The fun thing most of these games aren’t even truly capitalist. City builders like Cities Skylines, Tropico and Anno have little or no free market and you’re just in control of a centralized planned economy.
The only truly capitalist games I saw on that list are X4 and Offworld Trading Company since you play as a single private owner competing with others on the market.
He wrote a techno optimist manifesto that reads like a proto fascist manifesto. In fact, he cites Marinetti as an inspiration, who was founder of the futurist movement, and later author of the fascist manifesto and a close supporter of Mussolini, so no surprise I guess. He enforces ideas that this century is just a bad rerun of the previous.
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-religion-of-techno-optimism
Sony also has an MFN, not sure about Xbox: https://tryhardguides.com/epic-games-ceo-says-sony-is-the-reason-they-cant-lower-prices/
The real reason Epic hasn’t sued Sony is because they’re an Epic shareholder
How do you compare it with other platforms if it’s exclusive to EGS? For timed exclusives, it would mean the price would have to go UP on EGS when the Steam version launches, which seems like pretty dumb marketing honestly.
I know I’m playing devil’s advocate defending Epic and publishers, but I don’t see how defending rent extracting monopolies is any better.
The price is the same because of a Most Favored Nations clause in Steam’s ToS. Publishers have to sell it at the same or higher price on other platforms to keep their product on Steam, which is the lion’s share of the market. This is part of the accusation in the lawsuit: https://programming.dev/comment/5159579
Now you could argue that even if it were removed, publishers would still sell at the same price and keep the extra profit, but that’s just hypothetical at this point.
I love the theme for it, but was expecting an actual city builder, as advertised in the description. Instead, it’s a pretty boring puzzle game with pretty graphics, very unrelated to something like Cities Skylines. I am hoping something like this with more in depth management comes up in the future.
I do like ‘cozy’ building games like Townscaper and Dorfromantik but they aren’t advertised as city builders, and the puzzle elements in Dorfromantik don’t get in the way of building pretty stuff as much as in Terra Nil.
“Wow, personalized ads? That’s brilliant! Let’s patent it” said an Activision exec who had been in cryogenic sleep since 1995
Yeah, I’m going to reserve my excitement for when I see gameplay footage or actually play it. Quake Champions looked really good in the beginning and then it ran like an internal pre-alpha. Tribes Ascend had so many OP hitscan weapons on release you thought you were playing Call of Duty. Waning general interest in “boomer shooters” and disastrous releases make these games more nostalgic memories than interesting future games in my mind.
Thanks. So TLDR:
I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).
I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.
And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.
Pros: Easier to learn (belt mechanics are a bit clearer). Belts have a Z axis which allows for even more spaghetti! Progression feels faster since you already start out with builder drones. Graphics are absolutely amazing. Multiple planets are pretty cool.
Cons: there are no trains. Logistics stations kinda ruin the late game since it makes factory planning much easier
I wouldn’t be surprised if the board is just doing what ChatGPT tells them to.
And the easiest. But even if all animal products were eliminated worldwide tomorrow, it would probably still not be enough for the emissions target. So individual changes do not make a dent in the problem.
Here’s a crazy idea to make your population grow: how about not sending your people to die in a war?
We are committed to creating value for our
customers andshareholders.
Fixed a typo in the report
And shorter games should naturally command a lower price
This is exactly the thing that doesn’t make any sense. Should The Last of Us be priced at a fraction of The Witcher 3 because it is shorter? What about Bioshock? It’s half the length of The Last of Us 2
I’ve often come across this sentiment in Steam reviews and it’s very reductive to judge games based mainly on this metric. Getting older I have less time for videogames and I value shorter games more. There are games that are extremely valuable because of their high quality even if very short, like the first Portal.
This is why we have companies like Ubisoft trying to game the system constantly with low quality content to pad the game to 100 hours or whatever is fashionable in open world these days. I will take 6 hours of quality single player anytime over 100 hours of AssCreed grinding and ridiculous ‘story’
This year’s Unity story sums up my discontent with tech nicely. Impressive tech made by extremely talented people, botched by incompetent corporate parasites who care only about securing their millions.
Best Supergiant game. But I wouldn’t call it underrated: it was a big hit when it landed. I has also aged really well with some very creative mechanics.
Honestly, this article is pretty bad at explaining the problem here. It’s clear that other websites will try to track you, but the important part of this incognito drama is this:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/google-agrees-to-settle-in-chrome-incognito-mode-class-action-lawsuit/