Quoting: randylIn Fedora I have an extension that modifies my user agent and reports my OS.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/81.0.4044.138 Safari/537.36

Maybe Ubuntu (and it's many children) have something like that? Dunno, just throwing that out there. No comment on the reliability of it all either. I haven't looked at their data collection methods at all.

Ubuntu reports their name in the User Agent too. Reliable or not, I'm not sure if there is any other better way to guess your OS when people is web browsing.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: x_wingValve already do that. If the issue was the revenue, publisher only have to set their prices 20% higher (or around that value) on Steam compared to the same game in Epic. But nope, seems that if you want to publish on Epic you must go full epic for a year... which definitely points towards that Epic subsidies the publishers.

That's just an amalgamation of misinformation.
A) You can't just sell your game at 20% higher. Game price points are a very important and sensitive variable that you can't just alter like that if you want more money.

But they already do that. As you mentioned, many games are sold in both stores and their prices are different. Is the only excuse is that Steam revenue is not enough, you can sell at the price you fill "correct" in Epic and add the percent that Steam "steals" in the price of their store. Doing that you guarantee yourself that you reach 100% of your users in the market with the prices that are better for each platform.

Using you words a publisher can say: nobody force you to buy on Steam were it is more expensive, you can go a buy cheaper in EGS.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPB) Nobody forces you to go Epic exclusive, there are lots of games on EGS that aren't exclusive to it and never were. It is moderated, though, similar to GOG. Something as high profile as a Total War game certainly would've been accepted on EGS without exclusivity. But that exclusivity is highly profitable for developers/publishers, after all, they still get to release on Steam. Just later - it's like a free second release hype.

I recall very well of developers mentioning how Epic only wanted to make a deal for exclusivity (many indy devs said that). So, "nobody forces you" doesn't makes much sense when Epic behaves that way. Also: "Something as high profile as a Total War game certainly would've been accepted on EGS without exclusivity" doesn't make any sense with the phrase you started this point...

Quoting: TheSHEEEPFrom a developers perspective - and most devs don't care about Linux, that's the sad truth - the Epic deal is really damn good.

For whom? for users? I live in Argentina and I can tell you: Epic is far to be damn good even for Windows users. I fail to see where is better for users, which is what we are.

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Quoting: ShmerlHow does NetMarketShare analyze the distro? Browsers don't report it, so how do they even know what's Ubuntu and what's not?

User agent reports that information:
https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/what-is-my-user-agent [External Link]

But is quite easily to change (there is a very handy firefox plugin)

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Quoting: jensI wish I had more free time :)

Me too. Everyone at home with free time but I'm at home working as always and trying to figure out when to stop... Corona stole my vacations :(

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Quoting: vipor29people are plainly sick of windows 10 and rightfully so.let it keep rising.im not saying we will pass the mac numbers but if that keeps happening we might just do that.

I think Corona may be a factor too. Lots of people bored and during last year and LTT and many other youtubers has been showing Linux distros qualities. This unexpected free time probably allowed many to give it a try.

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Quoting: kuhpunktAnd yet several games will be released on both stores at the same time.

And many games ready to be released in Steam vanish for a year as well. With all the information we have now days is completely reasonable to think that some shady things happens with new games on Epic. IMO the bribe pattern is quite obvious.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPEpic just has the better deals for developers.

My hope is that Valve will wake up from its slumber and starts giving developers better deals as well. A cut lower than the absurd 30% would be a very good start.

Concerning the game at hand, it does suck for Feral I imagine, but I was never interested in the "Saga" series to begin with. Too limited in scope.

Valve already do that. If the issue was the revenue, publisher only have to set their prices 20% higher (or around that value) on Steam compared to the same game in Epic. But nope, seems that if you want to publish on Epic you must go full epic for a year... which definitely points towards that Epic subsidies the publishers.

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Quoting: SolitarySo your reasoning is that because online games have EOL, so what is one more?
There is no reason for game like this to die when some manager decides to pull the plug. Dedicated/community servers used to be a sure thing. Just because that practice mostly stopped (not because users did not want it) does not mean it suddenly became okay and something we should accept and it definitely should not be used as an excuse of Stadia model.

My reasoning goes inline with the way this games are designed. Current Online RPG designs follows the idea of monopolize the community in one place and create the necessary game mechanics in order to force you to play there in order to get the "new" super incredible sword and shield that you can only get if you pay for the current season pass and played 800hs the last six months (or if you payed the 120 USD in order to get it in a direct way). This games are made to die when they aren't profitable anymore for the company behind. Is not about story, is not about gameplay it's just about grinding.

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IMO this are the types of games that being released native or Stadia only won't change the results. I understand that for games that have offline components Stadia is a big "no way" in our heads but for games that completely depends on the existence of game servers in order to play, Stadia or not this games already have a EOL date from day zero.

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Quoting: PublicNuisancePeople can say what they will about GOG but they do excel in certain areas over Steam such as in QA on what games are allowed on their store and trying to make sure they work.

I can't talk of how they test the game but I can tell you: the game is not yet playable with AMD GPUs. I have the game and I reported an issue with the codex (basically you can't see the contents) and that makes the game unplayable as it's a vital component for the story and game riddles.

Whatever tests GOG did, it wasn't with an AMDGPUs or they didn't try to play the game properly.

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