I miss the duke

For-hey-ho

“IS THIS GAME WOKE?”, or my favorite pre-release thread: “WHEN SALE?” All of them, all the time. The Steam forums are trash.

I can’t even go to the forums any more. It’s nothing but trolls and bait. If I have an issue with a game, I’m better off going to reddit, and that’s fuckin saying something.

I think it came down to net vs gross. They make less in gross with pachinko, but their net was higher due to less overhead. It’s like the dodgy gacha market that every Japanese game house has gotten into. They can put out a shit product that only reaches a 10th of their previous market, but that 10th pays through the teeth for their waifu.

Bullshit. It exists because Konami got out of the video game business for Pachinko and then realised they could double dip if they beat all their dead horses some more.

I’d like it kinda like the PlayStation controller with the pad in the center.

“You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses…,” said the man who stole someone’s glasses.

The revolution will not be televised, but the brainrot will be retweeted, liked, and followed.

Lmao. I meant “blows my mind.” I was half asleep typing on my phone, so I’ll blame that. Either way, I’m leaving it :)

Good for him. He’s made some of my most favorite music, and for that I am forever grateful. I’ve read about his work ethic, and the fact that he’s still alive blows. I’m glad to hear he’s going to take it easy.

Sidetalkin’™ 2

You could very well be right, I haven’t read the full suit or done a lot of research on it, so I’m just going off the scraps I’ve read. I did check out isthereanydeal to look at price differences between Steam and Epic on some major titles, and all of them had even pricing. I don’t have a huge sample size, so if you want to look for some that have different prices, I’d be interested to see how much difference there is, and if, say, the lowest price on Epic has had a Steam sale after it where the game was priced higher on Steam.

I think that’s part of the argument. It isn’t just for Steam keys, it’s for alternate storefronts like GOG, Ubi, EA, Epic, etc. If you want to sell on Steam, you have to keep it the same price as anywhere else. It seems a bit harsh, but I am tentatively siding with Steam on this one. I’ve never had a company be as consumer friendly as Valve has been over their lifetime, and they’ve earned some brand loyalty. It’ll quickly dissolve if they start fucking people over, but for now, as far as I’m concerned, they get the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, on the other hand, I’m also an idiot, and I could be completely off with what I’m talking about. IANAL, so we’ll have to wait and see.

It wouldn’t make them available to more people, it would make deeper sales available to certain storefronts. Right now, Valve says that if you want to do business with them, and you offer a discount on another storefront, that same discount must be reflected in the Steam price when it sold for a discount on Steam. What the lawsuit says is that Publishers should be allowed to publish whatever discount they want on whatever site they want. That sounds like a better deal to consumers, but what it does is open the door for anti-competitive loss-leaders.

It’s the same strategy that companies like Wal-Mart have employed to gain marketshare. They come in, sell everything at a loss to drive out competition, and then raise the prices to the same price the competition was charging. They haven’t given the consumers a better option, they’ve only ensured that they don’t have another choice. If you look at Valve and you look at Epic, you can easily see who has the deeper pockets: Valve is worth a little over $3 Billion from what I can tell, while Epic is worth over $40 Billion. If Epic wants to sell at a loss to drive Steam out of business, they can, easily. As a matter of fact, they’ve already tried this by offering the free weekly games that they do.

I’d wager that if this goes through and Steam loses, we’ll see that free weekly game go away, and then large doorbuster sales of everything on the site just to undercut every steam sale as it happens. Where are you gonna buy that new game at? Steam where it’s full price, or Epic where it’s half price? What about the Steam Winter Sale? Will you buy the game for 80% off, or go over to Epic offering it at 90% off with a $10 coupon for another game on the site? Pretty soon you’ll only be shopping on Epic, and once Steam is gone, Epic can charge whatever they want. It’s the long game. They don’t need to be profitable today. They just need to show their shareholders the path.

It’s actually kinda the opposite. It’s claiming that Valve makes deals with publishers that use Steam forcing them to maintain price parity with other storefronts. So, if you want to discount a game on something like Fanatical, you’d have to run the same discount on Steam, you can’t just have one or the other. I don’t want to put on the ol’ tin foil hat, but it reeks of Epic. Epic wants to run cheap sales through their storefront that Steam won’t get, so they can pull users away from Steam. If they both have the same discounts, then Epic can’t get the upper hand. That is complete conjecture on my part, but it fits with Epic’s shit strategies. Instead of making something that brings people to them, they want to kill off the competition through anti-competitive practices. It’s the same thing they are doing by signing exclusivity contracts with third-party developers.

Sweet Lord.

Yes, the publishers have a solid catalog of games they have published. Those games were selected and published by people with great minds. I hope they all land in their feet and continue to publish great games.

They have a solid catalog and a lot of talent on board. I hope everyone is able to land on their feet. It would be a shame to lose out on those great minds.