Twitter is by far the larger platform, and small independent creators have to work to promote their game on every platform they can, if they want to succeed. The moral high ground of not using undesirable social media sites is nice, but isn’t fair to people who are partially dependent on those platforms to make a living.
It’s an absolutely massive game, and has been in development for 17 years. They also were pretty upfront with the fact that there would be a price increase at launch. I’ll also mention it’s one of the rarer games where the devs opted out of any Steam DRM, so you can copy the game files and run them on any machine without needing Steam installed. I keep the game on a thumbdrive for playing on my work PC when I have downtime.
All in all I think the price is well deserved, and I hope they do really well.
They want access, they just don’t want china to have access. Of course, when you add a backdoor it’s best to assume everyone will use it sooner or later.
30% as industry standard
That’s the same as app stores/etc, and is still a common cut to take. I’m not convinced the cuts that Epic is taking are actually sustainable for offering downloads/updates/etc for a game indefinitely, but it’s hard to tell since the Epic store is already bleeding money.
I’ll also mention that Audible (which has a monopoly in the audiobook space) reportably takes a 60-75% cut of audiobooks sold on their platform (they take only 60% if you agree to sell exclusively on audible, but they take the full 75% if you want to sell the book somewhere else as well). Monopolies abusing their position is really common, but I haven’t seen anything similar from Steam that makes me think they’re abusing their position. I suspect PC gaming would be in a far worse state if another company controlled the popular storefront.
Being a small game dev has a lot of uncertainty and risk. I wouldn’t blame any small dev for taking a guaranteed paycheck from Epic. Larger studios with safe prospects should be blamed though imo. Gearbox with Borderlands 3 for example.
Except they’re trying to strongarm people into using it by using huge amounts of money to buy exclusivity rights.
People don’t want monopolies because companies can abuse their position to hurt consumers. But steam provides a very user friendly experience with lots of benefits and features like mod hosting, remote play together, etc. Epic provides a store that people hate using, and people only put up with because epic abused fortnite’s success to buy exclusivity deals*. Despite being the much smaller storefront, Epic already feels like the abusive monopoly in the PC gaming space.
*Many people also play on Epic because of free games, which is a valid and pro-consumer way to attract users. I’m 100% cool with this strategy, although giving away merchandise at a loss is also a common monopoly strategy.
One of my biggest pet peeves with corporate websites. It’s like they’re afraid that clearly stating what they do will prevent them from growing and doing other things as well. So instead they refuse to say anything coherent.
There was a request to halt sales until the specific mechanics were removed, with the mechanics being throwing pokeball like items and riding monsters.
That lawsuit might take years, and the requested damages from Nintendo are only $66,000. Palworld isn’t going to be shut down anytime soon, even if they lose the case.
Great game, it and the original Pixel Dungeon were my most played phone games for years.
Another high quality mobile experience I can’t recommend enough is Slice & Dice. Gameplay is quite different from Pixel Dungeon, but it’s basically replaced all other phone games for me. Been playing it almost continuously now for the past 3 years.
Yeah, games like DRG prove that season xp/unlocks can be fun and rewarding. But the key there is that:
Done like that, it’s a fun system that gives you extra rewards for playing. But there’s never any punishment for not playing enough in a fixed period of time.
That link was just specifying that there was a difference between adaptive charging on the pixel 4, and later pixels. All pixel phones from 4 onwards have it, but I’m guessing it’s a pixel software specific feature.
I have a pixel phone, and it may be a pixel specific feature rather than a default android feature.
Here’s Google’s webpage on it.
The slower the better for battery health.
Usually slow charging is just the standard USB 2.0 output, which is 5v 0.5A (so 2.5 watts). That was all the USB standard officially supported for a long time, but many devices and chargers actually supported up to 5v 1A (5 watt) or 5v 2A (10 watt) charging. Those would usually be considered normal charging.
Fast charging has a couple different specs and voltages, but can go up much higher. My steam deck supports 45w charging, and some laptops support 65w or higher.
Slow charging is actually better for battery longevity than fast charging. For example, my phone will limit it’s charging speed at night when I have an alarm set, because it assumes I won’t need it until my alarm goes off, and the slower it charges the less damage is done to a battery.
In general, lithium batteries are damaged by heat. Rapid charging creates extra heat, so it’s worse for the battery. Manufacturers work hard to minimize the damage of quick charging, but it’s still somewhat better to slow charge when you have the time.
You can look up videos of some of the stores that were closed, they were basically being straight up looted.
I remember seeing the videos, and thinking to myself how I didn’t understand how they could afford to stay in business like that. So when they announced they were closing those stores for theft, I didn’t’ really think the given reason was every in doubt.
Fossil fuels is kinda a prisoner’s dilemma issue. Everyone cooperating to save the planet is obviously ideal, but realistically there are always going to be companies/countries that won’t. And as long as it’s cheaper to not be environmentally friendly, there’s always going to be someone taking that option.
For example, lets say country A passes new regulations on manufacturing to be more environmentally friendly. The new regulations take the country’s manufacturing from low pollution to very low pollution. However the increase in cost causes many companies to stop manufacturing locally, and instead outsource their manufacturing to country B with low regulation and moderate pollution during manufacturing. The end result is more money leaving the local economy of country A, and increased global pollution.
It’s a similar prisoner’s dilemma for the individual companies involved. If your competitor is able to make their product for cheaper because their process is less environmentally friendly, then they can undercut you and put you out of business.
Stealing from walmart also isn’t sustainable if many people are doing it. For example there were a ton of walmarts and other stores in the Chicago area that recently closed due to high theft at those locations. Now whole communities there are left without convenient shopping options, which can be a big problem for people with limited transportation options.
Some HOAs are better than others.
have you tried uninstalling windows:)