It’s fairly common, see a lot of them on the top selling games too

From the last time I had to use EA’s launcher, I still couldn’t easily pick an install location. It’s incredible how shitty it is.

Yeah, they’re a pretty shitty company. Weren’t they one of the first companies to implement always-on DRM?

Definitely greed, Ubisoft did the same thing in 2019 because they didn’t want to pay Steams 30% cut.

Aren’t demos kind of making a comeback? I’ve played lots of demos on Steam.

Not really, it’s just that a lot of guides nowadays are done on youtube. I personally think text guides are superior so I really don’t want gamefaqs to go away.

I really hope Gamefaqs continues to persist. I still think it’s one of the best places for guides.

I liked the online events because it was easier for them to get runners from around the world to participate. Also, I think the rhythm game showcases would have never happened without the online-only GDQs.

I’m guessing this is still related to that time where a guy running a tournament had his nude Chun-Li mod on.

Most people probably didn’t even recognize the other games. I only know about Shadow of Doubt (which I think should have won) because Yahtzee made a video about it.

Or being one of the few games that require you having an SSD to run properly lol.

Best guess is people voted it because they didn’t know any of the other games and didn’t bother to check.

I think the quote from Jane is pretty telling. Some people at Valve only help out when a project starts “getting pretty cool.” It’s probably the cause of a lot of inertia in game development over there. Also, just an interesting detail, Jane Ng is from Campo Santo and she stopped working on In the Valley of Gods to work on HL: Alyx.

It’s not just that though. A lot of people have already pointed out that Epic appears to be actively hostile towards Linux by removing compatibility for games that had it before. People have also pointed out that turning on Linux compatibility for EAC is fairly trivial, but they refuse to do it. For some games, Linux users have to go through extra loops just to make it work. So when it looks like a company is treating a certain demographic as something that’s worth less than shit for no apparent reason, I’m not surprised that they’ll have a negative attitude towards that company.

And say what you want about Valve, but they have pushed Linux compatibility and it’s not surprising why Linux users have a more positive view of them over Epic. As I’ve already said, your argument reinforces this point.

I looked it up and apparently Gray Newell doesn’t work at Valve, so it’s actually unlikely that he’s going to be the successor.

Not the person you’re replying to, but from what I’ve read before Valve is kind of notorious for this because they do encourage people to work on what they want. The problem with this is that it also means it’s hard to get support for your project. For example, in order to get Half-Life: Alyx pushed out, they had to suspend that policy of working only on things that make them happy.

Here’s a quote from the wiki article about HL: Alyx’s development:

Valve abandoned episodic development and made several failed attempts to develop further Half-Life projects. Walker blamed the lack of progress on Valve’s flat management structure, whereby employees decide what to work on themselves. He said the team eventually decided they would be happier if they worked together on a large project, even if it was not their preferred choice.

Here’s some additional info on how they work from an interview:

Robin Walker: We started in February of 2016, I think, with a small team, and we brought out a small prototype. Then people started to play that, understood what we were trying to do afterward, and started joining up. We had 80 people on the team when we were about midway through. The exact size of the team I wouldn’t be able to tell you. The way things work at Valve, people organically join once they’ve finished up what they were doing before, and if what you’re doing makes sense to them. So it was always full steam ahead, I guess, but not in the sense that all 80 people were there from day one.

Jane Ng: I joined the project last year, I think. People just sort of see that “Hey, this project’s getting pretty cool,” and then they roll their desks over when they’re done with whatever they were doing.

First time hearing about this. Hope it works out.

I understand that it’s normal, but the argument still doesn’t make sense for the purposes of this discussion. For people who do use Linux, it is worthless since they can’t use it. I also can’t blame Linux users for not liking a company that has been hostile to them (i.e. removing Linux support from a game that had it.) You’re just reinforcing that Steam is a better option for them.

Has there been any news at all on who the potential successors are?

I really don’t understand this argument. Aren’t you basically pointing out that Steam is better because they cater to a demographic that most companies won’t consider because of the small market size?