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Latest Comments by LungDrago
Check out two brand new videos of the System Shock reboot including Cyberspace
10 September 2020 at 8:49 am UTC

Quoting: AnzaOriginal System Shock was strange, but in odd way still fun to play. It really doesn't play like Doom, which was released year earlier. I think it's closer to sci-fi version of Ultima Underworld.

System Shock also compared to Doom has better immersion in a sense that you have reason for going to places, it's not always about finding the level exit. You can even try to escape the space station.

System Shock 2 though had lot of improvements and felt more like the more a traditional FPS game, but still retained the RPG elements (there's even a grid inventory). Engine had also evolved quite lot, which made it possible to make environments feel bit more real and recognizable.

Sadly, I never tried SS2 because of my experience with the first one. Grid inventory would help a lot, but I didn't know it had a grid inventory. If I remember correctly, what gave me trouble as a kid was actually the control scheme and user interface. It looked 10x as complicated as Doom and items were represented as text instead of sprites, so a kid like myself who wasn't as yet comfortable with English had no idea what the screen is trying to tell me.
I thought it played more like a Mechwarrior game rather than Doom - and I couldn't play the first MW either. :)

Check out two brand new videos of the System Shock reboot including Cyberspace
9 September 2020 at 11:39 am UTC

I was too young to understand System Shock back in the day, although I do have memories of trying. This remake looks incredible however, I might get my System Shock experience yet.

A little round-up of Gamescom news for Linux PC fans
3 September 2020 at 8:26 am UTC

Quoting: Whitewolfe80
Quoting: gojulLooks that Feral has forgotten us, sadly. :-(

They need to have agreements in order to port stuff since there yearly go to TW in this case Troy is exclusive to epic for a year and IO decided not to port Hitman 2 or newly announced 3 to Linux and there is not another Tomb Raider game coming they sadly have nothing to announce. Also I do not think Feral forgot us its more proton ate their lunch desert and tea all in one go. Why pay for a porting job when you can do nothing and codeweaver steam team will make it run for nothing. Do not give me to support the community they are a business and they need to turn a profit end of.

Yeah, the market got harder for Feral, sadly. Proton tends to be easier - the annoying thing with their TW:Warhammer ports for me is that the Linux verions tend to be a patch or two behind Windows, which breaks Workshop mods.
I still think they could find a niche of sorts with porting A) HW intensive games that have trouble running under Proton and/or benefit in general from increased perfomance by running native (like multiplayer games?) B) porting games with annoying stuff like anti cheats that also give Proton a hard time.

Religion creation auto-battler Godhood has launched after a rough time for Abbey Games
14 August 2020 at 8:04 am UTC

It's really unfortunate that the game had as much trouble as it had. Ironically, Godhood is the only Early Access game I've ever bought, and I liked it. It pains me to see that the devs couldn't fully realize their vision.

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 2:36 pm UTC

Quoting: SamsaiStore owners do sales because it gets you to look at the store and it makes them money. It's that simple. You just happen to be one of the people that didn't get to take advantage of a particular sale, just like I don't get to take advantage of a random sale that might be happening in some store in Siberia.

If more people bought stuff at the store, it would make more money, no? Especially if the store has unlimited supplies?

Quoting: SamsaiFalse equivalence. No time travel, even figuratively, takes place. The nature of the whole transaction changed. This is just a weak justification for continuing to buy from G2A while ignoring the negative effects of doing so.

Correct, but what other option do I have? Not play games?

Quoting: SamsaiWhat makes you more entitled is that you feel entitled to a price that is not available. The person who bought it happened to be paying attention and was able to take advantage of an opportunity when it presented itself. You do know that you are not the only person in the world that is busy and cannot keep track of all the sales, right? You just happen to be among the few that think this entitles them to an offer that is no longer available.
Surely I cannot be the only person on this planet taking issue with a store that sells stuff cheaper to other people but myself? What exactly constrains a sale to a weekend?
Quoting: SamsaiWhat I am saying that your solution doesn't actually fix what you claim it fixes. You will miss out on games regardless of your ability to buy them from G2A.
That is true, it's not a fix and not an ideal solution at all. But it's the best available to me. Again, I want to hear of better alternatives. Surely someone somewhere tried to fix things?

Quoting: SamsaiSure, there are aspects of key reselling that are desirable and there are ways we could do key reselling in ways that don't cause active harm to developers. Keeping track of key age and sale legitimacy, disallowing bulk sale of keys, etc. There are ways behaviour as described in this very article and the comments could be mitigated.

However, when it comes to the actual topic of the article, G2A, these things are not there. G2A can meet your demand specifically because they benefit from keys sold at an effective loss because those keys are fraudulent. That's why the original stores cannot meet your demand: they don't sell stolen shit. If you get something for free, any price you put on it later on is profit.

Also, whining about G2A's policies is kind of the point of an article on the harm caused by G2A's policies.
I don't think saying that 100% of keys on G2A are stolen is a true statement, either. Neither do I think that any amount of policing would fix the mess that it is. Again, I'd rather fix the stores than fix G2A. It's Steam I'm chained to, not G2A for god's sake.

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 2:07 pm UTC

Quoting: EikeYes, the question is legit and I understand your motivation.

... I don't think this is so much to ask for, though.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a better legit option.

Let's be fair though, Steam specifically has been doing stuff to try and improve dicoverability of games and sales, but it's been mostly miss. The fundamental problem of giving a user a specific subset of data that's relevant to them is a very difficult one.
When you walk into a store and literally everything is marked as on sale, the inherent effect of more publicity by the virtue of being on sale is lost. The user experience of that sucks even in real life.

But it baffles me that when I go through the trouble of shoveling through such sales and buy something, I'm being called entitled because I didn't shovel fast enough. Either realize time limits are a bad idea, or give me a bigger, better shovel.

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 1:29 pm UTC

Quoting: SamsaiPeople are entitled to a time-limited discount because the proprietors of the store set a time-limited discount. We can argue whether games are appropriately priced but that is an entirely different issue.

Okay, I suppose the question then is why do proprietors of the store feel the need to exclude or pressure customers with busy lives? What makes me less worthy of doing business and what I can actually do about it?

Quoting: SamsaiYeah, it sucks to miss out on opportunities. But that's life and opportunities are passing you by constantly. Getting stuck on what-ifs isn't productive here or anywhere else.

Indeed, it does suck to miss out on opportunities. Imagine the feeling of a service allowing you to figuratively travel in time and erase past regrets. Magical, really.

Quoting: SamsaiThis goes back to whether games are appropriately priced or not. In our economic system prices are set by sellers and it's up to the buyers to determine if that price matches their demand for a product. In some cases that means waiting for the product to be on sale for the price to match demand. This is not relevant to the discussion though and you feel you are entitled for that price to match your demand even if that means working around the economic system.

I didn't come up with the discounted price, either. The lower price was offered and it matched my demand. Yet no sale happened. You don't want my money anymore, and I believe I am not the only losing party here. What again makes me more entitled than the guy who bought the game a week ago? There's no entitlement, just a missed opportunity as you said. Missed business opportunity and the cause for it was bad timing.

Quoting: SamsaiSo, on one hand you are complaining that you cannot know for certain that the one game you want will be on sale but the next moment you complain that it's hard to keep track of multiple games. So I'm not really sure which of the two is the issue here. It's a fact that you cannot keep tabs on every discount ever, so you need to prioritize and keep tabs on the discounts you consider important. This may require, for example, pruning your wishlists. In either case, I don't believe that because keeping tabs on everything that might be on sale is inconvenient, you now get to use illegitimate means to acquire a product for that price.

Both of the two are an issue! I can't be certain a concrete game will be on sale again and simultaneously there are tons of other games going on sale anyway. In the future of several months forwards, there is no guarantee I will rediscover that same game again when it's on sale, IF it's on sale. Unless I spend considerable amounts of valuable time trying to perfect my wishlist which still has other shortcomings, won't fix the underlying problem anyway and requires time investment which is the very reason that caused this problem in the first place. Why are we playing this hide and seek game?

Quoting: SamsaiGames go unpurchased and unplayed anyway. Either because you miss a sale and have to wait for another one or because a game didn't receive enough publicity and fades into obscurity. Not everyone gets to play all the games. If this was an argument for something, it would probably be another argument for piracy, since one's economic status is a limiting factor on their ability to play all the games they want to.

And regarding convenience, there are lots of convenient things people can do. For example, it might be extremely convenient for me to throw my trash on the street so that I don't need to inconvenience myself with a trip to the trash bin. However, we typically don't tolerate people taking advantage of such conveniences because it makes other people miserable. Something being convenient doesn't justify it, which is a thing I'm trying to focus on here. We know that grey market key trading causes harm to devs, we know that G2A has repeatedly lied and acted scummy about this. Just because they happen to be a convenience for you doesn't override these things.

What are you trying to say, really? If I didn't play games, I wouldn't have a problem? Or that games don't really have to sell?

Here's a thought. How about instead of whining over G2A, we stop and think about how we could improve our business so that G2A doesn't provide such an incentive to use? The thing is, I went LOOKING specifically for a G2A-like service because of that "missed opportunity" feeling and I DIDN'T want to pirate the game. I would really prefer if the stores made up their damn mind if they want my money or not and we could stop playing such games.
In other words, if G2A can meet my demand, why can't the original store? Since the issue is timing? If I made a store that sold only at midnight, can I really call customers entitled for going elsewhere for their purchases? Inconvienience doesn't justify criminal behavior, but if your business rules suck customers are in their right to shop somewhere more sane.
That was of course blown out of proportion and I suppose it got a bit rantier than I intended, but yeah. Perhaps it would be for the best if the time-limited offers were scrapped altogether, as virtual stores just aren't the same thing as real world ones.

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 11:53 am UTC

Quoting: Samsai
Quoting: LungDragoThat's the problem, isn't it? There are tons of games, games go on sale en masse and it's very easy to miss one amidst everything else. Or maybe the sale's timing sucker punches you in a different way - it comes right before your payday, it comes right when you were on a vacation with no internet access or maybe you just plainly haven't used your computer for a while. Then when you do miss one, you can't be sure it will go on sale anytime soon or even ever again. So yeah, if I've just missed one, I went to G2A to get it. I guess my point is that time-limited offers such as these have proven inconvienient numerous times and G2A is the service that provides that convienience (for a while, after a certain point the prices there are the same as everywhere else anyhow). I always figured some purchase is better for both parties than no purchase or a maybe-down-the-line-if-the-stars-align-later purchase. It would be better if there was a more direct way that pays the devs better, but that's the can of worms you open with time-limited offers. Either you ax those completely or find a way to improve your service/store so that I don't feel the need to go G2A to make my purchases.
This has a number of problems. Firstly, this is based on an assumption that game sales are random. They are not, the biggest sales are seasonal and if a game is going to go on sale, that's most likely when it happens. You have at most a few month window when you cannot know if a game is going to be on sale. You are also still clinging to an entitlement to a temporarily lowered price but haven't made arguments why that entitlement is justified. Hell, you even mentioned that stores could stop doing sales entire, so why aren't you willing to buy the game at full price? That's what you'd be doing if stores didn't do discounts at all.

Secondly, "some purchase is better than no purchase" isn't really valid when there's a bunch of devs who would rather that you pirate their game than buy on G2A. With many of these purchases no benefit goes to the developer. At best they profit nothing, at worst they take an actual financial hit from it.

Basically, nothing you've mentioned is an insurmountable problem and thus a justification for going to G2A. Sales aren't random, they can be reasonably tracked and games aren't such a vital commodity that you can't wait for the next sale if you happen to miss one. Just because you can get a small amount of convenience from going to a grey market doesn't justify it.

Okay, explain to me what makes anyone entitled to purchase a game at a time-limited discounted price? There are no limited supplies, no manufacturing costs, no shipping costs. No entry fees, club memberships or raffles. I am just as entitled as everybody else, no?
It's just that real life does not bend over backwards over a dev's sale. Sometimes I find myself excluded from this entitlement due to third party circumstances that have nothing to do with me as the buyer or the devs as the seller. Buying the product at now full-price feels bad, I believe understandably so.
Yes, none of this would be a thing if time-limited offers weren't around. But they are. They even come en masse seasonally as you mentioned. Even though there is NO guarantee that the game you want will be on sale, a large enough quantity does go on sale, enough so customers can ask questions such as 'Am I willing to buy this at full price or am I willing to buy this only on sale price?'. Reviews today have a "buy at sale" rating. You're calling me entitled, but it seems to me that everyone is entitled. It's the reality of things when you show you're willing to lower the price - it just might become apparent that your product was never worth the original price in the first place. In other words, if there was no discount, there would be no purchase. Some games I do buy at full price - if I have faith they are worth it. I usually do so right away and I do not need and don't use G2A for that either.
I want to reiterate the fact of oversaturation of discounted games on those large big sales you mentioned. I don't know about you but I don't sit around all day on the Steam page filtering the games. Real life is a thing. Filtering is needed though, as the primary sales-keeping feature I'm aware of, wishlists, have one major problem: you have to know a game exists for you to add it to a wishlist. Second problem is that wishlists really stop working once you add too many games to them, so you can't use them as a "maybe buy at sale" list either. This is why I find myself discovering games after a sale and end up retroactively buying them on G2A so to speak.

Also let me point out that I did ask for better options. It is not my intention or wish to rip of the devs, if it was, I would indeed pirate the game, but I am not using that option. I am arguing though that G2A does provide a convienience service that is not available anywhere else. There are use cases for it and if it weren't around, games would go unpurchased and unplayed - after all, when I missed it once, what's there to stop me from missing it again?

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 10:26 am UTC

Quoting: EikeYou didn't use to go to actual real world markets to see if it has got the game you want and for which price back in the times, right?

Exactly once, to find out that retail prices are way too high in my country for a kid to ever buy a game. Back in the day, I got nearly all of my games from my favorite game magazine that came with a CD. When you did buy a game back in the day, you often got it in a nice large case to store the medium in and display on your shelf and you got a bunch of doodads like game manuals, art books, soundtracks. Back in the day you owned your game and you could lend it to your friends, or lend it from them. Not to mention back in the day there were way less games in general to keep track of.
Times have indeed changed.

G2A has paid Wube Software over illegitimate Factorio keys
28 May 2020 at 10:15 am UTC

Quoting: tuubiAnd you're saying we should all be entitled to sale prices after a sale has ended, even if that means purchasing from a random dude on a shady key reselling site like G2A?

I wishlist games I actually do want to buy, and if I miss a sale, I wait a few weeks or months for another one. There's always something else to buy or play anyway.

That's the problem, isn't it? There are tons of games, games go on sale en masse and it's very easy to miss one amidst everything else. Or maybe the sale's timing sucker punches you in a different way - it comes right before your payday, it comes right when you were on a vacation with no internet access or maybe you just plainly haven't used your computer for a while. Then when you do miss one, you can't be sure it will go on sale anytime soon or even ever again. So yeah, if I've just missed one, I went to G2A to get it. I guess my point is that time-limited offers such as these have proven inconvienient numerous times and G2A is the service that provides that convienience (for a while, after a certain point the prices there are the same as everywhere else anyhow). I always figured some purchase is better for both parties than no purchase or a maybe-down-the-line-if-the-stars-align-later purchase. It would be better if there was a more direct way that pays the devs better, but that's the can of worms you open with time-limited offers. Either you ax those completely or find a way to improve your service/store so that I don't have to go to G2A to make my purchases.

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