Phew! So they just have to make good enough games to avoid two complete flops in a row. Which is impossible but feel free to try and argue that it’s possible.

It’s also an extremely privileged view. “Just have lots of money and you’ll be fine lol! Dumb studios who don’t make enough money to weather flops are bad!”

It’s the equivalent of the rich billionaires saying if you want a house just work hard and buy one. It’s not hard! Why are the poor people complaining?

It would be nice to not have Layoffs but it’s just reality it will happen. If you think it’s impossible you are a child or are completely blinded by corporate interests.

Yes. See my other comments. It’s just basic logic.

Well luckily every game studio only ever makes successful games and Larian will never make a flop. Right?

Just like other great studios like CPDR. Or Blizzard… Oh…

I swear people are just idiots or have zero memory.

Well luckily every game studio only ever makes successful games and Larian will never make a flop. Right?

Just like other great studios like CPDR. Or Blizzard… Oh…

I swear people are just idiots or have zero memory.

Well luckily every game studio only ever makes successful games and Larian will never make a flop. Right?

Just like other great studios like CPDR. Or Blizzard… Oh…

I swear people are just idiots or have zero memory.

Surprisingly narrow minded and incorrect viewpoint.

Layoffs are inevitable, including at Larian studios. Otherwise they’re saying all video game studios just have linear growth forever which is stupid.

People downvoting have no idea what they’re talking about lol. One flop and Larian Studios will do mass lay-offs like every other studio. And no studio will make continual success after success.

Nice. The porn streaming wars have begun.

Even if you carefully get a successor, they can still fuck up and ruin it. Or they just die/decide to move on 2 years in and you’re in similar shit Creek. Or hell, Gaben himself gets dementia and starts making shit decisions.

It’s impossible to control.

It’s impossible to future-proof. You can’t for the rest of time have good leaders, inevitably someone will come and ruin it.

Lol. This is a cute idea but we all know it will go through enshittification with time. You are naive if you believe otherwise.

If you don’t have an argument attack the person. I’ll take the point cheers.

I don’t understand.

Valve is good now so it doesn’t need a competitor? And only when it goes bad should another company exist as competitor? This makes no sense… It’s just not how the world works. Once you have a monopoly it typically stays a monopoly. Look at any of the current monopolies - many are going to shit like Google but there’s no real competition regardless.

You’re also discounting the fact the opposite fact - Epic might be terrible now, but change leadership and its now amazing.

You’re buying way into a very specific case of looking at where things are at now and making a judgement VS. Thinking of longer term ideas like competition is good.

Also, is steam infinitely better than Epic? That’s very debatable, I have no issues with either. To be honest, they’re much of a muchness. You may just be too heavily emotionally invested in these companies. Realistically, they are both just trying to make as much money out of you as they can. For instance, Steams use of their market and giving out digital cards to collect and level up is very predatory.

So you’re making some false assumptions here:

1. That a new person to Valve would be equal to Epic, as opposed to massively running Steam into the ground in a significantly worse way. It’d be easy for some dumbass to suggest a subscription service is needed for Steam for example, you need to may $10 a month to support it. Whelp, Steam is now shit.

2. You assume I’m helping Epic whatsoever. I get free games, that only costs Epic… So yes, this is helping me and costing Epic. Net win for consumers.

3. If a developer/publisher wants the choice to pay lower fees they can do so via Epic. It’s great they have the choice, I support devs being able to do what works best for them.

There’s no hypocrisy there - it’s just logical that it’s a good outcome to have competition.

Perhaps I should turn the argument around - why is a monopoly by Steam a good thing? Long-term it’s completely unsustainable and they will do bad things, so why would you support that?

Yeah sure, Epic wants more market share.

But that’s ok - this is why competition is good. Devs make some more money, consumers get some free games.

Even if Epic ends up only matching Steam then this is a net win for people.

Asking for a monopoly is just short-sighted. Gabe leaves and then the next person in line is some $-hungry mofo who makes terrible decisions and you end up with a shit system. You need competition to keep things in check.

Ahh, so you can only have good competitors? It’s either a monopoly (which is only as good as the CEO in charge, and with time will go to shit), or competitors which do the same stuff and play nice?

This is reality. And you get good competition, you get bad, but in general it’s good for the consumer to have options. Fuck it, I’m actually completely happy using Valve for most things and then getting free games from Epic.

The view that a monopoly is better is just extremely short-sighted and naive. Similar to a “We should just have a dictator! This one guy is really good now, what could go wrong in the future?” type thinking.

Eh, more competition is good. This opinion is pretty basic.

From memory Epic has improved rates for developers/publishers - why the fuck wouldn’t you want that/just be ok with a base 30% cut because of some shitty ideal?