Karen demands to talk to the manager, while adding fuel to the fire.

He lost me at that part, too.

Okay, Valve has a DRM API, their client doesn’t support old operating systems, and they hook system APIs in dumb ways. The first and last points—sure, that I agree with. Not indefinitely supporting EOL operating systems, I don’t, but whatever.

But to then go on and recommend Epic Games Store and Microsoft Game Pass? Buddy, you’re deranged.

EGS is consumer hostile and a side project for a company whose main revenue comes from Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Steam is a side project-turned-cash-cow for a former game development studio and makes up 99% of their revenue. If either of these is going to be shuttered and end up as a waste of my hypothetical money with nothing to show for it, it ain’t going to be Steam.

And then Game Pass… If you’re resigned to being a pessimist and accepting that you’ll never own anything, fine. That’s your choice. But to recommend it to others as a better alternative to Steam? Steam has its problems, but it’s not vendor-locked to its own operating system or a recurring monthly subscription. And if a game gets delisted, you at least still get to keep it on Steam.

Zhong went on to say that the Sure Foundation Baptist Church is a “Bible-believing church” whereby “whatever the Bible says, we believe it”.

“whatever the Bible says that we agree with, we believe it”.

FTFY.

He added: “If you are sick and tired of the woke culture or churches that do not preach the whole Bible, then you should come and check us out!”

If Jesus came back today, Zhong is the kind of guy who would rally to crucify him again.

I had a math teacher at my stem highschool claim that the touch screens on the ipads worked by heat and that if you touch them too much the screen will get too warm and stop responding

I think the only way this could be any stupider is if she said it has cameras under the screen looking for where your fingers go.

They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios.

They did.

The Windows 10/11 “S Mode” only allows installing software through the Windows store. It was mostly relegated to OEM installs for cheap x86 and ARM laptops, thankfully.

You must be this rich to vote:

 $100b |  
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  $10m |         |
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   $1m |         | ↓ You are here
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    $0 |         |        |

Meta said that “it is required to offer a free, reduced-ad service that leads to poorer outcomes for users, advertisers, and platforms.”

Oh, fuck off. Targeted advertisements don’t help users with anything other than spending money on things they don’t need. They lived perfectly fine before seeing the ad, they don’t need what it’s trying to peddle.

The only poorer outcomes are for Meta and their advertisers. Don’t try and frame this as though it would hurt actual people, Meta.

It’s actually getting kind of hard to think of new, stupider ways to ruin the economy and raise the cost of living. Parody is getting close to being indistinguishable from reality.

• Blanket tariffs for goods with low domestic production? Done.
• Imprisoning laborers who do domestic farming? Yes.
• Deporting legal, tax-paying noncitizens? Yep.
• Pissing off citizens of countries that contribute significantly to local tourism? Indeed.
• Asking potential tourists to pay extra for the privilege of visiting a to-be-sold-for-industrial-logging park? Why not.
• Cutting healthcare and replacing it with a bonus for the 0.001%? Might as well!

What if all this drama is just 4D chess and PS is secretly supportive of it?

If he doesn’t triple down on his shit take, it’s pretty much guaranteed that he’s going to try and take credit for SKG succeeding. People like him can never be wrong and will twist reality and facts to that end.

Edit: And he did. https://x.com/PirateSoftware/status/1940956598178140440

Isn’t it kind of ableist to assume that when somebody says they are “not able to physically do” a job, that they’re lazy or classist? For all we know, they could have mobility issues or be unable to do sustained manual labor.

Brought to you by the party of white supremacy common sense, white supremacy reason, and white supremacist family values.

That makes much more sense now.

Yeah, I agree with you on that.

If discoverability was better, I’m sure Android would get way more ports of good games. With the way it is right now with shovelware and Google pushing microtransaction-riddled crap over one time purchase games, though, it’s treated as a second-class platform because it’s not nearly as profitable as other platforms.

Which part of my comment was denigrating indie devs? Indie games are great. Android gaming is currently not.

If I’m looking for a good non-mobile game, I don’t go looking in the mobile game store. I go looking on PSN or PC, where the focus is on the kind of game that wasn’t designed as a phone-first experience.

The fact that Android has some good traditional games or ports of indie gems isn’t something inherent to Android. The overwhelming majority of those games were on PC or console first.

Oh, there’s no doubt about that. I’m not disagreeing that Android has some good-looking games. The problem is that games like GRID Legends Mobile are the exception, not the rule.

The Switch is crap, yes.
The Play Store is also overwhelmingly crap, though.

If you exclude all of the mobile games from both stores, the Switch simply has a better catalog of games.

You’re comparing apples to oranges.

The mobile gaming market is leagues larger than every other market combined. That doesn’t mean the games are even remotely comparable to console games.

It’s an entirely different target audience. Mobile games are focused on quick sessions and design patterns designed to encourage spending money on microtransactions. Games made for the traditional gaming market are mostly designed for longer play sessions with more mechanically complex gameplay. I as well as many others prefer the latter.

Nintendo’s store is full of shovelware, but at least you’ll find more traditional games than just ports of indie hits. Or, buy a Steam Deck and enjoy something better than both.

The OP is really blowing smoke up Android’s ass when it comes to the quality of native Android games. Most “top” mobile games are freemium crap riddled with microtransactions.

What it does have, however, is emulators. Including one for the Switch itself. Paying $350 for decade-old hardware and $80 for games is just bad value compared to a $300 used S21 and $0 games.

5.6% of [respondents] users said they wouldn’t pre-order [on Epic] knowing it would influence exclusivity, 2.7% said they would.

They really brought in those big dollars with making Borderlands 3 a timed exclusive on Epic. A whole 9%. Meanwhile, 91.6% of respondents preferred Steam. Bravo, Randy. Bravo.

Disappointingly, 53.9% still would buy it on Steam if it influenced exclusivity going forward. Even if it is Steam—which has a record of providing better service than its competitors—exclusivity helps nobody.

GOG being pushed out of the market. They’re one of the only stores that actually give you ownership of your games, and they don’t have the same indomitable foothold that Steam does.

It would be all too easy for Microsoft to strangle one of their key markets by taking a loss on sales and offering publishers 150% sales price in exchange for exclusive distribution of 90s and 2000s era PC games or console ports.

Steam will end up pushed out of the market

This has been explicitly attempted 3 times already, and that really didn’t work out well for anybody who tried it.

Epic Games Store still resorts to bribing people with free games to keep their monthly active user numbers up, hemorrhaging money to attract users who are rarely interested in anything more than freebies.

EA and Ubisoft tried to forgo Steam releases in favor of their own stores and launchers in an attempt to keep 100% of the revenue. They eventually relented, releasing their games on Steam again. Even Blizzard joined in, adding Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 to Steam.

And Microsoft’s attempt to dethrone Steam by releasing games through the Windows app store just ended up with Valve funneling considerable resources into helping Linux and WINE become a viable alternative to Windows for gaming.

Unless Valve enshittifies or legal shenanigans ensue, they’re pretty unlikely to be pushed out of the market. No single game or game series is good enough to capture the entire market of Steam users and permanently drive them to alternative platforms. On top of that, Steam has a huge following of users who are loyal to the company, which is both insane and insanely hard to compete against.

or they will also become Streaming Platforms

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t see it happening, though. Valve makes money hand over fist from digital sales alone, and they have more to lose in pissing off their customers by selling subscriptions than they have to gain by selling subscriptions.

I am concerned about GOG and PC hardware prices, though.

I can give it a try.

We’re going to make America great again. Not great, VERY great. Tremendously great. Great economy, great people, great science.

Science today, it’s not great. All these WOKE theories and hyperthees. That’s not science, that’s wasted money. The scientists today, they take our money. They give it to Harvard, woke Harvard. Spend it on DEI, not SCIENCE. They’re cheating, taking advantage of HARD WORKING Americans. We don’t pay them to ask questions. I KNOW science, that’s NOT science. We tell them to do science, they don’t DO science. They do SOME science, then they do it AGAIN, asking for money. That’s FRAUD.