ampersandrew
@ampersandrew@kbin.social
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Nah, it doesn't just linearly double like that. If it takes 10 people to build, test, and support the launcher for Windows, it doesn't take 20 people to support Linux, since most of it is going to be the same across platforms. A 1.8% increase in sales also isn't the best prediction. On Steam, the vast majority of their players and revenue are accounted for by just a couple of the most popular games, and a lot of that is dictated by what games are allowed or successful in China. If your game isn't selling in China, your addressable market is actually much closer to being 4.5% Linux. That's not to pick on China, but China is a massive market on its own, and it's the difference between the case where you're selling microtransactions in Counter-Strike 2 or if you're selling a metroidvania.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Thanks a bunch. If I get the answers I'm looking for, maybe GOG will be my go-to.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Less incentive, but 1.7% of a huge number of customers may still be profitable.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Neat. I was aware of Heroic before, but I haven't heard of this. This does change the equation for me, because now there's a data point that GOG can use to see where my money's going and how they can get more of it. What can you tell me about their refund policy? Are the results on ProtonDB just as reliable for GOG versions as they are for Steam versions of games? Does Heroic pre-compile Vulkan shaders the way that Proton on Steam enforces it? Whatever answers you don't have, I can do some of my own homework, but I'm intrigued now.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Do you have a source on Heroic getting a cut? I can't find it in their FAQ.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Setup is annoying, and feedback on whether or not it's working is a bit rough. I've lost data by misconfiguring it before. You have to run a background daemon on a device where battery life matters, so I tend to shut it off when I'm done. Syncing saves with SyncThing requires knowing where those save files are, whereas being built into the launcher client means they already know where those saves are, and that step is already done.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
I want auto updates for my games so close to "always" that you can only tell it's not 100% if you squint a bit. I use Syncthing in other contexts, like syncing emulator saves to and from desktop and Steam Deck, and it's not quite as easy as Steam cloud saves.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Yes, that's the selling point, but I also value automatic updates and cloud saves most of the time.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Yeah, but I want things like auto updates and cloud saves as officially supported features rather than something they can revoke from Heroic at any time.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
They don't even need to invest in its development. They just need to integrate it as a launch option.
- Comment on God of War (PC) is now available on GOG 8 months ago:
Please give us Galaxy on Linux, GOG, so I can shop with you over Steam.
- Comment on Final Fantasy XVI PC Version In 'Final Stages Of Optimization,' Expect A Demo Before Release 8 months ago:
The question for me is how much less I'm willing to pay for a game that made me wait past GOTY/spoiler season to play it, because I'm not paying $70 for it anymore.
- Comment on Multiversus, WB's Smash Clone, Is Coming Back This Spring 8 months ago:
They're called platform fighters. And I doubt this thing has an offline mode, so no thanks.
- Comment on Multiversus, WB's Smash Clone, Is Coming Back This Spring 8 months ago:
It felt more like a retroactive beta, like taking back a move in chess saying your hand was still on the piece when they realized it wasn't working out.
- Comment on How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath 8 months ago:
That’s no excuse to try to get a user’s account banned.
I'd say it is. They highlight the part of Steam's rules against harassment, and while that's always subject to interpretation, they feel that this counts, and I'm inclined to agree.
The steam group had like 1000 people now it has almost 200,000 after the whole debacle.
Before this group blew up, YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers were already making their bullshit conspiracy theories. People try to paint this as Streisand, but that's ridiculous. The Streisand effect is trying to hide something, which you still seem convinced they're trying to do despite highlighting their clients on their web page and getting listings in the credits of the games they work on. What it looks like to me instead is that:
- sensationalist YouTubers paint this company as the devil
- this curator is made in response
- it gets a natural, human reaction from the people targeted by this group
- the YouTubers from step 1 use that reaction to mean whatever they want it to mean
In no way did I foresee a way that this group didn't continue on the same trajectory with or without Sweet Baby responding to its existence.
SomeOrdinaryGamer made a good video highlighting stupidity from both sides.
I've seen one video from SomeOrdinaryGamers, and it was too many, but he's cited in this article as perpetuating the bullshit conspiracy theories, so I'm good.
- Comment on Physical or Digital? 8 months ago:
I think the last console game I bought was Metroid Dread, but I leaned physical for those as well, because their digital storefronts are a single point of failure. I've witnessed first hand a friend of mine getting frustrated with a now-sunset Xbox 360 store, a problem I could see coming a mile away even when I was in high school when the console launched. On PC, if Steam disappeared tomorrow, I could pirate my entire library. If GOG gives me a week of lead time on their store going away, I could legitimately back up those games.
Digital is more convenient. I have shelves of old games and consoles that I'm working on culling rather than expanding, especially as someone who tends to move to a new apartment every couple of years. Physical often tends to be a false sense of security in the modern age of day 1 patches and other kinds of server dependency. DRM-free is actually what you want, unless you really, really enjoy the tangible aspect of the game. Outside of nostalgia, I don't think it matters to me.
- Comment on EA just added classics like Dungeon Keeper, SimCity 3000, and Populous on Steam 8 months ago:
Maybe not. The disclaimers on the side of the store page appear to be different between these and some other EA games. I hate how hard it is these days to discern if a game has a stupid always-online requirement.
- Comment on EA just added classics like Dungeon Keeper, SimCity 3000, and Populous on Steam 8 months ago:
EA's launcher still requires internet access though, right? If so, you're probably better off sticking to the GOG versions. I booted up Jedi: Fallen Order on a train, and EA told me "no".
- Comment on Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have "about 40" video game projects in the works 8 months ago:
Ah, that would make more sense. I thought that was a licensed deal like anything else.
- Comment on Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have "about 40" video game projects in the works 8 months ago:
their own official DnD game is the complete opposite of BG3 in terms of monetization, popularity and critical acclaim
I don't follow. You buy a book and you play. Critical Role brings in more viewers than most primetime network TV shows ever could. They had a controversy around changing their monetization that didn't come to pass, is my understanding, but the complete opposite of BG3?
- Comment on How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath 8 months ago:
I think I'd have a problem with it if bad internet super sleuths came up with some nonsense reasons to try to destroy my reputation.
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
There will continue to be games to play because people will continue to make them. A bad experience in one place leads to a new studio designed not to repeat it.
- Comment on Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo? 9 months ago:
I'm aware, but it will likely be mechanically similar. If it turns out to be a Bloodlines 2 situation, I can always just stick to the first game and Grim Dawn.
- Comment on Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo? 9 months ago:
Yeah, that last part I knew, but I started diving into this genre with Titan Quest because the sequel is allegedly coming out this year.
- Comment on Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo? 9 months ago:
How would you say Titan Quest compares?
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
You slipped in an edit while I was responding, and I think the gist of it is that you and I fundamentally don't agree, especially not the hyperbolic flourish you used. I think you'll continue to see plenty of great games come out in the next decades, because people still want to buy games and other people still want to make them.
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
No, this is the reality. The likes of Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and Take Two rule the industry by market cap, but that's because their games notable sell to the type of person who only buys a few video games per year at most. If they utterly dominated the material reality of the industry, how on earth could Baldur's Gate 3 or Palworld even happen? How could Hades or No Man's Sky, made by former EA devs, happen? Your view of reality is quite overly pessimistic. How can you even measure some of the claims you're making?
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
Best of luck. But yes, there's a good chance your scope is too large, so definitely start small.
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
When a company like this catastrophically fails and Baldur's Gate 3 or Palworld do gangbusters, that signals to others who also want to make money what they should be making in order to make money. Where the money does go, like a Larian or a Pocket Pair, now has profit to spend on growing their studios and making more of what actually works. They end up hiring the talent that was let go. Not all of them; this is less efficient than if the first studio that imploded had instead made something that the market actually wanted, but this is not a situation so dire that the industry will feel it for decades like you say. New studios form all the time from mismanaged large companies that lay people off after making bad bets.
- Comment on EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" 9 months ago:
So like Rainbow Six 1-3's mission planning mode?