I feel like they’ve earned it because they’ve put in the most work. They are the best in the game because they make the user experience the best there is. EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft have/had their own storefronts or launchers but they are clunky and unpleasant to deal with and the only benefits they had were exclusives. They’ve never put any effort into user experience and were mainly doing it to make themselves more money and it definitely showed. The only one that’s ever been a real competitor is Epic Launcher. And while it has gotten better over the years, the user experience is still not anywhere near Steam. And even now the Epic Launcher is still unpleasant to deal with in a lot of cases unless you just use it to play Fortnite.

With Steam everything just works and is basically seamless. Not only that, before Steam the modding community for most games had an immense learning curve and most people just avoided it save for Minecraft. And as far as I can tell you can’t even mod games you buy on the Microsoft Store because their file structure is atrocious.

The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.

Back in like the late 2010s it was an old coworker of mine. He came in two years after i started and swooped in and took the promotion I was gonna get because he went to highschool with my bosses daughter. I’d be more mad at the boss but this guy was absolutely insufferable about it and would boast about it literally every day and talk about how awesome he was. Would always talk about how amazing he was at his job but would crack under pressure pretty much every time. He was also one of those guys that’s nice to your face but talks mad shit when you leave the room. Huge “fuckboy” energy too and always felt like he was entitled to everything. He was the kinda guy that would try to fuck your ex girlfriend the day you broke up yet still be friendly to your face. And I know that because my ex told me about it after the fact. Bro straight up sent her a request on Snapchat and Facebook out of the blue within a week after only meeting her once before.

Glad I don’t work with that guy anymore and that I have a much better job. That guy lives rent free in my head and I fucking hate that he does.

Man, imagine spending hundreds of millions of dollars in protection money to get as many tax breaks as possible only for him to come out 6 months later and basically demand more taxes as protection money. As it always is, give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. Like, y’all are bullies too, right?What the hell were you expecting to happen?

The same reason every politician and government will never release them, because they are trying to protect themselves or someone else. As long as money and power remain the only things politicians care about this will never get released. And I find it absolutely infuriating that these people will always prioritize reputations over the literal r*ping of children. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people just blatantly getting away with it because apparently every single elite is in on it.

I’m 30 years old and have taken a bus once in my entire life. Not because it sucks but because it’s simply nonexistent. I’d have to drive 30 minutes just to get to the place that had the public transport and at that point I might as well just drive all the way there. And I don’t even think the US has any trains that go between cities anymore except for commercial trains. I literally live next to a train track and it’s all cargo trains. I’ve never seen a passenger car on a train in my entire life. Could just be where I live, but I’ve driven from coast to coast and the only trains are cargo trains.

In a world where a lot of triple A games are not even worth $60, I’ll wait for the reviews.

I guess I’ll piggyback on the other comment and say laziness doesn’t exist at work. People definitely have off days or hate their job, but I’d say pretty much all the “laziness” I have experienced in my life at different jobs usually boils down to awful work conditions, managers or bosses that don’t care about you, not getting paid enough for the actual work, or general distain for your corporate overlords if you work for a big company. Some may call me lazy, but I’m working exactly as hard as I feel like they deserve when I’m 30 years old and still living in a studio apartment one paycheck away from being homeless. And I’m not gonna work at 100% when 100% of my needs are not being met. And I make more than anyone else in my family so I’m technically the “successful child.”

Kinda on topic, but imma give you some perspective into what it’s like to be a liberal leaning person in a deeply red county. Half my friends are independent or republican, all my coworkers and my boss are republicans, and even my dad is straight up MAGA. I’ve always voted third party because I hated that Democrats never get anything done, but I did vote heavily democrat this past election because I knew how fucked everything would be.

I would say 99% of people do not care or don’t think it’s a big deal. The ravenous Trump supporters you see on the internet and in videos are more of a minority than the norm. There are definitely some hardcore MAGA here but most everyone is just regular everyday people that are just carrying on like nothing is different. Most of them don’t spend much time on the internet and they hardly watch the news. I was talking about the tariff situation to a cashier at a gas station just this morning and it was the first time they were hearing it. And with the news not even covering half the shit that’s going on they probably never will. My roommate works downtown and he didn’t even know about the protests at the Capitol until I mentioned it to him 3 days later.

I guess my point is that the average person isn’t even informed. Not everyone spends a lot of time on the internet so they don’t even see what’s going on. They decide to vote specifically because the candidate says “Republican” and that’s the furthest thought that goes into it. Everyone talks about “this is what they voted for” as if any more thought went into their vote for Romney or McCain than their vote for Trump. And I don’t blame them for it because as far as they know, this was just like any other election. They’ve been bamboozled by local news to think everything is still exactly the same as they slowly pushed the Trump agenda onto them. The hardcore MAGA are definitely fascists in every sense of the word, but these regular everyday people are not fascists. They were just voting for the party they always voted for and were just expecting the same kinda shit from Trump’s first term, and the local news didn’t tell them anything different.

And in a week, 500 - 2000 people will get laid off to “save money.”

This article feels like it was written by someone that has never gamed on PC and they gave almost zero examples of how Steam is declining besides gaming on Mac and their 30% cut. As someone that has been a PC gamer since the early 2000’s, they underestimate the ubiquity that Steam has. If it’s not on Steam some people will refuse to buy it all together. Not even as a boycott but just because they want all their games in one place.

There will always be alternatives, and I agree that’s a good thing, but Steam basically already cornered the market. Unless someone provides a service that isn’t just different but actually better for consumers than Steam, they will stay on top. Doesn’t matter about exclusivity, free games, or how much of a cut they take. From the perspective of the consumer, Steam is the best option.

And this isn’t just me fan-boying for Steam. I have plenty of issues with them. I just happen to have a lot more issues with the alternatives. The only exception I’d make is GOG. Their launcher is kinda meh, but I enjoy the lack of DRM. Now if GOG had an app and social aspect similar to Steam, that’d be a game changer.

Time to act like an old man yelling at a cloud as I try and convince all my friends to go somewhere else. Not that it isn’t a good idea, just that they don’t really care as much as I do.

Can’t deny that. The ratio of good/bad presidents is definitely abysmal.

You could look at any country in the world and find leaders that were just as bad and even worse throughout history. I think the takeaway should be that shitty people exist. Some of it is a product of the times, some of it just being awful people. Shitty people have and always will exist.

Edit: With these downvotes it almost seems like y’all thought I was defending them. I absolutely was not defending them. :)

I played the first play test and it was extremely disappointing compared to the first game. I played like 10 matches and never opened it again. Hopefully this alpha is better and they’ve made some improvements.

What blows my mind is that when it comes to costs I feel like voice actors are probably less than 5% of the budget on a video game. Unless they hire a famous actor I can’t imagine this being that worthwhile. It’s just penny pinching.

As much as I absolutely hate PewDiePie with every fiber of my being, this is probably the best thing that could happen to Linux’s mainstream popularity. That dude’s got so many followers that it’ll get a lot of people interested.

Man, if the new Assassin’s Creed isn’t a banger Ubisoft is cooked. They’ve had nothing but flops for the past 4 years or so. Even the newer Far Cry games kinda flopped.

My GPU can do ray-tracing and that’s usually the first thing I turn off because it absolutely destroys performance for minimal effect. I think ray-tracing is cool and all, but I don’t really care when it makes most games run like shit. I thought Elden Ring was poorly optimized until I turned it off and than BAM 120fps no problem.

Honestly if it has to be enabled, as much as I love the Doom games, this’ll be a pass for me. Smooth combat doesn’t mean shit when it stutters every 2 seconds.

I wonder what their basis for detaining people is…

They detained U.S. citizens and a military vet. Were they just detaining people because they looked like immigrants? Are they literally just detaining brown people?

I made a comment about a week ago on a post when they first said they were gonna do this asking how long it’ll take for it to go from detaining immigrants to just brown people. Guess we didn’t have to wait long, Jesus fucking Christ.

Shit, I’m in the same boat with energy drinks. All the cashiers make jokes about how they already know the price. It’s like a roll reversal of customers making jokes like “that means it’s free, right?”

I hate it, but I know their job sucks so I don’t say anything.