I don’t think I can speak for everyone, but the majority of the games I have on steam that I will never play are older big name titles that I got in bundles on sale with other games I wanted to play.

I have a lot of indie/smaller studio games on steam, and I’ve played all of them a decent amount. I think the reason games from smaller or independent studios do better on steam is because they actually get put forward and highlighted by events. Like, there are mechanisms in place to promote them to people who wouldn’t have heard about them through word of mouth.

I think the larger issue is that other storefronts are just… bad about highlighting games that aren’t from huge studios and massive publishers, obvious exception for GOG who is more focused on game preservation and older niche games, but even there I rarely see new stuff from small/indie studios getting promoted.

Like, sure on epic they’ll get a 80% cut, or what ever it is, but 70% of 1000 sales is a lot more than 80% of 10.

Also, like, the comparison to Netflix is absurd. When you pay for a Netflix subscription, you are paying for literally all of the content they have, and I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to watch everything on there. It also sucks because if I want something niche or novel, there is no incentive for that to be produced because my payment is spread evenly across everything Netflix is producing.

F I B E R

Pick pocketing does exist in the US but it is much rarer than in Europe. Even if you just compare major American cities to major European cities. Pickpocketing is much more common in Europe.

I don’t think that’s down to a risk of confrontation though. I think it’s down to the fact that pickpockets can’t make enough money to live on in the US.

Cash is less common in the US. A lot of people straight up don’t carry cash on them, and the rest barely carry any. Almost everything has accepted cards for nearly 2 decades here.

Managing to steal a card is much less useful than stealing cash. The card is liable to get canceled the moment someone realizes it’s gone, maybe they can get lunch with it before it’s canceled, but they can’t keep that money around to pay rent or buy groceries with. Phones and other things to can be pawned, but that’s another extra step, and another chance to get in trouble, and most of the time the actual money they can walk away with is much less than the value of the item.

Generally yes, For me it depends on how significant the discomfort is and how broadly it impacts people, but also, how much doing the thing really matters a lot to someone.

Like, there’s a point at which “ok someone else’s discomfort about this thing is marginal compared to how much it matters to a large number of people” at which point I get annoyed at someone trying to force other people to stop doing something that matters to them, even if I’m not doing the thing.

Maybe because the automotive market is doing poorly at the moment, and gas demand is down as well.