I do not understand how anyone supposedly in the marketing realm can fail to read a room this badly.
I'm almost impressed.

While I don't think review bombs are an appropriate form of protest against non-game issues, I also realize people don't have anything more powerful available to them, so 🤷‍♂️

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Using a game sandbox as an AI study space makes a surprising amount of sense.

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Quoting: jjaksicSteam Survey is useless garbage. It's not humanly possible to do polling and statistics any worse than this. Please ignore it, it's just worthless random noise junk not worth anyone's 2 seconds of attention (except maybe to teach a toddler how not to do statistics).

You always this cheery or is it your birthday which caused you to just glow with joy and spread some love?

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Oh, wow!

I loved this game growing up - definitely my favorite of the C&C-likes. Just the weirdness of it all is so charming.

Definitely putting that on my wishlist to keep an eye on it.

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Quoting: neolithbut I have no idea how Australia's eSafety agency imagines this is going to work in detail. Or perhaps they just don't.

My guess would be, they don't.
They probably just want the devs/companies they are contacting to tell them how they tackle those issues so they themselves won't have to do anything.

Some of the wording is a bit nonsensical, though, I agree.
How exactly do you want to stop someone from, idk, building some swastika-looking things? You can't.

And anything that allows peer 2 peer communication can in theory be abused by one group or another to do their communication in.
At least for Valve/Steam, though, as far as I know message get auto-checked / auto-modded before publishing?

I assume these "reports" they are talking about Steam being a "hub" for one group or another is probably some milquetoast stuff like those "isitwoke" etc curator groups?
I mean, I'd gladly remove any political culture war nonsense from gaming, so getting rid of those would not exactly make me shed tears. However, I do not believe there is really a basis for this.

Yes, all of this feels A LOT like amateur hour - which is unfortunately kind of normal whenever politicians get involved in anything even remotely out of their interest/age group.

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Quoting: JarmerI guess there's reasons for it, but ... I suppose this is a perfect example of "don't buy ea games yall".

It really depends. Some games are absolutely safe to purchase in early access.
Factorio was a blast way before it fully released and would have been "fine" even if development had stopped the moment you purchased it back when.
Same for Caves Of Qud, same for DRG: Survivors, same for Palworld, and many more.

What all of this is really an example of is: "Don't purchase blindly. Do your research."

This game in particular had quite a few red flags when looking into it (most of all a clearly unsustainable vision unless it would've been a mass success, which seems impossible given the lack of mass appeal), long before this announcement.
Then a VERY lengthy stay in early access (this can go well, but is definitely a flag).
Then the issues they kept dancing around through their updates.
Then the update pace.
I'm sure there would be more.

And it's not like purchasing games that are not in early access is safe from purchasing an unfinished game in any way, I'm sure I don't need to give examples here...

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Maybe one of them is indeed CachyOS?

I was actually surveyed while on a CachyOS machine - did not bother to check the data, though, so I have no idea what value was reported in that field.

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Quoting: Phlebiac

recent shift in the VR market

Anyone know what this refers to? VR didn't take off like they hoped (just like the last few attempts)? Or something else?

Definitely a part of it.
Those old enough will know that this was like the fifth time or so VR was touted as the "next big thing"/"the future"/etc.
And of course it didn't take this time, either, at least not to the level of mass success some were hyped into believing.

But also: Current price & availability for any kind of electronic hardware - within and without the gaming sphere.

Add that to a product like this, basically a free online hangout - these concepts have already failed so many times before (remember the first hangouts of comparable kind in the late 90s/early 2000s, with avatars and stuff?).
It adds this extra step to hanging out together digitally, I am honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did.
And as it turns out, that was because the devs poured their own money into it.

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Oh, neat. I was waiting for a good time for a next playthrough, wanted to try some of the overhaul mods.
Might just wait until one of those catch up with the expansion content.

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One of the most idiotic changes I have seen for a game in a while.

The wall banging and "free" reloading has always been a staple.
People looking for realistic ammo simulation (or any kind of realism, honestly) are playing other games, not CS.
Completely uncalled for, wrong target audience.

I fully expect them to undo that change after the reviews have dragged the game down to the low 70s. Recent reviews already dropped by 5% in just a few hours 😂

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