How do they win with exclusives? The strategy is nonsense.

For Sony, I get it. I want to play Demon Souls, I buy a PS5, now I own a PS5 I'm gonna buy more games for it.

But for EGS this doesn't make sense. It costs me nothing to install both stores on my PC. I buy Alan Wake 2 on EGS, great, that doesn't make me any more likely to buy the next game I want there. Nothing about the platform is sticky or requires a sunk cost.

Unless they're making enough money on the exclusive games to justify the deals on their own (which, given this announcement, seems unlikely) I don't see how they or you think it could work.

> It costs me nothing to install both stores on my PC.

But you wouldn't bother unless you have a reason to. I put off buying games I wanted to for months because I'd've had to install a new store. No-one is going to install a store for nothing.

> I buy Alan Wake 2 on EGS, great, that doesn't make me any more likely to buy the next game I want there.

Now every time you launch Alan Wake 2 they get a chance to sell you another game. If you see a game you like, why wouldn't you buy it on EGS now that you've installed it and know it works? They've got your email address now and can send you recommendations or tell you when there's a sale on.

Sure, it's still going to be an uphill struggle. But if they can't get you to install the store then they can't even start.

This is definitely wrong, Steam’s stickiness is a massive selling point.

What part? Finish your thought.

Steam is sticky (social features, network effects, etc) and EGS is not, so EGS exclusives do not work. What part of this is "definitely wrong"?

It's called a network effect. At some point, you use it because you use it. And without any killer feature, you have no reason to move. It's not "wrong", but it explains why "just do better than Steam" does not work.

Comment is suspect. Defines a term I already used like you think you're introducing it, and addresses an argument I didn't make.

Did you use an LLM to generate this? Don't do that.

No, I am sadly human. Heck, these days I'm sloppier with my typing specifically to avoid such accusations.

You asked why and I answered with the real reason. It's not that deep. People don't leave because people don't leave. If that's not a satisfying answer, I agree. But reality can be irrational.

Historically, exclusives have been the only way to get an edge in. And it only takes one system seller to pull it off.

Or at least, that's how it worked 20 years ago. Thing is, games got so diverse, as well as the rise of "forever games" that there's fee actual "systrlem sellers" these days. It's really just GTA that comes to mind now.

I'd love steam to have some competition. epic isn't it though. Epic sucks up your personal data to sell to advertisers and "marketing partners", the client itself is trash, it's just one more middle man to get in your way (https://old.reddit.com/r/EpicGamesPC/comments/zc5ri3/playing...) at inconvenient times.

A good competitor would not come from a game publisher. It wouldn't collect any more data than it needs and wouldn't use your data for marketing or sell it to anyone else. It also wouldn't be able to remove your ability to access and play the games you've already purchased for any reason.

Bad products/services that are more trouble than they are worth do not magically become good because they might compete in some ways with something else.

GoG is the closest thing to a steam competitor right now and even in that case I have zero incentive to install their client.

Competition is good, the EGS is bad and anti-consumer.

Two anti-consumer products is probably better than one, but I also hate Epic as a company, so I would just prefer for Steam to win. At least I like half-life.

If you use an extension like vimium, you get this by using the standard [[ and ]] vim motions for this.

Also, using the keyboard for navigation, while it sounds like a chore, is really quite excellent, and I prefer it to the mouse, as crazy as that might sound.

I don't disagree, but I haven't used a traditional mouse in years. I have a rollermouse, so it's just a bar just below the space bar, which I can reach with my thumbs without moving my hands from home row!

Given their statements, influencers and indeed their raison d'être I don't understand why this and bun was acquired? Why did they not just Ralph loop it? Claude is famously not made by humans anymore.

One prompt and call it a weekend. Surely they have the compute.

Oooooh, right.

Same reason we don't have windows 41 either.

Right because golang is like 2 years old and new o.O

Look at the post history https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hristian

and it's an old account (2014!). why do people do this? it's like griefers in games.

The account is old but it looks like it was only used for posting for the first time today. Maybe a longtime lurker?

Yeah I'm completely at a loss regarding motivations as well. I understand the need for astroturfing outfits to establish legitimate history prior to usage but the prose are still far too easy to spot to be throwing away old accounts like this one.

I really wonder who is paying for all the wasted effort targeting HN at this early stage instead of waiting a bit for the LLMs to be less discernable.

Waiting for when llm bots start shaming more obvious llm bots.

What on earth do you have to rely on alphabet, an ad company, to read rss for? there are many other options, that are not made by an ad company.

Google Reader was never the answer. It's such a shame that people even here don't realize that relying on Google for that had interests at odds - and you weren't part of the equation at all.

Well, except for your data. You didn't give them enough data. So they shut down shop. Gmail though, ammirite? :D

Yeah I wonder why gmail was not one of the shut down products /s

For now you are. All these things fall with time, of course. You will stop caring once you start feeling safe, we all do.

Also. AAarrgh, my new thing to be annoyed at is AI drivel written slop.

"No browser automation framework, no separate browser instance, no re-login."

Oh really, nice. No separate computer either? No separate power station, no house, no star wars? No something else we didn't ask for? Just one a toggle and you go? Whoaaaaaa.

Edit: lol even the skill itself is vibe coded:

Lightweight Chrome DevTools Protocol CLI. Connects directly via WebSocket — no Puppeteer, works with 100+ tabs, instant connection.

I feel like there's nothing fucking left on the internet anymore that is not some mean of whatever the LLM is trained to talk like now.

What can you do? I mentioned the use of AI on another thread, asking essentially the same question. The comment was flagged, presumably as off topic. Fair enough, I guess. But about 80% (maybe more) of posted blogs etc that I see on HN now have very obvious signs of AI. Comments do too. I hate it. If I want to see what Claude thinks I can ask it.

HN is becoming close to unusable, and this isn’t like the previous times where people say it’s like reddit or something. It is inundated with bot spam, it just happens the bot spam is sufficiently engaging and well-written that it is really hard to address.

Could you just be paranoid about it and seeing things where they aren’t? I can’t imagine someone using AI to comment on HN!

I hear you and I agree. I don't know. Gated communities?

Unjustified huge assumption by someone who has AI living free in their head incoming!

Some litmus test. I am sooo tired of statements like "No x. No y. No z." and then optionally "Just Foo.".

Who aside from Fred fucking Durst writes like that?

Ugh... Clearly llm generated. This is how internet has become. 90% of posts are variations of tropes like these.

    > I am sooo tired of statements like "No x. No y. No z." and then optionally "Just Foo.".  Who aside from Fred fucking Durst writes like that?

I disagree. This is a classic humor template in popular magazines from the 1990s and 2000s. The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" probably has/had this style frequently. Also, (Timothy) McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is basically an extended trope of exactly this type of writing from 1990s and 2000s.

I self host miniflux. Elfeed in Emacs, read you on android. The read status syncs between devices and clients.

I have miniflux set up so it integrates with instapaper so I get interesting articles on my kindle. And saving an article will send it to karakeep automatically for permanent storage! (image, video, screen shots and text storage).

Pretty pretty pretty good.

I'm also self hosting miniflux, along with Reactflux to get a nice webui. I use Read You on android, and then Reactflux in a browser anywhere else.

I'll have to check out karakeep. I'm running linkwarden right now but it's not really doing it for me.