Honestly, I like the look of the leader/civilization changing and mixing. Looks like a lot of fun, in the “late-game rogue-like”, “Break the game by amassing synergies” type way. Its a different appreal than 5, but that just means I can enjoy both rather than picking one. That said, given the price, the DRM, and the reported buggyness, I’ll probably still be waiting a few years at least. At least that gives modders time to get to work.

I saw this posted a couple days ago which pretty succinctly summarizes the current state of the market.

Commented this a year ago, and its just as relevant today.

The disbling of lifesteal on Bristleback’s Bristleback feels like it destroys him as a hero. I have no idea how you’d make a viable core build for him now.

I was kinda suprised too. I know someone else was saying they’re popular in developing nations, because of better regional pricing, although I can’t confirm that. I also know that they were a popular choice for crypto grifts and similar shady and scammy games, since they had less moderation than Steam, so its possible some of the income also comes from stuff like that.

In comparison, spending on third-party titles declined by 18% to $255 million

Some key context from the article.

Basically, profit from Fortnite increased significantly, although the store itself isn’t doing great.

Given that its $255 million in customer spending, not revenue or profits, and Epic reportedly takes only 12% plus reduced fees on Unreal Engine effectively lowering it further, I can’t imagine its profitable. If we assume 10%, that leaves revenue of $25.5 mil, which doesn’t seem like it’d be anywhere near enough to cover exclusivity deals, and giveaways, nonetheless infrastructure and other factors.

Worth noting that Steam does not enforce the use of its DRM. Like Epic, its up to developers to add it.

As for installing games after the services ends, I’d be curious to know if any have specified what happens to game licences at that point. Obviously, if the licence is revoked, continuing to play it is piracy, but if these services close, are the licences revoked? I couldn’t find anything matching in the Steam or GOG terms of service.

deleted by creator

I think the vast majority of users only use launchers to launch games. For that purpose, it does that perfectly fine.

Does it? Lets envision the minimum viable product for a game store. You have a very basic web interface and you download games or installers from it. Something like itch.io, or similar to GOG. Is using Epic’s launcher better than just downloading the installers from a browser? I’d argue not, given the hastle of creating a new account, installing the launcher with all its spyware and using it, rather than the bare minimum of just downloading an installer, running it, and then running the game directly.

I suspect that even if Epic invested billions into bringing their store up to feature parity with Steam, users still wouldn’t switch. They’d need to be leaps and bounds better, and that’s hard to comprehend in terms of features and cost.

Look at how other platforms have eaten into Steam’s control most successfully without resorting to anything too shady. Humble Bundle and Fanatical offer unique bundles with better deals. Itch.io works more closely with devs, esspecially smaller devs. GOG cut out a niche by specifically seeking out old games to licence or fix themselves, as well as by ensuring everything is DRM free.

None of these had even a fraction of the funding Epic did. Imagine if Epic spent their early years trying to replicate these practices rather than paying to remove stuff off other platforms. Instead of spending millions on exclusivity deals, they offered customers things like weekly discount bundles, a designated DRM free section on their store, or maybe a community games section with less moderation, meant for quick-and-easy publishing for new devs.

If that isn’t enough, and they aren’t busy spending ten or hundreds of millions on pissing off their potential customers, then they could also look at loyalty programs, better sales, or even just straight-up marketing for their platform and the games on it. Epic isn’t a small company and their store has been a major investment.

All of that is just easy, obvious stuff off the top of my head, none of which even affects the launcher. Implement even half of it, (without burning the bridge with your customers first) and I’m confident you’ll have a very strong competitor to Steam.

Okay, but any significant plans to make the launcher or store itself worth using?

Looks like the general consensus is that its not terrible, but is unfinished and not at all worth the price.

If you’re looking to get into Civ, I’d probably recommend either five for a more complete, and polished game, or six for a weirder and more experimental game.

Yes, its a way for a developer to shift blame, but its also a very obvious and clear label to the consumer to expect an unfinished game. I wouldn’t really consider ot abuse as long as the developer is actually trying to make a decent game. For example, 7 Days to Die is a buggy, unfinished game that the devs have failed to complete for years. It should be labeled as such and shouldn’t be sold as a finished game. That said, its also a good game even in its unfinished state, and I’m happy its available to buy. Removing early access either means these games aren’t sold, or they’re sold without the disclaimer. Either situation is worse for the consumer.

The bigger problem is when its used to disguise a game that isn’t even trying, but at that point, removing the early access warning doesn’t help much. In that case, a generous refund policy and decent support are far more important.

I mean, the information was published. People could have shared it more if they cared. Most users don’t. Just look at the backlash he got for comparing ad block’s impact to that of piracy. I still see people citing that as a reason not to trust LMG. If people are that offended by being asked to consider the effects they have on creator income, you really think they’d react well to being told their discounts are hurting creators. They’re already seen as whiney, pro-corporate shills. They’re not going to go out of their way to shout from the rooftops criticism for a company that helps consumers (or was thought to at the time).

Edit: to be clear, I’m not a fan of LTT, but if you’re going to criticize them, do it for their bias, factual errors, personality, ect. Not because they didn’t go far enough to discourage using coupon codes.

“We’re not blocking competition, we’re just making sure no one else can get any money.”

A “profit all the things” CEO would be running the casino themselves. IE: Many of the big mobile games. Hell, I don’t play many modern triple-A titles, but it sounds like they’ve largely gone that route too.

AI content is low-quality slop. That said, sometimes low-quality slop is the best option for what you want, and in that case, it can make sense to use. That slop can also make a useful ingredient for other, better works, so long as its just a small peice used appropriately.

No, it wasn’t, and that’s exactly the problem. Car dependent infrastructure is so bad for society and he was proposing a concept that would entrench it to a degree that would make today’s anglosphere look like a utopian Nordic paradise by comparison.

Ignoring the fact that its already entrenched and not going to change without dedicated infrastructure that happens seperate to the development of individual vehciles, at that point, you’re asking him to make a video on urban planning rather than AI. Its an entirely different field. Might as well ask for him to make a video on vaccine development or something at that point. To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong about the importance of pedestrian and bike infrastructure, but it’s importance doesn’t mean that cars can’t or won’t develop further. Frankly, given the fact that Grey has lived in both American and Europe, I doubt he’d disagree, given the first-hand experience.

Ending it and then saying nothing for months, before having your cohost release a lie stating that it hadn’t ended is unreasonable by any metric. It would have taken so little effort to put a post up on the subreddit saying “thanks for all the good times, but we’ve decided we’ve exhausted what we can talk about, you can keep up with me on my YouTube or my productivity podcast at these links.”

Given the unscheduled, (relatively) umplanned nature of it, its likely they just didn’t fully know what the plan was. Again, not suprising for what it was. Its entirely possible, for example, that they do hope to come back to it someday. Declaring the indefinite hiatus a lie just because it hasn’t ended is an overreaction. They could very easily decide that in the last five years, they’ve amassed enough new topics to come back for another 100 episodes.

You don’t get to give your fans cutesy nicknames and invite them to send you postcards en mass to vote on a community flag and then pretend to maintain the sort of faceless transactional relationship you described there. You just don’t, and it’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

I mean, companies and organizations do that sort of thing all the time. Providing a banner for fans to rally to doesn’t make them any less of a buisness. I wouldn’t consider myself a friend of the head of the Nationa Research Counsel just because I was a big supporter of Boaty McBoatface, nor was that their goal.

I should add one more point to the list though that I just … … … interested in that, Grey and Kurzgesagt ended up leaving.

I was not aware of the Kerzgizart or Nebula drama. If true, that would be a much bigger concern to me, and yeah, would paint him as much more of a scumbag.

I do agree with the criticism against him in terms of Guns, Germs, and Steel, but I think the criticism of his automation and self-driving cars videos is a bit of an overreaction. These are videos trying to predict the future based on current trends. At the time, many were very optimistic about the progression of AI (and not just Tesla). At the same time, whille his predicted timeframe was off, its also not seeming unlikely that his predictions will come true. We’re already starting to see AI automate a bunch of jobs. If I remeber correctly, he also talked about the original video on Hello Internet about five years ago and basiclly said what I am now: his timeframe was optimistic but much of what he predicted still seems feasible if not likely. As for the traffic video specificly, it might be overly simplistic, but the idea is to give an idea of how traffic management might change in the future. It’s focus isn’t on bikes and pedestrian, and while not covered in the video, its not like they don’t fit in to that model. You literally just need a signaled crossing like is used now, or if you insist on ensuring near-maximum efficiently, a bridge, underpass, or otherwise separated infrastructure (which is usually better for pedestrians and bikes where possible anyway).

I also don’t really think the end of Hello Internet was esspecially out of the blue, or unreasonable. It was very much an improvised, talk-about-a-random-topic type of podcast, so after about 200 hours of talking, its not suprising that they would find it difficult to come up with new topics that they can both engage with and make entertaining. IMO it was very clearly fizzling out well before they stopped, and post covid, it would have only been more difficult. The lack of announcement is annoying, but I would hardly consider it a betrayal.

I know its very blunt but, it sounds like you were far more attached to him than was warrented. I always read his talk of fans as very clearly viewing them as a seperate group - appreciated customers, not friends. For example, his talk about using the Grey alias to seperate himself from his work, trying to keep himself faceless and mostly anonymous, and the treating of all of his works as a buisness. IMO he never tried to sell it as anything more than a buisness.

Its a posting of his video from years ago.

While I’ve been disappointed by his lack of modern content, I don’t see a reason to call the productivity techniques he likes nonsense, nor to lose respect for him as a whole. Is there a particular reason?

Basically, Valve’s game, Counter Strike sells cosmetics for the game. They can be bought from through in-game lootboxes (a form of gambling itself, but not what’s being refrenced here) or, notably, from other players in an open market. Valve provides the infrastructure for managing this, but doesn’t charge players for its use or otherwise moderate it. For a comparison, when NFTs were popular and people were saying it was already a solved problem with fewer issues, markets like what Valve set up for Counter-Strike cosmetics were the existing, non-blockchain version.

Ultimately, as this is an open market, with free trading, this has significant benifits and significant downsides. On one hand, I can buy hundreds of $0.02 skins to use in the game without every touching the $3 lootboxes, or can trade items with friends or other players. On the other hand, this is an largely unregulated market. Valve controls the “wallets” but doesn’t have direct say over trade negotiations, and governments are either ignorant or intentionally looking away. This means scams, money launderers and illeagal or sketchy casinos can use Counter Strike Cosmetics as a currency or intermediary without having to fear oversight or law enforcement.

These casinos are the gambling being refered to here. Because they have have effectively no oversight, they can use every scheme in the book to abuse their players from rigging results, to ignoring normal casino legal payout rates, to advertising to children, to using bureaucracy to make receaving payouts as slow and difficult as possible. The casions advertise aggressively and are able to make millions and millions off this.

The reason Counter Strike, and to a lesser extent DotA benifit from this is because the items being used in this, are cosmetics in their games. As the only practical way to use these cosmetics (besides selling them) is in-game this encourages players to play the game. For example, if a player wins a jackpot in the casino, they might play a round of Counter Strike to show off their valuable new cosmetic item before the sell it. This adds to the games population and acts to advertising the costmetics in-game.

But why not just have the people who can pay reparations, can punish those running illegal casinos, and can do it without catching others in the crossfire do it?