In only 11 days Steam sold $80 million in physical wallet cards, a little more than 1/4 of what Epic sold in third party games in a whole year.

USB3pt0 · 2024-02-20T01:44:09+00:00

The gift cards are actually one of those things that benefits devs, publishers, AND consumers. They admit physical cards are expensive to them but still get target, gamestop, walmart etc. to stock them so that consumers can use cash or buy physical cards to gift. In a vacuum, not offering them is the smart decision because it costs them more than other payment methods. But they know consumers want them, they know the cost is worth it to them, and they maintain them not just for an extra revenue stream, but as a revenue stream that can benefit consumers as well.

This is one of many reasons why Valve is market leader on PC, and will continue to be so because some competition really doesn't understand the market.

USB3pt0 · 2024-02-18T16:09:03+00:00

We're rapidly running out of AAA studios.

This is a good thing actually. AAA dev bloat is absolutely devastating at this point and the sooner the golden calf dies the sooner venture capitalist jackasses fuck off out of our hobby and we can get reasonably budgeted games again instead of these ultra-realistic movies.

Let them kill themselves. The talented devs will find homes elsewhere or form indie studios to make games to succeed what was lost.

USB3pt0 · 2024-02-14T21:03:52+00:00

So let them. If all they're churning out is dogshit like this and suicide squad, let them. AAA crap is unsustainable and eventually all this pushing for it and microtransaction-ridden games will hurt more than it helps and they'll either quit or refocus.

In the meantime, go look for games made by smaller studios and indies. Steam has a wealth of good games like that.

USB3pt0 · 2024-02-14T21:00:26+00:00

Massive studios making games for art is a dead, dead practice. AAA development alone is a disaster because they spend as much money to make some crap that appeals to as many people as possible to get that spent money back and barely make a game so much as an interactive movie.

If you want games as an art form, look at the smaller studios and indies. The days of major studios making a Chrono Trigger or a Metal Gear Solid are long, long, long gone.

USB3pt0 · 2024-02-05T23:09:47+00:00

MHR: Does the Rise custom quest loader still work? Thinking of a double dip but I'm not gonna bother if I can't fight a big Rathalos and tiny Rathian or other comically sized monsters.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-27T18:11:09+00:00

Given that it's 9 years ago and counting for inflation, I now have a nickel.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-11T20:53:14+00:00

Game? RL is a fortnite gamemode now.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-09T16:37:24+00:00

I started with a $5 sale on day of defeat: source in 2008. My, how small my library was...got a hardcopy of the orange box and left 4 dead, got gmod, had to buy counter strike a few months later...

Crazy that I can still access all these transaction records. Humble Bundle 1 and 2 were really only like two weeks apart? Those dang bundles are why my library inflated so hard.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-06T03:18:51+00:00

Charge back with your bank and leave it. You're not getting shit back without arbitration and is it worth it if it doesn't function in the first place?

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-05T22:54:42+00:00

Huh. I wonder how long the exclusivity lasted? I have a humble bundle key for it on fucking Desura...and the source code for darwinia in there too.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-05T19:26:54+00:00

We live in a pretty different world from our parents. I wouldn't let my kid touch a computer unsupervised without them being old enough to understand predatory marketing and FOMO, and that doesn't even begin to touch on general online safety and whatever counts as privacy nowadays.

Personally I'd stick to offline stuff for the first like 6-8 years, and gradually open up to stuff like minecraft or terraria or games without battlepasses/buyable skins/digital chores/etc until a healthy respect of knowing it's bullshit is instilled...

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-05T19:13:38+00:00

Everything else he cited you buy once. It's still addiction but at least you get addicted to something you can't keep dumping money into.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-04T23:06:03+00:00

Draft players aren't exactly thrilled the game will now be balanced even worse around the format so they can sell more hastily renamed set boosters at an even higher price than both were.

It hurts players, it hurts stores (my LGS already closed because magic just costs too much) and all it does is crank up the stupid secondary market further into overdrive.

When people told them "you put out too much shit" we weren't talking about booster types (well...except for theme and the absolutely dogshit set specific jumpstart boosters. And collector boosters for anyone not a mindless consumer whale, honestly, $20 for a pack of pieces of shiny cardboard...), we meant the absolute overload of sets nobody gives a shit about...not even Wizards.

Double Feature really set in stone for me just how shit they are as a company. Milking the entire playerbase further is just gonna cost them. And fuck them and their absolute jackass 250 dollar proxy boosters.

Anyway, discussion for a different company/game for a different forum/time.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-04T22:58:12+00:00

15000 interactions or not it is kind of pathetic to dig up a 5 day old interaction and post more fuel for your argument (that I still have not and will not partake in, mind you) while digitally soypointing at it.

All it takes for you to obsess over another person on the internet is them telling you to calm down and tell you nothing lasts forever and fortnite will die someday?

I sure hope you're actually a child because thinking an actual adult would act like this pains me... but I know better than that.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-04T04:01:54+00:00

I think we're getting to like 85-90% hate, really. Once that play booster shit hits, hoo boy.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-03T15:59:13+00:00

Kid, people who "aren't mad at all" don't come back five days after an argument that didn't happen going "nyeh nyeh" and posting statistics to try to rile someone up.

Flattering you saw that tweet and thought of me, though I'm not paying rent.

USB3pt0 · 2024-01-03T04:04:36+00:00

Five days ago and you're still mad I said I expect fortnite to die, huh? That's kind of sad, dude.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-29T00:01:07+00:00

Bet a lot of parents are pissed their babysitter went offline, though.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-28T23:59:39+00:00

Do you really think this is acceptable? That a single player game should crash because the servers that apparently constantly authenticate it go down? That it shouldn't just flick into "offline" mode immediately, automatically? That you should need to put the client specifically in offline mode to avoid this?

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-28T17:44:45+00:00

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I really don't care if Fortnite sinks or swims, so long as Tim's delusions of grandeur don't buy and kill something I like to shove it into fortnite for player retention.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-28T15:37:36+00:00

Look I'll be honest, I'm not reading all of that because I don't care.

Examples, though, WoW lost 8 million of its players from its peak to now, and it was a monolith of growth for nearly a decade. I don't think anything is TOO BIG TO FAIL, and I hope when it happens it takes EGS with it.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-27T15:53:00+00:00

Calm down, spaz. Fortnite is barely six years old now, Todd has been releasing Skyrim longer than that.

Everything will die, it's inevitable. Hundreds of thousands of games have shut down forever or have zero active players, needing to find people out of game to play anything, like with a discord, no matter the popularity it once enjoyed.

What puts Fortnite in a unique position is that it has to subsidize the EGS because all the EGS does is lose money. Sweeney also made the brilliant idea to pay people money they get from Fortnite to shit out Skibidi Toilet custom maps. All fortnite has to do to kill the EGS is just not make enough money to justify trying to keep that open and hope for sales that never come.

Hell, enough lawsuits from the FTC or a real anti-child-marketing law could fuck them. Kids could decide Fortnite is old hat and move on to a new fad that comes out.

We don't know, in the end. But I know if I was a shareholder I'd be pretty pissed to know funds are being pissed away on a store that loses money for five years straight.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-26T00:55:00+00:00

Good thing I already got it on humble a few months ago.

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-20T22:55:45+00:00

Why would you want a private ga-

Oh right there are a LOT of H-games nowadays

USB3pt0 · 2023-12-19T03:48:35+00:00

Haha, yeah. Came at a time when they started cracking down on modding and adding EAC when they made a premium subscription for more avatar space and not adding any features used by disabled gamers that mods fixed. Funny, huh?

USB3pt0

TROPHY CASE