• 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • He lost me at that part, too.

    Okay, Valve has a DRM API, their client doesn’t support old operating systems, and they hook system APIs in dumb ways. The first and last points—sure, that I agree with. Not indefinitely supporting EOL operating systems, I don’t, but whatever.

    But to then go on and recommend Epic Games Store and Microsoft Game Pass? Buddy, you’re deranged.

    EGS is consumer hostile and a side project for a company whose main revenue comes from Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Steam is a side project-turned-cash-cow for a former game development studio and makes up 99% of their revenue. If either of these is going to be shuttered and end up as a waste of my hypothetical money with nothing to show for it, it ain’t going to be Steam.

    And then Game Pass… If you’re resigned to being a pessimist and accepting that you’ll never own anything, fine. That’s your choice. But to recommend it to others as a better alternative to Steam? Steam has its problems, but it’s not vendor-locked to its own operating system or a recurring monthly subscription. And if a game gets delisted, you at least still get to keep it on Steam.






  • Meta said that “it is required to offer a free, reduced-ad service that leads to poorer outcomes for users, advertisers, and platforms.”

    Oh, fuck off. Targeted advertisements don’t help users with anything other than spending money on things they don’t need. They lived perfectly fine before seeing the ad, they don’t need what it’s trying to peddle.

    The only poorer outcomes are for Meta and their advertisers. Don’t try and frame this as though it would hurt actual people, Meta.


  • It’s actually getting kind of hard to think of new, stupider ways to ruin the economy and raise the cost of living. Parody is getting close to being indistinguishable from reality.

    • Blanket tariffs for goods with low domestic production? Done.
    • Imprisoning laborers who do domestic farming? Yes.
    • Deporting legal, tax-paying noncitizens? Yep.
    • Pissing off citizens of countries that contribute significantly to local tourism? Indeed.
    • Asking potential tourists to pay extra for the privilege of visiting a to-be-sold-for-industrial-logging park? Why not.
    • Cutting healthcare and replacing it with a bonus for the 0.001%? Might as well!





  • Which part of my comment was denigrating indie devs? Indie games are great. Android gaming is currently not.

    If I’m looking for a good non-mobile game, I don’t go looking in the mobile game store. I go looking on PSN or PC, where the focus is on the kind of game that wasn’t designed as a phone-first experience.

    The fact that Android has some good traditional games or ports of indie gems isn’t something inherent to Android. The overwhelming majority of those games were on PC or console first.



  • You’re comparing apples to oranges.

    The mobile gaming market is leagues larger than every other market combined. That doesn’t mean the games are even remotely comparable to console games.

    It’s an entirely different target audience. Mobile games are focused on quick sessions and design patterns designed to encourage spending money on microtransactions. Games made for the traditional gaming market are mostly designed for longer play sessions with more mechanically complex gameplay. I as well as many others prefer the latter.

    Nintendo’s store is full of shovelware, but at least you’ll find more traditional games than just ports of indie hits. Or, buy a Steam Deck and enjoy something better than both.