Zoraptor

They all (exc the Britties, who always increase indirect taxes instead) have increased VAT, which is the classic consumption tax. Since two of those rises are directly referenced in the links and you've accepted it's the case with Greece (and it's a not directly on topic) I'll not provide more links, if you want to check it out yourself you can always google Portugal VAT rise (2011, IIRC) and Ireland VAT rise (2012, IIRC). VAT increases are particularly bad because they always hit those with less discretionary income hardest, those with discretionary income can simply stop spending- which, of course, is bad for the economy- while those who have little to no discretionary income find themselves with even less.

They have: Britland Portugal Italy (recent elections notwithstanding) Ireland Greece Spain At the very least France and the Balts as well. While it is pretty stupid the ultimate problem was overspending in the good years, now they only have a selection of various poor choices. They've gone for the one which best matches the fiscal orthodoxy du jour, which is of course coming from the same people who completely missed the crisis (encouraged it, even) which is largely responsible for the problems being so bad.

Can't say that I particularly liked Risen 1, something about the progression seemed a bit off. In Gothic 2 if I ran into low level enemies after a certain point there was no way they stood a chance, but in R1 my high level guy still contrived to lose to things like vultures (and those gnomes, those horrible horrible gnomes). I think it was the locked camera perspective if you dodged, way too easy to lose where your enemies were. Played a bit more BG2, got past Suldanesselar and killed Gromnir- Ha! Good fun- who proved that it isn't just my party that sometimes suffers hilarious saving throw failures. Yaga Shura's fire giants are absolutely brutal for guys that don't cast spells and with better calls for help, plus the inclusion of a dragon (can't remember him being there in previous playthroughs) really puts the molten sulphur on the cake.

Pretty much ^^^ exactly. Most governmental spending, even 'wasteful' spending tends to at least get spent directly in the economy. If you do as has been happening a lot in Europe and both cut spending massively- thus raising unemployment- and increase taxes then you aren't going to get growth any time soon because you're hitting your core employed workforce at both ends by shrinking it and by wringing more tax from it. There's only a finite amount of money and those policies reduce how much is available. The flow on to businesses that rely on that discretionary and even non-discretionary spending just depresses things further, as they fail because their customers have no money or confidence. The amount of pandering to credit agencies and the like- who were singularly useless at very best when it came to correctly rating the institutions largely responsible for the financial problems- is pretty ridiculous.

It's true, there's notabl elack of typos in stuff Volo quotes, so he clearly uses Ctrl+C/ Ctrl+V rather than transcribing it himself.

Austerity is working pretty much exactly as expected- if you take large amounts of money out of the economy it will contract and that is what happened/ is happening. It isn't even reducing debt, it's just reducing the rate at which it accumulates. Only way to fix it is to build a time machine, go back to high growth years and politely suggest that (1) banks aren't omnipotent and cannot suspend reality by wishing real hard/ giving big donations and (2) running deficits in good years as well as bad is moronic, poor stewardship, and cannot be sustained.

Likely, but no outright confirmation.

Not sure about that- the problem may be that nobody wants it and Hasbro isn't willing to fund games themselves. They did say the Planescape setting was available for licensing recently, and that at least implies D&D as well.

K2's never been out of print retail, there was another pressing not that long ago as well. In any case [game] being available after a hiatus is a feature of DD in general- GOG is probably responsible for more old games being available again than steam, especially since a lot of the old games steam does sell are rebranded GOG releases.

I wish people would be a little bit more consistent in their criticism. Paradox releases a bunch of cheap games, often of rather... questionable quality, which are basically "throw ideas at wall, see which stick" trying to replicate the success of Magicka, and they are effectively glorified dlc front ends. By and large they get away with that strategy with little criticism, yet it is hardly a million miles from EA's. They both do it for the same reasons, the sort of people who buy awesome robe and staff dlc for Magicka/ appearance pack 212 for The Sims are easy to sell to, as opposed to discerning consumers of good taste, refinement and breeding, who are hard to sell to, and it is inherently easier to get people to spend small amounts of money. All businesses love their customers being easy to sell to, so that is what they aim for. The inconsistency is really obvious on a site like RPS where they mine hits by OMG EA! Ubi! Acti! headlines about every week knowing that there'll be a Pavlovian response, but if a smaller company decides to do something like mine dlc for cash it doesn't even rate a mention in their "here's the latest shovelware" release news. And if Valve were ever to start doing microtransactions or frivolous dlc, or randomised drops sold for cash with a share going to Valve in an auction house, in that purely theoretical universe I'm sure they'd be crusading against that as well*. I quite often find I don't end up finishing games any more because I cannot play them for a few days, or a week or two and simply lose the thread of what I was doing. It's happened to me at least three times in both Gothic 2&3 neither of which I have finished despite enjoying both. In contrast, I finished BG2 in 5 days when it came out despite being in uni- and just prior to exam time, too. *Not specifically a dig at Valve (want to take it as such, go to the Steam suxxors! thread) who are after all just monetising markets like EA do, more so at the double standards even the more highly rated games journalists and especially the internet at large have. [1000 posts on vaguely on topic stuff, party time!]

Or maybe not. There's a world of difference between a $25 buy in for a company with a Proven Record of Excellence like Obsidian and one whose main claim to fame is running a successful kickstarter, and whose game offerings to date have been... hmmm, at best. Difficult to justify a 66% mark up for the Numenera base tier over the WL2 base tier when effectively nothing has changed in the meantime. That's more than 6 Outcasts worth of money.

I can say exactly that- it's the same reason Origin and Uplay can claim eleventy billion subscribers when their offerings have a poor reputation. If you've bundled it and made it compulsory then you have a captive audience, those who want to play the games that require it. If HL2 sells 8 million copies then you have at bare minimum 8 million customers. And if you're the first to do it- and the only one to do it with 3rd party titles- then you've gone a long way to capturing the market. And no, we would not be dominated by anyone under my scenario. Don't like Origin? Don't buy EA games. Don't like 'ActiBattle.net'? Don't buy Actiblizz games. Don't like Matrix? Don't buy Matrix games. That's a far preferable situation to: Don't like Steam? Don't buy [long list of 3rd party publisher + Valve] games as the situation is now, as it is based on choice rather than restriction. You'd still have the actual independent stores like 'D2D'/ GG/ 'Impulse' and they would not be beholden to one competing behemoth either. EA could pull their games, certainly, but that would only be ~20%, rather than the ~70% that Steam enjoys if they ever wanted to get nasty with a competitor.

I'd bought games DD prior to steam. The switch was inevitable as it is a far better way to supply products from the point of view of those making the product. The main reason why 'everyone' switched via steam was its bundling strategy, I'd put every cent I have in the bank that the vast majority of steam adapters did so via its bundling with games rather than choosing to download the client. If that hadn't happened you'd probably just have a situation (far better for the companies involved as they'd get ~100% of revenue rather than ~70%) where publishers sold their own games online and no centralised gatekeeper existed.

It doesn't really have much to do with EA, they're just a touchstone because OMG EA IS TEH EVIL!!! Here's a dlc list for Sleeping Dogs from notEA as an example. Note the number of "boost experience" and "awsum weapon" and "look leet" packs. Only difference is that Squeenix is not as unpopular and the stuff being sold is labelled dlc. You can do the same thing with Saints Row or pretty much anything else as well to find plenty of cheat code equivalent or pretty aesthetics dlcs. It's already in existence for EA games and has been for ages- the success of The Sims is largely built on cheap(ish) trivial additions, alternative appearance packs for ME2, armour and weapon packs for DAO On multiplayer, while I do not play as my internet is rubbish (and I don't really have the time) I don't really understand the attitude towards grinding. If you enjoy the game it isn't really any great imposition to play it, if you don't enjoy it then... why play it? It's rather like the odd attitude some have to achievements where they feel compelled to get all of them for a game they dislike or even hate (like the guy on RPS who hated Aliens:CM and was glad he only had to play it a few more hours to get the final few achievements)

In practical terms it's hardly a new thing either. If you look through the dlc lists for EA games there's almost always a "Look leet and kick butt!!!" pack or two in there. It might even be better if you just wanted one of the things and could get in cheaper by itself. It's all in the implementation though. As an alternative for the sorts of people for whom easy is too hard (or makes them feel like wimps) or to whom RPGs are riding around on horseback with a fine roostercade, matching doublet and hose, outrageous ruff and a codpiece to make the clergy quail it's fine, if they try too much to funnel everyone towards it it will suck. But then dlc which they try too hard to funnel you towards already sucks.

I will too, inevitably. End of the day the list of "Torment" features is what I want to see more of in RPGs. I'll just have a slight feeling of needing to shower afterwards.

Distribution troubles may well be in regards to its disappearance from greenlight as well. One reason to go via a distributor is that it can short circuit the (pretty stupid, as nearly everyone agrees) greenlight process, as well as being an 'easy' way to get any physical goods fabricated. But if you do that then it's a balance and you have to do the stuff the distributor wants in return. That might be seen as a bit of sharp practice since the primary funding was kickstarter, and the implication there is that you avoid entanglements and don't go to a publisher afterwards.

Not with default SCS it ain't. Beholders have the ability to 'steal' the SoD (and Cloak of Reflection as well) with their telekinesis. And I'd go for Trademeet and Bodhi as well.

In theory, it's fair for them to block such things. The trouble is that while steam objects to being used as a platform for other stores it is itself happy to itself be inserted into the products other stores sell, ie block others from bundling their exclusive shopfront but do the exact same thing and bundle your own shopfront into products sold by others. Ultimately, if EA or Paradox or whoever wanted to bundle their own shopfront into their products it is for their own benefit, if they do the same with steam's shopfront it is primarily for steam's benefit as steam gets the cut on dlc and their store bundled into all copies. It's good business sense if you can get away with it, but it's also hypocritical and not something you could get away with if there was proper competition. Or to put it another way, every steamworks game sold on Gamersgate or Impulse or whatever is a "Trojan Horse" for steam just as much as ME3 sold on steam would be a "Trojan Horse" for origin.

Outright anachronism was pretty rife in The WItcher- fleurs de lys all over the Temerian livery, 'scientific' explanations in a magical world and the like. From what I remember of the two Sapkowski books I've read anachronism is pretty rife in the setting. The only one which bothered me was the discussion in TW2 with respect to genetics.

I answered that pretty much. 'Free' features and ease of use, the knowledge for pre-existing steamworks users that 100% of their customers are already on steam etc. I don't know in a provable court-of-law sense if there's additional leverage, but there is some evidence that there's some... influence applied, in a Fat Tonyesque "nice company you've got there, shame if something happened to it" way. For Paradox as an example, they got rather publicly peeved at some rather overt steam antics- delayed, disappearing patches, an expansion that turned up months late, applying expansions as irreversible patches etc- and had some very clearly stated policies- no preferred DD vendors, DRM free, they were going to put Connect onto all future games, sell on GOG when they started selling new games etc. Yet barely a year later they've done a full 180 and are steamworks only, and would have been only a few months after- for example- Fred Wester's tweet looking forward to selling on GOG if there hadn't been uproar about CK2 being steam only. So there was an alternative- which, ironically, used the (defunct, got killed off as Paradox could not go toe to toe with steam over their TOS change as EA did with Origin; they don't have 2 billion in cash reserves) Connect interface but never had any real support, all the best and first sales were on steam sellers and there was barely any mention of there being an alternative. As I said earlier, there is a certain amount of amusement to be had watching someone run around praising steam to the skies when you know perfectly well that a year or so ago they were being highly negative about it, but I'd personally prefer them to have stuck with their DRM free no preferred vendor policy rather than kowtow to steam, and watched an episode of Hannity to get my amusement fix.

The whole Torment thing still rubs me up the wrong way. With WL2 there was direct continuity, with this thematic sequel you don't have direct continuity. And given those involved it'd still be better as Planescape: Subtitle rather than reversed Supertitle: Torment Still, my slight discomfiture/ mild annoyance is a gentle zephyr wafting off the warm waters of the Meditteranean compared to the potential for a howling Sirocco of rage there'll be if the people who got the rights to System Shock try kickstarting an SS3.

Clearly what is best is a KOTOR2 style meta-narrator to chastise you for whichever choice you make (<3 Kreia) The dialogue in the first Witcher tended to be a bit stilted, especially in the first chapter. That was probably down to translation, and was much improved in TW2. But throughout the game there was a sense that there was some 'stage direction' being left in, like a forum post using [/pretentious pontificating] as a signifier. Still, I'm not really sure how much you can use subtlety and how much you have to bludgeon people over the head with stuff, I've seen people who didn't get the significance of which sword Jacques got stabbed with at the end and people who thought it was obvious and cheap.

per se, no. Practically? if they've gone steamworks there's no push to provide alternatives as they can guarantee that 100% of their customers are- by definition- steam customers, they've in effect glued themselves to a monopoly supplier. And if they've gone steamworks then any sales through other vendors are irrelevant, they all get routed through, vetted by and ultimately approved by steam. If any DD gets into serious competition with steam they can kill that service, and that competitor will have been selling the steam shopfront and client for all that time as well. Facebook_piggies.jpg works as well for companies getting 'free' services as it does for individuals. And if they haven't gone steamworks? Well, no one (except some steam advocates, upset at others getting choice) are complaining if that's the case. It's rather like saying that there's good 'competition' in the car market, if the car market consisted of 90% Toyotas being sold. Oh, but you can buy your Toyota with its Toyota service contract and Toyota accessories purchasable from the Toyota shop from a Ford dealership or a GM dealership or a Nissan dealership so there's 'competition'. Except of course if those dealerships are selling 90% Toyotas there isn't any actual competition, because these 'rival' dealerships exist at the sufferance of the company that supplies most of their vehicles, and the 'competition' will exist exactly as long as it remains 'competition' instead of competition.

Or, they'd be happily selling their games through other DD sellers, sellers with a lot less leverage over them. Again, most of the 'benefits' steam has provided are benefits of DD selling in general, not steam in particular. Some companies, large ones like EA and small ones like Matrix, do fine without steam, there's no reason to think that everyone else would have failed to adapt if Uncle Valve hadn't happened along. To further what Tigranes said, I don't think I've ever seen anyone advocate there not being a steam version of a game at all, just that it shouldn't be the only version. It is however in Valve's best interest that the steam version is the only version, hence why steamworks is offered with such 'reasonable' terms.