Community MetaSteam | March 2019 - The Core Values of One-Handed Fighting

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Ex-User (307)

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I think the most compelling argument that would put most of this to bed would for someone to do some investigation/quiet snooping/general poking around into what it costs to run digital storefronts.

I’m not saying that the cuts that brick-and-mortar stores are good, or something to live up to. But the cuts there are are astronomically worse than in the digital space. Yes, there’s no physical product to house; yes there’s no physical locations to maintain; yes, there’s no mass of employees for each individual location.

But you’re still paying for housing/transferring data to and from users, including cloud storage, downloads, store traffic itself, etc.

You’re paying for a staff to offer support and issue resolution to both customers and developers around the world.

You’re pahing for non-trivial and unique development costs including but not limited to achievements, leaderboards, controller support, Proton, client updates, storefront security updates, mod support, anti-cheat detection and legal compliance with unique local laws.

I’d genuinely like to know what those costs are, but I’m pretty sure no one with the connections to suss out the info is going to research it.
 
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Stevey said:
Maybe my build sucks but Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods is kicking my ass on Elite.
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Speaking of Grim Dawn, I'm finally playing the game, and it is AWESOME! :eek:

This coming from a guy who played 3 or 4 hours of Diablo 3 when it launched, and never returned to it, because I was simply not having any fun, and the game wasn't what I expected as a follow-up to Diablo and Diablo 2, from the gameplay, cartoonish graphics, nothing connected with me. It felt like a chore to play.

Like I previously explained, despite pre-ordering Grim Dawn in January 2010, 9 years ago, before it even went to Kickstarter (I really enjoyed Titan Quest, and wanted to support the new game by former members of that team, so the day it was announced, I had my pre-order placed at their website), my previous PC kept crashing every 5 minutes in-game, so I only had 60 minutes in total with the early alphas/betas, and was not able to play it when the game finally launched 3 years ago.

But now, with another PC, I can finally play the game, and I was waiting for the launch of the new expansion to finally start playing it. I started today, and after 5-10 minutes, I was in love. :love:
As soon as I levelled up for the first time, and got Forcewave for my Soldier, and started sending people through the air, or even the little details like using this skill and breaking furniture and background elements, everything feels so alive, hits have weight, weapons feel powerful, skills/spells fell powerful. It's just a lot of fun.

Really, it's pure perfection. A cross between the grim atmosphere of the first Diablo, the physics and interactivity of Titan Quest, all dialled up to 11, with plenty of QOL improvements. The game is a blast!

In a way, it's great that I had to wait years to finally play the game, because I can now play it without problems, with all settings maxed out, and any issues that the game may have had were surely patched extensively, so I'm left with a polished, fluid, unbelievably fun and customizable experience.
 
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derExperte

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Just watched Behind the Curve about Flatearthers.

I like to think that we're the scientists in the Epic-debate.

BUT WHAT IF WE ARE ACTUALLY THE EARTHERS AND SWEENEY IS NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON??
 
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Any chance we may get some more title announcements tomorrow at the SEGA FES 2019?

So far, it's been a bit disappointing on that front.
A couple of new games (Olympics, Sakura Wars), a lot of cool re-releases by M2 (but only for the Switch), and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Mini (with Yuzo Koshiro doing the menu music!), but outside of that, nothing.
I thought that we would at least get a revived old IP or two. Ok, we got Sakura Wars, but I was hoping for something more.
 
Wildebeet

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Ascheroth said:
That's one thing I'm very curious how it's going to affect Epic's plans going forward.
I'm under the impression that PC gamers have always been used to waiting, especially if you've been a fan of japanese games. (Late console ports all the time was a common occurence not that long ago and still is to some degree).
Combine this with the - if you think about it - paradoxical nature of games themself: they get cheaper with time, but they also tend to get better with time, up to a certain point (unless you're Square Enix cough). Patches, free or paid DLC, complete editions, enhanced editions, you name it. We all do it, but thinking about it rationally, buying a game immediately is not efficient.
So I wonder if instead of driving people to their store, Epic's 1 year exclusives will just get PC gamers used to waiting again, and have them buy things cheaper and more complete. Which probably would be not great fot the industry.
I'm honestly curious how this whole thing will play out.
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Yeah. This is exactly where I'm at. Waiting is why I'm not worked up about Epic, like, at all. Some stuff going exclusive is mildly annoying at most. I was pretty deflated about Rogue Galaxy Outlaw at the time, but if I'm honest about the situation I'm not hurt by it. I wait for a year or two, I get the game cheaper with all the kinks patched out and hundreds of mods available. And you know I can't handle my backlog as it is. I mean, backlog's a joke at this point like everyone else's. I even ditched my Humble Monthly because it felt like I was collecting Sniper Elite keys with no reason to play any of it.

Worst case scenario for me is that I play what I've got, have fun with that for a while, and pick up my Steam key half price later. Epic and their dev friends can work this out however suits them best, but I'm damn near set until the end of time on games when I really look at it. It's a buyer's market obviously and Epic can't forever spend. Steam got where they are by having huge sales and trying to be consumer oriented. Epic eventually needs to stop courting developers and actually sell something besides Fortnite, or they're going to wind up looking like Origin's little brother. To do that, they'll have to try a lot harder to meet customers on their terms (sales and features) instead of short term shenanigans. Maybe they can transition, maybe they can't.

I'm willing to try Epic store to see how it'll work for me. I think the major problem here is the transience of our libraries. Knowing that if anything happened where Gabe retires (or worse), who knows - things will change. Will Steam get sold off and screw me over? People worry that if Epic can really challenge Steam, what's gonna happen to our games, because nobody trusts Epic yet and maybe never will. But the core problem is that we don't have enough control with anything except GOG for whatever that's worth, and haven't really needed more control with Steam.

It's hard for me to get too mad about this stuff. I remember having to wait and mow lawns for months to get one console game. Now I have more games than I can even count. Not a bad problem to have.
 
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fsdood

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nice, lashman . that's a neat twitter thread, but wouldn't be better if you posted that in a forum thread like here or on Era? I agree with all of it, but if you wanna reach out to more people about this issue and show people the bigger picture, posting a thread with all your points should be a great step.
 
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Alexandros

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Ge0force said:
I really hope this is true. But I'm afraid many people will cave in for Borderlands 3. While people I know in real life told me that this will be the only game they'll buy on EGS, no doubt Epic will notice and spread this success to get exclusivity for other popular franchises.
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Maybe, but in the end a few big games don't really matter. There are many other clients that people use to buy and play a few big games on, yet none of these clients have managed to establish themselves as a general storefront because of that. People buy these big games, play them and never buy anything else on there. Unless Epic somehow manages to convince customers to steadily and continuously spend money on a variety of games, big and small, Epic's launcher will become another Origin at best.

Ge0force said:
Please don't forget that Epic is counting on developers to win the "war" against Steam. This means they will do anything to persuade devs to release their games exclusive on EGS.
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I know. Developers are opportunistic and they'll keep taking these deals as long as Epic is offering them. This is why I said right from the start that the goal is to get Epic to stop offering moneyhats, not convince developers to stop accepting them. They won't, but Epic will eventually stop offering them if they're not getting the results they're hoping for.

lashman said:
so i wrote a 100-tweet long thread about this whole epic thing ... in case anyone wants to torture themselves reading it:

Click to expand...
Will read, thanks for doing this.
 
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Ascheroth

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lashman said:
so i wrote a 100-tweet long thread about this whole epic thing ... in case anyone wants to torture themselves reading it:

Click to expand...
I've read through it. That's a very good summary of the whole situation.
One thign I want to add, though: Regarding Steam libraries going poof if Valve goes out of business, I believe they have mentioned a plan to keep libraries available and working in such a scenaria. Iirc there were some concrete speculations by JaseC on how it could work (something with their CDN network and all servers being able to be an authentification server? I dunno).


========
Also, tomorrow is April. Time to think of a new title and challenge!
 
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GrrImAFridge

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Yeah, Valve requires remote admin-level access to its third-party content servers, so my theory is that it'd update them to act as authentication servers as well, meaning it'd be business as usual as far as downloading and playing games is concerned (well, Steamworks-based multiplayer stuff aside, probably) for as long as there's someone willing to host.

The common assumption is that Valve would just mass-remove CEG and give users a final window to download their games, but "continue to have access to their Steam games" feels like a deliberate choice of words; "You have x days to download your games before they disappear" doesn't align with that.
 
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Kvik

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Deques said:
Is there a way to get DEAD OR ALIVE Xtreme Venus Vacation?
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I just clicked the Install button in its Steamdb page and it asked me to install the game: steam://install/958260

it added the game to my library so it works then, not sure if it's the same situation with Linear Bounded Phenogram since they revoked the ability after some time for that particular game.
 
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Snakethesniper

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Kvik said:
I just clicked the Install button in its Steamdb page and it asked me to install the game: steam://install/958260

it added the game to my library so it works then, not sure if it's the same situation with Linear Bounded Phenogram since they revoked the ability after some time for that particular game.
Click to expand...
Where are you from? When I try it gives me a page that says not available in my country
 
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Kuro

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Looking at the Steam tab and "Most active games" I must say I'm proud of the members of this forum, Sekiro dominating.
 
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Digoman

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lashman said:
so i wrote a 100-tweet long thread about this whole epic thing ... in case anyone wants to torture themselves reading it:

Click to expand...
Excellent write-up on this whole mess. Thank you for trying to remind the developers that Steam offers them a lot of advantages too. And your closing remark is something I wish they would consider. Without the moneyhat, what will happen when is time to release your next game? EGS already has terrible visibility with just the few games is has now so even if you get in, there won't be even an algorithm to complain about when you get buried. Betting solely on streamers/etc seems very risky, specially since we know they have been consolidating the number of games they cover.

Kvik said:
I just clicked the Install button in its Steamdb page and it asked me to install the game: steam://install/958260

it added the game to my library so it works then, not sure if it's the same situation with Linear Bounded Phenogram since they revoked the ability after some time for that particular game.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think that only worked for the first day (or less). My guess now the only way is VPN only. Though the store page appears for me now and it didn't before. My curiosity is still fighting my fear about if I should run this or not. Fear of what? Well, Nights of Azure was influencing my discovery queue almost a year after I played it... I shudder to think the impact this one will have....
 
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Deku

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Kvik said:
I just clicked the Install button in its Steamdb page and it asked me to install the game: steam://install/958260

it added the game to my library so it works then, not sure if it's the same situation with Linear Bounded Phenogram since they revoked the ability after some time for that particular game.
Click to expand...
I tried this method, did not work. I guess VPN is the only solution for this then
 
madjoki

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Epic coincidence that price glitch happens day after they implement revocations.

Patch Notes - Native client support for entitlement banning.
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And it was revoked so fast. (There won't be notification of any kind either - it just disappears from library).
 
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sauce

sauce

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So wait, everyone who managed to get the free Detroit game got it revoked without a word of warning? That really doesn't bode well for purchasing on EGS if it's taken out of your transaction record too.

Monooboe said:
Let's do it! I'll be the photographer! Not that there is much need for such in gaming news and reporting haha.
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I'll write posts about games that came out years ago since that's basically all I play as a backlog gamer. :coffee-blob:
 
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lashman

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fsdood said:
nice, lashman . that's a neat twitter thread, but wouldn't be better if you posted that in a forum thread like here or on Era? I agree with all of it, but if you wanna reach out to more people about this issue and show people the bigger picture, posting a thread with all your points should be a great step.
Click to expand...
Monooboe said:
I agree with making a thread!
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thanks ... but it's not really a post/thread material ... i can't write long-form for the life of me - as you can see from my regular posts, lol ;)

Ascheroth said:
I've read through it. That's a very good summary of the whole situation.
One thign I want to add, though: Regarding Steam libraries going poof if Valve goes out of business, I believe they have mentioned a plan to keep libraries available and working in such a scenaria. Iirc there were some concrete speculations by JaseC on how it could work (something with their CDN network and all servers being able to be an authentification server? I dunno).
Click to expand...
JaseC said:
Yeah, Valve requires remote admin-level access to its third-party content servers, so my theory is that it'd update them to act as authentication servers as well, meaning it'd be business as usual as far as downloading and playing games is concerned (well, Steamworks-based multiplayer stuff aside, probably) for as long as there's someone willing to host.

The common assumption is that Valve would just mass-remove CEG and give users a final window to download their games, but "continue to have access to their Steam games" feels like a deliberate choice of words; "You have x days to download your games before they disappear" doesn't align with that.
Click to expand...
yeah, i know, i know ... i just really wanted to drive the point home for people reading ;)

Ge0force said:
Well done lashman. I hope your tweets will open a few eyes.
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i hope so too ... but i doubt it

Ge0force said:
I'm very curious what game you're working on by the way ☺
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nothing really ... just a bunch of prototypes that never went anywhere

Digoman said:
Excellent write-up on this whole mess.
Click to expand...
thanks :) appreciate it
 
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Li Kao

Li Kao

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Jan 28, 2019
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Is there a point in playing Total War Warhammer 1 now ? Is this set at a different time than the 2 for example ?
I... think I’m in full strategy / management / builder mode :cat-pizza-blob:
 
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