I know enough people have already said it, but the whole “you’re licensing not buying” has been a thing for as long as I’ve used Steam.

The answer to your question though, for me anyhow, is convenience. It is very easy to buy games on Steam, there are frequently sales where you can get games for lower prices. It’s super easy to play your games with a friend using Steam’s in-game overlay, and it also gives a unified platform where you can show off achievements, clips from your gameplay, screenshots, share guides about games, browse forums about your games, etc.

On top of that, Steam has become a trusted name for many people, myself included. While they can take your games, legally speaking, they don’t- and they’re very often pro-consumer in a way that many other companies aren’t. (To address your Destiny example, Destiny is the one that decided to sunset half their fuckin’ games it was one of many reasons I stopped playing. Didn’t matter where you bought it from, you gotta connect to Destiny’s servers to play at the end of the day.)

On the contrary, they’ve done many things that are helpful to gamers- and yes they also help Valve/Steam, but comparing to others in their field, it’s worth noting imo. Steam pushed VR adoption ahead significantly with their Index headset. They’ve done phenomonal work in making gaming on Linux viable without extra work from game devs, which is especially great with how Windows keeps getting worse and worse. Up until recently, if you had a legal dispute with them, while it WAS subject to arbitrition, they would pay all legal costs, whether you win or lose. (that has since changed after a law firm took advantage of that to try to pin Valve with hundreds of individual claims in order to get a payout, but I digress).

I’ve got my issues with them- being a TF2 player, I’m still sore over their treatment of the TF2 bot crisis and their overall neglect for their older titles. They need to get their shit together for moderation purposes, the amount of bot accounts and scams are downright shameful, especially with how obvious it is once you know the patterns. But overall, when compared to their competitors such as Epic (for game distribution) or Ubisoft, Activision, etc (for game development), they’re one of the better companies imo.

I have never had a serious injury requiring medical help (broken bones, concusssion, anything that should have you going to the ER, regardless of whether or not you actually did)

Bro, you’re arguing with a dude named SnotFlickerman. Expecting a nuanced opinion may be asking a tad much here.

To actually add my own opinion to this, Mr. Flickerman here is representing this in a bit too black & white of a setting. Like obviously it’s gonna be worse if he gets elected. But that doesn’t magically make it safe for an individual to oppose him now. Rather than insisting that a single person retaliate (and thus very likely have the ire of Trump’s less stable fanbase focused on them), it would be more effective to have groups speak out. That (among other things) is why I think the US Army releasing their statement is great- even aside from the high respect that a lot of Trump folk have for the military, it doesn’t give crazies a person to latch onto and attack.

Lmao, why am I not surprised that when I see someplace I grew up around in the news, it’s only for bad reasons? Still sad tho, tbh

While I agree that I think that in most formal situations you should not write that way, I personally see no problem with a more casual writing style like that in a post like this. Seeing as it’s written as the writer’s personal account of their journey to regain privacy, a slightly more casual writing style is fitting. The benefit of a more expressive writing style, in this context, outweighs the potential reduction in clarity, given that most readers will be able to use context clues just fine.

As a side note, y’all shouldn’t be so quick to downvote this guy. While I don’t agree with his perspective myself, it’s still a fair point of view to have, and it ain’t like it’s being written in bad faith or such. But that’s just my two cents, I s’pose.

I don’t know the term for it (I’m sure someone who does will chime in later), but that still makes sense. It’s a way of typing things out how they’re pronounced. Some other examples includes: ‘at’ll (as a shortening of “that’ll”), ol’ (as a shortening of “old”, as in “good ol’ boy”), or the most common y’all being a popular southern way of shortening and contracting ‘you’ and ‘all’.

Note that I’m not claiming this is perfect proper English, but just saying that from the perspective of myself being a native speaker, it makes perfect sense to me, and just adds some character to how my mental voice reads their text.

Well you couldn’t tell now lol, but when I commented, about 25% of the comments were accusing OP of being a corporate shill or similar “you’re just giving Spotify free advertisement” stuff.

People are like piranahs on Lemmy when it comes to anything ad-adjacent lol. It’s good to be vigilant, but damn, not EVERYTHING is something, lol. Honestly, getting all riled up over an ad someone saw in a subway and was amused by is pretty shellfish of them…

Sent a friend request just now.

If you’re still looking for folk to playtest your game, I’d be down to give it a go! I’ve not done that kinda stuff before, but I have played an unhealthy amount of games, including the Stanley Parable. c:

I just wanted to say I’m almost exactly the same way, and it’s kinda cool to see someone else stuck in this halfway point, lol. The way I describe it is that I can picture the concept of something in my head, but the moment I try to focus on any details, it gets warped or corrupted or simply won’t manifest any more detail. Same on struggling with faces/remembering people, not so much on spatial orientation.

While I haven’t played chess in a long while, I can kinda draw off my experience with similar games and logic problems I’ve worked on. I can kinda hold the concepts in my head, but not really visualize it. So I’ll not be envisioning the chess board, but I can still easily puzzle out “if I take this pawn, that one will take my rook, then I can take it with my knight”, etc.