I think every downturn in gaming history has led to explosions in indie dev studios and products.

this one feels a bit different; first time I’ve seen companies posting record profits and bragging about them, while laying devs off in absolute droves. it’s almost as if consolidating a billion competing IPs into a handful of publisher/owners who don’t really care about games per se, but see the enormous financial value in controlling the IP and production landscapes may have been a bad idea.

don’t get me wrong, someone comes along and offers me billions for my company, probably gonna take it, but you can see how it becomes reductive; and then the people calling the shots end up knowing very little about the actual mechanics of the industry… yeah we’re in for very fun times.

Indies will keep producing great stuff. Some of them will also get gobbled up. Support the rest please!

ALL OF YOU! EACH ONE OF YOU HAS HAD MY FILTHY ASS PENNIES!

or a silly, halfwit race to build out the infrastructure (because they’re smoking their own product) that could crash the economy.

You’re only seeing the upsides - make nifty pictures, ai music, whatever - because the entire shitshow is a free or exceptionally underpriced preview of what’s to come. while everyone from google to grok to your mom fails to find a way to actually profit off of it all when they have to figure the costs of the water, power, training data, lawsuits and other shit into the actual equation it blows up.

These aren’t my ideas - please, take a break from your preconceptions and read:

https://futurism.com/data-centers-financial-bubble

https://www.zdnet.com/article/todays-ai-ecosystem-is-unsustainable-for-most-everyone-but-nvidia-warns-top-scholar/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/8/22/2339789/-Why-The-AI-Bubble-Will-Burst

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/

Yup. How bad did the situation have to get before a group of people decided to take matters into their own hands and resolve a persistent unaddressed serious flaw with their operation that was constantly endangering children?

It’s fucking mind numbing to think that Roblox wants to step in and stop the vigilantes instead of - SIMPLY - fixing the problems to protect children from pedos. Holy hell

oh no, that’s… not diddling kids.

wish conservatives would actually care about kids being molested instead of cosplaying concern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvL7GlSi_jY&ab_channel=SpunieBard

that looks fantastic

appreciate the details!

…what did happen* to ksp2? I remember ms acquired them then… ?

Prince of Persia.

but which? og? which release? I liked it on Atari ST then hated it on PC lol… but only had access to a really bad pc.

so far the only legit critique I’ve seen is the uncertainty of what this will mean to indie devs - will they be forced to sign with publishers who can assist with compliance etc., what will compliance actually look like to small shops, etc.

I will say this: the vast majority of game devs feel the same way and want to be able to play the games we paid for as well. there’s just a bit of fear of the unknown for small devs.

Steam could pursue other payment processing possibilities instead of acquiescing to their demands.

why is valve obligated to serve up this garbage? simply not being party to it is the best answer.

still nothing explaining why valve should be serving up this garbage. just downvotes. weak.

yup. there’s a whole bunch of people who will cry ‘but this slippery slope’ - sorry your incest twins use too much lube, that freaky slope is your problem, not Steam’s. get over yourselves. it’s a private company, nothing compels it to carry your daddy twins incest shit.

SWOTL.EXE

Edit: Also his voiceover halflife series is likely the best protagonist commentary series ever.

It is. hard to say why but it’s quite compelling.

I couldn’t stomach it.

spin up 5 projects. hire devs from all over the world, make them work on site in person. people upend their entire lives for a chance at a stock option.

cancel 2 after 10 months.

cut the teams on two of the others.

cut the teams again.

and again.

oh wait hire like crazy and overcorrect so we can

cut the teams again.

Then cancel 1d3 of remaining projects, announce <OLD IP>REMASTERED

All devs cut never neared their stock vestment, all shares returned to the mothership, start to consider spinning up 5 more new projects.

this is a fantastic point. well put.

I’ve seen it second hand; it’s wretched. imho many of these monetization mechanics should be restricted to 21+.

Soon as I realized I had a problem, I uninstalled the game. Couldn’t even talk about it for a long time without wanting to reinstall. F

props and respect for recognizing it and getting yourself out. that takes character.

Also trying to be patient for Clover Pit

clover pit looks like gambling addiction on roids, holy shit did they exploit a good game loop. like, almost scary if you’ve known anyone who’s struggled with it. at least it’s not real currency and loot boxes fuck

I dig that microprose is going back to it’s roots with stuff like Cleared Hot and Tiny Combat Arena. satisfying.

tbh, I loved SuperGiant’s themes and aesthetics, but not their gameplay. So often early games of Bastion and Transistor felt squishy, or like I was playing underwater - the response loop from button push to effect on screen seemed laggy. Tried both on various platforms, never really got past that feeling. lovely soundtracks tho

Godotcon is in boston this week. I love the engine, it’s maturing rapidly.

It’s an alternate timeline where Jessica had a daughter instead of a sun

this is what the bene wanted. a daughter Atreides to mate with Feyd Rutha Harkonnen - but Jessica wanted to satisfy Leto.

and Leto defeated the Harkoenens during their invasion, so Leto rules over Arrakis for the indefinite future, leaving space in the story for fetch quests and base building.

uhhh so this is an entirely different fiction huh

Apparently the firemen disappeared too, so you have to solve the mystery.

I suspect you mean fremen…

why even bother licensing the story if they’re determined to change everything?

how strange

more plausible than anything else I suppose

… a dune mmo?

who thought this was a good idea?

love the frank herbert books. I thought the recent movies were ok. But MMO? what a strange fit for this universe… unless billions of the players die in the jihad lol

The Sims for me is either 1800s Utah polygamous Mormons, post apocalyptic Handmaid’s Tale scenarios, or prisons.

lolwtf

gamestop is developing games now?

that relationship always seemed too close regardless.

Mine broke just by sitting in the couch with it in my pocket. That was a huge lost opportunity.

yeah you should have hurled it at a fascist.

edit: ooh the fascists are sensitive today!

it would be so awesome if we could just ship all the fascists to a prison planet with no oxygen.

yeah it’s really got a bad name in the game dev community. but they don’t give a shit and seem to double down on the troubling aspects of their business model. imho the rest of the community is afraid of the kind of regulation and oversight this bullshit will bring.

it’s a child labor machine

you can see the publishers just going out of business because of all that woke money. oh wait. $184.3 billion. nevermind lol

yeah, you’re right, they’re just a chud.

Your bubble is about to pop, thanks to trump.

I mean, goddamn… chudtastic take

you’re a sad little chud. gonna block you now, have a wretched life.

SteamOS

the way I see it, steam machines led to SteamOS, which will lead to a true steam living room console.

so you can’t tell me when.

because you know, it’s always been that way.

what a fucking sad life that must be to lead, to know, yet deny it with every fiber of your being because you can’t accept.

Keep living in your bubble and being angry at the world, it sounds fun!

lol you’re so isolated from reality you can’t even tell

The rest of us just don’t want it shoved down our throats.

and when you put storytelling of any kind that way, it tells me who you really are.

no one is shoving anything down your throat sweetie, you paid your money for a game before checking it out. that’s your mistake, not the devs.

The mere presence of a POC or trans character isn’t bothersome to most people.

but some people LOSE THEIR ABSOLUTE SHIT over it lol.

fuck em, let them die angry.

before it was filled with activists.

and exactly when was this? lol

when did all the activists take over. Pong?

Colecovision?