This looks quite promising. I don't hate the Steam client, but organizing the games into categories leaves a lot to be desired and the page for each game in the library is a wasteful mess. Organizing the games takes a lot of work and the filtering isn't really convenient. The game page shows little useful information, and what is of interest is cropped in a way that makes it useless (such as seeing the workshop, your achievements, or the links to the store page and community). Some things, like the DLC section and a weird feed of news from various places, I never used.

The idea of "Events" is cool. I can think of many games that had cool events/releases/updates I wanted to know about, but I found out through other channels - often through Steam itself, but on the store page instead of the library. If they don't spam too much, this could be great... particularly for indies that get less mainstream attention but could reach their own players.

Now what I really want is some change to the wishlist. Either allow us to have multiple lists or give us some organization tools besides just sequential numbering.

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Quoting: DuncIt's a bit of an aside, but it occurs to me that this sort of thing is very much a modern phenomenon that's only possible with online distribution. Stellaris is almost a different game to the one that was first released too. And it's even more true of, say, Minecraft. In that case, it's definitely a Good Thing, especially as most of the older versions are still easily available for those who prefer them (right back to the astonishingly basic rd-132211 if you're so inclined). In others, I'm not sure.

Genuinely so; I can see the advantages, but what if most people like the changes but you don't? It's like having a game you enjoy snatched away from you. (To be clear, this isn't a comment on DOTAU itself; I downloaded it since it's free, but I've barely played it.)

Interesting times.

Well, I'm not sure if it is only possible with online distribution. It certainly happens with competitive tabletop games - expansions are released, other people start using them even if you don't, and the game changes.

For multiplayer games I think that yes, the chance of "losing" something definitely exists; you can't just go back and play an old version by yourself, because the point is not playing by yourself. So I think that consistency and transparency are important, and overhauling the entire thing is less recommended.

For singleplayer games the lack of legacy versions shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes it is because of stupid copyright laws that make it harder to make back-ups of previous versions and distribute them (and even merge the changes you liked, or change something yourself... in the end the problem is proprietary software).

For Underlords, I think it is kind of expected as the game is still in Early Access, so it is by definition going to change a lot.

Quoting: scaineTarget Buddy is gonna be huge for Blood Bound contract setup, since it draws fire. Things are getting interesting!

But at the same time it competes with Contract for your items since it is the same level, and barricade is also level 2 so it should be harder than ever to find multiple contracts. Putting a contract on a non-attacking dummy seems like a huge waste of a powerful item unless you already have 3+ contracts.

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Well, late is better than never. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen or not at this point.

I'm not sure if it is worth it to download the game to test on my computer, even though I have it on Steam. The graphics card requirement is even more stellar than I was expecting, even though the processor should be more than fine. And this is probably the kind of game where stuff like framerate matters at least a bit (unlike, say, Civilization where turn times are the issue).

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I think it is really crazy that the Steam client can now support "compatibility tools" in general. Sure, Proton is the biggest and most important... but we can also have DOSBox and ScummVM, apparently. What next? Emulators for old-ish consoles? Some Android compatibility layer to play mobile games? WSL2 so we can run Linux games on Windows? :P

If GOG Galaxy 2 makes any progress on their proposal of interoperability between launchers/stores/platforms and Steam goes far enough in this, plus Microsoft bringing their stuff to other stores and Sony being more open to non-exclusives and also platforms like Lutris ever improving... we could be looking at some really exciting developments for gaming. Going on the opposite direction from "streaming" and exclusivity and other restrictive policies that prevent people from running software as they want.

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This looks like a really interesting take on an MMO (even though it is not the kind of game I usually get into). But I doubt it will work well on my potato computer, so I'll pass for now, despite the amazing dinosaurs.

Edit: fixed my wording, because it unintentionally sounded dismissive of the game.

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I saw this yesterday. This is really an unusual month, and I suspect it is because this month saw very few "big" releases.

Not only we have a pretty high number of Linux titles, but we also have a crazy number of strategy/tactics/simulation/management games (a niche that I'm not used to being so well represented) for example. And... two hentai games. Maybe last month's inclusion of one hentai game was not just an outlier? (Also, one of them seems to be a hentai management game, which is doubly weird).

So, yeah, just from a few months we know Linux games can vary from 5% to 30% of the top 20, plus some nice Proton support right on the release. Last month people were pretty concerned over an apparent downward trend, but those were far from conclusive (just as this month is also necessarily not representative of the big picture either).

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Nice, looks interesting. One more reason to get Rise of Industry in the future (I tried the demo, but my computer is a tad too slow for it and I have enough backlog).

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Unsurprisingly, nothing in there that interests me. Just the same old action games, shooters and RPGs, which is probably the main niche they appeal to. I was wondering if maybe they would put in Total War Three Kingdoms or something similar - a game that is graphics card intensive enough to benefit from it, and popular at it, but nope. Not that I would be able to take advantage anyway, as 1) it won't be available on my country and 2) my internet is barely good enough for online multiplayer, let alone play-streaming and 3) I am not exactly supportive of the whole thing.

Now let's see if all those games get actual desktop Linux releases or if developers will all go "if you use Linux you can just play using Stadia". I find it doubtful, but we can hope.

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Quoting: sub

Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: subI'd like to see Valve giving devs a discount as an incentive, IF they (properly) support all 3 targets Windows, Mac, Linux.

There must be some quality threshold/check, ofc.
Otherwise we'll see many one-click Unity and UE Linux builds that are crap.

I am strongly against this. I think that as a store Steam shouldn't discriminate the games it sells, and that users and developers of any OS should be treated equally. I don't think that charging more from users of any system is fair, even when it benefits the one I use. It is probably also difficult to evaluate.

Discriminate?
Where to start if the suggestion like the one above already belongs to the category of discrimination?

IMHO this is absolutely a fair deal.

Devs usually have to pay a 30 % cut to Valve AFAIK.
If you sell a lot the share reduces to 20 %.
(Btw, I'm sure that's also discrimination in your view but is reality already.)

Having many well-supported games on Steam must be a goal for Valve.
It increases the value of their service.
Plus, it is probably (still) part of their strategy to get less dependent on Windows.

So here is the fair deal to all devs:
If you help us getting towards more games being properly supported on all platforms,
we lower the cut for this game to let's say 25 %.

I agree, though, that evaluating that can be difficult.
But there are surely good approaches.

One could go for the market-drive option.
If all platforms are present you get a lower cut.
If a build was just done to get the lower share and is not supported or outright crappy,
then people will surely downvote the game.
Having "Mixed Reviews" or worse is not what you want.

That could be a good thing *additionally* to all the great things they already do.

They are providing the same service, but charging more for some people. Because they think that some people are more valuable based on what OS they develop for.

And yes, the current "AAA games get a better deal" is one of the worst things Steam has done recently, it is downright hostile to indies, it benefits the people that need it the least, and I think it is horrible all around.

I don't want Steam to use its market size and pricing policies to blatantly push developers into adding/removing specific features. That is, by principle, a bad thing for stores to do.

I don't want Windows games to be more expensive than the alternatives (for developers, in this case). I don't want Linux to succeed because a huge company decided to charge extra if you don't use Linux. I don't want people to be bullied into using Linux, I want them to do it because Linux is awesome. And artificial price differences are not "awesome".

If they want to subsidize Linux development, don't do it through store policies. Don't do it by leveraging your dominance in the market. Do it by creating a porting studio, by giving grants, by giving away tools and stuff, by helping with long term support. The kind of thing that helps, instead of just rewarding those that already had the means.

Edit: another analogy. Paying developers to add Linux support is wrong by many of the same reasons that paying developers to make their games exclusive to one store is wrong, or paying to have your crapware pre-installed or bundled with a system.

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I really don't see this as positively as most people seem to. I don't think that refunding fixes the issues; I personally think the previous solution of partial support was more beneficial in the long run. This feels even more like a "we don't want anything to do with you no matter what". However, this is a very generous policy, and one of the safest ways to avoid negative feedback (more than the previous, honest "yes our support was bad and we can't even fix it completely"). So, well, not bad.

Quoting: subI'd like to see Valve giving devs a discount as an incentive, IF they (properly) support all 3 targets Windows, Mac, Linux.

There must be some quality threshold/check, ofc.
Otherwise we'll see many one-click Unity and UE Linux builds that are crap.

I am strongly against this. I think that as a store Steam shouldn't discriminate the games it sells, and that users and developers of any OS should be treated equally. I don't think that charging more from users of any system is fair, even when it benefits the one I use. It is probably also difficult to evaluate.

If they wanted to push Linux, they should pay for ports directly or indirectly invest in making it easier and better - libraries, tools, contributing to the OS itself, some marketing initiative. Or, you know, find a way that they can independently make all other games work on Linux...

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