Whiterabbit-uk,

I've noted recently that someone always marks down my reviews early in the day, no matter what the game is. It would be more useful if that person would actually gave a reason for their negative mark down, so that I could improve them; unless of course it's someone whose' s taken umbrage with being asked not to swear on this family oriented site, or had a comment removed due to using very inappropriate language.

I ask because I'm always looking for ways to improve my posts; especially bearing in mind the amount of time I'm able to dedicate to them. I used to spend a lot more time with reviews when we were only given games at the weekend, but now that they are more often than not, every day, it's taken a big hit on my spare time, so I've had to be judicious with the time I do have to play, make notes, take screen captures then cobble together a quick review of the game; often with a lot less time that I would have liked to have spent on the review.

Please remember, I do this as a volunteer, with no recompense other than the feeling that I've done a reasonable job and of course the many friends I've made over the years I've been posting here since 2006. Some of those friends I talk to via Discord every week and often play cooperative games with them.

Whiterabbit-uk, Ooops, I replied to the wrong post (see below!).

But rest assured, good sir, that your "initial reviews" are very useful and much appreciated — by myself at least. My only criticism would be you keep mentioning Steam (whom I detest Big Time) but that's a personal thing and not actually a criticism of you nor your reviews.

Cad Delworth,

Thanks Cad, appreciated.

Regarding Steam, I realise that some community members are not into Steam. I wasn't initially, but after buying some Steamworks games without knowing what Steamworks entailed back in December 2008, and then discovering I had to install the Steam client before I could play the games (I'd purchased the games from IGN's Direct to Drive site). I wasn't happy and initially complained to which I was offered a refund, but I wanted so much to play both games (Galactic Bowling and Defense Grid: The Awakening), I ended up downloading Steam January 2009. Whenever I booted up the platform it would initially boot up to the Steam store (until I discovered you could adjust what was shown when booting up via the settings), where I quickly discovered they had frequent sales.

Within a week of installing the platform I'd purchased my first bundle of six indie games, five of which I'd had on my radar for some time. The cost of the six games was less than the cost of buying just one of the games when not on sale, so I couldn't resist. That, plus other attributes of the client such as the ability to switch on auto updates so that if a game was updated, it would automatically update the game. Plus the community side of the client was growing and I started to make friends with similar tastes in games. When they introduced trading cards I started to sell some of them and made over £1400 in just over 12 months also selling some Counter Strike dlc's that I'd never added to my account, but had stored in my inventory.

I would still prefer DRM free games, but sadly that will never be globally viable due to the billions the big name developers lost pre DRM due to games being copied and passed on to friends for free.

Of all the different game clients now available from the big name developers such as uPlay, Origin and even GOG (though the latter is voluntary), the Steam client is still far ahead of any of them with respect to what it has to offer to the gaming community, as well as who you can meet and what you can trade via the Steam market.

Out of curiosity, (you may already have said previously) why do you detest Steam?

"I've noted recently that someone always marks down my reviews early in the day, no matter what the game is. It would be more useful if that person would actually gave a reason..."

Troll mentality. The purpose is to create a reaction, negative from targets, positive from fellow trolls.

"My only criticism would be you keep mentioning Steam (whom I detest Big Time)..."

For better or worse, Steam is in the same league as Microsoft, Google, Meta etc. -- virtual monopolies it's hard to escape. You can go XBox game pass & avoid steam by feeding Microsoft, or feed Steam, joining them in fighting Microsoft by installing/playing *their* games on Linux. Steam has put a Lot of work into Windows emulation/compatibility for gaming on Linux, and they expect to profit. The only way to avoid feeding the monsters that I'm aware of is to run Linux and play Linux-native games. gamingonlinux.com/free-games/

mike,

Which for me wouldn't work as most of my favourite games would not play on Linux.

Whiterabbit-uk, I'm basically "anti-" anything that forces you to download a "client" which does who-knows-what when it's running (i.e. spyware). This is why, for example, I won't use audio plug-ins from Waves. I did actually install their so-called "client" but it didn't work, and it caused me a LOT of aggro a) getting it installed and b) getting it UNinstalled.

In the particular case of Steam, a Long Time Ago I did have it (briefly) installed but it screwed up and lost my keys, to zero sympathy from Valve, who basically said it must be MY fault (it honestly wasn't!). All of which left me thinking they are a bunch of complete shysters who don't give a stuff about the people paying them Actual Money. And is why, if I'm asked, I'll tell anyone NEVER to use Steam. EVER.

And yes: companies like Waves and Steam/Valve get precisely ONE chance with me. If they blow it, I'll hate on them forever: and no, I will NOT EVER give them another chance, even if someone I trust (e.g. yourself, whiterabbit) tells me "oh, they're not like that any more, they've really changed."

(Since you asked, LOL!)

Whiterabbit-uk, Sorry to double-post, but I forgot to add that in addition to my personal bad experiences with Steam/Valve, I have less-than-zero interest in "meeting people;" or in horse-trading virtual "assets," both of which you mentioned in the sense of those being desirable in some way. Not to me they aren't: sorry!

With apologies for the soapbox...

"Which for me wouldn't work as most of my favourite games would not play on Linux."

There are gamers who really don't like Microsoft &/or Windows, or who prefer the greater efficiency & lower hardware requirements of Linux, or simply love Linux, and as their ranks grow because of the Steamdeck & Win10's upcoming EOL, they're continually making Proton [& GE Proton] compatible with more & more games.

protondb.com/

store.steampowered.com/curator/33483305-Proton-Compatible/

That said, *pragmatically speaking & IMHO* it's not worth it unless you just enjoy fiddling with that sort of thing. It can feel good personally to take a stand, but it's not going to have any effect otherwise.

Sadly, it's exceedingly rare for any biz [including non profits] for their #1 goal to not be making more money. If they have investors / shareholders, their only responsibility is giving them maximum returns. When they do something that's considered good for the planet or society, it's some combo of PR, Marketing, & financial incentives -- NOT because some super rich CEO is really a nice person [if they were they'd be fired]. When a biz has good CR [Customer Relations] it's because when they measure the results of their CR efforts, it needs to continue that investment to meet or grow sales targets to keep investors happy. If they can cut back, e.g., eliminating email or personal support without much effect on the numbers, they will [& in most cases have]. Steam almost certainly screwed Cad by accident -- if it was normal practice they'd face Big consequences, & they know that -- but their leadership didn't feel it was worth investing in the level of CR that would have made it right. Steam likely has changed, but in today's cost cutting environment probably not for the better -- most every tech company is cutting costs nowadays, & CR can be an easy target. 'Bout all we can do -- again just my humble opinion -- is vote for people in gov that we think / hope will try to rein in, regulate the way biz treats us. That's hard, because biz feels it's cheaper to pay all sorts of folks [including politicians] to say that would kill biz & the economy, feeding the growing polarity in politics.

mike,

Thanks for the link Mike, will check those out. I may install Linux onto one of my older computers. Apart from my really early desktops up to around the turn of the century and a couple of dual core computers that I gave away, I still have most of my builds. I keep meaning to set up a couple with older windows versions, including at least one with DOS so that I can play all those abandonware games I have without having to go through an emulator. I still have all my old disks and useful books to help, going back to DOS 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7 and 8.1. I've still not moved over to Win 11 though. Will probably do that sometime this year.

"I've still not moved over to Win 11 though. Will probably do that sometime this year."

I've found Win11 *slightly* more compatible with older software / games, & *slightly* more responsive on really low end hardware [Intel Atom CPU, 2GB RAM etc.], but otherwise it's identical to running Win10. Things like the new faster pathway for games to access the hard disk have been back-ported to Win10, so the only exclusive I can think of is the Amazon [Android] App Store. Originally I had planned to start moving everything over -- since 10 was being replaced by 11 why not -- but then the news hit that there's going to be a Windows 12 [though they might not call it that] around the same time Win10 hits EOL. I'm also a bit skeptical about Microsoft actually orphaning a billion or so PCs & laptops that don't meet Win11's official hardware requirements, especially since Win11 hasn't been a runaway hit. Anyway, I've hit the brakes on upgrading Windows for now.

That said, the upgrade is a piece of cake, or if you prefer to install Windows fresh, installing Win11 takes noticeably less time than Win10. A tiny app called "Windows 11 Classic Context Menu" is the only real necessity -- sordum.org/14479/windows-11-classic-context-menu-v1-1/ -- & Windows Central has a couple of decent guides on what's up with the new Start Menu, which can throw you at 1st.

mike,

Thank you for your feedback Mike, appreciated.