Even if she doesn't get a direct payment per copy sold, which I'm not sure I believe considering you know her negotiating power, there are still benefits for her. Increasing the brand increases future payments. Increases her bargaining power later on. And I'm sure allows her more creative control which means that any trans inclusion would probably be nullified in future projects.

Maybe it's a good game, but at a certain point you got to nut up or shut up. Are you going to take a stand and boycott something or not? Yeah you miss out on things with your boycott, that's the point. If you're not willing to sacrifice at all, and we're talking a very minimal sacrifice here aren't we, then what are you even doing?

Though why we are even talking about paying for it I don't quite understand. There's always other ways.

I have to disagree, it wasn't a particularly good game. Everything felt off. I was days into the game and it felt like I was still doing tutorial missions. Basic mechanics weren't unlocked until 3 quarters through the game. And I can't imagine it has much replayability at all beyond trying to hunt down every trinket. 

It never granted you the feeling of being a wizard or whatever made Harry Potter special, it made Wizards feel ridiculous. 90% of the game is spamming a generic unnamed "attack" spell 

Isn't the game about putting down a Jewish slave rebellion?

It's an insanely boring game with no depth. To each their own, but calling it a "really good game" is as much of a stretch as calling it "shit". To me it felt like a Hogwarts walking simulator with a bunch of basic unrelated minigames stuck onto it, marketed as an open world action rpg. The combat was insulting.

really good game

Yeah no

JK Rowling has openly said that she also sees piracy as an endorsement of her fascist views. She looks at the download numbers and thinks to herself "trans women have finally lost"

Plus Bully did it so much better with social interactions with staff and students, having a schedule and generally feeling like a school. HL came nowhere even close to that to the point where I wondered if the devs even tried to make it like Bully and we all just assumed they did because what other game makes school life the focus and does it even half as well? I don't even think there is an indie game that tries it.

She absolutely is profiting from it.

When a game is "free" the publisher isn't just donating it for funzies. Either Epic pays them (Epic is spending money to get people to its platform) or the publisher is using the game to advertise other games, which has value to them.

if you’re gonna play it, just remember that your teacher dies at the end and can’t be saved, and that rockwood is the one that cursed anne

it supports a TERF

The store behaves like malware, with stuff running as root in the background all the time mining your personal information, and constantly keeps re-enabling ad popups even when I disable them. At least the uninstaller works.

It's because epic store launched with "exclusive access" being a "perk" to attract users. I fucking hate that shit in the TV/Movie space so I decided to not support it.

Also, using that as an opening move suggested that they'd enshitify as soon as they have the market power to do so.

Plus their anti-linux stance. Not just not supporting the shift to linux but specifically against it by removing support that was previously there. And they killed off the UT franchise to be sure it wouldn't compete with Fortnite.

Even the reduced commission rate just seems like a play to build market share to be abused.

Meanwhile, the biggest negative I've seen from valve is cosmetic lootboxes that you can ignore by not playing their games or not buying lootboxes if you do.

It supporting Gaben into billionairehood isn't great but he's one of the few that makes things better by still being around (because who knows if the next one(s) in control will sell out or not). Plus, with him already being a billionaire, MS can't change his course by throwing money at him.

Steam also provides a lot more than just a store front for devs at that price, including customer support, multiplayer servers, anticheat, and forums and other social features.

Epic also launched their store without a shopping cart (you had to buy everything as individual transactions) and put new, unreleased games up for sale at up to 50% off without permission from the devs during their first sales event, amongst other things. Like buying multiplatform games to ensure that they only launched on the Epic store. Nobody liked it when Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, or Rockstar tried that exclusivity crap with their own launchers/storefronts, and they don't like that Epic does it either.

Dude is a twat and his opinions unfortunately drive Epic's policies. People hated Steam when it first launched as well, but Valve as a company has consistently worked to put customer value and rights as a selling point of their products, and people appreciate them for that. Beyond Steam as a sales platform, they've been a driving force in other parts of the industry such as VR and Linux gaming.

The dialogue options presented are "overly courteous" or "neutral"

The worst thing you can say are things like "don't mess with me" or "I have to report you for that"