Honestly the best thing for people to keep in mind is that humans were really good at moving giant stones long distances at that point in time so they could come from pretty much anywhere. There is a video on Easter Island statues where they figured out a way to walk the statues down to the water’s edge matching oral tradition descriptions and there is a guy who moves huge blocks multi ton around with a similar technique.

When people did it full time for generations I bet they had even better techniques!

The movement is wonky compared to modern games, and unless you are wanting to do real time DMing it isn’t worth it in my opinion.

It was absolutely fantastic. A full campaign plus all of the DM tools and the ability to run shared servers for people to join and play together!

I really wish they included similar real time DM tools to BG3.

You want this place to be something different than reddit, you shouldn’t be acting like a reddit mod yourself.

Not magic that is useless to society.

Magic that is not valued by society.

Apparently they posed zero threat to any residential plants, other bugs, or other parts of nature.

They were only a threat to industry!

Agreed in pricipal because family businesses are frequently how knowledge is passed from generation to generation, but family and small businesses can also exploit and not protect children and still need oversight on safety.

I haven’t experienced it, but hear good things about the community.

The player base was always going to decline significantly.

It doesn’t have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.

The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren’t on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren’t grouped up for major orders.

The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I’m happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.

This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don’t have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I’ve played.

It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.

Also the time spent getting ready for office appearances and prepping lunches (or the cost of buying lunches away from home).

They probably saved 30 billion through sales and got even more worth out of finding the games they really enjoy that they may have never even tried without the sales.

I can confidently say that I spend less per year on games now than 25 years ago, very rarely regret a purchase, and don’t bother with refunds (which I hear are easy) because if I buy three games for cheap and spend all my time on one then I got my money’s worth.

Hell, I spend less each year than my wife spends on switch games and get way more entertainment out of it.

• Jared from Subway

K

Ok, then let me be an idiot while you go through whatever distributor you think gets the ‘right’ amount of profit.

They distribute games, which is something in addition to creating and publishing.

Whatever percentage they use is based on an average across wildly different games. A large game with frequent updates doesn’t need to pay steam for the work on steam’s end each update. They don’t need to pay for each tine someone downloads their game, or for the ongoing costs to upgrade steam over time to continue supporting their game. They have a set percentage per sale so they can easily calculate how many units they need to sell to break even.

If the game’s sales die off they don’t need to pay for steam to continue support. At any time they can use the popularity of a new release to renew interest in past releases without any extra requires work. When game sequels blow up, the publisher doesn’t need to do anything to get sales money from new sales of the prior versions. The prior games are just there, waiting to make the publisher money.

How much value do you think any distribution platform provides?

I am getting my money’s worth.

Steam is not making the games more expensive, the game studios/distributors are increasing the prices so they can make more profit.

I am fine with someone who set up and runs a successful business that is in no way predatory and is a benefit to employees, consumers, and the companies that use their product to have an excess amount of money. They are doing capitalism the right way and actually earned the benefits.

Games going up to $70 are not becsuse of the 30% cut. They wouldn’t go down if that percentage dropped either. I play multiple games that were always sold at $40 or less as full games and they have been massively profitable.

I guess you wouldm’t be complaining if they never improved efficiencies then, since decreasing costs should apparently be passed on to distributers. Shame on them for improving their business sonthey could use those profits to create the steam deck and other benefits for gamers instead of propping up the profits of game companies!

Should game companies lower their proces based on volume of sales when they make ‘enough’ profit?

Plus it isn’t like there aren’t tons of compatibility issues with all the versions of hardware on PC.