Department of feeding and testing kids.

At a minimum it should be popular enough to be a good reference machine for indie and AA developers to ensure good performance.

There’s plenty of games that you could say the same about that didn’t get the traction. It’s still a hit based industry. It’s not a knock against the game, it’s a reality of the industry.

The starter edition bundle is 11.99 us and the ultimate is 104.80 in USD. There’s basically 2 different types of DLCs in the paradox model. The core expansion type that is released every year or so and adds or fleshes out an area of the game, these are generally must haves and reasonably priced if you have played the game for a year(s) to mix it up. The second is smaller focused packs that add a faction or some extra flavor to a more minor mechanic. These are relatively expensive for what they offer, but aren’t always intended for everyone to buy.

If you are a hardcore completionist this model is bad for you, but if you can live with not having everything then it’s not terrible.

I think the big studios lost reality with what the gaming market is. It’s a hit based business, you need a level of volume that they’ve been backing off on. It’s not that the expedition 33 devs were so much better, they just happened to be the lucky ones that put out a solid game that got traction.

EA is great for small and medium sized studios to get games out that might be a bit more ambitious than they could manage with traditional models. The point of AAA is that they have the money to do big impressive things. They can already do focus groups and closed betas to get community feedback. The thing that might attract AAA attention is you could make a good amount without actually releasing anything.

Early access is more about getting revenue during development and some limited QA potential. There shouldn’t be any surprises in the feedback, that would be a sign of major problems. EA also generally comes with a discount for the player which is anathema to the AAA crowd.

There’s plenty of constraints still, they aren’t technical though. It’s about making a game good despite the monetization requirements.

EGS isn’t really even a store, it’s sole purpose is to avoid giving anyone else a cut of fortnite.

Iirc it’s the main ingredients in a draino bomb.

If you have a mild clog it’s probably worth trying it according to the directions. If it’s severe, just call a plumber. If you don’t have a clog, then just keep it under a sink or something.

If you are feeling adventurous, get some aluminum foil.

Team fortress 2 heavy. He’s Russian/Soviet in the game.

You will notice your body slowing down soon. It might not be the second you turn 30, but almost definitely by 32.

If you want kids there’s a few things to consider.

1. Graduate highschool then get married before kids.
2. Kids are physically easier when you’re younger.
3. No one is ever really ready for kids, but you should have some level of financial stability and be prepared to have significantly less freedom.

Be purposeful in what you spend money on. You don’t need the best of everything, especially when starting a new hobby. You can find someone spending absurd amounts on anything, but no one can do that on everything.

It’s becoming nearly impossible to write code in a corporate environment without AI. Everyone has AI auto complete at the minimum, and AI code generation is at a point where it’s at least even with an entry level dev.

A large part of wine tasting is bullshit, but different styles are definitely different.

Most criticism of valve on Lemmy reads like blatant shilling.

That would require real ownership which is unlikely to ever happen. Company failures more likely just means loss of any library from them.

There’s no way a game that people have been waiting over a decade for is ever going to live up to the hype.

Honestly 20 different companies would probably suck for the consumer. That’s 20 different storefronts to compare, 20 different libraries to manage, potentially 20 different sets of logins, 20 sources of data breaches. It’s unlikely they would adopt an open standard to allow a shared library. Maybe you have a 21st company that makes a product like heroic launcher. You’d likely run into regionality issues where a particular store is unavailable, so you may not be able to play purchased games. You would have all sorts of odd exclusive dlc and pre order bonuses so a cosmetic item you like could be locked to a store you haven’t used. Multiplayer likely wouldn’t be global cross play between all companies, you likely get some set of 20 companies working together for multiplayer. Some games may develop a good scene available to a single store, requiring a game to be repurchased. Exclusives or timed exclusives would be annoying to track, as each store would likely have different catalogs.