I was part of a campaign that was running for a few years that unfortunately ended abruptly before I could ever naturally reveal the several puns and references I packed into my character from the outset. The set up for the ones I remember are my character was a large, friendly paladin whose highest stat was in Charisma, who largely wanted a group of friends and his highest goal was to be called their pal, who wanted to be called by his last name by his friends, who was half angelic/celestial (can’t remember the name of the race), who had dark skin, a large muscular frame, bald head, and short facial hair, whose starting gift was his blessed chainmail, and whose name was Cronwier Aderb.

The references that I remember are that he was designed in the image of a meme with Terry Crews photoshopped as a paladin (stats also reflected this meme), his blessed chainmail was his Hole-y Armor, I remember there being something about his name reflecting a crown but I can’t remember the pun or reference, and lastly he wanted his friends to say “this is our pal, Aderb.” That last one I remember I specifically came up with after the DM asked if my character was going to be “like your dark souls character, another paladerp?”

Great, you have a simple rule that’s wholely unrealistic and as poorly construed as pretty much everything else you’ve been saying so far. Such a rule could so easily be worked around that it may as well already exist for all that it would matter.

I’ll again reiterate that I agree with what you want to argue. I agree that I think Steam could probably take a smaller cut, still be profitable enough to stay in business at the same scale they are, afford more smaller businesses a better cut of the money they’re generating for themselves and for steam, and give the option to charge less to consumers. I agree that there are too many mega corporations, making way too much money, screwing too many of their clients, customers, and employees. I agree that too many executives are making genuinely fuck loads of money that are inhumanly excessive.

I’ll still say again though, that pretty much everything you’ve argued so far is wildly unrealistic, unfounded in reality, barely thought through at all, and comes across as the absurd ramblings of a middle schooler who passed an economics elective.

I’ll also point out the hypocrisy of you attacking Steam (and to your credit other distributors retail or otherwise) but defending the publishers that by your arguments simply must charge more or else they don’t make money back on their investment. Your argument defends AAA publishers such as EA churning out games year after year with the exact same code just different stats for sports games (FIFA, NBA, whatever the current football games are), games exploiting gambling addictions (pay to win, FOMO, loot boxes), and games exploiting the efforts and attention of children (Roblox).

Also “something must be broken in your brain for you to defend them instead of your own interests” is rich coming from the person who’s very visibly experiencing double-think seemingly genuinely arguing “of course publishers aren’t going to charge less for their titles on other digital marketplaces because if they need a $49 RoI on Steam then they’re going to charge the same $70 price on other platforms” at the same time as “well if Steam didn’t charge a 30% cut then you would pay $50 for an otherwise $70 title!” as if you don’t believe in your own argument that they would charge the same exact price on Steam as they do elsewhere.

It sounds to me like you’ve already started with the conclusion that 30% is too much considering you’re against all retailers taking 30%, seemingly without any regards to the context any of these retailers might have. How is it that you’ve determined that 30% is too much, and don’t forget that you’re the one who argued that other distributors are not relevant in this discussion.

Oh is that because Steam exists in isolation and can’t be compared to any other platform? If so, tell me what about Steam makes it an apples to oranges comparison with Epic, GOG, Origin, and Battle.Net? If they’re up for discussion then why is it that physical game distribution isn’t allowed to be talked about? If an average consumer is only really concerned about getting the game then why are some forms of getting their game not allowed for discussion? Why should retailers be exempt from this discussion?

You also didn’t seem to mind slashing their cut percentage in half, but how can we know that’s a feasible percentage if we’re not allowed to talk about other distributors and see if they’re able to make 15% work? If we’re not considering other distributors at all then who’s to say if 30% is unreasonable? Should it be increased or decreased and by how much?

Suppose we were instead talking about Nintendo selling games for too much, how would we decide it’s too much if we couldn’t compare it to other studios, distributors, or platforms that demonstrate they can still run a business and charge less?

Face it, talk about and comparison to any other distributor or distribution method is fully relevant and required if you want to have any meaningful discussion. You just don’t seem to want to discuss retailers because they’re hurting your weak argument.

So companies made due with the same cut from retailers for decades, Steam comes along and offers the same cut with none of the other expenses associated with those retailers (thereby giving them a better RoI than the same retailers they made due with for decades) and suddenly Steam is the reason games are so expensive.

For all of your talk that Steam’s awful cut sets the bar for the price or else they won’t make their RoI on games sold there, you suddenly don’t seem to care very much about the very many retailers these AAA publishers still regularly sell through that cost them a significantly larger percentage per game sold than Steam does.

I find it absolutely wild that you seem to think Steam’s 30% cut is the sole reason AAA games cost $70. Have you ever looked into how much it costs to sell a game at a retail store? From what I’ve seen Steam takes roughly the same cut as most retailers do and then the publisher still has to produce the physical copies and distribute them. They would make the same amount on Steam if and only if they printed, burned, packaged, and distributed their physical copies for free, not to mention the promotional materials they’re sending out to retailers.

Everything I’m seeing indicates that compared to a physical copy (which is given for a majority of AAA games) a major publisher would earn far more money per copy on Steam than at GameStop, Target, Walmart, or any other retailer where they’re charging the same $70 price at. But Steam is the real problem that’s hurting their RoI, apparently.

I’ll agree I think Steam’s cut is high and they could earn a lot of favor by turning it down a bit, but your argument seeming to insinuate that their 30% cut is the sole reason games cost $70 is absolutely wild to me.

It’s possible they have more games in their library as they did say 300+ games they want to play, but yeah the numbers they gave don’t add up to hundreds of thousands. Unless they were taking phrases like “a $700 Demon Souls machine” very literally.

If you want to discuss specifically why someone might pirate a game for the explicit purpose of not liking Nintendo’s practices then it sounds like you don’t understand the concept of spite and/or don’t understand how infrequently that is the primary reason one would pirate a game in comparison to the other myriad reasons.

Pirating a game comes with some inherit risk depending on precise circumstances so a potential pirate would be to weigh how much their desire to play a game compares to the time and effort it would take to get it working (download time, installing emulators, installing drivers, configuring, modifying the game, etc), the risk to the machine they’d be installing it on (the malware that may be installed alongside, the risk of physical damage to hardware modifications that might be required, the potential for your console or your IP being banned from servers, etc), and if it’s worth any additional hardware they might require to install it (additional storage space, buying tools to modify hardware, buying hardware mods that could allow hacks, etc)

Not being physically, legally, or financially capable of buying games may make someone willing to risk some, many, or all of these factors. I can’t imagine a significant percentage of people who’d pirate a game like Tears of the Kingdom were financially well off enough to easily afford it, but chose to do it with the explicit purpose of saying “Screw Nintendo, they don’t deserve the money I easily could give them for this game.”

I can however reasonably believe that the majority of the pirates for a game like Tears of the Kingdom would do so because “I can’t play the game without better accessibility options that Nintendo doesn’t offer, so I need to play it on an emulator that can support what I need”, “it’s not available in my region other than from brick and mortar stores which are all out of stock or charge absurd prices I can’t afford”, or “I just want to add a few mods to make the game I love even more enjoyable without risking my console getting banned from online play”.

But refusing to discuss other reasons except the most petty feels like you want to disregard other valid reasons in order misrepresent piracy as nothing but a petty practice. Of course I don’t know your exact intentions, but that’s the vibe I get from your response here.

So are you gonna cite your sources for that 1-9 ratio? Still waiting on the source for your other comment about only 1% of gamers backup their games implying the other 99% use backups for piracy.

You’re being just as dishonest as the people you accuse in two different ways: there are people already in the replies to this comment admitting to the same things, as well as making unverified claims that “they’re actually pirating, they just won’t admit it”

I feel like devices like this aren’t really under a false pretense though. Most people who would pirate games like this probably wouldn’t buy a third party device so they can copy a friend’s cartridge so they can emulate it, they’d more likely just download it and skip the middle man.

The only real way I see it being used primarily for piracy is in areas where Internet activity is heavily monitored/restricted, or broadband isn’t available/accessible. Otherwise a 1 month subscription to a VPN and a few gigabyte of Internet usage is far cheaper and easier to a pirate.

Not all games back up to the cloud and you nees an active NSO subscription to be able to backup to their cloud.

I haven’t seen this video yet (battery almost dead, gonna watch later) but this device appears to let you backup your saves locally without running it by Nintendo.

Edit: I forgot that Switch cartridges don’t hold saves so this device can’t do that.

Assuming they bought it, they’d probably just shut it down.