Industry standard fees, actually.

Epic is the outlier, and only because they want to seem like the good guy. If they had market dominance, they’d charge just as much, if not more.

You spoke of their track record, which is something specifically referring to past activities. Sure, their recent track record is good, but going back far enough it was terrible.

But they did improve. Which is why they have a good recent track record. They listened to criticism (and as others have stated) followed regulation to best suit the needs of their customer base.

And instead of pushing back and doing their best to go around it… they made accommodations to follow those directives.

They’re not perfect angels, but they’re also not malevolent demons either. They tend more towards consumer friendly practices, even if they need a push sometimes, than most others in the field.

I guess I don’t really get where you’re coming from. Are you saying that, because you don’t feel that PC gaming was important in your lifetime that decisions Valve has made don’t really make any difference? That even if they had made anti-customer decisions, that it wouldn’t really matter because “PC gaming is dying”?

Hell, a major reason some companies claim that is because of valves dominance on PC. They don’t want to admit that they don’t have as much control, so they do their best to dismiss it as a non-issue…

Which is really neither here nor there about the entire point I was making in the first place. At no point did I say that they were the spearhead or major push… just that they helped. Just because something doesn’t do 90% of the work doesn’t mean they made no impact at all, and that decisions they made have no moral or ethical emphasis. The point was that Valve is not some pristine god from the heavens sent down to cleanse our filthy gamer bodies. They’re a company like any other, who occasionally make missteps. Valve just tends to make more consumer friendly choices than most.

They also have an excellent track record for customer support.

Their customer support actually used to really suck. They made a concerted effort to improve it.

You give too little credit to horse armor.

Mobile gaming was the major factor, definitely, but it was far from 100%.

Yes, it was more mobile gaming, but that doesn’t mean Valve had no hand in it at all. It certainly had a huge impact on desktop variations of it.

That doesn’t mean they’re wholly evil or some other bullshit like that, because of it, but their hands are definitely not clean of it.

They did help usher in the age of microtransactions and lootboxes with their CS and TF2 stuff. That’s about the only major bad thing I can think of that they haven’t been particularly apologetic about.

Yeah they charge like 10% of profit for the games on there, and more if you make it big.

Which is the same as the vast majority of every other store (video game or otherwise). It’s really only a factor because Epic keeps bringing it up as a reason they’re better than Steam, and should be allowed to be the monopoly instead (though they don’t explicitly state that part).

There’s an app, i think it only works for android TV, or Google TV, or whatever they call it. Same basic functionality, just dependent on your tv (or whatever thing you use for watching shit on your tv) hardware.

Not a single mention of the Deponia series… sad

Arin, is that you?

Yes, and if the kebab store pitched a fit every time someone provided a better product than them, calling that competition a monopolist, I’d have the same criticism of that kebab shop.

If they’re just doing their best to provide a quality product… I wouldn’t like that they have a monopoly, but if they’re not in any way abusing it… that sounds like they’ve earned their place. The problem lies in the people not putting forth enough effort (despite have the resources to do so) to match.

… because now your weird obsession with blaming Steam for all things going wrong with gaming has less ground to stand on?

So the systemic reason of… providing a quality storefront? Are you demanding that they just make things shittier so that other people have a chance?

This has got to be the most twisted criticism of Steam I’ve ever heard…

… right, which is why I said they want a monopoly, not that they have a monopoly.

Are they providing an actual alternative, or just creating a pseudo alternative then bitching about how someone else gets more attention?

Sounds like that was Sega.

That was on the developers, not the storefront, though. Epic has specifically decided they don’t give a flying fuck about Linux.

Steam is their scapegoat, they want a Monopoly without having to say they have a Monopoly.

Something that came out last week can be considered ancient in tech terms.

Insofar as Blizz-Activision does, yeah.

They got Bethesda now, too.

Maybe it looks goofy because you’re looking at a picture you took of your monitor instead of taking a screenshot like a rational adult.

Every WoW developer ever.

Ironically I looked at shit far more when I (finally) got a flying mount in each expansion than I ever did while stuck on the ground.

Finally my years of learning to play Tongo pay off!

Full Consortium 😎

But… why? They’re so boring, there hasn’t been much innovation in the genre in years.

So Arkham/Assassin’s Creed with a hobbit filter on?

Yeah, I’m sorry for my constant confusion, too. I appreciate your understanding :)

I misinterpreted your comment, I read it as $60 for the PSN account, not the game 🤦‍♂️

Do you need Playstation Plus or just an account?

There’s more to a PC than a CPU and GPU. Those of you giving me only those 2 that make up more than half of the $700 are kind of reinforcing my point.

Yes, but they do tend to cost the most.

None of that means Google wasn’t exploiting anticompetitive measures to ensure everyone has to pay their exorbitant 30% tax in their app store.

Something he repeats ad nauseum.

I find it hard to believe someone so invested in this outcome knows nothing about it.

So you just repeat his talking points because you believe in him?

You mean the same fee every store under the sun charges? Epic is the only one that doesn’t, and they pretty much just do it for marketing.

They are not the good guys. They’re Elon Musk before he took the mask off, though it slips through now and then.

You can target lots of things. And most probably do, cause if you limit yourself to one platform your audience diminishes severely.

Pretty sure their target would be “anyone who wants to buy the game”.

There were holiday events, like halloween (junkenstein) and an anniversary event covering the robot invasion thing from lore. But I don’t recall there being any permanent events, especially at launch.

Because more means more costs which means people won’t buy as many?

I’d say it has to do with increased support of controllers. It used to be really hit or miss whether a controller would even work on the computer, much less with games.

and grouping with people when I decide to be social.

They literally told you.

It doesn’t have to be all one or the other.