Cyberpunk 2077 being broken in some fashion is a "dog bites man" story.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I have almost decided to get a Steam Deck, but that's quite a chunk of change to throw down.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Mountain ManCompanies that lose sight of their original focus tend to not last long.

To be fair, sometimes it works. A quick search turns up examples of famous companies that completely changed their focus and were fine, or got vastly more popular and successful as a result. Suzuki, now known for their motorcycles, originally sold mechanical looms, Avon originally sold books, etc.. Of course, sometimes it also doesn't work out (and I'm sure more business-savvy people than I could do a decent job predicting whether it will or won't for a particular case), but it's a little more complicated than a blanket statement either way.

I suppose there's always a caveat, but I'm talking about successful businesses that abandon the thing that made them successful in order to pursue something less certain. Those are the ones that often find themselves suddenly struggling. Probably the most famous example is Coca Cola when they retired their original formula and introduced "New Coke" only to watch their sales take a dive. Of course they were a large enough company that they could absorb the loss and correct course, but smaller businesses are rarely so fortunate.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

When I say that "DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest", I am referring simply to the fact that any game you want can be downloaded for free regardless of what copy protection the publishers encumber it with, so in that sense, DRM is a complete and total failure. From the publishers' perspective, however, if they see a slight bump in day one sales, then they probably consider it a resounding success, although it could be argued that online stores like Steam that make it easy to buy and download games have had the greater impact.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: pb

Quoting: M@GOidIf they want to survive, they had to bend over for the publishers demands or not have a game to sell.

I don't think they have much in the way of surviving. Might be too late for that, I'm afraid. Let me tell you a story.

Some thirty years ago, a person who shall remain unnamed, opened a second-hand clothes shop. It was a low-budget enterprise that gave modest returns. It had many happy customers and the money was flowing. But she wanted more so she took the money and opened a bigger shop in a better (and more expensive) location to sell *new* clothes. Invested pretty much everything in the new shop and the first batch of new merchandise and... that was the beginning of the end. Operating costs went way up while the turnover went way down. The customers didn't come to the shop as there were many other similar (and arguably better) shops. The "old" customers were coming to buy second-hand clothes so they saw no point in coming to the new shop, they were only interested in what the old shop had to offer. Long story short, the business went belly-up after a few hard months.

This is not a made-up story and yet it's a perfect analogy to what gog has done. They had a good business packaging and selling good-old-games, but they thought they could "do better" and invested lots of money to become a "new games" shop. But they never stood a chance. That was not what their customers were expecting, and new customers were hard to draw in. Had they remained in their niche, their business would be small but steady. Low operating costs and modest returns. Right now, they will just keep posting losses until the board decides to close it all down. Tough luck. Maybe there is a way back, maybe there isn't. Probably the latter.

Reminds me of a bagel shop in my town. Extremely popular, extremely successful, always a line of people at the counter waiting to place an order, but nobody complained because the bagels were that good. Then the owner tried to expand into providing bagels to the local colleges but couldn't meet the contractual obligations, so he closed the shop to throw everything he could at the colleges but still couldn't fulfill his obligations, couldn't afford to hire more staff or equipment, and was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Companies that lose sight of their original focus tend to not last long.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Seems like every gaming company that champions DRM free eventually caves at some point. I remember Stardock's Brad Wardell and his infamous "Gamers Bill of Rights" that he never talks about any more, mostly because he almost immediately violated it when Sins of a Solar Empire was released in a crippled state requiring users to sign up at Stardock's website with a valid CD key so they could download the day one patch. There's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

The only entertainment industry to get it right is the music industry which has embraced truly DRM formats like MP3 and FLAC which can be downloaded and used with zero restrictions.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: foobrew

Quoting: Mountain ManI'm always excited about a new Stellaris expansion because I bought the complete soundtrack on Steam several years ago, and every time a new expansion is released, the music is automatically added to my library.

So buying the soundtrack separately automatically gives you access to all future expansion soundtracks too? If so, that's pretty sweet. I have the "Original Game Soundtrack" which came with a bundle but not sure if it includes any future ones since I've yet to buy any expansions...the vanilla game still overwhelming enough and I have about 100 hours into it already.

If you buy the Complete Soundtrack, then the music from all future DLC is added as it's released as both MP3 and FLAC. It's up to nearly 60 tracks of music at the moment, and for only $6.99 is a hell of deal.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/492740/Stellaris_Complete_Soundtrack/ [External Link]

You'll find the files in

/home/<username>/.steam/steamapps/music/Stellaris Original Game Soundtrack

At least that's where they are on my system.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm always excited about a new Stellaris expansion because I bought the complete soundtrack on Steam several years ago, and every time a new expansion is released, the music is automatically added to my library.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: andy155Valve reduces the size of the Steam Deck client in the latest update? Honestly but who cares? You really exaggerate with the deck news.

I personally find stories like this of interest. You are free to skip over this content, or you can start your own Linux gaming site that focuses only on "important" stories.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: EikeI wonder what I would want to play with 15 fps though.
Not even a point and click, right?

A turn based strategy game, or even something like one of Paradox's real time grand strategy titles would be playable at 15FPS. But I imagine this is only a setting you would use if you really needed to maximize battery life.

View this comment - View article - View full comments