I've nothing against heros in campaign or coop. But for competitive I also think they detract rather than increase strategic depth.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Syntax Errorallow me to edit once : curious as we are , just checked both the browser and steam client and the game is not even trending in one of the 5 sections. Its nowhere to be seen.

This game is mostly for RTS fanatics, and most of us already pledged in the crowdsourcing campaign. That means that most of the people playing now on steam, didn't buy a copy on Steam and this is why the game selling stats are low (for Steam is not a trend if people don't buy on Steam).

And then there is the microtransaction drama which also didn't help this game "launch".

With mixed reviews ofc casuals stay away. Money aside, it's not necessarly bad. This is a startup not Blizzard and early access game is truly early access. It's better to expand to less "committed" audience when the game is more polished just to not affect reviews even worse.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

That linux isn't immure to malware and virus is knonwn. That kaspesky is the solution... it's questionable to say the least.

The general advice is to modify your kernel with anything that is not trusted and OSS. Know which repo you add to your apt. That already shuts down the most nasty risks. And we know it well enough... it's the reason why anti cheats refuse to support linux. They cannot spy without some kind of user approval... and they don't want to disclose what kind of spying they do.

Then for the rest (all kind of malicious activities outside kernel that is) it's the same as Windows. Educate your users to not do anything stupid on the web. And to not download snaps and the likes from untrusted sources. Which is easier said that done I suppose. Some antivirus support can definitely help here. But the antivirus itself needs to come from a trusted entity :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It's all nice and good but far from the tipping point.

Does anyone have some kind of research/analisys that tries to identify the % at which point the "network effect" will trigger?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

One of the main selling point of Steam, especially with proton, is that it supports games forever. 30 years from now if I get nostlgic I will be able to play a game of today thanks to compatibility lazers and such. But when games demands untrusted networks like Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft to fire up it's a given that those games will be unplayble. Unless the cracks are still around, but that still means hassle on our part. This trend... defeats a lot of the purpose of Steam. And objectively they are worth less dollars than an hypothetical "non third party account" counterpart.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

My issue is not with the DLCs. It's with the renovated push toward pre order, be it with season pass, or subscription or exclusive content. And then there is the annoying thing of pricing, with real prices only being accessible during sales, and new player accessibility even if with real prices.
And this is first because they are a large company now with large shoulders and they don't need cash in advance. Second because they already proved to be more than ready to slash quality in order to shorten delivery cicles and grab quick cash. Their games to often becomes broken with a patch, and this monetization strategy only incentivizes them to continue with this bad behaviour.

To be clear, quality issues weren't to big of a deal in the past, just annoying. They broke the game to release quickly, you roll back to previous patch, and once they figure their shit out, you buy the DLC and play on new patch. I've done it for years and lived happy. Only those who gave in to commercials and bought the DLC blindly would rage out. Then if they took a year to fix it I waited a year and buy the DLC discounted. Everyone was incentized to do things right to maximize both fun and revenues. Classic vote with wallet. But I guess some higherup were not happy with that.

So now with season pass (or subscription, or pre order, whatever) it turns out you already bought something you cannot play. Or that is not fun to play. And since your money is alredy theirs, and they are very russian on their forums when it comes to complaints, the players are only left with venting out with bad reviews on Steam (which is not nice for obvious reasons). Sure with this they get their shareholders happy in the short term. But in the long term is not good for the games (I guess some whitecollar will think that it's not an issue: whe the reputation of the game is broken beyong repeair they will just release Stellaris2 and start over).

If you really like those games, you should understand that it's important to reward them with a purchase only when they do things right (which they are also capable of doing and did many times over), not to buy blindly. They don't deserve that. And you also.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

First you give us the money. Then maybe we give you a DLC. And if we do, maybe it's not broken beyond playability. :grin:

This hobby is seriously getting sick.

Why is financing games is so difficult once a company goes public it's not that easy to understand for the end user. Develop, release, get good reviews and have people buy the game worked fine for decades and made this hobby great. I really don't feel the need to change the winning formula. Sorry PDX, but I'm out.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ZeroPointEnergy

Half of anti-cheat is making sure the environment hasn't been tampered with, and this is extremely hard on Linux by design

Ah, it's the old problem of Linux not being fascist enough

It's the old story of people that complain that they can't tamper with your system with the excuse to check if it has been tampered.

It's the fake policemen fraud brought into digital world.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I used to play (and spend) a lot in LOL in the past. But hei, their decision.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It turns out life is beatiful in Canada. :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments