Sony also has an MFN, not sure about Xbox: https://tryhardguides.com/epic-games-ceo-says-sony-is-the-reason-they-cant-lower-prices/

The real reason Epic hasn’t sued Sony is because they’re an Epic shareholder

How do you compare it with other platforms if it’s exclusive to EGS? For timed exclusives, it would mean the price would have to go UP on EGS when the Steam version launches, which seems like pretty dumb marketing honestly.

I know I’m playing devil’s advocate defending Epic and publishers, but I don’t see how defending rent extracting monopolies is any better.

The price is the same because of a Most Favored Nations clause in Steam’s ToS. Publishers have to sell it at the same or higher price on other platforms to keep their product on Steam, which is the lion’s share of the market. This is part of the accusation in the lawsuit: https://programming.dev/comment/5159579

Now you could argue that even if it were removed, publishers would still sell at the same price and keep the extra profit, but that’s just hypothetical at this point.

I love the theme for it, but was expecting an actual city builder, as advertised in the description. Instead, it’s a pretty boring puzzle game with pretty graphics, very unrelated to something like Cities Skylines. I am hoping something like this with more in depth management comes up in the future.

I do like ‘cozy’ building games like Townscaper and Dorfromantik but they aren’t advertised as city builders, and the puzzle elements in Dorfromantik don’t get in the way of building pretty stuff as much as in Terra Nil.

“Wow, personalized ads? That’s brilliant! Let’s patent it” said an Activision exec who had been in cryogenic sleep since 1995

Yeah, I’m going to reserve my excitement for when I see gameplay footage or actually play it. Quake Champions looked really good in the beginning and then it ran like an internal pre-alpha. Tribes Ascend had so many OP hitscan weapons on release you thought you were playing Call of Duty. Waning general interest in “boomer shooters” and disastrous releases make these games more nostalgic memories than interesting future games in my mind.

Thanks. So TLDR:

1. PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can’t sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
2. Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
3. Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn’t explained properly.

I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).

I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.

And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.

Pros: Easier to learn (belt mechanics are a bit clearer). Belts have a Z axis which allows for even more spaghetti! Progression feels faster since you already start out with builder drones. Graphics are absolutely amazing. Multiple planets are pretty cool.

Cons: there are no trains. Logistics stations kinda ruin the late game since it makes factory planning much easier

This is not a slight nuance, it literally makes touchscreen unusable for me. Touchscreen really helps with carpal tunnel and RSI, which is more important to me than an ideological war against Google.

The deceleration is way too low and it’s hard to get it to focus where I want on the page fast. The deceleration is inconsistent between touchscreen and touchpad, which works fine. I tried looking around for configurations for it but couldn’t find any. Touchscreen support in Chrome is just generally better

Does this apply to all Chromium based browsers? I would like to switch to Firefox, but the touchscreen scroll there is terrible, and that is 90% of what I do in a browser.

We are committed to creating value for our customers and shareholders.

Fixed a typo in the report

And shorter games should naturally command a lower price

This is exactly the thing that doesn’t make any sense. Should The Last of Us be priced at a fraction of The Witcher 3 because it is shorter? What about Bioshock? It’s half the length of The Last of Us 2

I’ve often come across this sentiment in Steam reviews and it’s very reductive to judge games based mainly on this metric. Getting older I have less time for videogames and I value shorter games more. There are games that are extremely valuable because of their high quality even if very short, like the first Portal.

This is why we have companies like Ubisoft trying to game the system constantly with low quality content to pad the game to 100 hours or whatever is fashionable in open world these days. I will take 6 hours of quality single player anytime over 100 hours of AssCreed grinding and ridiculous ‘story’

This year’s Unity story sums up my discontent with tech nicely. Impressive tech made by extremely talented people, botched by incompetent corporate parasites who care only about securing their millions.

Best Supergiant game. But I wouldn’t call it underrated: it was a big hit when it landed. I has also aged really well with some very creative mechanics.

ToME is amazing! One of my favorite games in my library

This type of nostalgia porn is pretty popular on Youtube, but usually they at least make some valid point. Not in this case though.

It’s also funny how Skyrim is presented as one of the ‘cool’ games, glossing over the fact that it has a massive, slow exposition dump at the beginning, which was criticized ever since it launched.

While I agree with the title, this particular analysis is kind of shallow. It’s one thing to analyze predatory game design, but here it’s mostly “I don’t like this so it’s bad”. It’s also very narrowly focusing on AAA open world. Old AAA open worlds were much worse. Remember how empty and soulless the first Far Cry and AssCreed were?

I laughed when the author makes a bunch of examples where he calls cutscenes a waste of time. I don’t like action games for example and I can’t find any enjoyment in Dark Souls, but I’m not going to argue that it’s a waste of time or ignore the fact that people genuinely like it.

And then he goes on to say that modern games are made by random people in tech that aren’t into gaming. I mean, bro, have you tried applying for a fucking job as a game developer?? Participated in a lunch break at a gaming company where 90% of people only talk about videogames?

Exactly, they completely miss the point of a city builder and don’t fit neatly at all into the main game systems. And the zoo example was just because I find zoos revolting.

That’s totally expected. Besides, most of the Cities Skylines DLC were shit anyway. I mean building a zoo, seriously?

Night? More like sunrise and time to go to work

• Battle for Wesnoth
• Mindustry is the clear winner though

So this will apply to games that have already been distributed on stores as well? How the fuck is such a change in the terms even legal?

I guess this will mostly impact F2P mobile devs since they will lose most money from installs. The good news is that Godot is more than capable for those types of games.

When you chose a FOSS license you explicitly say that you are ok with derivatives of your work. These artists never distributed their work under a license where they allowed AI to be trained on it and make derivatives of it.

AI is far from replacing programmers. It can replace some simple boilerplate, but is nowhere near understanding the logic behind applications. So you simply say this knowing you are safe for tens of years more.

I wonder if you would be so adamant to defend AI if it could copy your work, and even your exact style by prompting your public name. I am going to bet on no

I played KSP on Epic because it was free, but I hate Epic so much that I just bought it on Steam instead since I really liked the game.

Exactly. Visual clarity is not just for the players, which can get used to anything after thousands of hours of play, but for spectators as well which will not have the same dedication.

Haha, good joke.

It’s a competitive game. You have to be able to recognize features as fast as possible and a vibrant color scheme can help with that. And I just like seeing things without turning max brightness and going in the basement. There is no need to set some mood here with a dark gothic color palette

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty

That’s why it’s so weird. You’re an adult in that game.

It’s an incredible game, but it took me something like 20 hours just to finish the first act, and I just don’t have the patience anymore for a 100+ hour long RPG. The combat is really good overall, but I didn’t like that movement and attacks use the same pool of AP. Compared to something like XCOM, this forces you to be very static since moving is basically wasting an attack, or it makes movement abilities like jump and the likes extremely OP.

It’s kind of funny reading that article as it’s basically saying longer games make for longer work hours from the perspective of a games journalist. Must be pretty annoying to get through some 60 hours of same-ish game just to get a review out.

I like to hate on Ubisoft as much as the next person, but hasn’t this already been disproved like a week ago? https://lemmy.world/post/2109249