ampersandrew

Nah, it doesn’t just linearly double like that. If it takes 10 people to build, test, and support the launcher for Windows, it doesn’t take 20 people to support Linux, since most of it is going to be the same across platforms. A 1.8% increase in sales also isn’t the best prediction. On Steam, the vast majority of their players and revenue are accounted for by just a couple of the most popular games, and a lot of that is dictated by what games are allowed or successful in China. If your game isn’t selling in China, your addressable market is actually much closer to being 4.5% Linux. That’s not to pick on China, but China is a massive market on its own, and it’s the difference between the case where you’re selling microtransactions in Counter-Strike 2 or if you’re selling a metroidvania.

Thanks a bunch. If I get the answers I’m looking for, maybe GOG will be my go-to.

Less incentive, but 1.7% of a huge number of customers may still be profitable.

Neat. I was aware of Heroic before, but I haven’t heard of this. This does change the equation for me, because now there’s a data point that GOG can use to see where my money’s going and how they can get more of it. What can you tell me about their refund policy? Are the results on ProtonDB just as reliable for GOG versions as they are for Steam versions of games? Does Heroic pre-compile Vulkan shaders the way that Proton on Steam enforces it? Whatever answers you don’t have, I can do some of my own homework, but I’m intrigued now.

Do you have a source on Heroic getting a cut? I can’t find it in their FAQ.

Setup is annoying, and feedback on whether or not it’s working is a bit rough. I’ve lost data by misconfiguring it before. You have to run a background daemon on a device where battery life matters, so I tend to shut it off when I’m done. Syncing saves with SyncThing requires knowing where those save files are, whereas being built into the launcher client means they already know where those saves are, and that step is already done.

I want auto updates for my games so close to “always” that you can only tell it’s not 100% if you squint a bit. I use Syncthing in other contexts, like syncing emulator saves to and from desktop and Steam Deck, and it’s not quite as easy as Steam cloud saves.

Yes, that’s the selling point, but I also value automatic updates and cloud saves most of the time.

Yeah, but I want things like auto updates and cloud saves as officially supported features rather than something they can revoke from Heroic at any time.

They don’t even need to invest in its development. They just need to integrate it as a launch option.

Please give us Galaxy on Linux, GOG, so I can shop with you over Steam.

The question for me is how much less I’m willing to pay for a game that made me wait past GOTY/spoiler season to play it, because I’m not paying $70 for it anymore.

They’re called platform fighters. And I doubt this thing has an offline mode, so no thanks.

It felt more like a retroactive beta, like taking back a move in chess saying your hand was still on the piece when they realized it wasn’t working out.

No, I just live in reality.

That’s no excuse to try to get a user’s account banned.

I’d say it is. They highlight the part of Steam’s rules against harassment, and while that’s always subject to interpretation, they feel that this counts, and I’m inclined to agree.

The steam group had like 1000 people now it has almost 200,000 after the whole debacle.

Before this group blew up, YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers were already making their bullshit conspiracy theories. People try to paint this as Streisand, but that’s ridiculous. The Streisand effect is trying to hide something, which you still seem convinced they’re trying to do despite highlighting their clients on their web page and getting listings in the credits of the games they work on. What it looks like to me instead is that:

1. sensationalist YouTubers paint this company as the devil
2. this curator is made in response
3. it gets a natural, human reaction from the people targeted by this group
4. the YouTubers from step 1 use that reaction to mean whatever they want it to mean

In no way did I foresee a way that this group didn’t continue on the same trajectory with or without Sweet Baby responding to its existence.

SomeOrdinaryGamer made a good video highlighting stupidity from both sides.

I’ve seen one video from SomeOrdinaryGamers, and it was too many, but he’s cited in this article as perpetuating the bullshit conspiracy theories, so I’m good.

I think the last console game I bought was Metroid Dread, but I leaned physical for those as well, because their digital storefronts are a single point of failure. I’ve witnessed first hand a friend of mine getting frustrated with a now-sunset Xbox 360 store, a problem I could see coming a mile away even when I was in high school when the console launched. On PC, if Steam disappeared tomorrow, I could pirate my entire library. If GOG gives me a week of lead time on their store going away, I could legitimately back up those games.

Digital is more convenient. I have shelves of old games and consoles that I’m working on culling rather than expanding, especially as someone who tends to move to a new apartment every couple of years. Physical often tends to be a false sense of security in the modern age of day 1 patches and other kinds of server dependency. DRM-free is actually what you want, unless you really, really enjoy the tangible aspect of the game. Outside of nostalgia, I don’t think it matters to me.

Maybe not. The disclaimers on the side of the store page appear to be different between these and some other EA games. I hate how hard it is these days to discern if a game has a stupid always-online requirement.

EA’s launcher still requires internet access though, right? If so, you’re probably better off sticking to the GOG versions. I booted up Jedi: Fallen Order on a train, and EA told me “no”.

their own official DnD game is the complete opposite of BG3 in terms of monetization, popularity and critical acclaim

I don’t follow. You buy a book and you play. Critical Role brings in more viewers than most primetime network TV shows ever could. They had a controversy around changing their monetization that didn’t come to pass, is my understanding, but the complete opposite of BG3?