Ooh, yes. Actually, I’d put that over Steam in priorities. Steam is serviceable as is. Itch needs more love.

I’ll probably just keep using Heroic because it unifies libraries. If it ever becomes possible to bring in the steam library as well, it’d be great.

It seems you don’t understand what they’re talking about. It’s not about the individual thumbnail and personal taste regarding the one individual image. It’s about the class of thumbnails that utilise/follow the ‘clickbait’ model, a system of manipulation developed and actively encouraged by the attention economy of ad-based media which has a broadly pleasant-feeling but long term negative effects on the users and society.

Not wanting to engage in or encourage the process of social harm is not a ‘personal issue.’

That thumbnail is like a shot from a folk horror. The viewer is the center of attention of a group of townsfolk, smiling so widely their eyes are closed. I half expect the view to turn down and show we’re up to our necks in kindling.

More effort than designing invasive software to work on all the different hardware and software configurations used by all the players? Still have to pay engineers to work on all of that or, worse, (shudder) contractors. That shit’s expensive.

You know what system you can really readily predict the hardware and software of as a game developer? The one you use as your server. You know what has access to everything that happens in the game? Your server. You know what could run software over which the players have zero control? Your server. You know what could maybe use that ability to run sanity checks on the values coming from the players?

This is theoretically true of everything under capitalism. However, it’s not the only force involved.

On the system designer’s side, unless there is a MASSIVE drop in sales directly attributable to the absence of a particular feature, not including that feature decreases cost which increases profit. Any company that tries to court the minority who like the feature will either have to cut into their profits or charge enough to cover the feature, which will effectively price out a section of the buyers from affording it. Either way, that’s probably a lot of money lost. That extra money the other companies gets can be put toward marketing, which in turn shrinks the market share for the feature-focused manufacturer even further, which nets them less money, which… You get the idea. It’s the same thing that happened in American health insurance. The companies that did all the things Americans hate used their profits to run the companies that didn’t into the ground. Now, all that’s left are the ones with which people are familiar.

On the consumer side, they can only choose from what actually is available. Consoles are just shitty computers for people who don’t want to learn to ‘do computers.’ The options are brand A, brand B, and brand C. That’s it. You can’t demand a console that lets you play games from all three. It doesn’t exist. You can’t get the one with a cup holder. It doesn’t exist. If it’s not available as an option, you can’t do a write-in vote like it’s a ballot. You take what’s available, because the alternative is being left alone with your own thoughts and facing off against the FOMO millions of dollars in marketing has built regarding the latest flagship products.