Only one episode out so far so hard to tell, but a moment from the book that I had been excited about ended up being done in a very anticlimactic manner with it lacking same emotional impact.

To add on to this for iOS/macOS/iPadOS if you use safari you can send YouTube to your TV through airplay. Skips all the ads and if you use sponsorblock skips that too, so if you are too lazy to install smart tube this is a setup that works nicely.

I'm not affected since I use freetube and newpipe. This affects people who were actually paying and watching YouTube logged in but not people like me.

Me too. So nice not needing an account to keep a playlist or channel subs.

Newpipe and its forks for the win.

I usually use freetube but few times I've used firefox never had an issue. I don't use a YouTube account, so might be why I never encountered problems.

My desktop which I got hooked up to a monitor and also a TV, so I switch between the two depending on if I want something super responsive or a cinematic couch experience.

Been also supplementing that with my Steam Deck where I can pick up playing the same game and continue my progress with a handheld.

Nice hope some Foss F-droid type app options pop up. I love it on Android since it's where I can go to find a simple app that I know won't have ads or IAP or subscriptions.

Nintendo doesn't reward super patient gaming though like other consoles where I didnt pay more than over $20 for any PS4 first party exclusives. It is actually on the weird side where sometimes physical prices actually go up with Nintendo seeming to be more conservative about number of physical copies they make to keep prices high compared to Sony where brick and motor stores look to offload physical inventory. So leads to used market for Nintendo games going crazy compared to downward trend of other consoles.

Isthereanydeals is a great resource. I always make sure to look up a game there before buying to check what the lowest price it was ever sold was.

That link was for helldivers 2 which is only available on steam on pc. From what I understand the keys are actually provided by the devs/publishers and steam doesn't get a cut of key sales.

Those are steam keys.

I've bought most of games through other sites because the games would be discounted lower and sooner than Steam. So it's more personal experience than theory in my case.

Humble bundles on the even more extreme end of like 8 games sometimes being cheaper than a single title has ever been discounted.

Steam also enforce a strict key price parity.

Do they?

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/helldivers-2/info/

if you think a 30% cut doesn't reflect on the cost a player is paying, you're out of your mind. This is business 101.

Isn't business 101 charging as much as possible and not passing on savings to customers, and trying to capture as much high paying consumers as possible before being forced to start capturing price sensitive consumers with discounts?

Price of games that didn't release on Steam seem to reflect that. Even games released by platform owners like Sony or Nintendo first party exclusives and the beloved Blizzard. Isn't that pricing strategy business 101 as opposed to this belief that savings pass onto consumers? Lowering price right away doesn't seem like good price maximizing strategy when goal would be to increase retail price consumers are willing to pay over time.

So which non billionaire associated company or publisher.

You don't buy games?

Why even buy games period? Why risk giving money to any of them since things that become popular risk making the people selling them to become wealthy? Not like indies are immune to it looking at Minecraft becoming too popular that too many people wanted to buy it making one person then a corporation wealthy, so why not just not buy period to prevent the issue from even becoming a possibility?

The best solution is prevention. Don't buy anything.

What? Do you know how redeeming codes work? You create an account like on steam, origin, gog, xbox, Blizzard, or UPlay and go to activate game and enter in your code.

I don't know what tangent you are going off about that method being an unreasonable amount of work. What are you even arguing about.

Have you really never redeemed a code ever in your life that you see it as illegal activity and a security risk?

Used /r/gamedeals and isthereanydeals a long time so not even sure how effective the price clauses are when I've gotten so many deals for games on my preferred platform for a lower price.

Interestingly enough GOG takes 30% and has had periods they struggled.

The storefront saw a slight increase in revenue but a net loss of around $1.14 million in the last financial quarter. Overall, it’s lost about $2.21 million over the past three quarters compared to a $1.37 million profit over the same period in 2020. CD Projekt didn’t immediately reply to questions about how its new strategy might translate into changes to GOG’s features or catalog.

One staff member tied the earlier layoffs to increased competition in PC gaming storefronts, which has driven major platforms to lower the commission they take from developers.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/29/22808199/cd-projekt-gog-losses-restructuring-earnings-2021

Funny thing is lower cut is likely to benefit steam more by killing off the competition for good with the economies of scale they have on their side compared to competitors which themselves are running at a loss and not clear if the cut is sustainable in the long run to justify running.

I pointing to your previous claims of illegal activity and making fun of how you'd probably see the sending of a code as illegal.

Running a crappy service nobody wants to use is more effective. Even better if it is so bad the company goes bankrupt. That's how to successfully avoid money.