Right, I’m not a fan of the community-made ones either. I do love Lego Fortnite and Rocket Racing though. Festival can be fun as well.

Epic has supported Linux via grants to platforms like Lutris and by promoting the alternative launchers, among other things, so its approach is not that dissimilar to Valve supporting Wine rather than funding or developing native Linux ports. Epic laying people off is very disappointing, but at least not worse compared to the other big corporations having done the same.

On AI, most of the time, yeah, I believe AI is used quite lazily to create soulless assets, especially for asset flips. It wasn’t like that with Vader though, was it? The community mostly loved him and had fun. I typically don’t use my mic when gaming, but him dynamically commenting on the world around him and the players got me to seriously consider connecting a mic. Vader’s voice itself was also used with permission from the copyright holders.

Have you played Fortnite? It’s not just a game anymore. It’s more like a launcher in that it lets you play various games that are very distinct from one another, like Lego Fortnite or Rocket Racing, with the main shared components being the Unreal Engine and the shared economy (e.g. owning a skin for Fortnite Battle Royale granting you a version of the same skin in the Lego games).

I don’t think Sweeney has ever claimed that everything has to happen in Fortnite though. My understanding is that he envisions more cooperation between game creators (similar to Epic’s collaborations with Disney and many others), powered by open systems like EOS, which would allow gamers to interact and carry items over from game to game.

Incredible how they got to take their time to (presumably) target the areas that would deal the most damage.

Out of curiosity, is there a way to see the communities included in the default blocks? I must have registered here before those were introduced, as I don’t have them.

The first time I heard about Piefed was in the context of the problematic views of the Lemmy developers, so I would assume the Piefed ones are better in that respect.

Pretty cool that Epic’s tech powers not only games on Unreal Engine but also other games. As shown, Death Stranding 2 is powered by MetaHuman.

The OP says global preloading and gifting are going live soon. Bundles are also on the roadmap. At the end of the day though, what’s the main benefit of a bundle? It’s the discount, right? I’m not sure the discounts offered via bundles on Steam are an overall better deal compared to Epic offering cashback of 5% on everything, sometimes increased to 20% (like now). For some countries, Epic also offers significantly better base prices compared to Steam. It still supports the Turkish and Argentinian currencies and presumably has specific price guidelines for those as well, compared to Steam having removed those options. I also remember Epic talking about supporting more regional currencies compared to Steam. From looking at the documentation now, it’s 37 on Steam and 43 on Epic.

Regarding the app, I disagree. It was very convenient to have everything in one place (which Steam fans should understand, given their reluctance to use a different launcher) and I used the chat feature all the time, but after Valve separated them, I just got tired of switching and ended up not installing the chat app after resetting my phone OS. Sometimes I need to message a friend, but I feel like the effort of installing it and logging in is not worth it for those occasions.

People love to bash Epic and list all the (often redundant) things Steam is ahead in, but nobody mentions the ways in which Epic is ahead. Something as simple as being able to chat with your friends is no longer a feature of the mobile Steam client, but if Epic sticks to the roadmap, their app will allow that. It also makes me think of how despite so many years of existence, Steam still doesn’t allow to add game editions to your wishlist, while Epic has allowed that from the start. It was also the first to introduce a custom value field for downloads throttling, before Steam followed suit.

That didn’t stop Russia from blocking it.

They wouldn’t want to risk his friend Vladimir getting the info.

Reason

“Slavi ukraini”

Enough said. Heroiam slava!

.world’s Rooki would approve.

Feeling insignificant yet?

Anyone who doesn’t feel insignificant doesn’t know about space.

Thanks for the detailed and honest explanation!

Its approach to moderation has been the same as Musk’s on X. Extremely permissive, with racist games like Tyrone vs Cops or Yasuke Simulator doing OK despite sufficient reporting on them. There are also countless groups and users profiles that promote the Russian invasion, others that promote neo-Nazism, and so on.

Well, Putin still may have been the first. Remember him diving to find some ancient relics?

Yeah, Trump is undoubtedly thankful for the hacks and the information campaigns, including the recently revealed funding of the likes of Tim Pool. I’ve seen various opinions attributing Trump’s most recent win to the rise of influencers and podcast creators who presented themselves as an alternative to the traditional media. You’re right about the other countries too. Having the likes of Schroeder or Le Pen on the payroll goes a long way, and that’s not the limit of the extent of the Russian operations.

Edit: Grammar.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that much of the world’s shift toward authoritarianism is thanks to Putin’s two decades of misinformation, sabotage, hacking, military involvement and other campaigns. A lot of what Russia does in that field comes off as a conspiracy theory that looks like it’s straight from a spy movie, but there’s a trove of evidence backing it up. Everybody knows about the DNC hack but I feel like there are many other things that have flown under the radar. For example, how many people know that the so-called Internet Research Agency got Americans out to protest for BLM? They also got people out to protest against BLM. The same for guns rights and other issues. The goal has been to sow discord and division, which is exactly what we’re seeing in the world today.

I do think it would end any Russian politician’s career if they were to tell the nation that the war has been in vain and that the occupied territories of Ukraine are to be returned but I also think you underestimate the power of a dictator. Everything in Russia is built around Putin and his image, so him dying could be a significant disruption leading to another revolution. That said, in Russia, virtually every revolution leads to a brief moment of freedom only for another dictator to come in and say how chaotic it is and that order must be restored, with the people accepting that.

Obviously. On PC, Steam alone takes 30%. Everything she gets though? Likely used for something horrible.