Yeah, this happens constantly and it's infuriating. I've started calling these exact things out, and it's helped.
Oth
Stability, reliability, don't fix it if it ain't broke.
Some companies have a need to reinvent them every 6 months to justify some middle Manager's existence so they can pad their resume for the next overpaid job position.
This Is what it looks like when you don't have that problem
Also, when developers have lots of cross-team and cross-skillset coordination that needs to happen, you can spend the majority meeting, documenting, and reviewing.
Case in point; my Cloud team spends a significant chunk of time coordinating between backend and frontend, Ops, Firmware/Hardware team and DevOps.
Product Owner wants a feature, specs how the feature should look in the frontend, and what the device needs to do when used. Backend has to spec the cloud logic and API glue between them. A feature might need support from DevOps if infrastructure needs to be updated, and Ops needs to know how the feature works to support customers.
It's a whole lot of talk and documentation so that the amount of time we spend coding is as little as possible. That's a good thing. If you're spending the majority of your time writing code, you're probably doing something wrong.
The new app doesn't require a log in at all, the old one did.
The old control panel was anything but snappy though. There is a long standing bug that makes it incredibly slow to respond under certain configurations, where a single click can take several seconds to register.
Give me the Steam Deck layout sans screen and I'll buy several.
So fucking fed up being charged out the ass for a few extra buttons and/or shitty build quality.
I went through RMAing SIX god damn Xbox elite 2 controllers before just giving up and getting my CC agency involved to get my money back.
I just want a controller with back pedals and touchpads for mouse emulation. Is that so hard?
I'd consider it if it was SteamOS, since I love the Steam Deck, but it's performance is just shy of where I'd like it to be.
No SteamOS is a hard pass from me though. I've just finished ditching Windows on my gaming PC, I don't intend to back step back to Windows, especially on a handheld.
I frequently amaze new colleagues when I show them that deploying an update for our backend application is a sub-second affair. Our pipeline keeps track of what git tag was deployed last, diffs between that tag and the new release, and uploads the files to each of the deployment targets. It takes longer for the pipeline agent to spin up from Cold on a Monday morning, than it does to actually deploy.
The core of the application is just php scripts, and those are either immediately up to date whenever the next call is, or swapped out the next time that component finishes a processing cycle.
Docker containers are nice, but nothing beats the cause of a stack trace being fixed, tested and deployed to the acceptance environment within minutes of it arriving.
This is probably controversial, but i always disliked how the Borg seemed to assimilate for the sake of assimilation? It was sometimes explained as their way of growth or achieving perfection, but that always rang a bit hollow as a motivation.
If I could write a longer term direction, it would be interesting as a quasi-justifiable thing; have the Borg be the boogeyman in the dark of space, until we find out its collective drive to assimilate is a way to insulate itself against some greater evil.
I've always liked stories of eldritch horrors lurking in the depths of space, so one way you could do this, is for there to be something lurking in subspace; warp drive weakens the fabric of space holding it back, which explains the Borg using transwarp conduite instead. This horror would be able to easily subvert individual minds to its needs, but the collective acting as a whole could resist it.
A "bad guy" doing bad things for an understandable reason is much more interesting that them just being straight-up evil. So in general I would aim for something like that.
This falls in the category of "looks shitty, but could be pretty good".
I once had a variation of this with devilled eggs with minced chicken cooked in a broth mixed in. It was fantastic, so meat in devilled eggs could probably work?
I think you know the answer: your copy goes poof. It's up to you to decide if the convenience is worth it.
Steam's TOS does cover you a bit on the first part; an unlisted game must still be available for previous purchasers, but the publisher or developer is not obligated to keep it functioning. They aren't allowed to intentionally sabotage the files on the depot though; steam can and has rolled back changes when a developer tries this.
I'm actually fine with this distinction; most games I buy are Indies anyway, and most can easily be backed up outside of Steam. On top of that, nothing lasts forever, even software. Hardware platforms change, dependencies shift, and over time things break.
We should try to preserve games, and not accept them artificially breaking, but we shouldn't expect things to last forever, for free, either.
Likewise, no online platform lives forever. I quite like Steam, I think it's been a positive force for players and developers, and I think it will be around for quite some time. Someday, eventually, it will go away. But you have to trust someone, at some point.
If that is a problem for you, buy from a place that gives you more control, like GOG.
I read a bit of fan fiction ages ago that extrapolated on what would have happened if Anakin had, at the pivotal confrontation with Mace and Palpatine, made the choice to support Mace instead.
I liked the interpretation that it would have still resulted in Luke and Leia, since Padma would still have had the twins, but not in secret, and without force fuckery, would've survived childbirth.
In this timeline, it results in a new high republic era, Anakin as a master, raising his children and them being his anchor to the light side. The friction in the story came from the politics of the Council disapproving of his attachment to his family, but it is also politically difficult to kick out the person who just saved their hides.
While the story didn't touch upon Ahsoka's fate much, I would have loved to see a timeline where Ahsoka raised a family and her kids hanging out with the Skywalker's.
That alone has so much potential for storylines; there would still be remnant forces of separatists, rogue troopers, the death star plans being out there, and potentially Maul as well.
I hope this project has gotten better. I like the idea behind it, but we deployed a version of this about a year ago and it was very rough and (in our evaluation of it), not ready for production use.