Epic Game Store released its Year in Review a few weeks ago and it’s noteworthy in that sales of third party titles went down 18% over 2023. And 2023 sales were down 13% over 2022. In total, sales of third party games on EGS dropped from $355m in 2022 to $255m in 2024. That’s despite having more accounts than ever and the free games, etc. My guess is that they got more purchases when they would give out $10 vouchers during the sales and had deeper discounts then customers lost interest as those incentives tapered off. They earned a good bit of ill will with their exclusives poaching but you barely hear about Epic Exclusives any longer. Alan Wake 2 was, but Epic was also directly involved in the development so that was a somewhat different situation (and last I heard still hadn’t made back its costs). The other last exclusive I remember hearing about was Saints Row reboot and… the less said about that the better.
Steam launched their Year in Review yesterday and it… doesn’t give any numbers for year over year total sales. They used to give better information and all the other signs from the year pointed to a laudable year for them financially (breaking records for concurrent players, sales of new titles, 10% increase in Seasonal Sale revenue, 15% increase in new game sales revenue, etc) but I guess they’re keeping their cards close to the chest this year. Too bad.
I’ve been watching a YouTuber play a game called “We Happy Few”. His first couple run-throughs were when it was still in early release, but now he’s playing the full release. It looked interesting enough to me that I went looking for it on Steam but it was $60. It didn’t look that interesting so I put it on my wish list hoping it might go on sale sometime. Steam has it for $20 in their Spring Sale so I think I’m going to grab it. Anybody played it? What did you think?
There’s a number of people who prefer the original Mafia II and the differences between them are cosmetic. The remaster has more detailed textures but at the cost of the original’s PhysX mechanics and eye movement.
I’ve played it. Haven’t finished it. The game itself is clever in both the overall premise and the writing, but combat is just awful. (Not necessarily difficult, but boring and awkward.
The message keeps many of the behind-the-scenes details under wraps but says two new individuals — one named Victor (a.k.a. Foledinho) and another named Marinus (a.k.a. Rapsak) — have adopted the leadership role, with both of their profiles now bearing the “Site Owner” title. The leadership change signals the beginning of a new era for Nexus Mods, and for Scott, a much-needed break.
“The strain of being responsible for the behemoth I created has taken its toll,” Scott explained. “The stress of the job has been a regular source of anxiety and stress-related health issues. I realised that I have been burning out and this started to have an impact on my staff and Nexus Mods as a whole. So, I firmly believe that the best thing for the future of Nexus Mods is for me to step aside and bring in new leadership to steer the business forward with renewed energy to make Nexus Mods the modding community we all truly deserve.”
The small project born in Scott’s bedroom for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind eventually ballooned into a massive entity in the gaming space. The Nexus Mods About Us page notes that this beating heart of the PC gaming community is made up of 63.4 million users and 16.8 billion file downloads, positioning it as one of the most highly trafficked UK-based websites on the planet.
There used to be a number of people here that played BF4 for quite a bit…any interest in a revival of a squad once the new Battlefield is released late this year or early next year?
Rumors that the open beta will be held soon is encouraging, and I like what ive seen from the BattleLab releases.
I really liked BF1 & V, but they didn’t ever instill the need to play with a squad like BF4 did. Hopefully, they get it right again.
I lost track of the all the different Battlefield #s and re-runs, but I loved the first few games in the series (2? 3? can’t remember).
Is the new one going to be set in the modern era again? Will it be like the old Battlefields (capture and hold flags), or just another battle royale extraction shooter?
If it’s like the old games, I’d love to play in a squad!
We did indeed used to have a big SDMB group that would play battlefield 3 together long ago. Mostly that group has drifted apart and with the SDMB population being as low as it is I’m not sure there are many new people to recruit. I’m not sure if I’m going to get the game, but if I do, I’m open to meeting new people to play it with.
There’s an open beta going on right now. You need an “early access” key to play today, but it will be available to anyone tomorrow. And you can get one of those keys just by watching a twitch streamer playing the game for a half hour.
It is indeed a modern day shooter and seems to be going back to the BF3/4 style old school battlefield. I think it has multiple modes including the traditional conquest mode and some version of rush as well as others.
Steam changed the date of their autumn sale and it actually started today. Makes sense – it was a little weird having a black friday sale just a month before the big winter sale. Starting at the end of September spaces it out pretty well between the summer and winter sales.
This page has a list of “special deals” many of which are actually quite good and feel like the old steam sales from 10+ years ago. I don’t know if that’s static for the whole sale or if it will be rotated with new games.
On that list, if you like stealth / sort of puzzle games Desperados 3 is really good, Monster train is one of the best deckbuilder and/or roguelike games ever, and I’ve heard great things about control although it’s been free on epic 3 or 4 times. But every game on that list looks pretty great from a price to rating perspective. I have more than half but I think I’ll grab transport fever 2, far cry primal, and the south park game.
