And the dark non-secret is that them and basically all the other top-grossing multiplayer games on the list are there because gambling is also their primary source of income.
I know you mean the general gambling of loot boxes, but no, I meant, literal gambling on 3rd party s(h)ites. CS2 skin gambling. Which iirc most other games are not doing.
Valve cracked down on dota gambling many years ago and since then, i dont think it is a thing anymore. However, normal gambling(for dota games or conventional sports) is the primary sponsor of most dota tournaments/teams.
Coffeezilla did a 3-part series about how CS2 skin gambling is flourishing and hooking children as young as 12 and Valve is profiting from its inaction to crack down on it.
Items for those games are also the preferred way for Account Hijackers to move money out of the target accounts.
The hijacker will use steam funds or the saved payment methods to buy Dota items worth a few cents for a much higher price from a chain of accounts to move the money.
Interestingly there is a session cookie stealing Trojan that enables Hijackers to do this even when the account has 2fa enabled. The session cookie eliminates the need for the 2fa code from the app or email for login, and steam only asks for additional codes if you want to sell an item over 1€.
I didn't even know this was possible until someone showed this to me live on a vbox and a honey pot account with 2fa email codes enabled and like 5€ steam funds.
It's a constant Circle though, they stream what's considered popular but because they stream it more people play it which causes it to be even more popular
Look at lethal company as a prime example of that, if streamers never took that game it never would have gotten anywhere near the publicity that it did
I’m assuming half of that is FPS which is very much not my thing. Give me a story I can play. BG3 I understand.
If I was in my 20s souls would likely appeal, now I’m an old fuck and just want a good, ad free story I can play along with. And DnD. No one is too old for DnD.
Ok, and Stellaris, Civ, etc. Those are like the fentanyl or crack cocaine of the gaming world.
Story is kinda optional. Depends on the genre. I'm big into Factorio and Dwarf Fortress, which go light (kinda? Df is a story generator?) on story, but big on mechanics.
Where's Veilguard, I saw so many articles from major publications saying it was a massive success and yet it can't even match space marine or helldiversII? Were they being untruthful? What?
On Steam, it is in the Bronze category. Considering it only released in october and people seem to have quite some issues with the game, I still consider that quite successful
It's in the same tier as Enshrouded, a crafting survival adventure indie game that doesn't even come close to it in Budget, market and scale. Yeah, no, it wasn't a success.