Does Valve refuse to allow third party stores to sell Steam codes like PlayStation is doing here?

In the US maybe, $100k is several years wages in many countries.

The profit line being stable isn’t good enough, the line must go up, forever.

Idk if they had the time or money to quietly release it and ramp up over time, Tencent was likely asking where’s their return on investment after years of funding and live service games kind of depend entirely on launch success to springboard future development.

Marathon seems pretty good imo, it’s problem is it’s trying to be a more hardcore extraction shooter than the ones that already exist which is gonna make it too niche to sustain a large US-based studio like Bungie.

Eh, even if PC/component sales drop to zero, PC will still be the biggest platform with hundreds of millions of active users.

So you paid for them on PS5 but pirated them on PC? Great job telling Sony you don’t want PC versions.

How is sending someone a file gonna help me access their games?

Can you use Heroic with multiple accounts? Because if not that’s meaningless.

See that’s kind of my point, when we’re on the 100th “oh just use this other external service/software”, most users (myself included) are just going to stick to the simple solution that just works.

Being able to just access family and friends games straight from my library without wasting all that time having to ask beforehand, manual downloads and file management/transfers and lack of cloud saves like it’s still the 90s is worth whatever moral cost you associate with using a piece of proprietary software.

It’s interesting how people ascribe a game or series’ failure to whenever they became disinterested in it. Saints Row 3 and 4 were the best selling games on the franchise.

For most people, that’s not the case if the alternative solution is worse or less convenient.

Every piece of free software that has ever attained some level of mainstream success and popularity has done so by offering a better product, not something worse with the excuse of “well at least we’re not proprietary”.

You don’t just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it’s a 2 step process:

1. I look in the tab in my library for games in my brother’s account I have access to with family sharing.
2. I download a game from the list.

That’s despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.

With GOG it’s

1. Find the right webpage for my brother’s games (you can’t see them from within the GOG client for some reason.
2. Ask my brother to download the installer
3. Get my brother to send me the installer file over discord
4. The installer is too big
5. Say nevermind just give me your login info
6. I try to login to his account with the GOG client
7. Ask my brother for his 2FA authenticator code
8. Finally login, and can download the game
9. Remember to turn off cloud saves so you don’t override your brother’s cloud saves.

Based on a true story btw.

There’s probably things we could’ve done that would’ve made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn’t have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I’m missing cloud saves and I’d have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.

then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam

If I’m just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.

Family sharing isn’t just for your local machine, I have family who live in the other side of the country.

Offer a good service and people will buy from your store, most customers either don’t care about DRM or care somewhat but don’t want to inconvenience themselves with a worse product for it. GOG have to catch up to Steam with stuff like family sharing and controller support for me to consider buying stuff there.

IIRC it still requires an EA account for online play, but not if you play offline.

It Takes Two actually removed the EA App in a patch a while back.

I think they allow studios they only publish for and don’t own like Hazelight the freedom to remove the EA App DRM now, but EA won’t pay for the dev time for their back catalogue.

People aren’t playing or paying for stuff in Skate. The player count drop off has been substantial.

Phil Spencer merely did what his higher ups told him to do, she will do the exact same except caring less about video games.

There wasn’t ever a time you could build a better or even comparable PC for the same cost as consoles in modern gaming history. It’s always been something with a higher entry cost and the cost benefit coming over time with cheaper games and no mandatory subscription.

Yet PC gaming is now the “mainstream”, with it being the biggest platform globally.