As the saying goes - "if something is free, you are the product".

Having an epic account and downloading their products is supporting them whether or not you're paying money to do so.

The facts about epic and sweeney are out there and if someone, after researching them, still feel like supporting them I'm not going to bother arguing with that.

I enjoy Fall Guys

I never really thought Fall Guys was that good - I played it for a while and it was kinda fun, but it got boring quite soon so it wasn't a big loss for me when epic bought it.

Rocket League is a different matter though - it is one of my favourite games of all times. I've got well above a thousand hours in it and bought most of their dlc just to support the developers.

When they got bought by epic I continued playing, but did not buy any additional content after that. Once it became mandatory to make an epic account to continue playing, I quit.

Overnight Rocket League went from being my most played game to me going cold turkey because there is no way I'm supporting epic and sweeney, even if all it takes is making a "free" account with them.

I get your point and I generally agree however I'm not sure what do about it. RL has been my game for almost 7 years now and getting GC rewards a few seasons ago was one of my most satisfying gaming accomplishments, I'm not ready to quit it cold turkey - I do play less since that season where I grinded so hard. I never bought anything on Epic (even though they have often best deals esp. considering €10 coupons) and I've only played a handful of games from their giveaways. Regarding: "if something is free, you are the product" - not sure if it works the same in this case, it's not Facebook. They're trying to make me spend money and they have failed to do so. My RL pass has been funded by itself since it got introduced.

agreed with the above, I'm all for cancelling big corporations, but I don't think that claiming free games from Epic counts as supporting them, they are more like free samples

Anybody play NBA 2k23? I can't figure out what the slide meters really do for shot timing and shot coverage. Sources on the internet say different things. And I guess the game developer doesn't put out guides. I assume shot timing at 0 makes the bar not matter but shot coverage is less intuitive. I'm having a hard time getting consistent at shooting. Somebody said taking the meter off totally improves shots?

It could be awesome, but like half the maps are vaulted now, meaning they never show up until "unvaulted". Apparently the Switch can't handle many of the levels, so instead of fencing off their users, they dumbed down the game for users on other platforms as well.

Games like this really need a wide variety of maps, and they're finally getting to the point where they have enough maps to keep the game fresh, and then they just throw 50% of the maps in a vault.

Yeah I quit when I noticed I was playing the fan level every single game. Plus that stupid ship that took forever.

Unfortunately epic gets my RL business because it's the goat game

Who's playing Hogwarts Legacy? The deluxe version unlocked today. I've bought the standard version and unlocks on the 10th.

Damn you paid full price for a game!?!?

steam next festival has some nice demos for indie games, I played Afterimage for a little while and it looks like a super solid hand drawn metroidvania, gameplay is decent enough and the visuals are just stunning.

The only issue I have is that voice acting is extremely annoying, does every character in translated Asian media have to sound like an overly excited 8-year-old?

My wife is a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I bought the game as a Valentine's Day gift for us to play together.

I love how the boycott Hogwarts movement has been so successful. It's only the all time #1 viewed single player game on Twitch. GFY with this boycott ****.

I don't really understand the boycott. Is it just some sort of streamer clout image thing over playing a game that a bunch of Call of Duty players would say is immature?

I don't know if there is a real boycott. Some people don't like jk Rowling.

A lot of the LGBT community are boycotting anything Rowling based, because she came out as anti-TERF. People who are allied with LGBT community boycott are supposed to boycott also.

So, the boycott is real, but it's just a minor % of people actually doing it.

Mark I want to hear your initial thoughts when you start playing

I'll let you know on the 15th...

Reviews all seem pretty positive.

Can't remember the last time I paid full price for a game, but based on the reviews and not having anything else tempting going on, I got Hogwarts Legacy and about two hours in, it is awesome.

Can't remember a game drawing me this in since Witcher 3.

I love Hogwarts Legacy! I'm still early on in the game but the fun factor is high! There are a ton of short term, medium term and long term quests. So you are always progressing on something. The world building and attention to detail is almost unbelievable. Also, it runs great on older hardware - however it gobbles memory like crazy. With 16gb, it seems it still wants more.

I look forward to playing more tomorrow.

I like how the combat is challenging but not too ridiculous. Reminds me of Zelda where you need to figure out the weakness.

With that said. It's fun just walking around the castle... (with my jaw on the ground )

How do people with a controller play? I struggle with all the button options on the keyboard. Auto aim makes it fairly easy, kind of want to turn it off.

I was surprised it had direct support for my steam controller.

It lets you play with a mouse and keyboard and the controller at the same time.

Maybe I'll dual weild. I meant on keyboard it's tough so i imagine with controller it's impossible.

Yes, the game looks great and there are a ton of good locations both in and out of the castle


As for controls, I've only played with a controller and think that works really well - haven't tried with mouse/keyboard so don't know how it compares, but I find the controller really easy (and I'm not a "natural" controller-player and often struggle with that over mouse/keyboard).

Don't know how the controls are on pc, but apart from the spells, there aren't that many buttons to keep track of on the controller - and the spells are grouped into 4x4 groups so it's fairly easy to switch between 16 of them (once all 4 'spellgroups' are unlocked) at the time (not always easy to remember which spell is where in the heat of the battle, but I imagine that's the same on pc).