Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

For a moment, I thought my enemies managed to ban me from the site forever!

Panta stop talking about NTR, the FBI is trying to shut the place down.

This is for two months, but yea its still really high. I just thought it was funny I hit those exact numbers, like what are the odds.

The electric has always been expensive here especially in these types of buildings. The AC/heat units consume a huge amount of power and without it you'll be cooking because of how these windows absorb heat. Just can't win

Pretty sure I used lucky 7s on all of the optional weapons in FF7 for my first kills. Definitely Ruby.

Thanks for fixing the site issues, and Vyre for responding.

So are gog, humble bundle and others without charging that premium.

From my point of view Steam is in the position it is now because they were the first on the market and primarily because Valve forced it on it's customers by demanding it to be installed together with Half Life 2.

If companies try this today it's perceived as anti consumer, which it is.

Steam stays on top because by the time competition showed up a lot of people already had built a catalogue of games on steam and understandably don't want multiple launchers with different logins for the exact same purpose on their system.

Afaik Steam takes a cut from in game micro transactions if purchased thru steam wallet so they directly profit from enshittification of gaming and there are few games that shove their micro transactions as much in the customers face as valve does in their own games.

I could care less about his yard purchase if he simply bought it to enjoy in silence. For some reason he felt the need to frame the purchase as a ocean science project.

One thing I wanted to mention yesterday before the sites problem and losing my original post, is that I grew up with games being considerably expensive to buy here than in other coountries.

Because there wasnt a cartdrige factory here. All games were imported, with incredibly aggressive taxes, something like 50%+.

I started seeing Steam as the cheap and indie game back then (basically around the golden age of PS1 and N64). But I never trusted their catalog. I was thinking there as the flash-like gaming, what I wasnt interested at all to purchase.

Only a couple of years later where they started to introduce mainstream game, while still keeping the low prices that made me see it as a dominant platform. The easy recipe: good game + low price.

Nowadays I discovered that Steam dont only host games, but softwares. For example, this year I purchased Vegas and Asesprite, two very good apps that basically work as a good and old lifetime license.

It is so damn refreshing seeing this model of purchasing software, instead of this subscription hell that is every single apps you think in using.

I cant say dominant because dominating the market demands a lot of strengths, but I think Steam covers many bases that people like me really desire: good product + low prices (low price of the game and low price for the hardware) + license model.

I dont know a thing about Steam directors, nor their yachts or the ***.

I dont care about this, and I think it is funny how the press likes to emphatise something maybe to prove a point or a narrativa, but the reality shows only a handful care about this ***.

I dont know who Gabe is, I was pretty happy without knowing, and I will be pretty happy forgetting him or anything aside the next game I will play on Steam.

Have fun with your yacht.

And naked hoes in the pn board parties.

Because the only point of having a yacht is to have naked hoes shaking with the waves.

Do you know what GoG stands for?
"Good old Games". Its literally a completely different market.

I went to Humble Bundle to see if I could buy Crimson Desert. Oops, cant find it. Maybe its too new.
Lets see what other big 2026 games there are:
Pragmata: 79.99 on Humble Bundle, 79.99 on Steam
RE:Requiem: 94.99 on HB, 94.99 on Steam
Nioh 3: 90.99 on HB, 90.99 on Steam
Reanimal: 53.49 on HB, 40.11 on Steam

Any other 2026 games you want to look at? Did I cherry pick to suit my narrative?

So being first on the market locked them in?
Wheres Myspace?
Wheres AOL?
Wheres MSN messenger?

Being first wont lock you in. Provide a better product and you can usurp the trailblazer.

Literally EVERY other e-shop does this.

Only one left, hurry before it sells out!

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/product/final-fantasy-vi-masterline-terra-1_6-scale-statue-105987?variation=204273

They don't just sell super old games anymore though. I've seen cyberpunk, Baldurs gate 3 or the 2023 system shock remake in their shop. I think their unique selling proposition is DRM free.

Yeah, but the argument was that steam is better than the rest, that they don't participate in enshitification.

These aren't good comparisons. AOL is a weak example as you don't lose anything by switching internet providers.
In the case of MSN and Myspace you can convince your social circle to switch platforms with you. You can't convince your steam games catalogue to switch to a different platform.

Myspace surprisingly is still alive.

Humble bundle has been offering vegas pro together with music maker and sound forge pretty much every year. It's usually 1 version behind the most recent version but it also costs a lot less.
For instance vegas pro 16 was available in a 2021 bundle for ~25 bucks. Checking steam today they offer version 18, which I believe was also available on humble bundle before, for 150 bucks.

I also read davinci resolve is better for video editing and there is a free version, although I don't know how restricted it is compared to the paid one.

I'm not going to search every game to compare for you but Crimson Desert is currently 70 bucks on steam and on gg.deals I've seen 4 different shops offering for below 60 bucks on a 15% discount.


Steam isn't always the cheapest option.

It has nothing to do with the article that was posted, but Shichishito does raise an important point, in that once you pick one of these distributors for digital games, you tend to stick with that one forever because you can't take your library with you to a competitor.

FFXI was the only PC game I played for years and years, and I remember going to Babbages to get CoP and ToAU discs.

Anything released after FFXI I play on PS3/4/5, which is how I managed to avoid Steam entirely.

Not a problem we ever used to have to deal with, and one we still don't have a great answer for.

Things I never said

Things I have said:



lol
Yeah it costs less because its yesteryear's model. A 2026 model car is gonna be cheaper if you buy it in 2027. What the *** argument are you trying to make with that lmao.

Once again
I've already covered this

Sunken cost fallacy is a strong prison and companies are aware of it.

You brought up new games and made pricing comparisons between steam and other platforms. I picked up on the first listed example "Crimson Desert", since you seem to like it. If we check steamdb.info we can see steam so far never went below 69,99 on this title.
I quoted your snippet but others like Thorny and Pantafernando argued in a similar direction of pricing being a strong argument in favor of steam. I didn't feel the need to cite everyone's quote on this.

Further I gave examples why I think steam isn't as consumer friendly as it often gets depicted and thus isn't worthy of the level of worship it receives. I've also reasoned why I think people put up with steam premium price tags and why I believe it isn't a 100% voluntary decision.

Let's at least try to keep this open ended and not turn it into a quote repeating fest to avoid counter arguments in a effort to have the last word.

The argument was both platforms have offered yesteryear's versions of vegas pro, but HB happened to bundle it with other software while still being cheaper.


Watch out panta, the newspapers fly fast in the thunder dome.

It is why a lot of the softmod and console hacking community derives from Brazil.

(Third attempt to post this, hopefully it goes through this time)

I still say some of us grew up in the golden age of the digital age and it keeps getting worse all the time.

My golden era of gaming was the PS1, that totally won the entire brazilian gaming community at the time.

We had those cheap stands, that had a PC at their home, they used to buy empty CD-ROMs, and burn ISOs to mass sell then as cheap as $3.

It was the first time when video game actually became accessible to us.

Ive just hit my weekly model limit with Claude Code.

Finished my weekly dose of vibe coding.

My app is taking shape. It is slowly but steadly converging to what I think is useful.

I actually had a memo to unsub from Claude at next day 19, because I thought I would use Copilot (because that is what I use at work).

But I think the plan is ok for a casual vibe coder like me. I dont want to spend entire weeks doing. Having a set limit, I can start vibe coding at friday, and now, sunday, I got my quota done, learned a bit, the app is improving, and now I can focus on my other projects.

Im learning a few tricks to make vibe coding more accurate and reliable, and less expensive.

Things are starting to take shape!

The difference between a "casual" vibe coder and a vibe coder is.. what.

The vibe coder makes buggy products. Panta sits in the c*ck chair watching.

I seem to remember a marketing Email from Squenix about this product a year or so ago. It was way cheaper then. Still an eye popping price just not THIS eye popping.

Hey now. The person in the corner is at least getting something out of watching.

Only about a 20% increase. It was 13.8

You gave ONE example (it takes a cut of microtransactions) and I debunked it immediately (every e-shop does this)

I picked Crimson Desert because its the first game that came to mind because I am actively playing it. I listed those 2026 release games not to show that Steam is cheaper than alternatives, I listed those games to debunk your claim that humble bundle is cheaper than Steam for new games. If I wanted to compare games that are 5+++ years old, I could have done that too, but considering Steam has huge quarterly sales, that could have gone in any direction and would take way too long to compare things. "Well in April 2019, RDR2 was cheaper on HB, but in May it was cheaper on Steam, they were the same price in June and July, Steam was cheaper in August, but in Sept it was cheaper on HB and you got RDR 1 with RDR2", I aint doing that. Not to mention that shopping for sales is not exclusive to gaming e-shops, it applies to any e-market or even local brick and mortar shopping.

And my new home fluked in the end.

Ive decided to stop waiting, and gonna ask my lawyer to terminate the contract, because this was a con from the start.

Im really worried if the sellers will nicely give me back the first payment I did.

If they dont, I will have to consult my lawyer what is the best action to take.

Giving up a large amount of money or expecting the law to do justice.

Before anyone ask, the problem was that I signed a contract for an apartment, but after a couple of months, the apartment was never able to be sold, because of some ongoing process.

After 1 year, the apartment is still unable to be sold, and the process is barely moving.

I dont think I have any fault here aside not having a lawyer fro the very beginning, and being tricked by those dishonest people.

I was careless, sure. But in my book, they had bad faith from the beginning.

The only good thing is that if I cancel the contract, I can start tomorrow to find someplace to rent, and move out of here faster, instead of waiting at least more 2 months, that is the very minimum to complete a process like this one.

My believers, please pray there is a slight of honestity in the sellers and they give me back the money, and we peacefully close this episode.

My haters, you can keep expecting my worst.

anybody look through the ufo dump? saw a few cool things but its harder than ever to know what to believe these days.

If my position is steam/valve/newel aren't the saints they get portrait as and back it up with a example that demonstrates that they are just as bad as their competition and your retort is their competition does it too then I'm not sure what you've debunked there.

Here is another example: Valve has been, and still is, pushing unregulated gambling in it's games, which are also marketed at minors. Please remember if you want to debunk my take then "their competition does so, too." doesn't cut it.


I didn't narrow it down to just Humble Bundle.
I didn't narrow it down to new games either, you did. I just followed up one of your cherry picked examples to demonstrate that even there steam doesn't always offer the best deal.

Lets take the second example on your list. According to steamdb Pragmata never went for less than 59,99 on steam. If we look it up on ggdeals we see multiple offers for 50 and less. Fanatical, which is similar to Humble Bundle, is among those sub 50 offers.


If this gets too much for regulars of this thread and we should continue in a separate one let it be known.

I guess so far a good take away from all this is if you like to save a little on your game purchases then gg.deals is worth a bookmark.



I'll burn a treat for your cause.