That certainly changes the calculation quite a bit, but how many people can be anticipated to claim a given free game is definitely going to be a point of negotiation on how much to pay the publisher to giveaway a given game, so in a roundabout way it does ultimately cost Epic more money if you do claim the games without downloading them
Its almost like half-assing a store front that runs like shit, lacks the most basic features and is generally perceived to be user-hostile is a bad way to attract business. When the freaking open source Heroic Game Launcher does a better job hooking into Epic’s servers than their own damn launcher its time to do something. Take one of those millions of dollars you rake in every year and actually invest in the platform for cripes sake!
The part that annoys me the most is Epic could simple reduce the free games to bi-weekly and rebudget those same dollars into platform improvements and actually create a viable platform that people don’t hate. Just look at Steam, its got some glaring issues (online DRM, massive illegal gambling problems, cyberbullying, unclear & inconsistent policies on adult content, rampant shovelware, etc. etc.) but by not being a pain in the butt to use, and having some decent company policies that aren’t obviously anti-consumer they have an entire fandom devoted to them. Its just wasted potential. If Tim Sweeney felt like it he could actually build an incredible platform and actually compete with Steam, but instead they just engage in the most disjointed corporate bullshit possible
Nah its the parents of iPad kids. Remember, this is the company that owns the biggest game with kids and teens right now, Fortnite.
There’s some really good ones mixed in with intensely not-me games that get given away. Touch Type Tale, Strange Horticulture, Sunless Skies, Turmoil, Two Point Hospital, Sable, Lego 2k Drive, LOTR Return to Moria, Farm Simulator 2022, Bus Simulator 2021, The Bridge, etc.
Epic pays some amount of the price of the game to the devs for every free game claimed, so it costs Epic money and makes money for game devs in exchange for a bit of your time. Sometimes you end up trying a game you never would’ve purchased and end up loving it. For example, I snagged Sable a few months ago for free through Epic and was absolutely blown away by how good that game was. It wasn’t even on my radar but I saw it come up as the weekly free game and thought it looked neat so I downloaded it and booted it up
The USDA and FDA regulations make it basically a requirement for food to be processed in the US, hence why there’s so many massive food processing facilities in the US. Based on the recalls they’ve been caught up in, Aldi works with the same white label processors as other grocery chains and quite clearly works with them to set the taste, quality & ingredient expectations and of course the price.
There is a noticeably less sugar in Aldi’s goods than most other brands, but I also see far more packaging errors in Aldi’s goods than other budget brands, for example. Their packaging is also heavier into recyclable materials and uses less plastic
Back in the day when I worked at an American grocery chain they had a rule that you were not allowed to drink water where customers could see. Literally the only person who ever cared was the franchise owner. I’m sorry, I’ve been scanning and bagging hundreds of products for the last 3 hours during a holiday rush, I might need to wet my mouth between customers from time to time.
When they initially put in the self checkouts the delay for scanning was set to similar to a manned checkout, and as someone who spent my formative years cashiering at a grocery store, I greatly appreciated being able to quickly scan through my stuff. They upped the delay between scans after a few weeks, so now its like 10 seconds before you can scan another of the same item, so I’ve just gotten creative in alternating items to scan faster
For me I found they struggle to cook the very center in the microwave, so I’ll usually give them 60 seconds to thaw, cut it in half then another 60 seconds (or was it 30?) to finish cooking. Only problem is my kids very consistently try to steal them from me if I dare to eat them when they’re around so I’m quickly better off just making something else
Yeah I get almost everything from Aldi because the quality is consistently comparable to name-brand while being significantly cheaper. Its also nice that the stores are so small so you can focus more on shopping and less on getting through the store itself
There’s a few items where I do prefer from other stores (particularly meats and fresh fruits/veggies as the Aldi ones tend to go off faster and are lower quality) but generally I’ll hit Aldi, then my local grocery store for the last couple of items from my list, thereby keeping me well-within my grocery budget and getting the best of both worlds. Plus I can usually get it all done within about an hour thanks to only needing to hit a couple of isles in the big grocery store
Hey that’s honestly super awesome. Most folks don’t have that kind of financial discipline when they’re young.
When I was first on my own I was just proud that I was a able to pay extra on my possibly-illegal car loan that I got from a place that was shut down a couple of years later for credit fraud
Ideally yes, but on top of your normal expenses socking away $800/mo is a ton, especially since we’re almost certainly talking about a young adult, fairly freshly on their own who’s probably only making around 30-40k per year. When each paycheck is under a thousand dollars every couple of weeks that money disappears fast especially with the financial discipline one can realistically expect of a young adult
Car rentals are so expensive nowadays. Enough so that I’ve never done it in my adult life. Its always expensive enough that it makes some alternative make way more sense, whether that’s driving our own vehicle somewhere or just winging it with public transit
When I was car shopping at the end of 2024, I quickly realized the best bang for the buck was around $10-12k because at that price you could get a low-mid range vehicle that was around 6 years old with around 100k miles. Obviously some vehicles in that price range would be older with fewer miles, some would be newer with more miles, but that seemed to be about the price range where you’d get a vehicle which you could reasonably expect to be mechanically sound for at least another 2-3 years. Less than that and you got into vehicles that were far more worn either by age or by mileage, so you’d be trading upfront payment for additional maintenance costs.
$10k is a lot of money to save up. That’s about my entire emergency fund right now. That’s almost 3 years of socking away $300 a month, or 2 years at $500 a month. Simply put vehicle ownership is horrendously expensive especially for folks making close to minimum wage
I like the Gay Bar or Steak House one
If you’ve not seen the Blues Brothers go watch it right now. Order the DVD if you have to. Its absolutely worthwhile. Its an SNL spinoff film with a Legendary soundtrack featuring the biggest names in the Blues and Jazz scene. Great soundtrack, brilliant gags, incredible car chases and just a ton of rediculous chaos.
I have no clue what MultiPlex theaters are
So back in the earlier days of cinema, you’d go to the Cineplex to see a movie. A Cineplex would only have a single screen for viewing movies while the multiplex would have multiple screens for seeing movies on. This started with the first duplex theatre in 1915 and later the first triplex in 1966, shortly followed by theatres with 6+ screens which is around when the term “multiplex” started being used. Basically for anyone born after the 80s (therefore anyone under the age of about 40) the term is largely obsolete since most theatres have at least 4 screens and qualify as multiplexes, plus the industry has seen so much consolidation that smaller independent theatres with 1-2 screens are pretty uncommon now
Around mid-2020 I worked at a callcenter. The organization I worked for had lower tiers of support via a callcenter in the Philippines and higher tiers via the stateside callcenter I worked at. When everyone went remote some of the staff at the Philipines callcenter emigrated to other countries and there was one particular member who always had some very noisy chickens in the background of their calls. It seriously reminded me how nice remote work can be for folks because this guy was chilling at home with his chickens nearby instead of in a stuffy office with a bunch of other unhappy underpaid callcenter workers. It was funny though how some customers reacted to it, sometimes it would just be one more thing for angry customers to complain about and other times it would be a wistful thing a customer commented about in a later positive review
To shreds you say
I mean defining “active users” is an inherently political choice in any metric. You’re ultimately choosing how to slice the data for analysis, so if you adjust your metrics on customers who only claim free games vs customers who actually spend money on the platform the data can tell completely different stories.
I suppose the point is, collecting the free games probably creates non-negligable costs for Epic, and how that looks on their released metrics is entirely up to how the data gets sliced