Besides what others mentioned (Valve being kept in check, barely, and offering more service as a platform), I think Sony can’t afford to do what Valve does, because on equal footing they lose.

Sony saves you a bit of money on the hardware purchase, a small benefit if you buy a lot of games. Maybe some exclusives.

Steam lets you mod the game, play it on whatever device you want (PC now, PC you get in 10 years, Deck, Windows, Linux, likely even some Android devices in the future), and twink the settings to whatever you want, for whatever resolution, quality, or framerate you want. (Edit: also, your device doesn’t become a useless box if Valve becomes evil)

Physicals and exclusives are just about the only thing consoles have going for them, and Sony just lost one.

Another thread reminded me of the good ol Wii days, where the Wiimote did sounds for every character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

It sounded like shit, but damn was it memorable for 10 year old kids. “Fight me!” “Prepare yourself!”

Since I recently finished Zero Escape, my first idea is to press it a couple billion times

(If I get lucky it’ll kill all the stupid people)

This is great, but a new dilemma for me. I’ve been waiting for Steam Machine because I really want the small size and easy moving between TV and desk, compared to normal PCs. (Performance could go either way, I’m plenty satisfied with HD but also do have a 4k TV to use)

But I’m not actually sure precisely HOW small I want my gaming box to be. It seems like this’d be just a bit too clunky for me compared to the cube, but if Valve time pushes SM into 2027 I might just cave in, it still seems more convenient than most desktops I saw.

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I never used Win11 but I started using Linux (Nobara OS, by friend’s advice) in November, and not really. If you never used either, I’m sure the learning process is as easy, but switching isn’t.

I wanted onedrive on desktop to conveniently edit .tex files, which I can’t do on browser. The most popular option worked at first (after figuring out the terminal), but has bugs with downloading every once in a while (And Nobara doesn’t update it as consistently). The second didn’t work at all. The third, I got to connect, but I couldn’t get it to make a synced folder, on top of misleading description (the flatpack I found said it manages cloud, but it was the GUI for a package you needed to install via terminal anyway. And Nobara encourages to only use flatpacks, rightfully it seems) So I’m sticking with the buggy one and downloading the files from browser occasionally.

For that matter, installing TeXStudio had a font related bug too, and the solution was between the lines of a post about a slightly different problem and final solution.

The first installation (where I picked Fedora instead of Nobara at first) led to the laptop not booting, where my friend said “yeah that happens, I backup before I install something” (though he uses Arch), and I also accidentally installed Steam twice because the discover flatpack is a seperate one from the Nobara preinstall.

Windows? Most things are an .exe you launch, or have instructions specifically for Windows (complete with typical directories) while Linux has to account for at least a dozen distros.

There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence.

I’ll admit I didn’t read into it though, at most watched a (seemingly pro-Epic) video on it. None of the devs I follow ever complained, but I also can’t think of any offering lower prices on other stores (besides Steam key vendors)

I was about to start buying games on GOG instead of Steam when possible (I love them too though). I have no idea what’s going on, but sounds cool.

When will data center bathwater come out for tech bros?

I think a lot of it was just getting sick of E33 discussion. I remember when Hundred Line released this year some time after E33 and on Steam forums (which, to be fair, is as bad as most gaming forums), while people were, er, “discussing” the game, plenty of valid complaints were topped off with “just play E33 instead, it’s cheaper and much better” Like, I don’t even disagree, HL was disappointing, but why are you bringing it up, it’s apples and oranges.

It was also the first I heard of E33 personally so it wasn’t a good first impression, even if the devs are sweet and actually gave a shout out to HL.

(As someone who prefers Silksong that game’s community sucks too though, no, I don’t care a game is as expensive as 3 Silksongs)

Well, some people just treat it like playing sports. Wanna go play ball? Wanna play CSGO? Hey, this ball/shirt/skin looks fancier! It’s foreign, but understandable to me.

It also seems to be as many people as it was back shooters became a big thing. Out of the few people I know who video game, one only does FPS, one sticks to a few different games (Ultrakill, TF2, Peak to name a few), one either plays co-op with his gf or does Single player, and one mostly plays single player like me. Chatting up random people about games, that ratio seems similiar.

Why specifically $5M and not say $1M? Building a house should apparently cost you half of that, and I assume the rest is for investing into passive income?

I agree with the other guy, talk is cheap. I probably don’t need a 4k TV or multiple consoles, but I immediately started planning and buying after a raise.

They are anti-developer (though dev opinions differ), but most people aren’t affected by the anti-consumer stuff. The only instances I know are censorship with niche visual novels and case gambling (and things like crashing CSGO economy sound like good things in that regard), unless there’s more I don’t know.

Has Epic become profitable yet? I vaguely remember the plan being for it to become profitable later, and that it was living off Fortnite money.

Steam could just charge at most 20% then though, I don’t remember what the thresholds/conditions for different costs like 30% and 18% are.

I can see how banning might be controversial, but I sure wish they’d tax the hell out of them. Make that yacht not a million, but 10 or 100, a billion. Give that tax money to services like healthcare or UBI. I can see unique perks to yachts, if you genuinely want one as a dream I’m not gonna stop you, just commit to that being the dream you want.

In practise I can see how politicans would (or do) just use that money for themselves anyway…

I prefer GabeCube