Morgikan

The way I view Steam Machines is just as a delivery system for SteamOS. I don’t know if Valve even thinks Steam Machines will themselves be successful. I’m thinking they are betting on enough users adopting Steam Machines that they will get a foothold with their OS and start pushing Microsoft out.

And that kinda makes sense as Microsoft is going the “AI first” route and focusing on productivity. That leaves an opening (if albeit a small one currently) for companies like Valve to pull users into their “Gamers first” SteamOS.

Having the game on the horizon is actually a very good position for the employees for two reasons:

1. Pre-orders. Rockstar already secured $3 billion, so they don’t have the argument that compensation is unfair (why they were wanting to unionize to begin with along with work hours).

2. (The big one) Pre-Launch Strike. There still is a LOT of damage that could be done to GTA6 especially given the pre-orders. If they strike before November, GTA6 would go without day 1 patches. Whatever state it is in prior to strike is how it will stay during the highest review and revenue period for the game. It would mess with marketing and potentially even push off release by months which would hit their stock price hard.

Tales of the Neon Sea is a nice cyberpunk adventure based detective title.
Gemini Rue is similar but more dark and in the tone of Blade Runner.
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter is another really great title, although its more of an overarching story told during/through the various cases.
Call of Cthulhu is a detective story set in Lovecraftian horror. Really great endings.
The Sinking City is an open world detective story set in Lovecraftian horror. Gameplay outside of the detective aspect is not great but does its job.