Wow, there’s a series I haven’t thought about in like a decade. I recall really enjoying that game way back when, though.

It’s baffling that they decided to take the Marathon IP and do this with it. If this had been a single player game in the vein of the originals, it would have made sense - they’d capture the attention of people who played it in the 90s and wanted more of that. Who is this supposed to appeal to? I strongly doubt there’s much overlap between people who enjoyed those games in the 90s and people who want live service extraction shooters today.

The Borderlands franchise is really past its prime at this point, anyway. I’ve got absolutely no issue skipping this one. Might pick it up when it’s on sale for $10 in a few years. The franchise really peaked with BL2; it’s been down hill since.

It’s funny, really, because game elements like that could make for a really neat game if it was done intentionally, but when it’s AI artifacts, it’s awful.

Another great example of this is Bandi Namco’s loading screen minigame patent, which expired in 2015. The patent was incredibly broad.

I’d argue that the indie scene is already providing that; it’s really just the AAA studios that’re churning out cookie cutter garbage. However, if everyone had patented game mechanics, those indie studios wouldn’t be able to make those games. I’d challenge you to find a game that hasn’t borrowed something from another. I certainly can’t think of one.

Fair enough; game mechanics really shouldn’t be patentable. Specifically / particularly video game mechanics; every video game uses concepts and ideas from other games - there’s nothing completely original anymore. Imagine if every game had patented all of its mechanics - there would be no new games, it’d be impossible to make something. Imagine if ID had patented the concept of a first person shooter, for instance.

This is a whole separate discussion; game mechanics really should not be copyrightable at all, IMO.

Yeah, this is a really shitty, clickbait title.

“They were only getting paid for the first copy sold,” Fryer explained. “They lost millions of dollars.” Sure, multiplayer games were growing in popularity at the time, but as Fryer put it, “How do we create a single-player game that is so compelling, that people keep the disc in their library forever?”

Really, they finally found that one simple trick to maximize profits: Make a good product that people want to play longer. Go figure?

It’s right on the Steam page. Just click ‘Show More’.

and potentially their brand sponsors

Well, there it is. In-game ads in the form of “user-generated content”, from the sound of it. Also has paid mod vibes.

Hope I’m wrong and it’s actually great.

As someone who just has no interest whatsoever in competitive multiplayer games (even ‘passive’ competitive, like this sounds to be), or live service titles, I feel completely left behind by AAA developers. It’s a good thing the indie scene is so vibrant, or I’d just have to find a new hobby at this point.

This would also spawn a Captcha% speedrun category, where the goal is to beat Doom before the Captcha considers itself solved.

Halo Infinite: Post-season 5, battle passes are now free during their introductory season, but cost $5 to unlock afterward

Marvel Rivals: Battle passes will not expire if you bought the $10 Luxury pass during the season

These are not FOMO-less. Marvel Rivals sounds like the worst of the three in that regard. The ‘old’ method incentivized you to skip buying a battle pass if you weren’t going to finish it (because you’d lose rewards); MR’s system gives you a FOMO CTA to make that purchase to stop you from losing rewards.

Compare this to, say, Dead By Daylight, where there’s “seasons” with unlockable rewards, you can get them for free, and you can keep unlocking them after the season ends.

There’s also a wide range of player skill levels to consider. If you aim to make a game not be frustrating for most players, it’s going to be boring for a large percentage of the best players. If you aim to make a game challenging for the best players, it’s going to be unapproachable for most. Different difficulty tiers of the same fight helps to address that but still alienates players if they find even the lower difficulties too challenging. It’s a delicate dance.

I never saw any other solid evidence.

It’s all hearsay; anyone with a search engine can find articles making claims but what’s accurate or not is anyone’s guess. It’s all we’ve got to go on until the trial, most likely.

My understanding (again only based on articles from the past 2+ years that this lawsuit has been in the works) is that it isn’t codified in their agreements at all, but that they can / have either removed games from the store, or removed them from promotion (meaning you could find the game if you searched for it, but it would never show up on the storefront, for instance) in response to games being listed elsewhere cheaper. That’s kind of part of the basis for this lawsuit, by my understanding - I’ve read that they’re using those examples as evidence against Steam that they’re acting anti-competitively.

There’s been a lot of articles and discussion about it since this lawsuit first showed up, and the general gist that I’ve seen is that:

• It’s not codified in their agreements, but
• They can / have in the past either removed products from the Steam store entirely or removed them from curated marketing and promotion in response to the game being listed elsewhere at a lower price.

They seem to handle it on a case by case basis, but in those cases it’s definitely not been restricted only to the sale of Steam keys. They just don’t have any firm legalese to refer to here that I’m aware of.

I haven’t seen the agreement itself, but I’ve never seen anything to lead me to believe it didn’t apply to non-steam key sales. EGS doesn’t sell Steam keys but games still can’t be listed for cheaper on EGS than Steam without violating Steam’s terms, for example.

I really don’t think there’s any way to reasonably argue that Steam should have to give out Steam keys for cheaper sale elsewhere. They’re paying for the servers, they’re paying for the Steam features, they’re paying for the advertising; it stands to reason that people shouldn’t be able to take advantage of that. Even if it was ruled this way, all Steam would have to do is discontinue the free Steam key distribution and instead charge 30% of the game’s price to generate keys, then remove the MFN clause. They’d still get their cut.