
UI SE @CriterionGames @Battlefield 6 Past Work: Sega, Two Point Opinions My Own
He/Him
Joined July 2009
- Tweets56.3K
- Following2.8K
- Followers1.2K
- Likes88.5K
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
I'm gonna spell this out because this issue is deceptively subtle:
1. The Steam client and infrastructure is somewhere between "not that hard" and "trivial". It's a download service attached to a payment processor with a smattering of services on the side. Cloud providers handle all the infrastructure these days.
2. Steam takes 30% of gross revenue; ostensibly for the privilege of using these services, but in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase.
3. Steam users love Steam and having their whole library in one place. It works. It's dependable. It has sales and cards and achievements, oh my!
4. PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales. Not releasing on Steam destroys the business model.
5. Therefore, no amount of competition will ever unseat Steam. People post-hoc rationalize this with memes about how gracious Gabe is. And how brilliant their services are. But realistically, no avid Steam user wants other stores to succeed.
The mere existence of other stores risks splintering their precious collection. They are "all in" on Steam. Invested.
Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users. They would in fact find it to be a problem and a threat to their investment.
Competition in this space is not only uninteresting to most Steam users, it's actively denigrated!
The CONSEQUENCE of this situation, is that 30% of all gross revenue is siphoned out of the PC games industry into a black hole.
It doesn't recirculate into studios.
It doesn't pay any bonuses.
It doesn't fund any sequels or DLC.
This is a particularly insidious tax because it's well hidden. It's a second order effect. Most Steams users don't know, and the few that do never consider the aggregate effect this has on their favorite hobby.
It's undeniable that, at this point in history, Valve could EASILY lower the distribution fee while maintaining healthy margins. But they don't have to.
Users are locked into Steam and therefore developers are stuck paying 30% of gross revenue to Valve.
The irony is that Steam users, the very ones maintaining this unbreakable stalemate, would benefit the most from a better financed game development ecosystem.
I don't think this is fixable. It's just sad.
It's really sad that the games industry is drained by a 30% tax on gross revenue.
You could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week. Cloudflare egress is basically free.
The industry is in desperate need of a distribution platform that allows developers to keep their revenue.
Networks effects and the fanatic obsession with "muh Steam library" will make this very difficul.
But if devs could actually keep their earnings, we'd have a greater selection of better games and far more financial success stories.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Steam calculates its revenue share on net revenue after adjustments for refunds, chargebacks and taxes, not gross revenue. It funds Steam's platform services and infrastructure including distribution, Workshop, multiplayer tools, cloud saves and discovery features.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/finance/pa…
partner.steamgames.com/doc/finance/ta…
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
Season 1 World Champion. Forever a legend.
We are devastated to hear about Lauri “Cyanide” Happonen’s passing. Cyanide won Season 1 Worlds with Fnatic and remains the youngest player to ever lift the Summoner's Cup.
Thank you for everything, Lauri.
Replying to @FrederikDrabert
Was my first battlefield, while I was at university too. What a great game it was – at Cannock, England
We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Lauri “Cyanide" Happonen earlier this year.
During his four-year spell at Fnatic, Cyanide made history as the youngest ever player to win Worlds at just 16. He leaves behind a legacy that will never be forgotten.
Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family, friends, and everyone whose lives he touched.
Rest in peace, Cyanide. 🧡🖤
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
Fuse’s Lead Concept Artist, James Lewis-Vines, on the unique process of ageing Sebulba:
“We’re catching up with Sebulba many years after his race at the Boonta Eve Classic in 32 BBY, and his successful racing career is clear from is affluent garments and jewellery. After years of renown, it makes sense that he would have an aged rockstar look. We eventually decided on a beard in concept, taking references from the ‘Martial Arts Master’ trope as he mentors Shade. His golden robe was inspired by senators elsewhere in the STAR WARS™ galaxy, adding a touch of grandeur to his appearances in the paddock.”
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
"When it rains, it pours."
Apart from BioWare (Mass Effect), Maxis (The Sims), Full Circle (Skate) and Respawn (Apex Legends), #Battlefield developers Ripple Effect and Motive Studio have also been targeted by EA during sweeping layoffs.
EA's internal memo - first made public by Bloomberg - failed to specify which other studios would be affected. Vertical Slice has since reported that Motive Studio and Ripple Effect are among EA's targets, citing multiple LinkedIn posts by laid-off staff.
This has been corroborated by posts from Character Artist (Corey Thomas), Technical Animator (Juan Meza), and Technical Artist (Turner Spring) from Ripple Effect and posts from Concept Artist (Brandon Le) and Senior Gameplay Designer (Jamieson Shearer) from Motive Studio.
Corey Thomas: linkedin.com/posts/corweee_o…
Juan Meza: linkedin.com/posts/jjmeza_i-…
Turner Spring: linkedin.com/posts/turner-sp…
Brandon Le: linkedin.com/posts/brandon-l…
Jamieson Shearer: linkedin.com/posts/jamiesons…
The new round of cuts includes the elimination of 400 roles across EA. 50 workers were affected at BioWare. The other 350 job cuts come from Maxis, Full Circle, Respawn, Ripple Effect and Motive Studio.
verticalslice.news/maxis-ful…
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.
Feeling a lot of pain and sadness for my bf6 colleagues overseas who've just been let go. Spent quite a few late nights working across time zones with some of them. 😔 I really hope everyone affected by these layoffs land on their feet – at Cannock, England
Replying to @NotSoLittleC @charlteon
Beautiful photos dude.
Both looking swag as hell. That last one under the wooden porch is 😚👌 – at Cannock, England
Replying to @chhopsky
Every time I talk to some friends they act like there is a bear shortage so surely this can't be true 😅😂 – at Cannock, England
Replying to @PKhibiya
It happens to the best of us. – at Cannock, England
Finally, a real game you can play with your kids.
I spent years helping build World of Warcraft. Then I watched MMOs automate the people out.
So we're building Haven: a beautiful WoW meets Valheim, made for families, where cooperation is the win condition. 🧵
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
BREAKING: Electronic Arts is cutting 400 jobs and shutting down BioWare, the legendary development studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Ry-angry Simpson retweeted
Something dead has awakened in Area 51 💀
Dead Space has breached #Battlefield6 and #REDSEC.
👁️ Destroy the Marker
🧟 Survive hordes of Marked Soldiers
🔫 Wield the Pulse Rifle
🪖 Unlock Dead Space rewards
Survive the madness. Stop the Convergence.
Battlefield 6 x Dead Space | Convergence Event Trailer
Something dead has awakened in Area 51.
Replying to @darkosupe
Congratulations again, for realises now.
Replying to @darkosupe
Old habits die hard 😂
Grats in the first big launch – at Cannock, England
Replying to @lofibanshee
Thanks for being our dork – at Cannock, England















