confused_teapot

Just wanted to comment that I love your take on this. Especially that "the Collatz conjecture is essentially the simplest hard problem, by the defensible (albeit not unique) standard of "what it takes to understand the behavior of a Turing machine"".

Excuse my ignorance, but why does there even need to be centralized stores at all? I understand that in the past the primary means of distribution was retail boxes, so studios had to have publishers to at least handle the physical aspect of putting games out in the market. Due to the wide availability of a fast internet connection, the mechanics of a game release is different today, and the primary means of distribution is digital.

Steam and its alternatives brought conveniences to the developers by providing easy advertisement, a streamlined way of delivering patches, an actual digital store to perform transactions, and also more recently started to serve as a major platform for the communities of many games.

I am not a game developer, but I guess that nothing that these stores provide is essential to publish a game and keep it alive, and any developer might simply put a site online, sell the game there, and allow me to pay directly to them. This is probably a niche opinion right now, but given any transaction involving digital goods such as e-books, music, software, games, etc. I am delighted whenever I see the content creator do this.

You may argue that this would limit the discoverability of games by a huge factor compared to them simply being advertised on the front page of some online store, and I agree, but I think if Steam had not grown to be as massive as it is today, that job would simply be delegated to the gaming magazines, forums, and many other independent platforms where the creators would more freely have a chance to promote their content.