This is what I use. Quite like it so far.

I need my indies nominated for awards, but not sell enough for the devs to be able to afford healthcare. That's the real shit.

hey if you're a dev who worked on a game that was nominated, i know it's hard with the Discourse but i hope you're proud of yourself and the work you did

TIL that's why. I just assumed livestreams would go into the videos tab afterwards. Wasn't a big deal since they showed up in my subscription feed anyways, but it was confusing.

the children yearn for bj blazkowicz’s monologues

I feel like Control is about 50% of the way to what you are asking for. It swaps out actor name for movie name though.

Glad to see Polygon cover the resistance of game developers to generative AI--and to be able to speak briefly to one of the greatest dangers of this entire thing.

Gen AI doubles down on making MORE SPACE for production issues that *already make games worse.*
www.polygon.com/arc-raiders-...

They also do a lot of great stuff (their work on Proton is genuinely transformative and a technological marvel), but a lot of times I see them being praised for just simply being kinda normal.

A lot of Valve's strategy strikes me as just being kinda rational and not doing really dumb trend chasing moves. They come off as one of the smarter companies in this ecosystem by just doing nothing sometimes.

If I was unsure how I felt about Arc Raiders use of AI (I wasn't), knowing Tim Sweeney was defending it would be enough to let me know I should appose it

“We were effectively props”: young stars of game development feel let down by the ‘gaming Oscars’ Announced in 2020 by the Game Awards as an inclusive programme for the industry’s next generation, the Future Class initiative has now been discontinued. Inductees describe clashes with organisers and...

“Don’t gather some of the most brilliant activists in the industry, treat us like crap, and then expect us to do nothing about it.” After the Game Awards cancelled its Future Class programme, @alyssamerc.bsky.social talked to its former honorees

www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Back to your original point I can imagine Epic seeing the writing on the wall that even if they put in serious investment into their storefront it probably wasn't going to move the needle that much.

That was the point I was trying to make. They didn't even brush up against a point where Steam's dominance affected them because they were that bad. I'm not sure we can even say they competed with Itch or GoG or Epic.

But Epic has money. I recently used it again after not touching it for a couple years probably and the experience was nearly identical (I.E not great) and I really don't get how that is the case

With Epic while they have tried more than most from a purely consumer perspective using Steam compared to using Epic's store is a night and day difference in quality.

Part of that is Steam's been around for longer and had time to mature though. Hard for Epic to catch up.

For Epic I agree, but with Amazon I genuinely never even knew they were trying. I knew of various things like Luna or the free games they gave with Twitch Prime, but I had no idea they intended to compete with Steam. And I'm chronically online! To me that's just a massive failure on their part.

Nothing will make me consider someones opinion invalid faster than "Well people in Japan think this obviously morally bad thing is completely fine actually *shrug*"

The level of ignorance (and probably racism) you have to have to think 100+ million all think identically is staggering.

Hi and welcome to my post-mortem on why we did not take over Steam’s marketshare.

Slide #1: We did not tell anyone we were trying to do this.

Sorry, guys. This one is on me. I honestly just forgot. Like, I had it as a reminder on my phone, but it was there for so long, I just ignored it. Whoops.

White people who call people bro who are in fact not their biological brothers shocked that other people call someone aunt who is not in fact their biological aunt. Brilliant minds.

it's cool to see that this game's starting pitcher is still hanging in there

Not commenting is commenting.

aftermath.site/microsoft-halo...

Looking forward to Halo 2 Remake 2 now including sliding and the DMR for some reason.

My expectations for the future of Halo was already grim but they still found a way to disappoint me.

But now it has sprint! And the BR is here! And we cut off half the game!

The series is so out of ideas that they a partially remaking a game that was already remade and just taking ideas from later games and moving them into it. Not an ounce of originality.

This industry is beyond parody sometimes. We are actually getting remakes of remakes of games where the original versions still play great! An incredible waste of everyone's time. Just put MCC on PS5. It's 100x better value than whatever this is.

Luka once he's 40 and fell off, but is trying to stick around on vet min deals.

Screenshot of a Reddit comment that says: There's a potent quote about the Hong Kong protests in 1000xResist that applies so deeply; FATHER: You remember? In the streets...hundreds of thousands marching shoulder to shoulder... Biggest demonstrations in HK history. The world watched it all happen. Heard our voices. Saw us bleed. MOTHER: So? FATHER: So if we stayed silent? didnt stand up for ourselves? They would say...this is how it always was. They would say...this is what the people wanted. But no. They can't say that. Because it has gone down in history... That we resisted fiercely. That we fought for a different future...until we couldn't. That legacy lives in us.

Screenshot of a protest poster that says: "So if we stayed silent? .... They would say, this is how it always was. They would say, this is what the people wanted. But no. They can't say that. Because it has gone down in history that we resisted fiercely. --1000xRESIST"

✊

Libro.fm sounds awesome. Thanks!

Not to dissuade you from doing so, but due to this news I discovered Deezer as a replacement to Spotify. They've taken the strongest stance against AI of all the music streaming platforms from what I can tell. Their payouts are higher too (everyone is higher than Spotify lol)