I’m suddenly reminded of an old flash game about this concept, where various religious icons fought each other (and I think maybe they were mostly portrayed somewhat offensively?)

it looks like a car you’d steal in Cyberpunk 2077

Don’t insult Cyberpunk’s car designs like that, man

For AAA games, discs have just been fancy download codes for the last decade. I don’t understand getting upset is now; if these retailers were going to “honor the people who pay their hard earned money to purchase it,” they should’ve started complaining a long time ago.

I ended up settling on spells in my left hand, sword in my right, dodging like a maniac.

Right up until the last 3 hours where I respec’d into exclusively two-handed sword + heavy armor because

It’s actually way easier to treat sewage than it is to desalinate water: https://www.waterandwastewater.com/how-is-desalination-different-from-water-reclamation/

I’m not saying it isn’t insanely hard (actually I mentioned that fact twice), I’m just trying to point out that Steam gives developers more tools for visibility than any storefront that exists, with most storefronts giving no tools whatsoever. Any game with no marketing budget selling enough to support a multiple-person development team, when they have to compete directly with AAA games, is impressive for both the developer and the platform.

If you want to advocate for improvements and change, you can’t just ignore the positive things that already exist.

~Also you clearly didn’t read the page about the update visibility rounds, because those have nothing to do with popularity and are completely randomized regarding who among the recently-updated games gets a spot on the front page. In fact, your game gets rotated off that spot once you’ve gotten 1 million impressions.~

1. Blatantly untrue, as update visibility rounds are one of several marketing tools Steam gives you that can put your game on the front page for free, regardless of popularity.

2. Kitfox Games has published a guide (one among many you can find on the internet) on how to successfully market a game with no advertising budget. While their existing audience definitely helped, and as they mention, it takes a significant amount of time and effort, they do not spend actual money on sponsorships or advertising. This would not be a viable strategy on any other storefront, save maybe Epic, though Epic still gives fewer tools than Steam.

Steam has been coasting on the fact that everyone shoots themselves in the foot, sure, but you should look into the unparalleled level of “free” (30% cut) marketing support Steam gives to developers. On no other platform could developers end up with the visibility they achieve on Steam with nothing more than very strategic timing and good social media presence. It’s still insanely hard, but the fact that it’s even possible to compete with zero marketing budget against AAA companies speaks volumes.

Here, though there isn’t anything super concrete.

I dropped KCD 1 after ~30 hours for the same reason as you, but at least KCD has some justification - the whole point of the game is to be an ultra-realistic simulation of medieval life, a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word.

Your character starts out not even knowing how to read, even though you, the player, obviously do to interact with the GUI. He’s the son of a blacksmith who never would have learned anything else, so he, the character, has to spend time learning basically everything, even if you, the player, already have it figured out.

You and I think that design is unfun. Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it, as KCD 2 sold something like a million copies on launch day and instantly recouped their development costs.

I thought that didn’t work?

There was a ~1.5 year old reddit thread that talked about this

cough https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts cough

Others have already pointed out important things about what the dev has said; I would like to add that the book the game is based on has a number of female characters which are simply not in the game.