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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Steam Families announced with parental controls, no more library locking
19 March 2024 at 10:34 am UTC

Quoting: poiuz
Quoting: CatKillerNot unless you Family Share with yourself as an alt account.
Did you or someone test this with the beta client? I don't think I saw this scenario mentioned in the FAQ.
I'm pretty sure that having an alt is against the TOS, so they're unlikely to recommend it in their FAQ.

Steam Families announced with parental controls, no more library locking
19 March 2024 at 7:03 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: mZSq7Fq3qsDoes this allow me playing a game with my steam deck and another game with my pc?
Not unless you Family Share with yourself as an alt account. You could already play on both with the one account if one of the devices is in offline mode.

Steam Families announced with parental controls, no more library locking
19 March 2024 at 2:33 am UTC

Quoting: Mountain ManI guess the "one person is banned, you're all banned" rule is meant to safeguard against a dozen people all sharing the same game library, but I can't imagine developers and publishers are going to be too thrilled about the possibility of this feature cutting into their sales.

That's not how it works.

The person who got themselves banned is banned. The person who owned the copy of the game (if there are multiple copies in the pool you need to say whose you are playing) also gets banned. Everyone else in the pool can keep playing.

Playtron plan to launch PlaytronOS, a Linux-based system for gaming
18 March 2024 at 11:05 pm UTC Likes: 2

It very much sounds like a scam to extract money from venture capitalists.

Steam now has over 100,000 games listed
18 March 2024 at 6:02 pm UTC Likes: 5

On the brighter side, Valve do seem to be trying to connect the games with people that would be interested in them even in the face of the flood of 40 new games every day, with the Discovery Queue, recommendations, tags, and so on.

And - just sayin' - making sure your game is Deck Verified is going to get you a place in a smaller pool of games, and gives you a reason for a marketing beat.

Valve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?" when launching the Epic Store
15 March 2024 at 10:27 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: F.UltraThat I think we all can agree, not sure I follow in Tim:s reasoning that it's up to Valve to change the cut so Apple might be forced to follow (why they now would be forced, I mean there is no law on what cut you can take and Apple have full monopoly on the iPhone app market).
Epic doesn't care about "30%". At all.

Sweeney said that if Apple had given Epic special favourable terms that left everyone else in the lurch, they'd have taken it.

What they are bothered by is Apple's control of Apple's platform, so that when, say, legislators in a country say "you've got to take these applications off your platform" then Apple can. And have. For Epic's applications.

What they wanted was for the other platform controllers to collude to drop prices so that Apple would be standing alone & vulnerable when Epic sent the regulators knocking on Apple's door. Humble went along with it, and it's pretty much killed their business. Microsoft went along with it (but only for Windows, not Xbox) because they really want the Windows Store on iOS and Android. They didn't disturb Sony because Epic is so reliant on PlayStation Fortnite money. Google wouldn't go along with it. And Valve wouldn't go along with it, so Epic decided to use their Fortnite money to open their own store to (fail to) compete with Steam.

Valve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?" when launching the Epic Store
15 March 2024 at 5:17 am UTC

Quoting: F.UltraAlso not sure how Valve who gets 30% could make more money than the devs that gets the remaining 70% as he claims (and even if we include the typical publisher who:s average cut is 10%-20%, the devs should still get > 30%).
His claim isn't about revenue, but about profit: specifically, that for "most" of the 26 - 1,025 top selling games, (30% - taxes - cost of doing Steam things) is greater than (70% - publisher cut - taxes - cost of doing game-making things). Which is still a pretty incoherent claim (it makes zero difference to anything whether the claim is true or whether the claim is false), and Valve don't take 30% off the biggest games any more anyway.

Valve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?" when launching the Epic Store
15 March 2024 at 5:05 am UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: EhvisIt also demonstrates that throwing lots of cash at it is not enough.

So You Want To Compete With Steam?

Steam Spring Sale 2024 live, Valve list the Top 100 games on Steam Deck
14 March 2024 at 6:43 pm UTC Likes: 4

I'll have a proper look through later, but Death's Door and Blue Fire are the games on my wishlist that meet my discount threshold for a non-native but Deck Verified game.

Steam Deck had a strong end to 2023 and a great start for 2024
13 March 2024 at 2:38 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: PrettymuchnothingWay too optimistic, especially for a handheld console that costs up to 649 dollars. Sales will already be fairly limited due to the relatively high price, especially for the oled models.

How so? They're doing at least 2M per year when they're only selling in a limited number of countries, and building up this category of device as acceptable to mainstream PC gamers. 5M per year seems like a perfectly fine aspirational goal for a second-gen device that's built up some momentum and is available for sale everywhere.