The people laid off in 2023 (no less than 16% of the company's headcount) might have opinions upon hearing that.
The Epic Games Launcher is so far behind on features compared to Steam it's not even funny. Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front and to try and force users onto the platform with exclusivity deals and sweeten the deal with free games.
The one user-centric killer feature Epic has in their stack IMHO is the built-in multiplayer crossplay. Except it's not even exclusive to their store ironically (you do need an Epic account for it though).
Like every PvE game which does not have hundreds of people working to churn out content, its playerbase will dwindle until only those who do not get bored by its gameplay stick around. Whether it's Left 4 Dead, Payday, Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide, those types of games follow this pattern...
And I for one, see no fucking issue with that. It's a great game, people play it until they have had their fill and then move on. Helldivers 2 is only an outlier because of how hard it hit at launch. It absolutely does not have the content pipeline to keep a large playerbase engaged, so yeah it will not keep printing a lot of money, just a little bit every now and then.
Now excuse me as I go and spread some managed democracy.
tl;dr: Watch what you put online and who you friend, especially on Steam. Once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever.
That right here is very much what it boils down to. Whether it's SteamHistory or The Internet Archive or whatever public or private data store... Any information you publish is out of your control as soon as you do.
Vocal minority is the assumption when this sort of collective outrage manifests. This time though, thanks to Steam player count we will actually get some hard numbers and see if that has an effect or not.
Fuck me, that is some quadruple-A-level bullshit from our man Yves. I played the closed beta and I am sorry to say that this game is going to tank, hard. Its gameplay loop is waaaay too simplistic to be making those grandiose claims.
It's kind of amazing they chose to go with that design, when they hadthe benefit of hindsight with recent superhero-backed games:
"Well duh, let's try and make one of these live service games".
You can hear a more detailed explanation on VLC's stance from the man himself (JB Kempf) in the FOSS pod S1E11 episode around 22:10.
Basically:
I would say it is more of a practical consideration. Private trackers generally enforce upload/download ratios. This ensures the health of the sharing pool stays good.
The new MW3 steam reviews are locked until its official release, as is always the case. People are venting where it is both possible and making some sense.
The author likely is aware of this and just likes to poke fun at angry CoD fans.
Nothing particularly original, but it's mine, so here goes.
Not on picture: Samsung Galaxy S20 with a Spigen Tough Armor case.
I don't see the pattern of a review bombing in Steam reviews... Looks like a game getting released very soon in early access and failing to gain traction.
It's sitting on my wishlist and I'm waiting for it to get to 1.0, but their update cadence has been very slow. Now they are saying their studio does not have the funds to complete the game.
I do hope they turn this around, but as a consumer I am very wary when it comes to titles in early access, and even more when the studio goes radio silent for months.