Quoting: pskosinskiWhen Humble Bundle was promoting DRM-free games people were "meh, what are those shit games I never heard of", when they decided to include more known titles (never DRM-free) then people complained there are no good, DRM-free indies in bundles anymore. Whatever they do people complain.

For me, that's an awesome bundle. Too bad I own majority of games from that bundle.

Also, it's 100% for charity, people. Those developers simply give their games away for free, for charity.

I never complained about that. I liked seeing new indie games I never noticed before and getting Linux versions of them. Not everyone complained. Some of us liked the old way and don't like the whole just sell Steam keys that they do now.

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You can follow and pre-order on Steam.

Except if you go to Steam to preorder it, it only lists Windows as a supported platform. I have been burned before pre-ordering games that said they would support Linux and then they don't launch at release and say later, then eventually give up completely on a Linux release. No I won't even think about buying a game until I can actually by the Linux version at the time of purchase. I've been burned way too many times with pre-order to show support for Linux crap.

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Per usual it seems Humble Bundle has still lost their way even when fund raising for charity. They still don't promote DRM Free like they used to do. Sad really.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: ProtektorI find it hilarious that you think just because something is digital that is somehow special and different

But it is. The cost of a copy approaching zero makes a fundamental difference. When it comes to physical goods, scarcity is real and costs are based (more or less) on cost of production. When it comes to digital goods, costs are arbitrary and scarcity is entirely a social construct which we have created because we don't understand how to do any other models and anyway we fear trying other models would undermine the status quo.

So what you are saying is people price digital goods like physical goods but in reality are cheaper to produce because they aren't physical and thus don't have to use natural resources to make a copy and expensive shipping and stocking and middle men. Instead they can make 1 or 100 million and costs are exactly the same. Yea digital good are special....NOT! Customers shouldn't be screwed just because you or anyone else thinks digital goods are special and that companies should be able to wave away warranty of fitness and wave away right of first sale. Yes right of first sale is a consumer right in the US. We have the RIGHT to sell stuff we won't want or need anymore that we bought. Software companies are not the first to try that bullshit. Music, books, movies and all kinds of other stuff have tried that in the past but the courts didn't let it fly. Now companies have paid off judges to be friendly to them and convinced judges and people in general that some how digital media is special and different from everything else out there. It isn't and that is a modern corporate invention or what I call a modern corporate lie.

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Quoting: kuhpunkthttps://www.pcgamer.com/square-enix-reports-losses-following-release-of-underperforming-marvels-avengers/ [External Link]

Did you read the article?
"Despite the losses, the HD games division did do more business in both quarters of 2020 than in comparable periods in 2019." That's also the entire division, not reporting on just one game. They are not releasing sales number or costs of Avengers. So people are extrapolating ALL the losses are from Avengers and there simply is no data to support that. All you can say for sure is that SquareEnix said Avengers didn't perform as well as they wanted and the company said reviews and users were not responding to it as expected. That is all you can say for sure. Sales were lower than excepted which I would bet money was still a huge pile of cash, just not what they wanted. Clearly they made more money than the year before because SquareEnix said so.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe pharmaceutical industry comes fairly close. There are large up-front costs to developing new drugs. As compensation, companies are given a monopoly (patent) on drugs which they invented did the clinical trials for, and charge orders of magnitude more than the cost of production. The resulting compensation tends to be wildly out of proportion to the costs of development--but also, that mismatch between fixed development cost and per-unit revenue leads to perverse incentives. Companies gain hugely if by any means they can sell more units of a given drug rather than start over with a new drug; hence they tend to aggressively push to expand what a drug can be prescribed for whether it's appropriate or not, tend to spin the data to discount dangerous side effects, and pull various tricks to extend the life of their patents. Not to mention the genesis of the opioid crisis. If the drug companies were instead paid lump sums for the drug development, but then were not awarded a monopoly but had to compete, the prices of drugs would fall towards the price of production, and drug companies would gain little from misrepresenting a given drug's capabilities, arranging for it to be prescribed inappropriately, and so on.

Actually that is incorrect. If you look at all of the pharmaceutical companies you will find they spend more on advertising than they do on R&D. Also if you look at their end of the year filings for those that are public, not only will you see R&D costs versus advertising, but you will see how much they are feeding at the federal trough to develop these medicines and working with Universities that are government funded as well. So pharmaceutical want you to think they spend tons on R&D to develop drugs but most of that money isn't their own money. They feed very heavily at the public/government trough. I have many family members in medicine who have told me all about this and how the pharmaceutical companies wine and dine them and give away drugs to them in order to get them on a doctor's preferred prescription list as well. If a doctor tells you that you need a $300 drug most people just assume, okay that is what I need and I will just have to hope my insurance pays for it.

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Quoting: PublicNuisance

Quoting: tonR

Quoting: PublicNuisanceThe reality is that gamers are as much to blame as Valve. Take Wolfire for instance, they sell their games on Steam but also Itch.io and Humble Store. If a gamer wanted to give them maximum profit Itch.io would probably be the best bet as Itch.io allows developers to set what revenue goes to Itch and what they keep. The option is there but the issue is that most gamers prefer to buy from Steam to keep their games in one library. In other words they should be as mad at gamers as they are at Valve as gamers choose where to buy their games. Of course getting mad at your customer and suing them doesn't play so well from a PR standpoint. Just to make clear, i'm not saying they should sue gamers or even be mad at them but it makes as much sense (or as little) as being mad at Valve. I for one try to buy from Itch.io and GOG as I prefer to support those businesses that give me a DRM free product and support open source (in Itch's case not GOG). I'm the minority though, most gamers don't care. They just want their games and don't care about ideology or business practices. As long as that is true then Valve will remain king and no lawsuit will change that.

Totally disagree with your statement that I bolded.
Here the thing. Why most gamers especially in developing/emerging countries (which includes me) choose Steam because of one thing: Convenience

I can buy Steam wallet code anywhere! 7-Eleven, Tesco (now called Lotus as Thai company bought it), some mom-and-pop shops, telcos and even a bank! (Maybank Malaysia link) [External Link]. Some country such as India also have Cash on Delivery option.

So, Why should we get blame for choosing a company that offers better service to us. The one who willingly takes extra mile to reach us the gamers, as their customers. Don't mad at us for exercising our consumerism.

Without extra mile that Valve took, piracy will be rampaging again. Just like the old times. As Gaben said:
Piracy is an issue of service, not price

Apologies. Just share our sentiment (and some facts) here. And I do bought some games on itch.io if possible too.

I feel like you may have missed where I said

"Just to make clear, i'm not saying they should sue gamers or even be mad at them but it makes as much sense (or as little) as being mad at Valve."

I don't see being mad at Valve as being productive, i'm simply saying that if one were to want to be mad at someone that being mad at gamers makes as much sense as they are the ones choosing where to shop.

If you are manipulating the market to force lock-in to your store like Valve has done for years then yes they need to be taken down and forced to play by different rules than everyone else because they intentionally manipulated the market. They didn't make a better product to take the market they manipulated to take over. Giving a way keys was exactly a way to lock up the market. A new store just getting started can't give away keys because they don't have the size and scale to absorb the loses like Valve has done. Valve knew this and this is exactly why they did it. It was a cheap way to lock users in to their store and it worked once they were large enough to absorb the losses. Valve did NOT do this in the beginning. It wasn't until they got very large that they started doing this as a way to shut out other stores, lock users in to their store, and cheap way to capture new customers. If you can capture a new customer for $5-10 worth of bandwidth and storage then that is way the hell cheaper than advertising to capture new customers. Ask yourself why Valve has never advertised their store and how they built up their user based to this large. It wasn't because they were first. It was the choices they made to capture new users cheaply.

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Quoting: TheRiddickI find it hilarious people are comparing digital copies of games to physical goods in the retail markets like its Apples to Apples comparison. Its just not, too many people clueless about software development and cost/time associated.

I find it hilarious that you think just because something is digital that is somehow special and different and shouldn't be treated exact the same as physical goods for consumer rights and protects and cost regulation. Hell we don't even enforce fitness of service and use like we do for everything else that is sold to the public. Imagine if you sold every car with a license and contract and made the buyer sign a contract that said...well this is suppose to be a car but it might not work, it might blow up, in fact we can't even really guarantee that it's a car that runs, but you must agree to this and hold us totally immune and no liability if it blows up or breaks don't work or anything else including killing you. No one would put up with it, so why do should we put up with it for digital goods?

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: TheRiddickYeah %30 is pretty high for a DIGITAL GOODs based store. Who knows if Valve will change this policy. It does hurt indie devs the most who can't achieve high sales numbers to get discounted 'valve tax rate'.

Why is it always "this is against Indies"? Valheim is a small indie title and sold bonkers numbers. Avengers is a AAA blockbuster with a HUGE name behind it (the biggest running movie franchise!) and it bombed hard.

Valve wants to sell games. Why should they make a difference between AAA and Indie? Money is money.

That is a bullshit argument and absolutely does not look at the sales that Avengers still made given it's massive marketing and budget. It made 100x what most indie games will ever hope to achieve. Avengers failed based on the expected goals and what they spent on development and promotion, but it still made a ton of cash regardless. It just didn't make what everyone expected.

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Quoting: Interknet

Quoting: s8as8aFor what it's worth, the 30% (or any percentage) cut doesn't seem bad to me (even if they didn't "give back" anything to the community, but in our case, they do, and a lot). What does seem bad to me is the "clauses Valve have that prevent developers selling at cheaper prices on other stores" (because that improperly reduces competition among stores, and that likely is the point).

That sounds like a myth honestly. I'm sure I've seen games available elsewhere for less many times.

That is absolutely not a myth. I have seen the contract that you must sign with Valve to be on Steam. It is ABSOLUTELY part of the agreement and Valve is selective about enforcing it. But it not a myth. I have also talked with many developers who can attest to that.

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