I doubt it. Wow is still a massive cash cow. The other franchises also haven’t been mined of all potential value either.

You can sell keys, but it’s still part of the steam ecosystem, so you can’t sell in game purchases without using steam as the processor.

It’s still the steam ecosystem when you sell steam keys. Why should a game be able to use steam to distribute their game that they sell for a free or reduced price then sell micro transactions without paying steam? If you don’t want to pay steam a cut don’t use their store or distribution.

By what definition is the 30% cut high? It’s the same percentage for Apple, Google, and Steam. Brick and mortar is generally around 50%. Amazon is a large range, but 30% is roughly average or even low. eBay charges less, but doesn’t do anything other than facilitate the transaction. Epic charges less to small developers, but that’s also mostly marketing.

It’s not about the epic store being a success. It’s about getting fortnite on steam with little to no fees being paid to steam. Just like the lawsuit against apple.

Halo infinite is technically cross platform between steam and MS, but the integration sucks for managing friends on steam.

The actual rules aren’t too terrible, plenty of these garbage patents would be invalidated with any real scrutiny applied to them. The problem is that it’s often cheaper to pay the settlement than the legal bill to fight, which is a more widespread problem that the legal system is too expensive and slow to be accessible to the vast majority of people. There’s also a secondary issue that patent officers are too generous in granting patents, and reform would be great. The problem is they are overworked so they can’t properly evaluate and research applications, and are encouraged to be overly permissive in granting patents.

At a minimum it should be popular enough to be a good reference machine for indie and AA developers to ensure good performance.

There’s plenty of games that you could say the same about that didn’t get the traction. It’s still a hit based industry. It’s not a knock against the game, it’s a reality of the industry.

The starter edition bundle is 11.99 us and the ultimate is 104.80 in USD. There’s basically 2 different types of DLCs in the paradox model. The core expansion type that is released every year or so and adds or fleshes out an area of the game, these are generally must haves and reasonably priced if you have played the game for a year(s) to mix it up. The second is smaller focused packs that add a faction or some extra flavor to a more minor mechanic. These are relatively expensive for what they offer, but aren’t always intended for everyone to buy.

If you are a hardcore completionist this model is bad for you, but if you can live with not having everything then it’s not terrible.

I think the big studios lost reality with what the gaming market is. It’s a hit based business, you need a level of volume that they’ve been backing off on. It’s not that the expedition 33 devs were so much better, they just happened to be the lucky ones that put out a solid game that got traction.

EA is great for small and medium sized studios to get games out that might be a bit more ambitious than they could manage with traditional models. The point of AAA is that they have the money to do big impressive things. They can already do focus groups and closed betas to get community feedback. The thing that might attract AAA attention is you could make a good amount without actually releasing anything.

Early access is more about getting revenue during development and some limited QA potential. There shouldn’t be any surprises in the feedback, that would be a sign of major problems. EA also generally comes with a discount for the player which is anathema to the AAA crowd.

There’s plenty of constraints still, they aren’t technical though. It’s about making a game good despite the monetization requirements.

EGS isn’t really even a store, it’s sole purpose is to avoid giving anyone else a cut of fortnite.

It’s more the hierarchy of having super bad that can get bonuses based on your actions.

I’d expect it to be ok, but a second game coming out before the first ever really got fully fixed.

WB hasn’t used the nemesis system since 2017, and likely won’t use it again at this point. By the time the patent expires it might be a lost system.

It’s becoming nearly impossible to write code in a corporate environment without AI. Everyone has AI auto complete at the minimum, and AI code generation is at a point where it’s at least even with an entry level dev.

Most criticism of valve on Lemmy reads like blatant shilling.