Technically no PR. Their MO has been to let others do the work. Their games come from hired modders, with many skins made by the community. Their localizations are from the community. The game devs and publishers have to moderate their own spaces on Steam. The players do product promotions by using the social network of Steam. Valve is practically unreachable for the press, and their actual press releases are the rawest I’ve seen: infrequent, featuring no images and little information. Their press account is run by Kaci Aitchinson, the local Fox News host who was originally hired to present The International for Dota 2, but ended up doing a bit of everything, like many at Valve.

I usually avoid PvP games and I didn’t like ARC Raiders at first, but it has grown on me.

Unless you use the starter kit, you’ll always have at least one safe pocket slot, allowing you to bring back at least one item (or a stack) even if you get knocked out. Moreover, so often my stash is full even after multiple expansions, so the game encourages using those resources to craft weapons, which again makes it less of a problem if you get knocked out.

Later quests are not easily completed, but you can focus on completing the daily tasks for battle pass progression. There will be simple tasks like having to open containers or doing damage to the ARC robots, so you can just go out with the stater kit and do those, not worrying about losing your loot. With that mentality, at least sometimes (though often in my case playing solo), you’ll extract and get a lot of loot on top of your XP and tasks progression.

Another lesson on how authoritarianism and fascism target the most vulnerable or remote first but eventually come for everyone else.

*costume

NFTs are at least independent and won’t disappear if one corporation goes down. Other than that, they’re one and the same, and it’s insane that the same gamers who worship Valve are often the first to bash NFTs.

To me it still feels like a win for Putin. He’s asking for more to normalize the current lines being the bare minimum in any future discussions so that the least he gets is already more than what he had before 2022. Some talk about the loss of people and economic challenges as a setback, but I don’t think he cares. People are cannon fodder to him, while he’s going to be the last to be noticeably impacted by changes to the economy.

Calling it “a bit” disappointing is an understatement. There are people who lived in Crimea but had to lose their life’s investments in property after the 2014 invasion, then they had to lose family members, friends and neighbors, if not their own lives to the war. Getting the land back for a new beginning is at least some consolation for something that can never be returned, though after the irreparable losses, the people of Ukraine deserve plenty more than what they had before 2014.

That doesn’t say much though, as many of the other games on the list came to Steam after months and years of being available on Origin, so the highest concurrent player numbers were probably seen on that platform. A newly released game always attracts more players than an older one.

The only games I can think of where you fight back against racists as a Black person are Mafia 3 and Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry. Maybe Dustborn too, if you count alternative history fascism. It’s wild that there isn’t more after so many years of video games. It makes the news of the cancelation incredibly sad.

The stars are really aligning this year.

I believe the developer has practically no experience with action games, so the combat being subpar wouldn’t be unexpected. I definitely wouldn’t be playing a WoD game for its combat though. I’d want a good story, characters, and the right aesthetics.

If Valve were any other company, it would get crucified for its practices, including that it was the first in the West to popularize microtransactions with its Team Fortress 2, long before the likes of EA. It’s just that gamers have a blind spot for Valve.

If this were attributed to your real name, you’d be doxed and fired in no time.

Adding an “a” works for some names, like Vladyslav becoming Vladyslava, Yaroslav becoming Yaroslava, Myroslav becoming Myroslava, Roman becoming Romana (uncommon), or Teodor becoming Teodora, but not for many of the others. Viktor and Viktoriia are a thing, like in English. Same for Yevhen and Yevheniia.

I don’t think Putin is bad at something he’s not even tried. For him, meeting Trump was an opportunity to delay any additional sanctions and support for Ukraine, and to stroke his ego since the ICC issued the arrest warrant. Walking freely on US soil, treated like a president rather than the murderous and ostracized dictator that he is, must have felt great. The same is true for his visit to China.

Yeah, Obama was good for the US but awful to the world for appeasing Putin via his puppet Medvedev. McCain on the other hand was critical of the Russian invasion of Georgia and had strong ties to the opposition in Russia, so he was well-informed on the situation. He wouldn’t enable Putin to violate international law time and time again.

There is a Ukrainian games curator on Steam.

Spoiler alert: There is no soul there. Just a KGB agent looking to manipulate.

I think the part about exclusives and other claims is just a way to fight the cognitive dissonance of seeing something good but having spent so much time and money on something else. Always being in attack mode distracts them and others from focusing on the problems of Steam.

it’s not great for consumers.

Not in the short term, but having an alternative to Steam (or anything with a lot of market share) is great for the long run. Moreover, at least everyone knows that the majority of the contracts would expire in 6 to 12 months. For all intents and purposes, Steam exclusives are a lot worse because there are many times more of them, and you can’t mark a date on your calendar when you can buy them if you can’t or don’t want to buy from Steam.

Keep in mind that, as an example, just recently Steam just decided to no longer support the local currencies of Argentina and Turkey, resulting in no regional prices for the regions on Steam. If Epic didn’t exist and didn’t support regional prices for those regions, all those users would have for third-party titles is GOG, which has a much smaller catalog and seems to support fewer regions. Microsoft Store is also an alternative now, but I’d argue its rise was spearheaded by Game Pass, which relies on the “paid deal” model pioneered in the PC space by Epic.

No, it was created so they could keep all the money from Fortnite.

I think you’re confusing the launcher with the store. The origin of the store itself can be traced back to Sweeney arguing about Valve’s “junk fee” of 30%.

they merely want their game engine and anti-cheat to sell.

How is targeting niche operating systems helping the anti-cheat sell?