I suppose it’s not the first time Valve has counted to 3; in terms of releasing 3 projects. They released the Orange Box which had 3 games in it. But they never put out a 3rd iteration of things.
So expect this to be the last Steam Controller and Steam Machine, if we count the old 3p hardware Linux boxes and Index headset they helped with.
Elden Ring: Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows: The New Frontier: Last Rites: A New Beginning: The Pursuit of More Money
I’m still a little curious how that will work for games. Are they going to somehow emulate Win32 amd64 games? Do devs have to recompile them in some new way? Will engines support it beyond Unity and Unreal?
I’m not sure why, but an anime trope I want to see more of is cross-gender rivalries. A guy and girl who do not actively avoid each other, but actively hate each other in a nonviolent way.
It’s a perfect formula for hijinks and tension.
I actually feel like Arc Raiders has helped with this a bit.
I’m very distrustful of anyone who signals peaceful intent with nothing but an emote line. If people use voice comms, it shows a modicum of social openness, and helps humanize them. More often than not, people end up chatting about threats they’ve seen or where there’s useful loot.
There’s even a famous clip of a guy breaking open a bot who gets shot at, and he defuses the situation by yelling at the shooter that he expects better of him, and that they’re all just trying to get by.
Arc Raiders may be the first full price game I’ve bought, installed and played primarily on Linux (through a third party retailer, eliminating refund chances) without ever having checked its Windows performance.
Has been performing quite well. I’m a little aware of a matchmaking crash when its alt tabbed out though.
I once tried writing a guide for Paper Mario, and it was then I realized how much effort, consultation, and typing all of these are. It’s in some ways not a surprise that walkthroughs are now just video playthroughs of the game (often involving someone backtracking 3 times as they figure out a puzzle) - that takes a lot less effort than conscious text recorded outside of a game.
Just copying this from a top level comment in case you haven’t seen it.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/zohran-mamdani-new-york-times
Now I feel bad that I unsubscribed from them for something as simple as popup annoyance. I could have slammed them for this.
Another Crab’s Treasure, Stellar Blade, Jedi: FO and Survivor, Hollow Knight, Tunic, and lately Steelrising.
Some of those games are a bit easier but also have harder moments. To me, it’s about having a better-structured difficult curve.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of Soulslikes, but none of the ones made by FromSoft. Their style of providing poor explanations of mechanisms just makes no sense to me, even if you want to give players those moments of self-driven discovery.
Possibly a more humble answer: Ask.
Life, and struggle, operate differently in hundreds of areas around even a single large country. Even individual towns might have ideas for different programs that would have varying levels of benefit, and operate much smoother through voluntary buy in.
I’d be open to fining / taxing the ultra rich, I’d just want to remember it’s a means to an end. We don’t improve people’s lives by “taking down the haves” alone.
I feel like they would still know about it when doing inventory, no?
I mean, yes…but I also see this as “The vampire party could be so much more popular if they came out in favor of a bloodsucking ban.”
They likely have their own objectives beyond getting elected. They might even prefer being in the losing position if “they are our only hope and we all gotta donate real hard”.
The game seems awesome, but it is by no means indie or at all a hidden gem. It has a ton of presence.
Ownership of infrastructure THEY BUILT.
Why is it fair that only the Factorio developer gets to sell Factorio? I have a copy of the game myself, and even built my own mod where the engineer says “lol” and you can go around to other engineers and say “lol” to them. It’s just that the Factorio dev has ownership and control of the base game, and restricts how people sell modded versions. It’s basically feudalism where he has complete control over Factorio versions.
Okay, that was a full paragraph of sarcasm. There ARE some industries where ownership of one thing, like a river or limited capacity for internet wiring, causes monopolistic control. But when we’re not reliant on a limited resource, except for the main one of “user attention”, you can’t justify it as “monopoly control”. It’s just “Bob makes the best pies, so everyone goes to his store instead of Alex’s.” If Alex wants the same attention, they need to build their own incredible pie recipe from scratch - they have access to the same street, the same apples, and the same flour.
If you’ve ever watched those credits, you’d know that’s not true. Credits don’t just go to people who assembled lighting rigs or held the boom mic - they also go to the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using. Much of it becomes distantly disconnected, and that’s exactly what the relation to Steam becomes.
You’re also perhaps being disingenuous about the “one big player” thing. It is possible, and achievable for individuals to write their own launcher. I teased it as being more work than an indie dev often wants, but it’s still doable. Factorio and Minecraft famously did this a long time ago AND got initially popular as a result. Many Asian games run their own Windows launcher. As a result, they collect 100% of revenue, but forfeit some Steam exposure. Notably, some large publishers can cut better deals with Steam based on that popularity; “We don’t need you, but we both gain a bit more from working together”.
Some indies have even learned about this the reverse way, in seeing that merely because Steam is popular, publishing there doesn’t necessarily cover advertising for them; and even a good game can fade into obscurity. There’s some pretty heavy misconceptions relating Steam alone to a game’s level of success.
On the other hand, people have tried to argue Epic, Origin, and others failed because they “weren’t as popular as Steam”, but they’re also generally not as good a product as Steam - not just due to poorer programming, but choosing to not even offer certain core features like reviews.
I’m cautious but a little curious about this one, because QA could actually be a very good target for AIs to work with.
That said, those talking about human creativity and player expectations are still correct. An AI can report a problem with feedback that a human can say “No, that looks fine. Override that report.” It will also be good to do occasional manual tests, and lament “How did the AI think this was okay??”
I don’t think you came from Reddit. I think you came from TruthSocial.
Okay.
So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.
Once you do that, you may start to realize where that 30% is going. Sure, once you have the game and are playing it, you can say, “gee, it’s weird that Valve took a 30% cut of this work”. But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.
I understand Valve being libertarian about not moderating people excessively, what I’d like to see are better tools like shared blocklists or general moderation for any developer that doesn’t wish to control their own Community page.