The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release

This wording is a bit strange, are they tracking the new steam accounts that signed up to buy a specific 2023 title (like Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Starfield)?

If so it says more about the specific demographic attracted to that unknown title than it does about Steam in general.

Edit:

The methodology is explained here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/751641001553035271

To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users.

I suppose you are right.

As an anicdote, my son has always curated his home screen, creating groups for related games (e.g. one group for the cut the rope series, another for hey duggee games) and removing icons he wasn’t using so much anymore.

Then when my son was 4yo and his tablet ran out of space I taught him how to uninstall applications and that he could go to the play store and reinstall any titles I had previously appoved by himself. After that he could cycle though his library without any issues only needing my help if we were considering a new title.

A couple of months later my mum was having trouble with her phone because it was full, so she came around for a visit and my son showed her how to uninstall unwanted apps and manage her home screen.

So I guess this story reinforces that curating your device’s software library is a learned skill.

Thanks

They have taken the survivors.wiki domain.

I wonder if they are planning spinoffs with other themes?

Edit: typo

just look at the home screen of a factory resetted phone. facebook, instagram, tiktok, and other literal garbage too is not just installed, but pinned to the home screen by default

That’s an inconvenience to be sure, but cleaning all that crap from every device is just part of the ritual just like pealing the protective film off the screen.

Its an interesting read.

I agree with the conclusion, the stable iconography lend the program a air of prestige that might be lost if they changed.

Xbox one era d-pad shows a real attention to detail

In 2023, there were 19.5 million families in the UK, an increase of just over 1.1 million families (6%) since 2013.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2023

Even if we assume that each signatory represents a unique family (i.e. no couples contributed two signatures) then 100k represents only half of a percent.

While new game downloads plateaued in 2024, in-app purchases grew 3.8 percent compared to 2023.

They really has plateaued, 3.8% sound an awful lot like its tracking inflation.

Hazelight Studios has been doing OK under their publishing umbrella.

So what I really want is a game that gives me a sense of achievement, and with the vaguest possibility that I actually might finish it. And so it’d be really interesting to know how many games are actually finished, and how many games are just abandoned by what proportion of people.

It can be fun to go to an achievement/trophy tracker and compare the numbers for the awards for first and last story missions.

For GTA5 some numbers are:

• Welcome to Los Santos: 1,736,456
• To Live or Die in Los Santos: 565,297

For Assassins Creed Odyssey:

• This is Sparta: 417,003
• Odyssey’s end: 207,371

Some sacrifices were made… But the end result is a Godot project that works exactly the same, albeit with slightly worse performance.

The write up has lots of hard numbers for the executable size but only describes the performance impact in general terms.

It would be good to see some before and after performance numbers.

Neat

The future is indeed dumb. The 2022 GoldenEye has it’s own baggage.

I don’t think Nintendo was willing to let Microsoft sell it as a physical product (collectors would view it as superior to Nintendo’s NSO requirement).

The project is Open Source (MIT license) and maintained by W4 Games with sponsorship from Meta. Contributions from the community are welcome!

This is a fantastic approach.

It would be great if other platform owners brought out official Godot support.

I know there are legal issues with the Godot project signing up for console developer program or releasing integration code as FOSS,.

But I don’t see any legal reason why cobsole platforms couldn’t make extensions like this or even export templates available to members of their developer program.

It looks like they were using the name.

At that point it becomes a trademark protection issue.

This is going to vary from case to case.

In a situation where sales are legal and the publisher or platform later choose to remove it from sale then it usually remains available in your library for download.

But in a situation where the publisher never had a legal right to sell the product then they were never legally able to grant distribution rights to the platform? In that case the license offered to the purchaser is invalid and it may be pulled from libraries.

Its an impressive read!

The PlayStation version released in 2021 was PS4 software (that also ran on PS5 in backwards compatibility mode).

This update provides a native PS5 version. So I guess it is “next gen” in comparison.

I bought it because my son has been asking for Skatebird, but we also enjoyed an hour playing Ripped Pants at Work together and I’ll give Delver a go later tonight.

Thats the thing with bundles, different titles will appeal to different people.