QuoteSo if a developer can hook enough people in (or bots…) it's probably a reasonable amount going into their pocket.

This video about Banana by the excellent Jauwn (who usually covers scammy cryptocurrency/NFT "games") has a good run-down on this. I highly recommend checking it out if you have a spare 17 minutes and 18 seconds.

Quoting: GuestIt's quite embarrassing seeing this type of crap climbing top 10, as well as the explosion in market items.

It makes me sad to see that actual games with actual effort put into them, that I've personally thoroughly enjoyed, are not doing numbers anywhere near this stuff and might not see any follow-ups as a result. What times we live in, when this is what gets rewarded...

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Quoting: elmapulsure but why not an playstation?
their game sell better on a deck than an playstation? or its because they are promoting the fact that the game launched on steam?

Fair! Given that, my best guess is that because Square-Enix has had lower-than-expected sales on Sony's platform in recent times, which contributed to them losing a lot of money, perhaps they wanted to back up their recent announcement of going truly cross-platform by pushing the Steam angle?

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Quoting: kaktuspalmeAnd the Steam Deck has the Steam Client preinstalled on which they sell their games.

Yep, and it's an overall better experience, too.

What strange times we live in - did anyone ever expect all these big devs to be promoting a Linux device? It certainly wasn't on my bingo-card!

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Quoting: elmapuli mean, why an steamdeck?

Because they'd look pretty stupid pushing the ROG Ally and its notorious problems and poor aftersales support, I guess.

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Quoting: emphyWhat's with the white blob on the keyboard?

That's the sort of thing that would bug me immensely if I were in the market for yet another ultrabookalike.

Quoting: EikeI think it's the new Microsoft AI key, coming to keyboards worldwide soon.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67881373

Looks like the Kubuntu logo to me.

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Quoting: Doktor-MandrakeI'm sort of conflicted because tbh I really love valve and like them as a company (most of the time lol)

Can someone more intelligent then a simpleton like myself just assure me.. that they're being very harsh against valve?

There's been drama before about the cut they take to sell games on their platform ect... but as a uk citizen I feel the price of the games they sell are EXACTLY the same as places like gog and epic games?

Maybe on GMG or something you can get a steam key and it's cheaper, but I don't really understand how I'm being overcharged specifically by valve.

Sorry if this post is abit stupid, just abit confused what valve has done wrong compare to any other high profile platform to buy pc games like epic or gog

You're not the only UK customer left utterly confused by this! As I said above, I get way better deals using Steam than I ever did on any other platform (aside from the Commodore 64 in the early 1990s, which had similar pricing and discounts, in relative terms).

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There's an interesting video on this one by The Spiffing Brit - well worth a watch!

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So, where were these people when GAME was allowed to buy its only competitor, Gamestation, just because supermarkets sold FIFA and Disney shovelware? What about when Microsoft were allowed to buy Activision-Blizzard? These have all done actual damage to the marketplace - for example, right now, the few remaining GAME stores have been shuffled off into Sports Direct branches, with no signposting so unless you go into Sports Direct regularly you'd never know they're there, and they're mainly an outlet for Funko Pop! figures and Hasbro toys and board-games now, and no longer take trade-ins or have a loyalty-scheme; Within the next year or so, there will be zero national games retailer chains in the UK at all.

This all sounds very paid-off, to me - the text sounds like it's entirely about developers, and not consumers as they claim. As a consumer who ditched Nintendo for (mostly) Steam, I've been wowed by how very much lower the prices are, how very much better the selection is, how very many more options there are to get good deals (key-resellers like Fanatical, Humble, and so on), and how very good the features offered are (Proton, in particular, opens up the market to more people, since Linux is otherwise quite often overlooked; I know that there are issues with the Steam client and Nvidia, but some of that is on Nvidia's poor Linux support compared to AMD and Intel, so I can't fully blame Valve for that). It really is the best option, especially if you're budget-conscious - as many people, and especially families, now are.

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Quoting: kokoko3kA police-officer?! :)

Yeah! In Bomberman '93, he was an intergalactic cop, with the nickname of "Bomber Cop" - it's so goofy, I just love it.

Quoting: kokoko3kI spent some money in the arcade and some time on my c64 amd Amiga, but it was much time ago, and I just remember bombs and men :)

Oh man, it's all I can do to not write a massive lore-dump, hahaha! I'll keep it short, I promise!

Bomberman was built as a robot slave by an evil empire, but was miserable so he escaped and set out to use his abilities for good. Aside from that, he takes care of his many siblings (who were built by a kindly scientist who befriended Bomberman), and at one point he fought literally Satan in all but name in order to prevent him from deleting the entire universe and re-creating it in his image. He's a top bloke, really!

Quoting: kokoko3kThank you yoo for the polite discussion!

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Quoting: kokoko3kI agree with everything you, Philadelphus, wrote, and I want to thank you because English is not my native language and expressing myself on complex topics is challenging.

Thankyou for your time and acknowledgement of my post. This has been a very interesting discussion.

Quoting: kokoko3kI also have a personal point regarding the comparison with other non-ethical games.

In Bomberman, you place bombs, they place bombs; we are all the bad guys, and we know it. In about 80% of other games, you play as the good guy who kills bad guys to protect your or other innocent lives, and I'm okay with that too.

I'm guessing that you know Bomberman in a similar capacity to how you stated you know Pokemon, or perhaps less? Bomberman is the good guy, and at one point was a police-officer. The games are literally like Saturday-morning cartoons and shows like Power Rangers - it really is impossible to call it non-ethical.

Quoting: kokoko3kWhat really gets on my nerves with Pokémon and similar games is the fact that the negative aspects are hidden under a guise of positivity.

But they really are not promoting that stuff.

Anyway, thankyou again - this has been very enlightening!

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