marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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Really stupid decision by Private Division and Microsoft. That's some bad PR you really don't want, especially after how well received the game initially was.
And naturally, it isn't Private Division and Microsoft taking the heat from casual twats. It's Obsidian. You've just bought a new studio and you start by doing this. PR wise this is exactly the move you should avoid. But I guess Epic paid enough dollars that no one cares for the developers burnt fanbase.
Question is: Which one is worse MGS or EGS? With other exclusives I'll just wait until I can get the game dirt cheap, might actually want to buy this at release date.
MS's is better from a consumer standpoint (has reviews, for one), Epic is likely better from a technical standpoint.
Either way, pre-order is out of the window now and if it doesn't get rave reviews, well... enough games to keep me busy for another year.
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It's kind of funny that Epic's reputation among Extremely Online Gamers is so bad that this news would actually have been more well-received if the game ONLY launched on the Windows Store.
Well it makes me open the Microsoft Store front page for the first time in my whole life.
I'd probably buy something from it for the first time in my whole life as well simply because of this. I'd say it's a relatively efficient way to adversite the windows store.
The Windows Store is utter garbage though, I've used it for Forza games and it's been an issue for all three of the Forza games I've played through it, but at least it has user reviews, so it's got that over Epic's even lower effort attempt at a digital storefront.
Talk about having to choose between ebola and the plague.
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Whelp, the two most atrocious places to get games from. Sigh.
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To be actually specific, an algorythm will look through reviews and when it sees "off-topic review bombs" (ie, the devs tweeted they like Mars over Snickers so Snicker fans start boycotting the game) it'll flag it for supposedly actual human evaluation and if those guys find the reviews inapproriate, will disconnect those reviews from the aggregate graph. The reviews themselves will still be there to read and "enjoy" or you can switch so the graph incorporates the bombs as well.
Or so they said it'll work, we'll see once it's implemented.
I thought TheQuartering had a decent idea here. Just let us "review" publishers/developers, since generally review bombs happens because either of those did something stupid, so giving people a way to rate the companies involved (and display that rating, of course) might cut down on the review bombing.
Might help keep companies more honest as well, I imagine, as a negative company rating would carry over across games, while a review bomb generally doesn't...
Eh, who am I kidding, that would actually benefit consumers so it'll never happen, at least not voluntarily.
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Steam going to hide review bombs from its customers: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775
The inverse is not being tackled, of course.
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Is this the part of the thread where I should be bringing up Jeanne d'Arc?
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Playing mostly Warframe, new event boss went live and it's a lot better than the previous "Orb" bossfight they released. Fairly easily soloable by experienced players, I imagine (I mean, I managed just fine after failing and then looking up the mechanics) since it's mostly a mechanics battle and not a damage based fight. Only real negative so far is that there's no mission for it, so finding a group requires either going through clan or recruiting chat (or just learn to solo it, I guess, Zephyr works wonders for those around here that play Warframe).
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May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."
- Yes, backers receive both Steam/GOG and Epic keys
- Yes, even crowdfunding backers can withdraw their pledges, not just people who pre-ordered
In other words, the impact of this decision on their backers appears to be minimal. Then again, question is how many backers actually registered the switch - internet drama and sending out emails is good and all, doesn't mean all backers get the memo. For all I know some of the money I sent out to crowdfunded projects are now used to start forest fires."We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."
Incidentally, as it turns out, it wasn't Epic that invested into Snapshot games - it was Snapshot games who approached Epic asking about the deal.
That first sentence is an outright lie. They said they had the money to deliver on the KS promises. The deal with Epic is just to secure future funding. So they threw their backers under the bus out of pure greed, not even because "whoops we miscalculated and we really need this money to be able to deliver", which is often the case (and while still sad, would at least be more understandable). Offering a refund is just cynical, since they literally just used their backers to get an interest free loan so they would have something to shop around with.
If this doesn't have any serious repercussions then then this might just be the deathblow for crowd funding. Teams failing to deliver is one thing (and a risk you knowingly take on when you back) but a successfully funded project in no financial trouble rewriting the agreement when it suits them is something else entirely.
I don't necessarily have any interest in getting my money back (hell, since I backed a physical tier me refunding would probably be better for them as that would absolve them from needing to provide the physical rewards). What I want to see is a crackdown on this outright scummish behaviour, if it turns out there is no protection for either backers or pre-order customers (without literally going to court, which besides expensive is also extremely slow, and absolutely not worth it given the money involved) even in the EU (as mentioned previously, Snapshot Games HQ is in Bulgaria) then I fear crowd funding is just dead as that would mean there's literally no guarantee a company will live up to any part of the agreement they have with backers and thus opening the floodgates to this type of behaviour.
It's really just a matter of perspective. Were you crowdfunding a game or were you crowdfunding platform availability? It looks like they will deliver the game, so I can't see how the vast majority of the backers won't see it as success, particularly if it is good. The delivery method of the game is a minor part of the agreement we make when backing, so I don't see this affecting crowdfunding in any way.
Still waiting on the next Space Quest, btw. I'll take it on any platform or delivery method at this point.
I was crowdfunding a game that was explicitly promised to be available through certain means (there's a reason some of these projects are vague about this stuff). The delivery method was part of the agreement, whether that was a minor part is a matter of perspective and not something someone can decide for another person. It's minor for you maybe, but there are enough valid reasons to not want to deal with the Epic store, whether those concern you or not are up to you.
Regardless the simple fact is that they are still walking back on an established agreement, which is shady (and legally dubious) in itself and serious "slippery slope"-material and sets a rather dangerous precedent to boot.
It's also not the first time they walk back on their agreement with backers: they already dropped Linux support, likely because they were already negotiating with Epic and knew they couldn't support it on their client, so why bother, right? Or are you going to argue that doesn't matter because that's minor platform anyway? The argument that it's too hard to support Linux also doesn't fly here since they had a working Linux version up until the point they decided to screw over their Linux backers.
Or how about the Chinese backers that will now be unable to play the game they funded since the Epic Store is banned in China (ironic, given all the Tencent hubbub, if nothing else), or any of another number of countries that are not supported by Epic (there was a list at one point during the Metro rage)
As already mentioned, it's not like they needed the money to get the game done, they've publicly stated they could fulfil their crowfunding promises with the budget they received, so they get zero sympathy for me there either as the only reason to do it is the ego of Gollop (he wanted to do more than he got funded for) and/or pure greed. The condescending way in which they have communicated with their backers (and pre-order customers) since hasn't exactly done anything to garner any sympathy from me ("even if y'all refund we're still good; so **** you", would summarize it pretty well).
This is seriously different from a company mismanaging budget and going under, or any of another number of ways that things can go wrong (overreaching etc.). "Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence", unfortunately Snapshot Games has made it very clear that no incompetence was involved and that this was a very deliberate and very well calculated move to violate the agreement with the people who made it possible for them to create the game in the first place, and without which they would have had nothing to go to Epic with.
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Epic games launcher/store seems to be collecting your steam data: Reddit post and Metacouncil post.
That is ... well, not exactly encouraging. I wonder what they'll come up with as a rationale.
We use a tracking pixel (tracking.js) for our Support-A-Creator program so we can pay creators. We also track page statistics.
The launcher sends a hardware survey (CPU, GPU, and the like) at a regular interval as outlined in our privacy policy (see the “Information We Collect or Receive” section). You can find the code here.
The UDP traffic highlighted in this post is a launcher feature for communication with the Unreal Editor. The source of the underlying system is available on github.
The majority of the launcher UI is implemented using web technology that is being rendered by Chromium (which is open source). The root certificate and cookie access mentioned above is a result of normal web browser start up.
The launcher scans your active processes to prevent updating games that are currently running. This information is not sent to Epic.
We only import your Steam friends with your explicit permission. The launcher makes an encrypted local copy of your localconfig.vdf Steam file. However information from this file is only sent to Epic if you choose to import your Steam friends, and then only hashed ids of your friends are sent and no other information from the file.
Epic is controlled by Tim Sweeney. We have lots of external shareholders, none of whom have access to customer data.
Daniel Vogel
VP of Engineering
Epic Games Inc.
Gamers rising up, again
To be fair, them accessing the Steam files directly instead of using the official API (which respects your Steam privacy settings, for example), like other services, like Origin, do is still dodgy. But yeah, not nearly as nefarious as it's made out to be, at least based on what's being shown.
Even if (and that's a big if) the Epic client is doing illegal things I'm sure they'd hide it better as they're aware the thing is going to be analysed.
Oh yeah, their privacy policy is still in violation of EU Privacy laws, so there's still that. Sending that hardware information (which includes things that qualify as personally identifiable information, per the GDPR) without explicit consent (and per the GDPR hiding it in their TOS/Privacy Policy is explicitly not good enough) is among those. But that's not what this is about, of course.
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May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."
- Yes, backers receive both Steam/GOG and Epic keys
- Yes, even crowdfunding backers can withdraw their pledges, not just people who pre-ordered
In other words, the impact of this decision on their backers appears to be minimal. Then again, question is how many backers actually registered the switch - internet drama and sending out emails is good and all, doesn't mean all backers get the memo. For all I know some of the money I sent out to crowdfunded projects are now used to start forest fires."We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."
Incidentally, as it turns out, it wasn't Epic that invested into Snapshot games - it was Snapshot games who approached Epic asking about the deal.
That first sentence is an outright lie. They said they had the money to deliver on the KS promises. The deal with Epic is just to secure future funding. So they threw their backers under the bus out of pure greed, not even because "whoops we miscalculated and we really need this money to be able to deliver", which is often the case (and while still sad, would at least be more understandable). Offering a refund is just cynical, since they literally just used their backers to get an interest free loan so they would have something to shop around with.
If this doesn't have any serious repercussions then then this might just be the deathblow for crowd funding. Teams failing to deliver is one thing (and a risk you knowingly take on when you back) but a successfully funded project in no financial trouble rewriting the agreement when it suits them is something else entirely.
I don't necessarily have any interest in getting my money back (hell, since I backed a physical tier me refunding would probably be better for them as that would absolve them from needing to provide the physical rewards). What I want to see is a crackdown on this outright scummish behaviour, if it turns out there is no protection for either backers or pre-order customers (without literally going to court, which besides expensive is also extremely slow, and absolutely not worth it given the money involved) even in the EU (as mentioned previously, Snapshot Games HQ is in Bulgaria) then I fear crowd funding is just dead as that would mean there's literally no guarantee a company will live up to any part of the agreement they have with backers and thus opening the floodgates to this type of behaviour.
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Also did you know world hunger is caused by DRM? Also Aids.
What the hell brought on that "measured" response? I was just trying to help someone who suffered issues that seemed similar to the ones I had with that game way back when.
I know there were DRM issues with the disc version of TW1 because I suffered them. Loading screens would take forever because the game would check the disc on each loading screen (which would require the disc to spin up, usually since all the actual game data was on the hard drive), if it couldn't access the disc fast enough it would time out and crash the game (CTD). Whether or not one would experience those issues of course depended heavily on the disc drive used, but given the mention of slow loading times I figured this might have been the issue.
The digital versions obviously didn't suffer the issue due to there being no disc check DRM, for extremely obvious reasons.
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Well, Gorth gave the inspiration, so I might as well
admit to my problemjoin in:
From left to right (oldest to newest, only lvl80 characters included):
1st row:
- Sylvari Daredevil
- Human Dragonhunter
- Charr Berserker
- Sylvari Chronomancer
- Sylvari Herald
- Sylvari Scrapper (sPvP) / Holosmith (PvE)
- Human Necromancer (WvW) / Reaper (PvE)
2nd row:
- Sylvari Weaver
- Human Mirage
- Sylvari Scourge
- Sylvari Spellbreaker
- Sylvari Druid
- Sylvari Firebrand
One thing I notice is that while the relative size difference between the races is readily apparent, the size difference between different characters isn't (my Spellbreaker is like a full head taller than my Chronomancer, and I'm pretty sure she's taller than the Human Mirage as well).
I do have Norn and Asura characters, but none of them managed to make it to lvl80 yet (ironic, as my oldest character is an Asura). I was kind of, errr, shocked at my race bias, to be honest.
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I never finished TW1 because the loading times were killing it for me. Seriously, it was unbearable. TW2 improved this a lot.
Were you playing the disc version? I had stupid long loading screens as well (and regular crashes) which were caused by the DRM reading the disc on each load. The download versions (or the newer DRM-free ones) didn't suffer this defect, so if the DRM was the issue it might be worth revisiting the game.
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Software development is work, and vast majority of the fabled "other devs" actually only ever operate by taking "bribes" from "publishers" to develop a product. It's how majority of the industry works - and how a whole bunch of crowdfunded projects went as well, incidentally.They can't work for a living like other devs, they have to take Epic's bribe?
*chuckle*Well I can see why you have no problem with Snapshot's dishonesty.
And I can see you would prefer the dev team's children starving before they took a publisher deal! Why would you murder children!?
I know you're being facetious here, but Bulgaria is a civilized country with a working social security system. If Snapshot Games folds no-one is going to starve.
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Someone posted a rather interesting post about the Epic store on the Phoenix Point reddit. The post itself is a bit old (at least for this instant news age), so maybe some here have already seen it.
The tl;dr is that the Epic Store is bad for small developers as well and that, if the cut was such a big deal, there are other alternatives that take even less of a cut that are conveniently ignored when it is brought up. My takeaway here is that the constant bringing up of the smaller cut Epic takes is either misinformed or plain dishonest shilling.
My takeaway is that Epic doesn't have anything over the alternatives except for bags of money to throw around, and them doing so effectively hurts some of the better alternatives (eg. the entire Gog thing, but I wouldn't be surprised Humble might also be feeling it)
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@marelooke
The car analogy doesn't work though. Because they aren't giving you something different.
They are telling you that your car will be delivered a year late. To which your claim is that you need the car to get to work now. Then you get your money back and buy a car somewhere else.
It sucks. But you can get your money. Consumer protection will have a hard time forcing them to release early on other platforms and invalidating the contract with Epic.
Ah, but the contract with Epic is newer than the one with their backers (and pre-order customers). Meaning they signed a contract they couldn't adhere to, not sure how that's handled legally but "not valid" seems to make the most sense to me (but ianal).
They should just have done what the Metro devs did, keep their end of the deal at least for the copies that were already sold (one could, I guess, argue about KS backers, but not about the pre-order customers)
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And with crowdfunding delivery dates are in constant limbo. I expect at best you could get a refund, but as that is already offered, there is no legal action to take. You can't sue someone to get something they have freely offered.
"If you offer me a full refund I'll sue you for a full refund!" is not the basis for legal action.
For legal actions you must prove damage.
If you weren't damaged financially by a transaction as you are offered a refund, what damages are you arguing?
And people are not currently complaining about the delay or comparative access to the game. They are arguing about not getting Steam or GOG keys,which within two hours of the announcement were then offered (with the delay). I can't argue I am not getting something, at least not in a legal frame, when a clear frame of when I'll get exactly that has been given. If that time frame is not to my liking I can demand a refund. And that has freely been offered.
But as outrageous choices go, this is one of the most harmless ones I have seen.
We are all old enough to have witnessed EA's planned DRM for Spore (go online daily, if you fail to go online two days in a row permanently lose access to the game), SecuROM, and so much more.
I think the EPIC store exclusive thing is bad. I think it is a crap move to tell people that if they want their platform of choice they have to wait a year. I think for pre-orders that is especially problematic, because while crowdfunding is in theory less of a purchase but funding, pre-orders are purchases with an implied promise of release day access.
I do feel people should adapt their outrage as the situation changes, and be honest about what they are outraged about.
That's not how consumer protection works. I don't need to sue, or prove damages, I just need to prove that they violated my consumer rights by not living up to their end of the bargain. Unlike in other cases where the perpetrator was outside the EU this time the ECC can take action since it's inside their jurisdiction. If anyone will be suing it will be the ECC, not me.
If I order a VW Beetle but you deliver a Bentley you could argue that's an upgrade so I should just stfu and take it, but unless I accept said deal you've still violated my consumer rights by not delivering what was agreed upon, and if I insist you must deliver me that VW Beetle. The assumption is made here that the choice of delivery platform is unimportant (even though it was part of the initial agreement) or that the extra stuff they offer (free DLC) offsets the negatives so they expect people to accept their new agreement, no questions asked. It turns out they miscalculated.
Anyway, I'm still undecided about what I'm going to do about the situation. I might just contact the BECC (Belgian wing of the ECC) and ask what's what (since they offer free legal advice on my rights). Doesn't mean I'll act on it, but then again, if their attention is drawn to it they might follow up on it anyway as it's not like they need my permission to act on such public violations (if someone litters the police aren't going to wait with fining until someone files a complaint either). In either case I'll at least have a better idea as to what my options are should this situation repeat itself (which it might, if it's proven they can just get away with it).
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Yeah,
They added it within the first two hours of the announcement, but it apparently wasn't in the initial text.
I just can't get all that up in arms about it, because it is less problematic than Harebvrained's announcement for Shadorwun Returns back when they were going to go Steam exclusive and would drop the promised GOG keys, because after nearly finishing the game, and having wasted most of backer's cash on scrapping everything and changing engine, and dropping the in-game mod support, they finally read the licensing agreement with Microsoft and found out they had to have DRM.
Then we were supposed to blame evil Microsoft and rally around the poor devs who made promises to backers without reading the contracts they were signing.
Harebrained had not offered refunds. How could they, they had already wasted all the money.
Snapshot on the other hand is making an stupid move, but it does come out of deliberation. It may enrage part of gamer culture for a while, but that may blow over, and if it turns out the way they hope it may make the studio healthier.
And the addendum to the FAQ came out a LOT faster.
Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but people have put up with this kind of **** moves before.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but on this forum I am in the vast minority holding a grudge over the SR thing; most people forgot or didn't care.
It's a fairly deliberate move (btw, PP was going to be on Gog, so there's that as well) Also won't be surprised at all if they suddenly decide to add DRM on top given how true to their word they've proven themselves to be I kinda expect anything at this point.
Moreover I'm pretty sure what they're doing here is illegal (at least in the EU) since they've already started taking money for pre-orders. I suspect they're just hoping that the "it's just a game" mentality will persevere and they get away with blatantly violating consumer protection laws.
Limiting sales, possibly drastically, only makes sense if Snapshot blew the money and are hurting for more.
I wouldn't be surprised. It is an ambitious project and very much looks like one people would miscalculate the costs of.
Oh, they calculated it alright, according to a screenshot from the official Discord that's circulating on Reddit they've done the math. So they very deliberately scammed their backers (also Epic must be throwing stupid amounts of money at them for how niche this game is if they can fund the studio on it for a year). Guess they didn't watch Metro close enough or they should have expected this backlash.
Refunds also go through a third party instead of the same channel the original pledge went through (wonder how the GDPR factors in there). I'll see what they're planning on doing about honouring the original deal with their backers and pre-order buyers (which they legally should, it wasn't just out of the kindness of their hearts epic "allowed" it for Metro). If they don't do that I might go and talk to the Consumer Protection Agency, given how Snapshot Games is headquartered in the EU (Bulgaria) this means I'm even entitled to free legal advice, apparently.
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ah cmon, its still a d1ck move for those who funded it. I would be furious if I backed it and expected it to get it on gog or steam
It's even worse since they used the backer money to be able to make the game in the first place, then, when they have something they can shop around with they pull this bait and switch. Vile, just vile.
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Hang on to your helmet
Pretty places
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Newest Anthem drama: Level 1 weapon is better than anything else you can get in the game.
This sounds to me like the worst one yet. A loot and shooter where gearing up your gun is meaningless.
Did BioWare even doing any testing at all before releasing the game? It seems like a lot of the issues are things that would easily have been caught early on in the testing phase.
Doesn't look like it.
Besides supposedly starting development before Destiny 1's release they seemingly managed to ignore every looter shooter for the past 6 years and learn nothing of the mistakes made by those others in that timespan.
Honestly the game looks like it did an Andromeda, meander in development hell for years and then rush something out in the last year or so before release.
It's mind boggling.
Truly hope they can turn this ship around, but between the engine limitations, EA's reputation for shooting anything that smells remotely like it failed, and the negative press I'm not getting my hopes up.
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So much for that game then
Thanks
Depending on how far they played you could just replay the "Vor's Prize" quest (which is basically the tutorial mission of the game) from the Codex, though you'll be stuck with whatever gear they chose during that quest, at least until you can get your hands on alternatives (everything can be acquired eventually). Although you'll probably miss out on unlocking all the functionality of the Orbiter if they already did all that, which isn't all that much (imho)Well, just checked ingame and turns out that, despite it being a heavily requested feature for like 6 years it's still not possible to replay "Vor's Prize"
And of course you could try and see if support can reset the account, they won't on PC, as it's easy to just create another one, but I'm not convinced they might not do it on consoles. I guess you could, as last ditch effort, have them delete the account, there's some warnings attached but I'm not sure how relevant those are for the console versions (I play on PC).
And in a severe act of desperation you could just play through the tutorial stuff on a PC (Warframe is rather well optimized so it'll run on most things barring a literal toaster) and then go back to the PS4 if that's your preferred platform.
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Warframe
I am almost done with the missions on Mars. I also did some void fissures but I figured that they are best suited for higher ranks. Speaking of which: I need to rank up!
Also, back to Fallout 4: Nuka World DLC. It seems that I haven't upgraded my armor properly, only deep pocketed my armor pieces for the sake of carrying a heap of junk around. I need to upgrade my armor because the enemies in tha Nuka dlc are pretty tough.
re: void missions. It depends on the missions really. They're tier based (as you probably noticed) and the lower tiers are pretty easy, especially when you group up. That said, for solo play, the enemies that spawn from the Fissures can be rather nasty if unprepared (they're slightly tougher than their Void equivalents, so if those are no problem same tier Fissures shouldn't be too much of one either).
Anyway, also been playing quite a bit of Warframe, given how there's a bit of a content draught I've started grabbing those last few items I don't have yet so I can maybe even make it to Mastery Rank 27 (which is the highest attainable at the moment).
And while the other day I was proclaiming how Warframe, despite being grindy, respects its players' time DE decided they'd undo that feature by replacing the random "alerts" system with some sort of tiered (and time-gated) Battle Pass (or Reward Track, if familiar with GW2 PvP/WvW) type system that makes you do all kinds of random, and often annoying, stuff. It's basically MMO dailies all over again
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I never bought Andromeda for one reason...it isn't on Steam. It's not a protest or anything, it's just I only log into Origin on the rare occasion, but I log into Steam every day, and every day I see that store page, and every day some game on my radar pops up, and eventually I end up buying them all. But I never really get reminded that I haven't bought Andromeda, or that it is now on sale, so I still haven't picked it up. So I'd say EA can fix some issues by simply opening themselves up to all outlets.
Similar issue here. After ME3 and DA:I I didn't really want to play Andromeda, and definitely not at the release price, barring rave reviews (and we know how that went). If it had been more in my face I'd probably have picked it up in a sale by now though, if only to see what's what. But it only being on Origin and there not really being any reason for me to check Origin all the time it just never happened.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
in Computer and Console
Posted · Edited by marelooke
Depends on what you consider "bad". It might be OK-ish technically but it's lacking a whole lot of features steam has, whether those are relevant to you is for you to decide.
The main issue (imho) is their way of doing business (just outright trying to buy customers by exclusivity rather than competing on features, or price) and the fact that they are customer unfriendly on purpose (by not allowing reviews or letting publishers pick whether they want reviews, for starters), basically all the progress that was made on information being readily availably to customers they intend to roll back so publishers can keep releasing broken products with as little repercussions as possible.
Because, face it, for most consumers there are two sources of information on a new game: platform reviews (Steam, Gog and the MS Store, all have them) and gaming "journalists". Seeing how the latter are about as reliable as leaving an alcoholic to guard a liquor store (the biggest trainwrecks from AAA publishers still get scores in the 60s and 70s...) they just try to get rid of the former.
There's also their refund policy, which apparently has improved, so I'm not sure if it's still a train-wreck but they made it as annoying as possible to get one so people, well, just wouldn't, really.
For the more "dedicated" gaming clientèle nothing really changes as we tend to rely on peer reviews and/or YouTubers anyway, but catering to publishers by actively being user-hostile doesn't particularly sit well with me.