Why would it need to blur it? If you were passing by, I assume you’d see it, so you might as well take a pic and use it for your own corporate needs. That’s the logic we’re talking about here, though it’s not my logic.

Why do people sue Google and win for it taking pictures of their houses from the streets? It’s all public access, right?

Not necessarily. Valve says they haven’t heard from Mastercard directly. Is there evidence of Itch.io having been approached at all? It seems to me that they just made the move to delist and investigate to be safe in the wake of Valve’s rule changes.

I think the part about exclusives and other claims is just a way to fight the cognitive dissonance of seeing something good but having spent so much time and money on something else. Always being in attack mode distracts them and others from focusing on the problems of Steam.

it’s not great for consumers.

Not in the short term, but having an alternative to Steam (or anything with a lot of market share) is great for the long run. Moreover, at least everyone knows that the majority of the contracts would expire in 6 to 12 months. For all intents and purposes, Steam exclusives are a lot worse because there are many times more of them, and you can’t mark a date on your calendar when you can buy them if you can’t or don’t want to buy from Steam.

Keep in mind that, as an example, just recently Steam just decided to no longer support the local currencies of Argentina and Turkey, resulting in no regional prices for the regions on Steam. If Epic didn’t exist and didn’t support regional prices for those regions, all those users would have for third-party titles is GOG, which has a much smaller catalog and seems to support fewer regions. Microsoft Store is also an alternative now, but I’d argue its rise was spearheaded by Game Pass, which relies on the “paid deal” model pioneered in the PC space by Epic.

No, it was created so they could keep all the money from Fortnite.

I think you’re confusing the launcher with the store. The origin of the store itself can be traced back to Sweeney arguing about Valve’s “junk fee” of 30%.

they merely want their game engine and anti-cheat to sell.

How is targeting niche operating systems helping the anti-cheat sell?

Yes, I’m not implying Epic is forcing game devs into anything

Whether a business partner wants to be exclusive should be 100% their decision

This reads as mutually exclusive to me. How can it not be 100% their decision if it’s their decision? Moreover, it’s very common for a publishing agreement to also be legally binding, so everyone in this and other industries is used to that (or guilty of it if you view it as negative).

that’s textbook anti-competitiveness.

Not if it’s done by an underdog. Much of the US antitrust law for example revolves around monopolizing. Challenging what is argued to be a monopoly in a currently ongoing court case ripe with evidence isn’t monopolizing.

Would they retain that policy if they or GOG became #1?

The reason the Epic store was created is Valve’s unwillingness to lower their store fee that was way above the operating cost (7% still being profitable in Epic’s internal calculations made public by a lawsuit).

Epic has a lot more power in the anti-cheat and game engine spaces, but still keeps their software open, whether it’s by keeping the source code available or making the software compatible with Linux.

An exclusivity deal is signed by both parties, so it’s just as much of a choice developers make. By the way, like Valve, Epic seems to favor Wine over native ports, given their donation to Lutris. Unlike Valve though, Epic isn’t iffy about others not using their launcher, so there’s an official GOG Galaxy plugin for Epic endorsed by Sweeney.

Steam is full of de-facto exclusives that cannot be purchased and played elsewhere, meaning that you have to accept the Steam price, policies, practices, and their launcher in order to play those. Borderlands 2 was de-facto exclusive to Steam from 2012 to 2020, when Epic effectively rescued it from the exclusivity by paying 2K to give it away and add to the Epic store. If anything, Epic rewarding developers for doing what they’ve been doing on Steam is better than them not getting paid.

Allegedly? There is plenty of evidence of that in the Wolfire lawsuit. See for yourself from page 160 here.

That was a side effect of them upgrading the game from DX9 to DX11 and from 32-bit to 64-bit. Also, are you consistent and dislike Valve as a company for doing the same with CS2 for Mac?

On the one hand, yes, it’s a solid alternative because it’s decentralized and can even be untraceable (see Monero), but on the other hand, it’s been under attack for the past years. I would disagree it’s censorship-resistant, because if you make it illegal or hard to buy and sell crypto, few would be dedicated enough to go around that. Moreover, your proposed solution would still rely on some gateway between crypto and fiat, which would be vulnerable to pressure.

As much as Steam is free to host what it likes, Visa and the others are free not to work with Steam. You could argue the options available to Steam would be significantly limited by that, but the same argument is being used against Steam now in the Wolfire lawsuit. The argument is that Steam violates antitrust law via illegal tying and other means, making it hard for a user who doesn’t agree with their content policies to switch to a different platform, like Epic, which has always prohibited porn games.

Well, some people do want that.

There should be a separate platform for that, similar to how you wouldn’t go on YouTube expecting to see videos from PornHub.

What’s your fear in relation to using older recovery?

Relaunching never seems to work out. Just look at Multiversus and Bloodhunt.

You could still name names and link the article(s), then offer a verifiable summary as to why you believe the coverage is inaccurate. You’re not disputing that Kirsche is transphobic and that there is a genuine-looking clip of them being racist though, are you?

Not a great idea to call someone out for spreading lies but not support the claim with evidence. Also, what are your honest thoughts on Gamergate?

My impression might be skewed because I’ve only played from the first through Syndicate so far. Based on those, yes, there’s a lot of pointlessness even there. After finishing all quests in Rogue, I had to spend as many hours to open all the chests and collect everything for achieving 100% completion. Still, I got to explore new places and see more of the game world. I also could just abandon that and still see the game as finished, but you can’t do these things if you’re stuck trying to beat a boss in a souslike, or at least how I understand those games.

I’m a big fan of the AC games. It’s my favorite series. I also avoid soulslike games, as I don’t understand the appeal. Aren’t they all about doing the same thing over and over again “to get better”? If so, that’s definitely not what I play games for, as it’s more like work.

Larian and Kinetic Games too.