I think gaming is too mainstream like television/movie viewers to lump it into some type of niche group/activity these days. Especially with the increased communication and connectivity that the internet provides that brings all sorts of wanted and unwanted people together.

I’m someone who enjoys gaming, and when I play games like The Finals these days I disable chat/voice because most people are assholes. Game previously didn’t have chat and enabling that turned it from what felt like a wholesome community because I wasn’t exposed to their thoughts to it breaking the illusion when they were able to express themselves.

I think this is more a more broad societal issue and a worrying one of being shown what people truly think. Even a minority is a huge amount when the population is billions, so a lot of damage can be done. Games is just another avenue they choose to be toxic in along side other vehicles provided to communicate their thoughts.

Do body squats every ad break.

Still working. Not sure if it’s abandoned but gitlab last activity for Stealth seems to be 6 months ago.

Aside from lemmy…

Twitter with Squabler which is nice not getting any ads and accounts I follow through the app shown in chronological order. No ads.

Reddit with Stealth which is another nice app not needing an account to subscribe to subreddits and save comments or posts. No ads.

YouTube with newpipe and freetube which is another nice app that let’s me subscribe, skip sponsors, no ads, and no need for an account.

I wish they had an official Linux client since while heroic launcher works for downloading syncing saves can be buggy and it would be nice to get achievements.

Consequence of what you are proposing is that companies with economies of sale or are willing to operate at a loss due to other sections of the corporation being their main source of profitable revenue would be only ones left. Ironically ensuring higher barriers to entry than there already is. The 10% is more realistic for key resellers than those trying to launch a profitable mainstream platform hosting and distributing everything as opposed to side project that can lose money.

The CD Projekt-owned PC gaming storefront GOG just released a “facts and figures” breakdown of 2022 in an official blog post. The upshot? GOG experienced steady growth in its user base and library while also turning a tidy $1.2 million profit. It’s a heartening turnaround to see as the service actually lost money⁠—$1.15 million to be exact⁠—the previous year.

https://www.pcgamer.com/gog-looks-like-its-in-a-much-healthier-spot-after-a-hairy-2021/

The cut GOG takes is 30%. Epic operates at a loss and is more a side project they are willing to lose money on, since Fortnite and Unreal is there real money.

https://kotaku.com/epic-games-store-pc-profitable-google-court-case-apple-1850996972

GOG also started to limit cloud storage per game to 200 MB

As the size and number of games increase, so does the demand for Cloud Storage. These limits ensure that all players have access to sufficient and manageable space for their game progress, and that we keep the associated costs under control. By optimizing our storage allocation, we aim to continue providing a reliable and user-friendly platform for everyone.

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/18730340487709-Review-your-Cloud-Saves-to-avoid-loss-of-files?product=gog

Check isthereanydeals for deals on steam keys that aren’t gray market and lower than Steam. How do they get around it? Well it seems to more apply to retail price and not sales price.

People’s first impression of it was Metro Exodus being pulled from Steam close to launch and becoming exclusive to Epic despite even physical copies having the Steam logo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/aqyjac/physical_copy_of_metro_exodus_for_pc_has_a/

Turned out people don’t really like a company going out of its way to try and remove purchasing options from consumers for third party titles. This not only affected steam but releases on GOG too.

A lot of people requested that DARQ be made available on GOG. I was happy to work with GOG to bring the game to their platform. I wish the Epic Store would allow indie games to be sold there non-exclusively, as they do with larger, still unreleased games (Cyberpunk 2077), so players can enjoy what they want: a choice.

https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

There’s Marvel Rivals which is going to be f2p and is another hero shooter too. So just bad timing and executive decisions overall.

It makes Suicide Squad and Redfall in retrospect not look as sad with their launch day player counts.

Explains why I don’t like eating out and never cared for paying for stuff like the ambiance even at fancy restaurants and prefer take out.

Looks like I’ll have to downgrade then.

So current fallout 4 install is fine and safe?

Already aware of trying to capture price tiers. Pointing out that perception of cost is still generally the same despite inflation and that out the door lower prices that the competion have sometimes led to more financial success than that strategy.

There comes a price point where it’ll push more people to wait for discounts, and when that happens it makes it more likely those people will end up waiting even longer as the hype dies down.

There’s stuff like inflation and so on, but it’s also affected people’s buying power which will lead to them starting to cut down luxury goods.

Issue is even knowing about the games existence. So I would assume back then that it would be games that had marketing budgets and pushed by big publishers that ended up even being in a position to have a demo in a magazine. Now days games made by one dev can become hits out of nowhere to even their surprise.

Someone had to buy those games in the first place to leave those negative reviews on Steam.

Yep, and it was probably even way worse before the internet with few outlets to let people know about games, and way less resources to get different opinions on the matter.

People never usually never vote with their wallet and gaming industry is way too big for people voting with their wallet to even matter, since it’s not a niche hobby. So bad press is the best outcome possible.

Playable status with the green mark has been a pretty polished experience for me without issues after putting the settings recommended in the wiki. Those that have issues have been stuff like Mgs4 and infamous get ingame status.