NA is (or at least was when I played) the most populated and visible regional zone, and attracts a lot of players attempting various kinds of rank manipulation. On the one hand you have smurfing, which is the practice of a relatively high skill player using a an account with relatively low rank so that they can dominate lower ranked players. On the other side you have boosting, which is a relatively high skill player ranking up new accounts for later sale.
In practice this means at lower ranks, it was not at all uncommon to be matched with players with similar rank but vastly better skills.
This was my experience too years ago when I played CSGO. The difficulty at higher ranks (up to a certain point) felt significantly easier than the lower ranks. Getting out of the silver and gold ranks (can't remember the exact names) was a hellish grind with lots of matches that ended in one sided stomps with one or two guys on the other team racking up some insane k/d. Past that was smooth sailing for a long long way.
Yep - same story here with Nuke (the old one, but then it happened again on the new one too). Got to global and it was a ghost town save for the same 5 man we ran into every night.
I never really understood this mentality, especially when on the console side people seem just fine with the idea of buying multiple consoles for exclusives. (not that I am agreeing with that either).
There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists.
Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox and PC), Epic, and EA. Plus Game Pass.
The only annoying part is when I go to install or buy a game, finding where I have it or making sure I don't already own it somewhere. But there are launchers like Playnite to address that.
But it does feel like I am in the minority with this opinion.
For me, I don’t like launchers constantly updating and running at startup. Inevitably, they end up breaking something or popping up a modal when I’m trying to do something else.
I tolerate steam on my laptop because they were the first. I hate Epic and other launchers when I just want a game.
I will wait until it gets to steam. And have even skipped free games because I don’t want the mental load.
When you say "people do this" and "people also do that contradictory thing" you're making the mistake assuming that the word refers to the same people.
But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers.
One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox).
One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost.
Why do these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.
Software, especially if installed on my Windows PC, always has a risk of causing security problems, running spyware, agents that slow things down, taking up HD space, weird new DRM, screwing with the registry, etc.
> One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation.
I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.
But, as someone who is mostly a couch gamer so my console of choice is Xbox. I can see that, I have a PS5 but all of my cross platform games is Xbox.
I have my PC for a lot of games that I would prefer that setup (for me its a game by game decision), but with game pass and cross buy it already didn't make sense for me to go all in on steam, but some games are only on steam.
So what was the harm in adding other stores when it made sense.
> I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.
I don't want to reward it. But I also view myself as a gamer first before any platform loyalties. If I want to play something, that takes priority. So annoyingly I have both under my TV.
rant I am so annoyed at the people complaining about Xbox going Multiplatform as if it isn't a good thing for consumers to not have to buy nearly identical hardware. I don't care that it is how the industry has ran for so long, it's still anti-consumer. end rant
>I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.
Yeah, probably a healthy mix. The achievement and stats consolidation is via word of mouth and conversation I have had over the years. I don’t have data to back that up. I’m sure the /r/pcmasterrace folk would have something to say about it though.
I totally agree with your rant. It’s ridiculous that folk want to complain about this.
At this point, sunken cost into a Steam library aside, I won't buy a game if it isn't on Steam and at least SteamDeck supported.
Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.
Right. The phenomenon is real, but the description on that site seems a bit obtuse on purpose:
> For organizations with more than a handful of employees, this feature is critical for IT and Security teams (...) In short: SSO is a core security requirement for any company with more than five employees.
No, it isn't. They'd like it very much, but the SSO tax is proof positive that this is not a truly critical feature for small customers. In fact, it pretty much measures at which point it becomes critical.
>BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is this kind of access in the inbox. It sets you apart from all the others by showcasing your brand and legitimacy to your users in the inbox by displaying your logo and, in some cases, a verified checkmark.
Until I looked at the cost of a Verified Mark Certificate (1-year plan):
>$1,499.00 USD [1]
Yikes.
Small money for big players, but small businesses with valid brands not so much.
$1500 USD / year for something that collides with the logo functionality of Gravatar if the user isn't hovering over the logo?
We used to emphasize domains and everyone understood them. Then the large tech companies de-emphasized domains to the point where people stopped understanding them. Now big tech is going to sell domain validation back to us at a premium? Wow! What innovation.
I know there's trademark verification too, but I've never met a normal person that could tell you a difference between a Gravatar logo like the one I see in my mail client and a VMC logo like the one I see in the screenshots, so what good is showing a trademarked logo? Also, most small businesses I've seen don't even have trademarks, so they'll be completely excluded from this system.
I wonder if this is going to turn out like code signing certificates where they're super expensive for small developers, so they get excluded, but they're totally attainable for scammers and scumbags, so there's plenty of malware and garbage signed by certificates from fly-by-night companies.
Does BIMI help you pass spam filters like EV code signing certificates help you bypass SmartScreen? I can't be the only one that thinks all these things feel like a scam.
One thing I'm certain of based on what we see with SSL certificates. Government agencies will be racing to light money on fire buying them. Every year I watch my taxes get spent on overpriced DigiCert OV certificates and it enrages me. For all intents and purposes, all certificates are identical to normal users. It doesn't matter if DigiCert is taking my DNA for validation, all my mom sees is the lock icon. Nothing else matters.
> I know there's trademark verification too, but I've never met a normal person that could tell you a difference between a Gravatar logo
Current implementations display a blue checkmark in addition to the logo. It's a bit different from what Gmail or Gravatar previously has done.
> Does BIMI help you pass spam filters like EV code signing certificates help you bypass SmartScreen? I can't be the only one that thinks all these things feel like a scam.
Having a proper SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup most likely has the biggest impact, but BIMI might also be taken into account.
> Current implementations display a blue checkmark in addition to the logo. It's a bit different from what Gmail or Gravatar previously has done.
Where that checkmark ends up is important. In the GMail screenshots I saw, it's with the other header information, which is ok. If anyone puts it on the logo as a badge, that'll be bad because we'll start seeing blue checkmark badges on non-VMC logos used for phishing.
If I were a bad actor, I'd put a BIMI like looking header at the top of my phishing emails. Most people I deal with don't know the difference between the application and display parts of the UI. They don't know that one is a trusted area and that the other isn't. Since the large email providers hide so much of the header, I think a fake "certification" at the top of an email would be pretty successful.
> Having a proper SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup most likely has the biggest impact, but BIMI might also be taken into account.
I bet it will be, even if it's not publicly advocated for. I'm sure that's what DigiCert and Entrust want because it sets them up as rent seeking middle men that you have to deal with. $1500 USD per year is a disgusting amount of money for what they're doing.
It reminds me of getting code signing certificates where the prices are astronomical compared to what the issuers are actually doing. Some of the laughable requirements look similar too [1]:
> You will need publicly available proof that your business exists. For newer startups, we found that Yellow Pages or Google Business Profiles were the easiest ways to obtain this.
Neither of those are authoritative and both are filled with fake information based on my experience. It's just a bunch of theatre so DigiCert and Entrust can pretend they're doing something significant while charging an exorbitant amount of money for something that could be automated after the first year (until trademark expiration).
I've personally had people doing the "verification" (not DigiCert or Entrust) for a code signing certificate ask me to provide links to local business listings to prove I exist. I could have sent them anything and they wouldn't know the difference. Instead I told them there aren't any official listings like that and asked them to cancel my order. Magically they didn't need it.
I want code signing to change and, since this is the same awful scheme, I hope it fails to gain adoption. I plan to push harder to abolish DigiCert as a vendor next time I get a chance. This kind of egregious pricing isn't the type of innovation I'm looking for in tech companies.
We only just had Lets Encrypt shutdown the EV nonsense from the CA industry, and BIMI, which is only currently able to be signed by two super expensive providers, is their comeback.
Aside from the fact it's just unnecessary, I'm seeing a range of various "domain security checks" services now test for BIMI, meaning lack of BIMI is something I'm already seeing showing up on low rate "penetration tests".
Note it's not even supported on Office 365, meaning all those business customers you're aiming for won't see it.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/security-dev/c/h1...
https://groups.google.com/g/firefox-dev/c/6wAg_PpnlY4