By any chance, do you know if this game has an iOS or Switch version? I couldn’t really find much information outside of the steam page, since their homepage seems to be down.

The youtube videos don’t mention non-PC though.

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I remember enjoying the game a lot. Feels like it has been forever since I played it though... I guess 4 years IS a long time?

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Quoting: Keyrock

Quoting: BotonoskiReally seems like they're rushing this out the door as quickly as possible when they're adding to their launch roster so soon before release. Really ought to make sure things are set in stone before you announce them in my opinion.

Yeah, but Black Friday is right around the corner. This is the busiest shopping season of the year. They'll push whatever slapped together garbage they can out the door to get that sweet sweet money then worry about the backlash and making things work later.

We're talking about Google here. They don't need the quick buck. But given their "throw at the wall and see what sticks" history, I wouldn't be too surprised either.

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I think people expecting cloud gaming to result in huge jumps in performance may be a bit naive about the business model. While it certainly enables more efficiently rendering graphics and performances computations, those can only be viable economically if the software or hardware is improved in a manner that makes them sufficiently cheap to execute.

But that essentially is the same requirement as waiting for new graphics cards, new processors, and new software implementing new algorithms.

Then again, maybe they’ll do something smart with machine learning that vastly improves the perceived fidelity and is more efficiently trained by running the games in the cloud?

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I am really looking forward to seeing where this goes.

I am not inclined to value super high fidelity graphics; Much rather I’d have a solution that works well for playing games while laying back in a sofa, but also allows big screen gaming in 720p to 1080p at 60 Hz, preferably doesn’t cause fan noise, and avoids sync issues when switching from phone to TV to PC.

So far I have been using mid range gaming laptops as a stopgap solution, but it always suffered from PC games being optimized under the assumption that users can just pop in a stronger graphics card, and from such devices typically producing a lot of fan noise uncomfortably close to my ears. The Switch seems like a good solution, but doesn’t have many of the games I want to catch up on.

Valve Streaming on the other hand may allow me to access the backlog that I care about on the devices I want to use it on.

Remains to be seen though, how much of their catalog will be cloud enabled.

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Little side effect: Supposely, video streaming ALREADY is a huge burden on the climate due to its electricity consumption, and with game streaming this would only get worse.

That said, I can't recall an original source for this; With media reports alone, it is hard to tell whether the effect is actually relevant compared to usage before, or if it only looks large because the emissions are concentrated to a single provider rather than decentralized.

The reported logic is essentially:

• Streaming is better than driving to the Video shop,
• but worse than taking a bike to the video shop,
• and definitely made worse, as the flat-rate character of streaming ups the total consumption.

It isn't really clear to me for video-streaming, given CDNs, how it really compared to pre-digital watching cable TV all day. It is even less clear, how the effects of game streaming would even be estimated.

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The exclusivity will likely be a lesser issue with such services than it is with consoles.

For any game that is worthwhile enough for exclusivity to make a difference, I will likely play only that game, until I'm done with it. So for as long as I want to play it, I'd subscribe to that service, and cancel afterwards.

Unlike with consoles, there is no entry barrier in terms of purchasing hardware and making space for it at home, that would give an incentive against switching platforms.

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[quote=Kimyrielle]

Quoting: mah[...] These games have no commercial value anymore.

Not entirely true. Some of them are being sold by GoG still. (Though in the case of Ultima VII, I think I got that on GoG for free at some point.)

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I am recently trying out Apple Arcade and I am already experienced an increase of FOMO due to "the faster I play the more I get for my money".

So this makes me skeptical of pay-per-month streaming beyond the technical issues... Especially as my decreasing amount of free time shifts the financial advantage in favour of buying over flat rates.

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Quoting: subThere is no price on the consumption of the game anymore, which is what the
developer actually wants to get paid for - and that's fair, isn't it?

I have to agree with that one. Viewing purchases of content as a product purchase was always a bit of a crutch, that only worked due to the limitations imposed by physical media.

If you have played all of a game or read all of a book, you have basically worn it out, at least for your own purpose -- except for nostalgia. Selling it would require and effort in time and money, creating a minimum asking price where it is still worthwhile, while the product will not be seen as equal to a new copy.

With digital sales there is a additionally the aspects of continuous service. Updates, support, downloads... I could see Valve splitting game prices into a service fee and a game price.

My worst fear is that this will push Devs away from the single player games I like to more F2P, P2W multiplayer and gaming as a service. The last part might not be entirely bad, but as I have less and less time for games, it might just force me to drop gaming all together.

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