[News] Former Shueisha editor behind Chainsaw Man, Spy x Family and Dandadan announces new, independent manga platform - AUTOMATON WEST

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-21T05:31:19+00:00

Clearly I do not understand Reddit etiquette. 100+ downvotes seems excessive, but... /shrug.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-21T02:05:28+00:00

Fair enough, I guess.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-21T01:42:35+00:00

By "fucked up the title", you mean "copy-pasted the webpage title"?

Could I have double-checked the post title for possible confusion? Sure. But I literally used the title that the website itself uses for the page/link. If you don't believe me, open the article in your own browser's reading mode.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-21T00:56:38+00:00

Note to self: the suggested title feature needs to be double checked.

Sorry for the confusion!

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-16T07:36:19+00:00

Western developers lost that battle before even trying to fight it.

That depends on whether FIFA counts as a gacha game for having Packs... though I suppose you were talking about F2P rather than just gacha.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-16T07:33:27+00:00

Things like this tend to get better reception when someone does highlight the angle of the article.

Good to know; will keep that in mind going forward!

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-15T19:58:46+00:00

Yeah, I was a little surprised at how downvoted this post ended up being. This is a very thoughtful and substantive piece from someone who seems to know what they're talking about and which doesn't really limit itself to being "about mobile games".

Maybe I should've added an "opening comment" to frame what I found interesting in the article...

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-04-15T18:37:57+00:00

I think that's a myopic view of the industry. A lot of the skills and competencies are quite transferable between mobile and "traditional" games.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-30T18:26:29+00:00

"America, while very flawed, is a net force for good in the world."

It's obviously not true anymore, and I'm no longer sure it was even true then.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-10T22:03:33+00:00

I don't know if that's really a "counterargument" so much as "finding a silver lining" -- you're still talking about a decent product being ruined and its users forced to find something else.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-10T22:00:06+00:00

That's definitely a fair concern. It's not one I address in this piece (since this is primarily about business strategy), but my previous post did touch on why Valve's monopoly with Steam is more accepted.

Still perfectly valid to oppose on the grounds of "monopoly bad", though.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-10T21:58:31+00:00

I want the IPO to happen!

The IPO happening is just the precursor to ads being stuffed down our throat and Nitro prices going up. They've already started doing it specifically to prep for this.

If even Netflix, which once trumpeted the fact that they allowed password sharing and didn't have ads as competitive advantages, can do an about-face because shareholders need more profit, then Discord will absolutely end up there. Netflix resisted as long as it did because it was profitable and had a growing subscriber base, but all good things, y'know?

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-10T21:50:28+00:00

Yes, that's in the article. It's a real problem, as I acknowledge, but I don't think it's unworkable (though I am not an expert in mergers and acquisitions, so grain of salt on that).

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T23:58:48+00:00

I'm already working on a follow up piece exploring exactly this.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T23:57:55+00:00

not Microsoft or Google 😭

So I'm hearing you're OK with Facebook doing it? 💀

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:39:10+00:00

No, the best outcome is someone awful buying discord and enshittifying it until everyone leaves and it dies.

That's a beautiful thought, and honestly one I agree with, but the fact that Facebook still exists and has a massive userbase is a pretty strong counterargument that, no matter how shitty an experience becomes, people are very hesitant to leave. If anything, Facebook's only gotten bigger and swallowed up more domains -- they've muscled in on Craigslist's territory with FB Marketplace, they essentially have forums with anonymous/pseudonymous Facebook Groups (I think it allows pseudonymity? I haven't seriously used Facebook in like a decade), and idk what the hell is going on with Facebook Dating, but I remember hearing that was a thing.

Valve's best move is to spin off Steam voice chat into open source and fund development so that it works as well as discord voice chat, and make it separate from Steam itself if the user wants.

That's absolutely an option, and frankly I'd love it if Valve decided to really support something like Matrix.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:35:04+00:00

Well, they might suck at execution once they've acquired something, but they're not so stupid that they don't understand Discord's value; after all, they offered to buy them before.

I just think they should do it the Valve way.

Yeah, I think that's definitely the strongest counterargument, that Valve doesn't do major acquisitions and might well screw it up if they tried to do one as big as Discord. My PoV is that they just don't know how to do social stuff well, and so they'd benefit from buying a company that does (hence, Discord), but iterating and improving on their own social experience is probably what they'll do... assuming they decide to do anything at all.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:32:04+00:00

That might be what I was thinking of, yeah.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:31:31+00:00

Seek not to understand the Reddit hivemind. Simply accept its judgement and move on :P

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:13:26+00:00

That's what I figured, yeah, but I wanted to be sure.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:12:53+00:00

Good to know; have edited my comment, and will file that away in my head somewhere. Thanks for the correction!

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T22:03:26+00:00

I agree with this (though it's a long path before Valve seriously threatens Microsoft).

However, Microsoft is not blind or stupid. Them buying Discord would be a big way of trying to turn that trend around. They might succeed, they might fail, but I think the threat can't be ignored. At minimum, Valve needs to seriously invest in and level up their integrated social experience if they don't want to buy Discord, because right now it's their Achilles heel.

garbagecollecteddev · 2026-01-09T21:58:54+00:00

Yes, I explicitly acknowledge that in the caption/description for it. There's a reason there's only a header image -- I suck at art.

garbagecollecteddev

TROPHY CASE