That's on developers for not putting their games on other platforms, Valve do not prevent you from doing so. If they went crazy tomorrow, people can just jump ship.
I swear the only games that could never be on another store would be Valve's own. It's really not their fault that other platforms are so bad or niche.
Like realistically what should they do to not be seen as gatekeepers? Become worse to scare developers and customers onto other platforms?
I love playing "will the train be cancelled today?" every morning. Luckily covid's WFH revolution means I have a plan b, but for people who have to go in every day... I pity them.
Are they gatekeepers though? It's not like they own Windows or Linux and stop you from using any other store. Just having the biggest audience doesn't make them gatekeepers to the market.
I never see people talking about what valve should change other than lowering the 30% cut, but arbitrarily forcing that would set a bad precedent.
Instead of virtue signalling here's reasonable things Valve could do:
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure proton is free to use and you can install stores and games not from steam on a Steam Deck, so again I really don't know what they're gatekeeping.
Deceive Inc. is such a good game. Charming characters and an art style that really immerses you in a fun way. They learnt a lesson really quickly that's taken so many other games years to get right - buff the weaker, less fun stuff rather than nerfing the fun, overused things.
It's just a shame that the multiplayer only market is so saturated at the moment with games trying to monopolise your attention. To even get people to try it is difficult due to the entry cost - which is a fair £17.
Cute mascot!
Whenever ECS is brought up, I just can't think of a game I'd make where the pros outweigh the cons. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't understand it yet, so I'd love it if someone who's as passionate as you clearly are, could impart some of the things that made you fall in love with it.
Nope. The models have stayed the same from X&Y to Sword and Shield. Only in Scarlet and Violet have they been given an upgrade.
Not a silly question! The answer is technically yes, but not really.
Considering there are still sites that store plaintext passwords, there has to be some that just hash it and call it a day. For those, once you crack the hash, you know everyone with the same hash has the same password. Any real site does some more complex stuff to "personalise" each hashed password.
The real issue is when you reuse the password and it gets cracked once, people will try that with your email for other leaks and live sites. If a lot of people use the same password (like "password123"), they're likely to try it as one of the first guesses to crack any new leaks.
I'm oversimplifying my already oversimplified knowledge of basic cryptography, but it's a really interesting topic!
Is it confidence among buyers, or confidence among sellers? Don't try and make it sound like we're happy to be paying tens of thousands more!
Man I love Sun Haven! I definitely feel more involved in tending to my crops by using magic than setting up a sprinkler system. Co-op made for a really cute time.
Part of me wished the story was a little bit more than just an excuse to get you new farms but wouldn't want to ruin the tone haha.
HOLY SHIT you have no idea how long I have been trying to remember this game. A cousin showed it to me when I was young and I loved it. Next time I saw him he'd forgotten, and I never could find it when I finally got a PC!
I can't believe it's been under my nose this whole time (Paladins fan) and it makes complete sense. Thank you for unlocking a core memory 🙏
Game mechanics can be patented. It's stupid, but things such as "loading screen mini games" and "overhead arrows pointing to your objective" have been patented. The second I believe even got enforced once.
I think these kind of things have been getting approved less and less, but I wouldn't be surprised if "balls that contain monsters" was patented back in the early days too.
I'm with you on all of this. I'm familiar with this (am a game dev) and you're 100% right that the biggest cost is game distribution. One thing though: it costs ~$100 to list a game on Steam, which is returned to you after it's made a thousand or two.
Honestly there's nothing much valve can do to appease people, but I believe the most likely thing they can do is release data on how much distribution costs and give companies the ability to disable the "extra stuff" to save even a few percent of their revenue.