u/Complete_Iron_2656

If I weren't a child back in the day, I'd have purchased this based off the pitch alone.

Ubisoft actually allows users to disable push notifications thankfully, but there can't be any plausible reason for them being so much larger than Steam's notifications. Feel like it just stands as another instance to why people dislike the launcher so much, the interface is just dreadful.

I just thought it'd be worth sharing these here, since I actually quite like a lot of these graphics, for whatever they're worth. I always enjoy it when Xbox reflects on their past console generations like this. Part of me wishes they'd go a bit further, I still remember back during the 20th anniversary when Xbox's site emulated the original Xbox and 360 aesthetics for a bit, that was pretty fun to see.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-25th-anniversary

I have to appreciate the gall that Sony has, after all of the prior controversy surrounding forced PSN requirements, to nevertheless force it in this new release. I used to be pretty passive about it, but we already know now that it does literally nothing for the functionality of online and crossplay. Especially after having pulled away future singleplayer ports for PC, it just registers as a slap to the face. Game apparently doesn't work on Linux anyway, hell of a pity since it seems to be fairly enjoyable. Can't blame anyone who doesn't care either way, I just can't stand 3rd-party account requirements.

Just thought I'd share this here, because it was pretty baffling to me when I first noticed it. Really odd circumstance where the developers decided to discontinue the trading cards feature for their game, while it's still presently available to purchase on Steam. What traditionally happens when Steam games featuring trading card support get delisted, those trading cards continue being dropped for those who purchased the game, but they (and the items earned via badge crafting) are made no longer purchasable or sellable on the market, and can only be traded. In this case, drops on these trading cards were disabled, yet they and said items continue being accessible through the market, and this has consequently resulted in the value for the cards and items skyrocketing.

It's particularly egregious in the case of the foiling cards from what I've seen. Pictured above is the Keisuke foil card. Previously available for only 90 cents, it jumped up immediately to $10 after the initial announcement of discontinuation, stabilized to $5, and now is being sold for $50, as much as the game itself is selling for right now. I really have to wonder if this is some sort of bug that's occurring, rather than some sort of intended effect. I assume trading cards are normally made inaccessible through the market after a game's delisting due to the potential abuse that could occur as a result, and this is probably one of the reasons; item values for said game exploding in value. Whether or not that's actually a good thing is up to the individual I guess, just thought it was funny to see these foil cards take on prices akin to actual valuable Pokemon cards or whatever.

I don't understand why some companies just insist on making it so difficult to support their games. This can obviously be remedied by sailing the seas on PC, but you don't really get that option on modern consoles, and you're effectively SOL if you didn't buy into them early, especially so once physical releases are phased out entirely. I don't see this point getting raised enough by people, but it's a fact that will be extremely difficult to ignore once consoles enter an all-digital era. Especially with virtually all mainstream sports games releasing annually, and delisting older titles after just a few years.

Already makes me cringe to see how much of a community has fostered around collecting delisted Steam games, and a market that subsequently sells off these keys, sometimes at ridiculously exorbitant prices. Makes me wish that Steam would just implement some kind of game trading feature which expands to existing games in one's library, and not just game gifts in their inventory.

I'm already subscribed to PC Game Pass, was able to install Crimson Skies and Fusion Frenzy, but Blinx and Conker haven't had any install prompt for me, only a prompt to subscribe to some higher tier in order to play with cloud. Wondering if anyone's having the same issue, and if there's a fix.

EDIT: It just took a bit longer to update on the page than the other two games, looks to be live now.

It baffles me how still, after all of these years, companies like Sony and Microsoft will charge their users if they want to change their display name. And how even other PC platforms like Epic, EA, or Ubisoft will force you to have a unique display name, one which can only be changed anywhere from a couple of weeks, to several months. I only wonder why other platforms have never mirrored Steam's system, and allowed users to use whatever display names they want, within reason. Just a completely innocuous feature in the grand scheme of things, but I still remember it being a breath of fresh air, being able to make my name as short or as generic as I wanted it to be, when making the jump to PC. Feel like I'd unironically be very upset if they ever decided to up and change how the system works, to make each display name strictly unique per user.

Got excited for a second, but I knew it was too good to be true. None of these games are even remotely close to these 3k player counts, but I've never seen it before that bots load up dedicated server apps. Don't really see what's to gain, not sure if it's indication of people playing pirated games either, since that'd usually be Spacewar? Not sure, pretty bizarre though.

Family had purchased an all-in-one desktop computer for me when I was a kid, but it was obviously more for general use as the family PC at the time since we didn't have a computer prior. I was very into watching Garry's Mod and TF2 videos online, and really wanted to get a computer just so I could play those games. Was pretty lucky that Valve just happened to be giving L4D2 away for free from the 25-26th, ended up playing a tooon of it. Just funny to look back on as I was probably the golden demographic of users they were targeting with that, little kids who just got a PC for Christmas. Or if they weren't, it was just the perfect scenario for me at the time, lol. Really a shame that it doesn't seem they ever repeated this kind of giveaway since, I wonder how many others received the game under similar conditions as I had.

"THERE WERE ABOUT 89,700,000 RESULTS FOR "SPORTS INJURIES" ON A RECENT INTERNET SEARCH. THAT IS A LOT. CLEARLY, SPORTS ARE VERY DANGEROUS AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED."

I'm actually curious about this. I used to be pretty indifferent about this habit some publishers enforced, as I was always of the opinion that it was miles better than the console exclusivity practice. But over the course of time, it definitely has started to wear thin on me.

Just seems to make the simple act of getting into a game abundantly more difficult, much of the time. Feel like virtually every external launcher beyond Steam itself likes to conveniently forget at random, that I had saved my password, so they'll ask me to input my account details again, much of the time. And then they'll ask me to verify my email, again and again.. I could almost get the point of these launchers acting as DRM, or if the game is online + cross-platform, so all players use a dedicated online tag for that game or whatever. But with singleplayer offline games which also have a dedicated DRM layer on top of it, it almost quite literally serves as nothing more than a headache to me. It completely kills all of the motivation I would've initially had loading up a game, and it very frequently just makes me switch to a different game instead. It just feels like such an archaic practice at this point, which serves no other purpose than to punish a person for legally acquiring a game, versus a pirate. I still remember back when I purchased Trials Evolution on Steam, and only learned after the fact that it forces Ubisoft Connect to be running in the background, despite no disclaimer on the Steam page. And then the game just wouldn't launch due to Ubisoft's software not working, as if their servers were down or something, so I just had to refund the game. It would be less of a pain if these launchers were just fine, but they're not. Even after all of these years somehow, they're still about as half-baked and temperamental as I remember them.

Is there anything I'm missing, though? Truthfully, for singleplayer games, especially ones already loaded up with Denuvo, what is the reason for forcing someone who purchased through Steam to have Ubisoft Connect, EA Play, or some other obnoxious launcher loaded up in the background? All I can think of is it may help these publishers collect player statistics per game, and ultimately benefits them if they have their software loaded up on all PCs that wish to play an Ubisoft or EA game. I can already get the "they're evil" bit, but realistically, they must understand by this point that this practice only serves as incentive for people to go pirate, or to simply abstain from buying their games in the first place. If I wanted to use a game through your launcher, I would've purchased it through your launcher. And if you wanted to circumvent the 30% sale cut that Steam takes, you'd have just made the game exclusive to your launcher. I guess it'd be a shot in the dark to assume that anyone actually knows why this practice has held over the years, but I still have to imagine that there must be some kind of underlying incentive for them, which warrants keeping it in place despite all of the obvious backlash it has received.

Image was taken from the Wayback Machine, of his profile ID 'gabelogannewell' from 2008, though (I think) the ID has since been taken by someone else. His Steam account is a bit of an anomaly, but the profile picture is pretty fun, wonder if it was something done up by a fan, or some artist within Valve.

Just a weird issue I noticed pretty much immediately after learning of the store page refresh. Checked on FireFox, Chrome, and the Steam client, but it only seems to appear on FireFox, where the page will regularly jut upward in the page every 5 seconds. Curious if anyone else is having this issue, seems a bit annoying.

Edit: Seems to be fixed now, thanks Valve dev.