Me whenever I hear a G@mer praising Gabe Newell as if he wasn't instrumental/responsible for creating video game DRM that every company has iterated upon since.
As much as I wish this were true gamers have shown themselves to be literally incapable of not supporting ahitty business practices.
Go into any thread where they're complaining about how yet another game that everybody pre-ordered came out as an unfinished pile of shit. Try to tell them it's because they keep paying game companies before the product even exists and that removes the incentive for the company to finish the game and also its a digital pre-order which is by deffinition stupid.
You'll get dog piled and everybody will tell you it's their money, they can spend it however they want and how dare you try to tell them what to do and then go pre order another game.
AAA Gaming is dead, gamers killed it. Unfortunately they're still paying for corpses.
daily reminder that there are thousands of independent devs offering games with way more care, creativity, and vision than any Ubisoft product DRM free on Itch.io and elsewhere.
tbh i haven't really liked a ubisoft game since like far cry 4. i liked how far cry 5 let you have human companions that could drive you, but i hated the country guitar twang menu music and the 'america except apolitical' setting that somehow portrayed the evangelical christian apocalypse cult as 'hippies' and had you work for an explicitly republican, homophobic guy running for governor or something as one of the 'good guy' sidequests. i have similar writing qualms with far cry 6 but mostly i just didn't like the 'supremo' backpacks and how you couldn't unequip them, like i don't feel much like a real guerilla with 6 LAW AT-rockets strapped to my back welded to a metal box, it looks fucking stupid and impractical and i basically never even use the backpack abilities anyway. plus no more human companions, as cool as the alligator and wheelchair dog are they can't drive my car while i use the super special turrets i spend my hard earned resources to unlock like they could in far cry 5.
ALSO ALSO in far cry 6 the FAL rifle does like significantly less damage than every other assault rifle despite shooting the biggest bullets? (nerd note: the FAL is a 'battle rifle' and shoots 'full sized rifle bullets' unlike assault rifles, which shoot shorter versions of the bullets even if the caliber is the same - the FAL uses 7.62 x 51mm rounds whereas the AK-47 uses 7.62x39mm rounds - the second number after the x being the length of the bullet's case where the propellant is stored) Bullshit! i should be able to use that FAL on single shot effectively, not having to dump my entire 20 round magazine into the basic unarmoured enemy types to get a single kill.
also assassin's creed hasn't been good since like Unity (i didn't like black flag personally either, i don't like dual wielding swords of the same length [let me use a sword and a pistol at the same time! its a pirate game! he's doing it on the cover of the game but you can't do it in gameplay!] and the boat gameplay was tedious imo), but one of my friends has Mirage and it seems pretty ok compared to the recent crap, just not enough for me to spend 70 to 80 american bio-survival tickets on it.
As always if anyone needs educational help learning about steam emulators like the Goldberg Emulator or the SteamStub DRM remover (Steamless) just let me know/tag me!
Don't forget to check the emulation mega thread for other educational resources about how to play your legally acquired backups too.
Why run either Goldberg or SteamStub? Is it so I can download my friend's library or backups and use them myself? Can you play online with them with friends? Idk if I'm really interested but I am curious.
Goldberg emulator is a Steam (steam_api.dll in practice) emulator that allows you to play any game backups that don't have SteamStub (or other) DRM on them. Steamless is for removing SteamStub DRM from game executables (not all steam games have these) where you can then apply the Goldberg steam_api.dll replacement onto to allow you to play those backups.
Certain games (likely any game that has direct-connect features where you punch in an IP address) will be playable with friends online. Some games that use traditional matchmaking can utilize the matchmaking services of other steam games (through making steam think that it's matchmaking for game ABC when it's actually doing it for XYZ) and allow people with backup copies to play together through "official" steam matchmaking services.
being able to own and play old games, or emulate old good games probably cuts into profit and the amount people are willing to spend.
Why buy ubisoft bland open world game when i already own and can play 10 year old ubisoft bland open world game that does the exact same thing (but with less microtransactions)? Why buy the new cod? The good games with some originality gets lost when they break compatibility and don't let you play the thing you 'bought', but they don't really care.
COD4 (I seen with the correction) was when it peaked, though the 2nd game was a fun WW2 game especially when I beat it on Veteran. The series started to decline (Campaign wise) after 4 and once they shifted more to the online being the draw than the single player side of things.