The cut taken by stores is of little concern to me as a consumer. Greenlight was a mess for a lot of reasons, but they discontinued it years ago, while Epic continues to pay for exclusivity deals. Steam provides lots of services to me that Epic doesn’t, though, as others have listed here. That said, I also like GOG and itch.io.
It’s a little different to have your own games exclusively on your platform than to pay other devs not to release on other platforms, and it’s entirely different if devs just choose not to release elsewhere because no other store is worth the effort for them.
I’ve definitely seen some games that do have an option for this.
And that’s just what they’ve done by accident. There was also that time they installed rootkits on their customers’ PCs, lied about it, belittled their customers when nobody believed them, then put out a fake uninstaller that actually installed additional software and didn’t uninstall the rootkit.
Voiced characters that use generative AI in real time instead of prerecorded lines and a dialogue tree come to mind as an obvious use. How cool would that be, to be playing an RPG and ask any character any question you want and get an actual verbal answer? No way you can do that with voice actors.
I use Futurama-based names. It started with my wifi network, which I named Zoidberg, because why not. The NAS is Infosphere, the media server is Hypnotoad, etc.
I had the same issue at first, but once I learned that the game actually expects you to spend some time in the training ring with Bernard to both level up Henry’s fighting and build your own skills, it got a lot better. The game will let you do one round of training and move on, but you should do quite a few to level up, and you should revisit the training ring periodically as you level more to learn new techniques.
I would say a little more repetitive than Horizon. The structure is very similar, but there are really only four or so types of enemies and they’re all human, so you lose a lot of the variety that comes with fighting the machines.
That said, I still enjoyed it. Even though it gets a bit stale in the mid to late game, the gameplay is solid, and the story is good enough that I didn’t mind too much.
So I’m an insurance agent who has also been through a house fire personally. Any of the options people have suggested here would be fantastic and far better than what most people have, which is nothing.
What I suggest to my clients is to make a video once or twice a year walking through your house, inside and out. Video makes it less likely to miss a small detail that turns out to be important later than pictures, but pictures are also helpful. Insurance aside, it’s kinda fun to look back and see how things have changed through the years. I like to do it around Christmas.
Ideally that would be in addition to a spreadsheet or something with receipts and serial numbers and individual photos of specific items, but that’s a lot of work and hardly anyone keeps up with it on a consistent and long-term basis.
Whatever you end up doing, it’s useless if the only copy is stolen, burned, or sprayed with a hose. This is one thing I keep with a major cloud provider with a local backup. At the very least, make sure you have an off-site backup that’s reasonably up to date.
Why do I feel like no good can come of this?
Tracking for my LE was like that all weekend, but it updated with details last night. It was actually picked up Friday for delivery tomorrow, so something might be wonky with UPS tracking.
If it matters, mine is headed to Pennsylvania. It was shipped from Illinois. Ordered at 11:57am PST according to the confirmation email. You ordered quite a bit before I did, so hopefully yours is on the way too.
I just hope it gets the funding and resources it needs to realize its potential. Hopefully all the recent attention helps.
Lots of games are made for adults, and relatively few mainstream games have sex scenes at all. Many of the games with sex scenes have an option to disable those scenes and nudity. Practically all of them have an M rating with specific content descriptors on the box or store page, making it easy for parents to avoid it altogether. All modern game platforms also have parental controls that can be set up in a couple minutes.
All this is to say that if kids are seeing sex scenes in games, it’s because their parents have ignored all the warnings and options. For a parent to say that these types of games should not be made (as one of the above commenters did) for adults because they’re too lazy and feckless to use any of the options available to control and monitor the types of content their children consume, when it’s been made so easy, is disturbing. It’s especially disheartening to see it in a gaming community, from someone who presumably plays games themselves and therefore has absolutely no excuse to not know about the options available. I’m accustomed to hearing it from places like Fox News, but not here.
And “Revolution” was Nintendo’s codename for the Wii at the time.
I’m biased, but brokers and independent local agents are definitely the way to go. Going direct through one company means that everyone you talk to has no choice but to put that company’s priorities ahead of yours, even when they’re wrong. As an independent agent, if a company stops treating people fairly, we can just stop writing with them and offer our customers quotes with other companies. I also think there’s a lot of value in having an actual person with a local office that knows your situation and can help if things go sideways. I’ve physically been to every house I’ve ever written a policy on. You don’t get that online.
Quite a bit of what I have on my Jellyfin server is ripped from DVDs and Blu-Rays that I already had.
I’m an insurance agent and I’m constantly frustrated by shit agents and shit companies giving all of us a bad name. Not that I always agree with the decisions from our claims people, but they generally try to be fair. I’m assuming this was long enough ago that it’s too late now, but for anybody else reading this who runs into a similar situation, you may have some recourse.
My first stop, if I have a local agent, would be their office. I would calmly and politely (agents don’t make coverage decisions so it isn’t their fault) explain the situation to them. They have a vested interest in keeping their customers happy and they may have access to claims supervisors who can make it right. They probably don’t want to lose you as a customer, especially over such a small claim.
If I’m still not happy, I would start pestering the adjuster to talk to their supervisor. Don’t be rude, but be persistent. Call every day. Leave messages and emails until you get the supervisor.
If they won’t give you a supervisor or the supervisor is no help, you can go above the claims department. It’ll be different for each company, but look for contact info for the “office of the president” or something like that. In my experience, those calls always get looked into by someone who has the power to really ruin your day as an agent or claims person. If you get a call from them, you had better either have a good explanation for why you did what you did or fix it in a hurry.
As a last resort, check with your state’s insurance department. You may be able to file a grievance.
I take claims practically every day and I can’t imagine this not being paid. I’m not sure why it would even be questioned, since it’s your first claim and it’s not huge. Could be that that particular adjuster is an idiot or on a power trip, but it’s also possible that the company is just shady.
Adding to this for more context, in America, credit card fees on merchants are like 3-5% of the transaction. That’s why some places have started to pass them to consumers, especially in low-margin businesses like restaurants and movie theaters. If your margins are around 5% and Visa is taking 3.95%, that’s not super sustainable. Card network fees tend to be much lower in Europe. I’m not sure about elsewhere.
I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t appear to be a direct continuation of Jin’s storyline, but I’m still excited.