Except you’ve given no reason you shouldn’t play those games, nor any reason to think that everyone can afford the games they play and instead resorted to personal attacks because I think its not unreasonable to play a game for free when the publisher asks for a month’s salary for it (or for part of it). You’re ignoring all the points I put forward, and examples I give showing that people can’t afford the access price and just declaring everyone entitled for wanting media. But no, you’re right, all these poor people are just entitled, anyone who doesn’t have money to pay the asking price should stop thinking they’re better than these poor, poor investment companies and just accept that some culture just isn’t for poors like them.

You’re completely ignoring the point. Those games often are available, just not in the same form, or from the original developers. You either buy a switch and play a locked down, emulated version, or you buy a used copy for a fortune. Either way, the original Developers get nothing. Similarly, you might want to have your own copy of a game, rather than a rental than can be taken away or destroyed at any time for any reason. You can count that as “not legally available”, sure, but at that point you’re arguing its fine to pirate almost anything released in the last decade - anything older than that also doesn’t support your argument unless its a small indie studio that hasn’t been bought out, since devs are usually laid off or forced to move. Even ignoring that, which is relavent, you’re ignoring the fact that games now often cost well over a hundred dollars to get the complete game, during an economic crisis. I can get a Steam Deck right now for the price of Lego 2K Drive (with the missing content), the Sims 4 with a couple a DLC items, and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Even as someone who is in a pretty good position financialy, I can’t justify buying games like this, nonetheless if I had a rougher start or was in a higher cost-of-living area. Look at areas where income is lower and it becomes even more apparent. Theres a reason places like Brasil, Russia, and Eastern Europe are known for piracy and Canada or Western Europe are not. Its also why people tend to pirate a lot as a teenager but not as an adult. When an individual has money (and the official version isn’t actively trying to screw over the customer) they are willing to pay for the product. Once people are adults, or when they’re given access to games within a price they can afford (IE regional pricing) they’ll start actually paying. These options wouldn’t exist if that weren’t the case. On the other hand, when the cost of living is skyrocketing, as it is now, and people are struggling to even afford food and rent, they won’t chose to spend all their rent money buying Sims DLC and will simply pirate it.

The reality is that most digital piracy is perpetuated by people who are well-off and have lots of tech, access to broadband internet, and high-end gaming computers.

Yes, piracy is for rich people who should just be buying games. Thats why we only see it in places like Western Europe and North America, whereas places like Brazil and Russia just buy all their games. Thats why in these places, they have N64s in every house to support companies making great games like Rareware, unlike filfthy pirates in the rich countries. If the rich first-worlders would stop being greedy and just pony up a few hundred in microtransactions a month during this economic crisis, then publishers wouldn’t have to remove games from your library as often.

Yes they should. Unfortunately, we live in a very unequal world, so a lot of people don’t have any way to reward artists for their work. In those cases, the most they can give is attention and word-of-mouth advertising. Often, thats better than buying it, considering how frequently you have corporate owners who force the artists out and/or destroy the game shortly after its published. At least in those cases, the artist gets something rather than it all going to an already-rich investor.

But it doesn’t cost their time and effort. Time and effort has already been spent, and as a result, the media exists. Someone playing a copy of the game has no effect on the developer (except maybe advertising).

Personally, Im more of a creative-mode player at the moment so the majority of the problems don’t affect me. Its also been a couple months since I last tried Minetest (mostly on Mineclone). From what I remember, my personal dealbreakers were:

• IMO much uglier graphics, and more significantly, its harder to graphically customize with mods and resource packs. Maybe its more versitile than I’m giving it credit for, but at the very least, its not used as there aren’t enough modders and artists making content for the game to even remotely compete.

• Performance - Minecraft may not be optimized, but I was getting much worse performance on Minetest. In particular, I was getting massive frame drops any time I placed or broke a block, making it extremely nauseating to play.

• UX - There were a ton of small roadblocks to actually playing the game as I wanted to. First, customizing the graphics settings - the menu was disorganized and defaults were really weird for my hardware. Then, I had to find and edit the permissions file to be able to fly and sprint on my creative world. Even after that, if I remember right, the controls or flight movement were limitted or weird but in a way that couldn’t easily be fixed.

• Lack of world editting commands - Im sure theres mods for this one, but its more work to find, figure out, and set up and by the time I got to this point, having to put in even more work just to make the game comparable was a dealbreaker.

Minetest isn’t really a substitute for Minecraft. Yes, its similar, but its far less polished, lacking in content, vanilla and otherwise, and is missing a lot of the technical functionality that makes much of Minecraft’s content (esspecially on the modding side) possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it, and I’ve debated trying to contibute to it myself (although my skills are very lackluster) but as it stands its only really a substitute in the context of things like casually playing Pocket Edition.

I’d personally say its like a 7 or 8/10. Its probably the most mechanically varied and deep PvE focused survival game, but at the same time, it does really feel incomplete. Building lacks options, end-game content is often finicky or tideous, and performance issues can make the game near unplayable in enemy-dense regions.

The joke itself isn’t off-brand, but the fact its dragged out for so long is. Borderland’s humor isn’t exactly clever, but its at least fairly fast paced so you aren’t left sitting there on the same awful joke.

Also, keep in mind that if they’re including this in multiple trailers, they think this is one of the highlights of the movie - that is the more concerning point.

Anger Foot - I played the demo previously and its the only game I’ve played that recreates the feel and flow of Hotline Miami successful. Very much looking forward to the full game. I’m temped to buy it at launch, even for full price, which I don’t think I’ve done since XCom 2’s War of the Chosen DLC.

Personally, I blocked .ml already. Yes, they are a large instance with a lot of legitimate content, but theres such a disproportionate amount of extremism, hate and discrimination, and toxicity that I didn’t find it worth being connected to.

Nah, LTT is almost certainly too small of a company to benifit from something like this. They want to help those really in need, like Bell and Rogers.

Sorry how is forcing me to run their stupid app that gobbles system resources, ugly as hell and super invasive to run every game good for the user?

Valve doesn’t force you to run it, game devs do. Steam’s DRM isn’t mandatory for developers to implement. For example, I know FTL is drm free on Steam. If I remeber right, SteamPipe can also be used for a much more lightweight experience as well, if you don’t want to do anything but install games (and not use their DRM or features).

You can’t move purchases out of your Steam account and Steam won’t even let you transfer it after you die. Not sure how that’s good for me like I’m dead you can’t let my kid have it because you’re so nice.

They will ban you indefinitely even over a small dispute, like say a charge back or sometimes just a random violation of their TOS which says they can ban you for no reason.

This isn’t good, but its standard and unless licensing laws and/or other big publishers change, I doubt this will. Its not something that makes Valve any less of a standout in the market when every other company does much worse than this.

Needing an internet connection even for single player local games is also great stuff.

For developers that do chose to implement DRM, the offline mode on Steam is relatively permissive.

If you own a game and then buy a bundle with that game, they don’t give you another copy (that you could gift to someone) which is wild because you literally paid twice for it.

Again, this is set by the publisher/dev. Valve offers the option to discount the pack by the given amount. Not as good as traditional physical software, but again, its not as bad as basically all of the competition so…

But they are just as shit of a company as every other company. Like I said, they aren’t there for you. They just have good marketing and a good front facing VP.

Yes, because providing tools for gaming on Linux doesn’t affect the customer buying/using their products. Neither does VR, or portable PC hardware as they’re exactly the same offerings as a desktop PC with better marketing. Neither does improved controller support - its just flashy UI for what was already easy to do. Neither does providing tools and hosting for a modding API - any dev who doesn’t launch with a home-made one is just too incompetent to be selling games anyway. None of these things are anything more than flashy marketing, so we should just be using itch.io’s VR headset for the lower rates and Epic’s Linux compatibility tools for those who don’t want to support Microsoft’s anti-consumer practices. And of course, instead of doing these things, they’re secretly buying exclusivity to every game and preventing you from repairing your devices despite the repair information provided (but you don’t realize because of marketing).

Also they control so much that just wait another 5-10 years when management changes. It won’t be good for the user I can tell you that.

Given that Gabe Newell owns a majority share from what we know, and he has shown a desire to build a stable, competitve company rather than just trying to join the race to the bottom, it’ll likely be longer than 5-10 years. That said, yes, this is a concern, but thats unavoidable, and “but someday they might not be good” isn’t a reason to dislike them as they are now.

I’m not talking about billion dollar studios. I’m talking about indie devs.

Billion dollar studios like Notch, Battlestate games, and Roblox (pre-Roblox).

Moreover, they take a 30% cut and no one has ever batted an eye, not even today.

Because unlike Apple, you can choose to instead or also sell on dozens of other storefronts that also charge about 30%, such as Humble, GMG, Fanatical, Epic, Microsoft, GOG, IndieGala, or GamersGate, or one of a half dozen or so that charge less such as itch.io, or you can just put it on your website. A monopoly doesn’t mean something costs money, it means there are no other options. Theres more competition in the games retail market than there is most other areas.

Their success has been to convince gamers they are friends. That’s all. Apple on the other hand garners insane antipathy from the public.

The difference is that Apple follows the same sort of business practices as much of Steams competion, and the industry in general. They invest in measures to stifle competition, often at the cost of the user, rather than using their position for R&D or development that might help users. People view Steam positively because they’re one of a very small number of companies that try and make a good, or at least innovative product, even if their end goal is still to get your money. Compare that to Epic, where they immediately started limitting consumer choice by buying exclusivity and by doing things like removing the Linux versions of games they bought (even after they had already been paid for), or what you’re complaining about, Apple, where they prevent installing anything they didn’t approve (esspecially anything indie), and don’t allow devs to use services other than their own.

I was talking about whatever the current, popular CoD is. I don’t follow the series, thus my not knowing. Last time I tried to play, it was Battle.Net exclusive.

The problem is that, at least for Steam, they’re not a monopoly, nor are they necessary even within their market. Devs can and do distribute and/or market successful games without going through Steam and players can play games without ever getting Steam. I mean, if we were to take what I’d estimate are the most popular games right now:

• Roblox - only a dedicated storefront/launcher
• Minecraft - Up until recently, only a dedicated storefront/launcher, even now, not Steam
• Fortnite - Originally only dedicated launcher, built a storefront off of that, still not Steam
• Counter-Strike 2 - Steam
• CoD - Not Steam? I think? Honestly its been such a mess in publishing I don’t know.
• League of Legends - Only a dedicated storefront/launcher
• Valorant - Only a dedicated storefront/launcher
• GTA V - On Steam
• Apex Legends - On Steam
• Overwatch 2 - popularized off Steam, turned to Steam after massive mismanagement butchered the game

Its absolutely possible to launch and maintain a successful game off Steam, and people have and continue to do so. Even exclusively talking about 3rd party storefront/launcher combos, theres a lot of options. Steam its just popular because its not only worth using (a bar most of the competition already fails to pass) but offers a lot both to users and developers from cheap, effective marketing, to tools to support Linux, to better controller support.

What are the other alternatives?

Source Filmmaker - basically the tech used in Valve’s games (IE Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Gmod) but repurposed into an easy to use animation tool. Valve used it quite a bit for their content but it was also popular among amateur animators since it was easy to use and had bunch of ready-to-use resources from Valve’s games.

Skibidi Toilet is a serious of SFM shorts that became popular with young kids. Think in the same vein as the weird flash videos or early SFM videos that were popular with young kids 10-15 years ago. “Skibidi” doesn’t mean anything and is just taken from that.

I know in previous posts, you’ve talked about leaderboards and comparing stats to friends. For those who might be embarrassed by their stats or who would be anxious comparing stats, is ir possible to hide these menus and/or play the game without them? In particular, is it possible to play with other social features still enabled?