Yeah, I'm going to give the real world's continuing slide from SNAFU to TARFU a rest this time. Let's stick with smaller-stakes stupidity from the world of games.
First up has to be Valve's launch of the new version of the Steam Controller. I get why they might have thought the demand wasn't going to be as high as it was, because they tried this game once before, in 2015. I got one back then (and still use it to this day), even though it was apparent that it was a compromised device in some respects - notably, lacking a physical d-pad or right analog stick, and expecting the clickable track-pads to be a suitable replacement. At least they learned from that when they made the Steam Deck, which helped it become as dominant as it is in its gaming niche.
So now, May 4th, in a world seeded by the prominence of Steam Deck, they launch orders for their new Steam Controller, this time without those pesky compromises, and they decide to do so as a worldwide launch at 10am Pacific. I tried to get my hands on one, but, to nobody's surprise, the scalpers and their bots won the day, overwhelming Steam's payment processing systems, with eBay listings for two or three times the price cropping up shortly thereafter.
Normally, that's where the story would end, but Steam is a different sort of company in many respects. They took much of the week thereafter to look at what happened, and think about countermeasures. So now, as of May 8th, they decided to implement a reservation queue, similar to what they did when they launched Steam Deck, limited to accounts "in good standing" to effectively shut down scalper shenanigans. My reservation is in, so now we wait.
Of course, I could start up another game now, and the temptation is there, especially when I see things like publisher sales on quirky "AA" games. But lately, there's been a disturbing up-tick in games getting launched even as (or after!) the studios that worked on them are shut down, effectively eliminating any chance that their worst bugs will ever get fixed. So, shout out to Bellular for this video about Nacon, detailing some of their business moves and their relation to the state of the games they've been releasing of late. Long story short, they've just jumped up to the same level as Ubisoft for "do not buy"-ness for me, if only for engineering the shutdown of a subsidiary union studio while they staff up an internal non-union studio for the same game genre the old studio served.
Well, things should improve in this space with time, maybe after the AI bubble pops and further constrains the credit markets. For now, I'm getting by fine on Warframe, and Forza Horizon 6 is on the horizon, courtesy of a more-palatable Game Pass subscription price. Let's see what comes next!
