plenty of it doesn’t come from a company doing lousy stuff like this
So you only play indie games? Because that's basically the only way you avoid "companies doing lousy stuff."
If there's any time playing only indie games is viable it's now. We've had high quality indie releases outpacing how fast you can play them for a few years now.
Especially on PC. Also, people forget that Indie doesn't necessarily mean "made by a small team/low budget". It just means it was produced by a studio that isn't at the behest of some massive corperation/faceless number crunching shareholders. CD Projekt Red is an independant studio, as is Valve.
Also, some games are developed independently by small studios, but then marketed and published by a larger company. Devolver is an example of a publishing house with an excellent track record of just letting the indie dev teams they work with do whatever they want.
CD Projekt is publicly traded.
Yup. I tend to like Annapurna published games.
Steam Deck and other Linux handhelds make it super easy to play indies.
So you only play indie games?
Pretty much.
More specifically, I only play new games that I can verify the author is receiving a fair wage. That tends to be pretty indie.
In the rare case that I'm somehow caught up on my indie game library, I also play open source games and AAA title abandonware.
Moving from "patient gamer" to "gamer with a strong stance against Nintendo's and EA's bullshit" honestly wasn't a huge deal. And it continues to be easy on my wallet.
More and more lately, but not exclusively. I have an increasingly long list of things that are deal-breakers for me, and I haven't run out of stuff to play.
So you only play indie games? Because that's basically the only way you avoid "companies doing lousy stuff."
If there's any time playing only indie games is viable it's now. We've had high quality indie releases outpacing how fast you can play them for a few years now.
Especially on PC. Also, people forget that Indie doesn't necessarily mean "made by a small team/low budget". It just means it was produced by a studio that isn't at the behest of some massive corperation/faceless number crunching shareholders. CD Projekt Red is an independant studio, as is Valve.
Also, some games are developed independently by small studios, but then marketed and published by a larger company. Devolver is an example of a publishing house with an excellent track record of just letting the indie dev teams they work with do whatever they want.
CD Projekt is publicly traded.
Yup. I tend to like Annapurna published games.
Steam Deck and other Linux handhelds make it super easy to play indies.
Pretty much.
More specifically, I only play new games that I can verify the author is receiving a fair wage. That tends to be pretty indie.
In the rare case that I'm somehow caught up on my indie game library, I also play open source games and AAA title abandonware.
Moving from "patient gamer" to "gamer with a strong stance against Nintendo's and EA's bullshit" honestly wasn't a huge deal. And it continues to be easy on my wallet.
More and more lately, but not exclusively. I have an increasingly long list of things that are deal-breakers for me, and I haven't run out of stuff to play.