Honestly, it's just because most native UI libraries suck to use compared to HTML/CSS/JS. For all the hate modern web stacks get, it's brain-dead simple to get something good-looking in it.
Then there's the business aspect of "Well, if the people who make our web UI can also make our app UI, why not?"
That's not what his video showed though. They don't change the URL, they open another tab, which then overrides the cookie/session variable that is used to determine who the referrer is. It's still scummy, but it doesn't seem to be swapping links outright.
This gist of it from the WAN show was this:
Nope, that's a misconception/misinformation. That's just for Steam Keys (i.e. you can't sell Steam Keys cheaper than on Steam). Everything else is fair game.
Yeah, it's also ignoring that the issue with Apple's "30% cut" isn't that they take 30% of game sales. It's that they're forcing you to use their payment processing service to put an app on the store, and then they take a 30% cut out of that, even though third-party payment processing providers take much smaller cuts than that.
Physical stores also took a 30% sales cut, because there's value in getting people to see your product. It's literally been the standard storefront cut for decades. Microsoft and Sony take the same cuts for their console sales/transactions.
Valve does a lot more for companies than just put eyes on their games, too. They're pushing for Linux-compatibility with Proton, they provide you with networking libraries and infrastructure for multiplayer servers if you use SteamWorks, Steam will optionally update your game's SDL libraries so you have up-to-date controller bindings, etc. It's not like they're sitting there twiddling their thumbs and taking 30% of your money for nothing.
I'd argue Microsoft and Sony do comparable work for devs on their platforms too.
The whole argument against the 30% cut is so fucking dumb.
People who genuinely believe game prices will get lowered if stores take a smaller cut are delusional. You can literally look at the Epic Game Store and see that it isn't even remotely true. The only games on there that are cheaper than on Steam are the ones Epic invested in specifically to entice developers/gamers to use their services. The ones that don't have exclusivity deals are the same as on Steam.
Edit: changed "take a cut" to "take a smaller cut".
Camera pans down
His crotch is polished bronze.
That, and winter tires. The amount of people I know who don't bother getting winter tires because "it's not required by law" is infuriatingly high.
Gestures at a car that did barrel rolls at a 4-way stop with a speed limit of 50km/h with 1 inch of snow on the ground.
Yeah. Sure thing.
I feel like Trump's probably going to axe whoever is finally tackling these monopolies, unfortunately.
Every time I see non-tech people talk about Bluesky vs Mastodon, they talk about how awful the user experience is on Mastodon, and how it's been an issue for years and they keep ignoring it, so people just go to Bluesky instead.
It definitely feels like a "Us tech folk who care about the tech love it, we don't mind the user experience as long as the tech is here" vs the "I just want the same thing I have over here, the tech aspect could not be any less relevant to my choice of platform" kind of issue.
Yeah. Like, literally just:
What kind of lazy-ass crawler doesn't even do that?