Here is Valve’s answer to The Verge, as of 5PM ET: “We just confirmed with iFixit that they plan to have batteries back in stock by next week.”

“iFixit will be getting the same OEM parts sourced through Valve’s partners that they always have,” spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle tells me.

(Source)

There’s no need for spin when the whole thing was just a miscommunication that got overblown.

Sounds like they should apologize for the obvious use of Nazi symbols and state they fired the intern responsible, not apologize for an “unfortunate visual association”.

Well there’s the Nazi emails and gen AI sale art if you want something more recent.

There’s this revolutionary new technology I guess the start menu gamers haven’t caught onto yet known as “cloud saves” which make it a lot easier to continue playing games on different devices and through uninstalls.

The Nazi rune company hangs out at the Nazi bar? I’m shocked.

GOG pride themselves on being a “curated” store that rejects a lot of indie games, and Indies are what’s driving Steam’s growth right now.

Because the third party client based on reverse-engineering and undocumented APIs could break at any time.

Yet they barely support playing on an OS you actually own and only really support the proprietary DRM-filled Windows

Even EA have realised at this point that nobody wants their launcher and it damages sales, and stopped putting it in their new games (except Sports titles for some reason)

Ubisoft will keep making bad decisions until it bankrupts them.

That is bad but so far Players in sanctioned countries can still play on Steam, just not make purchases. Countries like Russia and Iran still have Steam players as long as their governments aren’t blocking external internet.

Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded private competitor

That’s why these companies love the idea of purchasing half the industry or using their resources to operate at a loss and squeeze out private competitors.

If they can’t compete, they can consolidate.

Problem for Microsoft is Epic’ll realize they have Microsoft by the balls and can start upping the Unreal Engine cut.

You can’t crack a required server-side download

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/bedrock

The kind of person interested in buying a prebuild doesn’t want to replace hardware or reinstall an OS.

Tencent already has an alternative in China known as WeGame, it only has government approved games so if any Chinese gamer wants the majority of games they’re going to use Steam.

Luckily, GOG games don’t have those extra DRM launchers

Easy anti-cheat is a different team to the Epic Store, so the effect of that hiring is indeterminate.

The APIs are all undocumented and reverse engineered for Legendary. Chances are a major re-write like this could change the APIs.

Tim Sweeney’s opinions end where his financial interests begin, and Microsoft pays him a lot every month for Fortnite on Game Pass.