Any time I go to pause Humble Choice, I have to admit, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the £9 I'm about to save. It's always an insane number of games for so little money. So it boils down to, for me, whether I could get a single game in the Choice for that £9. In this month's choice, that game is Barotrauma (normally £12), even though I already own quite a few of the others.

I mean, Remnants of Naezith looks superb too, like Speedrunners, but with prettier graphics, and I like the look of Stygian too. There's also King's Bird, which looks stunning, like Gris had a baby with Dustforce. So yeah. No pause for me this month, despite owning quite a few of the other titles.

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I think I got Neoverse [External Link] in last month's Humble Choice - turns out, it's absolutely superb, albeit Windows-only, but runs nearly perfectly in Proton (the tutorial screen doesn't display, but otherwise it's perfect). Dare I suggest... better than Slay the Spire?? It's basically the same game, except the heroines are all improbably proportioned girls. But putting the dubious boob physics aside, the core card game is superb. Loads of customisation, great synergies and fantastic strategy. Highly recommended.

I'm also completely addicted to Mana Spark [External Link]. The graphics are a nearly-unplayable mess, but the gameplay is so smooth and satisfying, you start to ignore it. Great progression, amazing power ups and again - great synergies with certain upgrades. Just awesome.

Finally, I've just bought Burning Knight [External Link], so I'm looking forward to playing that!

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I paste this into /etc/sudoers on every single install I do.

# Allows certain command to run without a password
scaine ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt update
scaine ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt dist-upgrade
scaine ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt auto-remove
scaine ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/purge-old-kernels

Although since I've moved to Mint, I find the GUI for updates is pretty good, so I don't do my command-line maintenance anywhere near as much.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: scaineIt should be, but this is all about money.

It is, but not really for the reasons you're thinking of. A tiny indie developer benefits more than a massive AAA developer does from all the infrastructure that Steam provides. A big multiplat release is going to have their own matchmaking, their own support chain, their own marketing, their own forums, and so on, outside of Steam, so there's less of a value proposition for Valve's cut than is the case for the indie, and supporting a million players in one container is cheaper for Valve than a thousand containers with a thousand players in, so there's scope to lower the rates.

I don't doubt any of that, but I don't believe that any of it's relevant to Valve's decision to reduce their cut to AAA. They did so, I believe, to prevent those big players jumping ship to Epic. Which was my point (poorly stated) - it's all about money. Specifically, in this case, Valve keeping as much of it as possible.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: GuestPersonally i think 30% is perfectly fine for AAA devs. I however think that Steam [and other Stores] could lower that Cut for Indie devs.

Funny enough, it is actually the other way around. AAA devs regularly negotiate a lower cut with Valve. Which in itself actually proves the cut Valve usually takes is higher than it needs to be.
Indies don't have that kind of power to negotiate with, unfortunately.

There's also this, which strongly favors AAA to begin with:
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-new-revenue-sharing-favours-big-budget-games-and-indie-devs-arent-happy/ [External Link]

Hah interesting, didnt know that. Well that sucks of course. Should definitly be the other way around.

It should be, but this is all about money. Steam don't really want to encourage more indies - they want to stop AAA's going elsewhere. Indies definitely get a rough deal with Steam and I don't blame any indie that takes an Epic deal. But I'll happily blacklist any AAA dev/pub that does so.

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: psy-q

Quoting: kuhpunktRelease it on several stores then. It's not like it's complicated.

Last I heard it's very complicated. Each store has its own toolset for uploads, its own publishing requirements, its own system for how updates and patches are handled. An indie dev once compared the experience between GOG, itch.io (the easiest) and Steam (the most complicated), but that was before EGS existed and I can't find the article now. But the conclusion was "think carefully before adding another store", so it seems it isn't something you just do on a whim.

That's ridiculous. It's fucking SEGA. Even if the toolsets are a bit complicated... that's no reason to go to just one store. They got a ton of cash. That's it.

Except its not this was Creative Assembly call as it was there call to port the other total war games and alien isolation to linux its why there are no sonic games etc on linux sega have not authorised any linux ports. I do not have the tweet about it anymore but this was a CA lead decision.

SEGA, CA, whatever... fucking tiny indies are able to set up Steam and sell their shit. Saying it's too complicated makes no sense.

oh you don't understand it not difficult its cash and you cant say in the same position you would do the the same exmaple i will give you two million upfront for a year of exclusivity on your game plus i will compensate you for lost sales plus i am going to take less of a cut of your profits. Still going to be noble and say no ?

Indies should always... ALWAYS... take the cash deal. The smaller the indie, the more they should take it. I mean, I'll stop patronising them (the few that I do) and I won't buy their game until it hits Itch, GOG, or Steam, but they should ALWAYS take the money.

But bigger studios? TOTAL WAR?? C'mon. They can absolutely do one in my opinion. Money talks, but won't see any of this consumer's money. Ever. Maybe not ever again - I'm not that bitter and twisted, but I won't support exclusivity deals in the same way I won't support Denuvo. Once those barriers are out of the way, I'll reconsider. But I'll usually remember that exclusivity deal and think "hmmmm... maybe not".

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Just checked my Steam profile to see when I played the last one - June 2015!!! Five... FIVE years ago??? It was a load of fun, but I did get bored on the 20 hour mark and stopped playing. Couldn't tell you why, but I think it was because of the grind to get minor upgrades to components? I prefer games where there's a HUGE number of components thrown at you and it's up to you to build them in novel ways.

Might be mis-remembering this one though. I'll keep an eye on it. I love 2D space sims.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: MohandevirPersonally, I was able to steer my son away from Fortnite. He is now an Overwatch convert. At least, he's not giving any more money to Epic that is used to fight Linux gaming...

Because, for my part, encouraging Epic in anyway is detrimental to Linux gaming. It's probably the single worst threat, atm. It's a total no-go.

I "liked" your comment because I agree with the concerns around Epic's exclusivity... but omg, Blizzard are hardly a shining beacon of light when it comes to a) being good guys, nor b) supporting Linux! :D

Five minutes watching Jim Sterling's videos on Blizzard would open anyone's eyes on what a shit-show they are!

(Overwatch is great though!)

Never pretended they were perfect... It's a matter of choosing the least worst. It was Overwatch or Fortnite... I had to find a compromise. :)

This said, there are no exclusivity deals, at Blizzard, that will directly hurt Linux. On top of that, the launcher and the games are running well in Lutris and you shouldn't get banned by using Linux (official Blizzard stance).

So... I can tolerate that.

Yep - Overwatch genuinely feels native for me on Lutris. Perfect sync of mouse on/off screen, no minimising of the app when I click out of it, superb performance, all features fully supported. It's excellent!

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Quoting: MohandevirPersonally, I was able to steer my son away from Fortnite. He is now an Overwatch convert. At least, he's not giving any more money to Epic that is used to fight Linux gaming...

Because, for my part, encouraging Epic in anyway is detrimental to Linux gaming. It's probably the single worst threat, atm. It's a total no-go.

I "liked" your comment because I agree with the concerns around Epic's exclusivity... but omg, Blizzard are hardly a shining beacon of light when it comes to a) being good guys, nor b) supporting Linux! :D

Five minutes watching Jim Sterling's videos on Blizzard would open anyone's eyes on what a shit-show they are!

(Overwatch is great though!)

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(p.s. I love that this article, despite all the comments, has precisely zero likes at the time of writing this comment!)

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