Yeah… Civ 1, 2, 3, and 4 were all good - for different reasons. Civ 5 was where the design decisions stopped being about gameplay and started being about maximising profit. Making the game functional and fun was lower priority to making paid DLC. Players buy the buggy and unfinished game… then pay more to fix it piecemeal with the DLC. Such is the power of brands and advertising.

In many ways, the silky-smooth convenience offered by modern computer software makes everything much harder to learn about and understand. For anyone that used zip files before this Windows feature, the problem is obvious - but for younger people it’s not obvious at all. Heck, a lot of people can’t even tell whether or not a file is locally on their computer - let alone whether it is compressed in some other file.

Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.

In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.

Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game: Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.

I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.

So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.

Help uncle jack…

Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.

There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.

It wasn’t always this way.

Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.

This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.

I first tried Linux around two decades ago, and it felt clunky to me - so I didn’t stick with it. I tried again around one decade ago; and it was a lot better, but I still didn’t quite have enough reason to keep using it yet. … But now, finally, I tried again several months ago - and I’m definitely sticking with it. I’m currently using Mint.

There are still some thing that I think are worse in Mint compared to Windows. But there is a lot of stuff that’s much better. It’s more than enough that I don’t expect to ever switch back to Windows again. The main thing is avoiding all the anti-features of Windows, such as the constant nagging to switch to Edge or activate their search bar; and the ads & other cruft in the start menu; and the constant little popups and ‘reminders’ about new stuff; and the lack of control in when updates are installed; and the ubiquitous harvesting of personal information, including ‘telemetry’ of which apps you run and when.

For me, one of the last straws was when I clicked on a help link from Windows settings, and it automatically opened in Edge, and Edge then automatically imported my browsing history and bookmarks from Firefox and automatically uploaded it to my Microsoft account. I was horrified that it would do something like that without any interaction whatsoever. I didn’t even think Edge had access to my Microsoft account until then, because I deliberately avoid using one to sign in, or for any other reason - the only reason it exists is because I used OneNote. I wanted the account to be isolated to just the app I used it for; not to automatically be grabbed by the whole OS and then used to collect my browsing history.

So yeah. I’d spent years of maintaining an ever-growing list of little system tweaks that I used to keep as junk off Windows as possible. But I’ve had enough. It’s too much. It’s not even close to being worth it. Linux has some minor problems, and some things take a bit of getting use to. But at least it isn’t systematically hostile.

Look, I can see where you’re coming from about the over-emphasis on winning; but it just sound like you’re talking about an entirely different issue to what Valve is trying to address.

Your suggestion, if I understand it correctly, is to have the game automatically make a judgement about every player’s individual skill during the match itself, and apply some buff or penalty if it detects a major discrepancy between players. Is that what you are suggesting?

I suspect that the existence of mechanics like that would lead to a lot of angst, regardless of whether it ‘works’. People already have a tendency to blame their team and blame match-making for making them lose. Imagine if they could also blame the game itself for holding them back. … It could be a perfect system that never gets it wrong, and it would still cause a lot of people to get upset. And I don’t see how it could fix the problem of smurfing anyway unless it is a seriously over-zealous system that erases basically any skill advantage.

Also, I don’t think such auto-detection would be reliable. But although we could could discuss the technicalities of what might or might not work… I just don’t think it’s worth pursuing in dota anyway. Perhaps it would be better suited to some other game.

Heck, I’d say if they are actually playing a game and streaming it, then that’s legit… but I can tell you that I’ve seen a lot of “stretching” and “exercise” streams where it’s basically just strategic shots of a girl’s arse. As in, that is genuinely the purpose of the stream. There is no actual exercise happening. Some streamers even have “!phub” in their description, suggesting users type that for more info about the streamer… And the ASMR category seems to be a 25-75 split between people actually trying to do ASMR, and people doing a kind of soft-core porn show.

The worst thing is that if you watch one of those streams, for curiosity, or if you were just in the mood for it, Twitch then makes your recommendations look like a porn site for the next couple of months. (I’m not against porn; but I definitely don’t want to be getting porn recommendations when I go to twitch.)

You’re unlikely to be in conversation with hundreds of millions of people at a time; or even thousands of people. Conversations happen with just a handful of people. So those platforms with billions of people perhaps allow for some ultra-niche subgroups, but otherwise are just providing a lot of low-value noise with the additional people.

I use to follow /r/degoogle on reddit… but it felt like pretty much every discussion was people shitting on every alternative, and implying that all measures are totally pointless unless you stop interacting with any form of computer for the rest of your life. It’s just so weird having people say there there’s no point switching from Chrome to Firefox because google is the default search engine on Firefox. I got to the point where I really did believe there was some deliberate destabilization going on, to weaken the community. (And it worked. I unsubscribed; and I’m sure it struggled to keep anyone who actually had anything useful to say.)

Anyway… I wouldn’t be surprised if /r/RedditAlternatives was similar to that.

Are you saying that Rocket League was removed from the Steam accounts of the people who already owned it? That sounds like a big deal, and surely must be illegal. But I didn’t see mention of that in the link you posted. Most of the things in the list seemed to be just saying that they didn’t think the Epic store is high quality. (eg. prices too high, not enough features, difficult to use return policy, etc.) Those are all fair complaints, and good reasons to not use the store - but again, they are only good reasons to not use the store. They aren’t really good reasons to crusade against it. There are heaps of crap online stores, and generally people just ignore them.

The Rocket League thing you mentioned would be a good reason to get upset at Epic beyond just not wanting to buy from them. So I’m kind of surprised to see it missing from such a comprehensive list of grievances.

Others have mentioned spyware, and like I said, I care about that. That’s a big red flag. But I looked at the links in the post you gave, and as far as I could tell they were all speculation. Things like Tencent owns 40% of Epic, and Tencent is bad - so Epic is probably bad. … Which is quite possibly true! I certainly wouldn’t want to trust Epic with my personal info. But it’s still a big step away from them having spyware built in.

I personally think that many gamers put up with too much privacy invasion and ‘telemetry’ in the form of online accounts and especially ‘anti-cheat’ software. The “anti cheat” software that some games require explicitly demand access to see every program you have installed, every program you have running, and in some cases even read RAM outside of what the game is allocated. That’s an enormous security risk and privacy breach… but people install that crap all the time with barely a whisper - but then complain about the risk the Epic will share its telemetry data with Tencent. I’m certain that some of Epic’s online games have software like that, but that wasn’t mentioned in thread you linked to.

Maybe I just don’t care about the same things that other people care about. Like, if Epic has a crap store… I just don’t care. It makes no difference to me how crap it is. It makes to difference if they say it is going to be great, and it falls short of what they said. I’m not going to go around telling people how crap it is, because I don’t think it matters. I don’t intend to use the store anyway; and if other people like the store for some reason, then fine. I don’t think it matters. They can like it, and I won’t try to convince them otherwise. But if they are somehow removing games you’ve already bought elsewhere - then that’s a big deal. That would be worth telling people about. I hope you can see what I mean.

The reason people hate Epic is fairly obvious – they don’t give a shit about the gaming industry nor about players.

What do you mean by that? For developers, they take a much smaller fee than Steam or GOG, and for players they’re constantly giving away free games.

At some point their client contained literal spyware.

That sounds like a decent reason to campaign against them. I haven’t heard anything about that before. What was the story behind that? (As in, when / why / how / what? Perhaps you have a link or something.)

brute force market share via sleazy exclusivity contracts

I’ve heard people talk a lot about exclusivity contracts… but can you name even a single game that has such a contract? When people have discussed this the past, the relevant developers basically said “there is no contract”. But maybe there is some different case I don’t know about. In any case, that personally doesn’t bother me anyway. If some developer wants to take money to be on one store rather than another, they can do that at their own peril. As for customers, we’re only talking about a store. It’s not like anyone is in danger of not being able to buy / play their favourite games. So it seems like a bit of a nothing-burger to me. Like, is there actually something bad happening here? Or are people just speculating that something bad might one-day happen if Epic got bigger?

their software doesn’t have one tenth of the features Steam has,

Steam has more features, yeah. Steam is very good. But Steam has been around for some 20 years. It’s hard to catch up with that so quickly. In any case, although missing features is a good reason to prefer Steam, it certainly isn’t a reason to campaign against Epic.

… So from your list, I’ll keep the spyware thing and the CEO complaint. I don’t know enough about either of those to say much though. I don’t recall who the CEO of Epic is right now, so I won’t say whether or not I think that’s a good reason. And the spyware… I take that kind of stuff seriously. Right now I’m posting this from Linux - because I’m fed-up with Windows spyware. But as I said, I’ve not heard any details about any Epic spyware thing.

Incidentally, I’ve found that Steam is very good for Linux gaming. … But obviously that doesn’t mean that I’m going to start making posts trash-talking Epic. I don’t find it weird that people prefer Steam. I just find it weird that people put so much energy into attacking Epic.

I’m never heard of ‘Gmer’ like that until a few seconds ago; but I’ll go on and assume that G*mers might refer to ‘both’ words.

I personally get most of my games from GOG and itch.io these days. And I’ve never bought anything from the Epic store whatsoever.

I will say though that I find it kind of weird how much hate Epic gets for their store. Like, I understand that someone prefers Steam, or doesn’t want to buy stuff from Epic etc. - but what we see goes way beyond that. Epic has people actively campaigning against it, as if its mere existence is insulting. I don’t really get why.

As for the 30% cut… Developers will try to price their games competitively, and within customer expectations. So with or without Steam’s 30% cut, you can expect games to be similarly priced. The large 30% cut from Steam is basically coming out of the developer’s revenue rather than from your pocket. (I’m under the impression that GOG also has a similar 30% fee. Epic has a lower fee. And on itch.io the seller gets to choose how money goes to itch.io anywhere from 0% to 100%. So itch.io is the best deal for developers in terms of fees.)

Steam is pretty good, in many ways. … … There is a little bit of customer abuse creeping in though. It annoys me that I can’t turn off the “what’s new” panel. It’s nothing more than an advertisement panel, and the only options are to say ‘show less’ for individual games, one by one (and even then, it doesn’t stop showing advertisements related to those games).

In any case, I don’t use Epic’s launcher at all; so I won’t try to comment on which is better. I just think it’s good to point out that Steam isn’t perfect, and I agree that competition probably does them some good.