Chebucto Regional Softball Club

'Why didn't they just try harder?' is an increasingly worrying take. A company could copy Steam's storefront and backend, verbatim, and it wouldn't impact Steam's monopoly on PC game sales. They're entrenched *and* they're well-liked. You can't buy a reputation overnight. Blaming the action without considering the environment is still a mistake. Epic tried everything, and people still scoff about UI, like *that's* the billion-dollar difference. Nah: it's attributing the difference in outcome to surface-level distinctions. And if Epic unfucked their apparently ugly storefront, these people would pick another excuse, because I guarantee you it wouldn't change EGS's irrelevance.

... and then they'll recoil in horror when you mention that's what a monopoly is. Monopolies can be positive and functional. They're still monopolies. Streaming was better was Netflix was the only choice, and had everything, for a reasonable price. Competition's supposed to be what drives those qualities. Exclusivity breaks that. Exclusivity splinters the market into desperate fiefdoms. But there's still a word for when only one store matters.

Seriously though, some maniac's bound to coerce this onto PS Vita. And Android.

Do not ask those farmers follow-up questions.

Dreamcast port when?

But the instance dedicated to a death-grip on this one stock said it was the future!

Oh fuck off. Launch a second game. Quit erasing what people already love so you can force popularity on some new bullshit.

That's not what "spliced" and "manipulation" mean. A spliced run could play each floor a dozen times and continue from the best outcome. This video jump-cuts to a completely different dungeon. Luck manipulation means doing weird shit so you can predict a random number. This video straight-up cheats for numbers the game would never roll.

They did quietly remove a few of Tommy Tallarico's records, halfway through that Hbomberguy video.

That's just *loot.* You don't like lootboxes - you like when games function as games. The part they're bringing back is charging five actual dollars for gambling on bullshit that should just happen through gameplay.

Project any harder and we could have this conversation on the face of the full moon. This shit is like gambling - where it's not literally just gambling. 'It can't be wrong if it makes money!' is amoral libertarian crap. People had this foisted upon them, until the widespread demand to stop fucking doing it could be dulled to background noise. You're lying about yourself. I *know* you don't like paying for this shit, because *you told me.* So don't fucking roll your eyes and insist someone somewhere must love it. They all know it's a shit deal, as surely as you know it's a shit deal. You're just bargaining around it and refusing to acknowledge that any amount of this is too much.

It's objectively abusive. Games convince you to value arbitrary worthless rewards - that is what makes them games. Attaching a price tag exploits how humans are bad at distinguishing forms of value. There's no conversion ratio between soccer goals and hamburgers, no matter how badly you want a few of each.

Ban the entire business model. It's an abuse. There's no form of it that is separable from deceit. Bickering about numbers means nothing. But here you are bullshitting me about how *these* lootboxes won't cost money, when *that's what lootboxes are,* and I gotta get raked over these specific coals before I'm allowed an opinion about raking anyone over coals. Fuck off. You can't sneer your way out of denying the blindingly obvious. Fuck any game where you can spend money. It's a scam. What I *like* has nothing to do with it. It's exploitation that's ruining the entire industry.

[Lie better.](https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Loot_Box#Prices)

You'll pay to pay to pay to pay. At some point a game might occur. Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.

If we allow this to continue there will be nothing else. Only legislation will fix this.

[Launch him into space.](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2021/12/03/bobby)

They plainly fucking can.

Fuck software patents.

> you’re saying monopolies are terrible *Where?* What negative effect have I suggested? Be specific. Look for it, clearly. People get so fucking weird about this. You're having an entire other conversation, inside your heads.