I think the indie games genre is just a vibe, not if something is really independent or not.

Like nobody is calling Witcher or Cyberpunk an indie game, even though it didn’t have an outside publisher. Conversely, most people would probably say Bastion or Journey are indie games, even though Warner and Sony published the games.

Ok? It was a temporary voice file that the devs forgot to remove or replace. And people immediately screamed that Blizzard is trying to sneak AI into the game.

Machine generated voices are also very standard as placeholders. I’m… kinda surprised nobody has slipped up on that post-AI panic

Diablo 4 had this recently, where an obviously Microsoft Sam like robot voice made it through, and a few people lost their minds.

Nope, the game is and will probably always be spammy. Everyone has unlimited ammo. I definitely prefer this btw.

There’s map control of course, just not like arena shooters. Most maps have changing objectives, around which the fights happen.

Instead of more difficult weapons you’re managing your abilities and cooldowns.

That’s just the kind of game OW is.

I’ve been playing for about two months now, after a multi-year break from the game. Just casual, not competitive (although Stadium is classified as competitive). It’s great.

Two bad things for me. Flex Queue means Tank, which sucks, because I’d like to play all roles, but now have to just queue DPS/Heal. Also, the matchmaker is shit, so most games are relatively one-sided (Quick Play and Stadium).

to this day, I still have no idea how DOS and DOS2 are related plotwise

They’re in the same world, but a thousand years apart or something, so there is no real connection.

Small references to the first game with books, maybe dialog a few times, nothing major.

It’s a dumb hypothetical, because of a dumb question.

Depends on who you ask. Square might have projected 15m sales on the first day, in which case it did.

BG3 tried it with Bear sex. I guess we aren’t ready for that yet, but our kids are gonna love it.

BG3 and Cyberpunk have boobs and were a success, which would support that statement. But Wukong, Palword, and Monster Hunter Wilds were even more successful (according to concurrent Steam players), which means animals are the true secret to success.

The only thing I know is that access to the specific purchase might get blocked, if there’s a payment issue. Not Steam directly, but a friend of mine once bought Diablo 3 for WoW gold on Battle.net, something happened after a while, and he lost access to the game, dunno if the other side refunded the game or whatever. All the other games still worked, but he’d have to buy D3 again to play it. I would be surprised if Steam blocks the whole account.

If they mean you buy a game, then there’s a problem with payment, but they should still let you download and play, that’s dumb.

The part about Steam Support being extremely slow is also old news. I think that’s been a lot better for years now. I don’t know if it was around the time they were forced to implement refunds, but I think that’s all outsourced now, and you don’t have to hope a Valve dev checks the support mailbox anymore.

The video from LTT made it look like when you launch this game mode or Xbox mode or whatever (like on the Deck, where you can still exit to the desktop), and lots of non-essential processes just get stopped automatically. After you’re done, those processes would start again. So nothing is really removed, just put on hold while you’re gaming, and there’s no separate OS version.

I’m interested in the Xbox game mode, or whatever it’ll be called. Freeing up all those resources to improve performance should be good. Also, the unified launcher for all your games could be neat, depending on how it’s going to work out.

I’m not interested in the Switch 2, but things like that are why I thought about buying one for like a second, just to have a low firmware one.

Finally, some real examples, where EGS is better than Steam, that actually impact people and might make them use EGS. Price is probably the most important one. If someone from Argentina pays like half as much on EGS as they would on Steam (don’t know how much it actually is), because EGS actually accepts their local currency and they don’t have to pay in USD or something, then it makes sense to switch to EGS

Also, EGS is better for devs than Steam, with revenue share, now even more so, as mentioned in the post. I don’t think a lot of people will buy on EGS solely for that reason, but it is something.

The OP says global preloading and gifting are going live soon

That’s why I mentioned them. You basically said, people (maybe unjustly) talk shit about EGS because of missing features like that, when they also have some advantages over Steam, and then talk about the most mundane stuff. “I might not be able to pre-load this game, but at least I can cap my download at 13468kb/s.” Those two are not the same.

It was very convenient to have everything in one place

As I said, with the button to switch to the Chat inside the Steam app, it’s basically the same. What is the real difference of clicking that button and switching to a different app, compared to clicking that button and switching to a new screen inside the same app? I genuinely can’t think of one. You could argue a separate app is better, because now you can open both apps at the same time in split screen, so you can browse the store or community pages, while chatting (I wouldn’t do that, but it’s possible).

I’m not sure the discounts offered via bundles on Steam are an overall better deal compared to Epic offering cashback of 5% on everything, sometimes increased to 20% (like now)

Probably not, most of the time, and this post doesn’t detail what bundling for EGS means. Steam has normal game bundles and the Complete-your-Collection bundles, which is dynamic and can give some extra discounts.

However, with Steam keys from legit third-party sites, you might get an even better deal at times, maybe better than on EGS, so I don’t really know where it’s the cheapest.

Wishlisting specific Game Editions would be nice, but how are you comparing nice-to-have features like that or custom download limits to stuff like Pre-Loading, Gifting, Bundles, etc.

For me, a separate Chat app for Steam is also a complete non-issue. I can’t really think of anything, that would improve, if it was integrated in the normal Steam app. Separate download and one initial login less? You can launch the Chat app from the Steam app itself, so you don’t even save that single extra tap to launch it, and for the user it’s basically the same as an integrated chat.

Different is good. I’m not a FromSoft-gamer. Elden Ring is the only game of theirs I really ever got into (and it’s not for lack of trying), so I don’t really care it’s not the same game again.

Also, you’re right, what I’ve seen doesn’t look easy, and no real communication at all is a bummer (only set a marker or jump and crouch in front of something), but it still looks like fun.

I’m not a huge Elden Ring guy, haven’t even played the DLC yet, but watching a streamer play Nightreign, I kinda wanna try it myself, even with these problems.

My friends aren’t into these types of games anyway, so it always would’ve with randoms (solo supposedly isn’t that good).

Looks exactly the same as all the other non-future Anno games, although I don’t remember if your citizens disliked living next to a pig farm in 1800.

I don’t remember if I ever played through a story mission or scenario in the previous games. I always just start an Endless Game, set the difficulty all the way down, with no other NPCs, and just build until I’m satisfied. Looking forward to doing the same thing here.

Yes, but it would still be nice to have in the middle.

I went back to check in Eternal, and I was wrong about that game showing the progress on the icons in the middle of the screen. Just like Dark Ages it just shows charges that are ready to use, and the progress in the full HUD on the edges of the screen. Seems like I just need to get good and look at the full HUD, like I did in Eternal.