Here's the email I sent all three of them; not expecting a reply, of course, because at this point in time, the Internet is fucking dead anyway, so this is just me screaming into the fucking void:
Don't feel like respecting the common email format, so please, bear with me, guys.
I'd like to start by saying that I loathe game launchers since the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time era (Pixel Shader 2.0 required; kill me, please), and that includes Steam. Thing is, the older I get, the less tolerance I have for services that I don't like while at the same time, I don't feel like I want to be held hostage just because there's no better alternative. One of the games I lost access to after I deleted my Steam account was Tekken 7. My question is: Why won't the devs allow online multiplayer for such a basic combat game to simply use the P2P protocol, so it wouldn't involve a server at all? Also, why do people love Steam so much when they don't even offer offline installers like GOG does? Why the fuck do I have to care about a junior or senior game developer's perspective, especially if it's mainly more about profit-driven “innovation” than actually being pro-consumer? “Standard industry practice” is such a bullshit argument; it reeks of the idea that as long as nobody's batting an eye about the issue, and being okay with all the draconian policies, anti-ownership, and kids using their parents' credit cards to buy games, the industry is like, “There's nothing wrong. Sales are fine, so move along!”
If I want to play Tekken 7 against a particular friend online, without access to my Steam account anymore, I'd have to first, pirate the game, and hope to God a reliable so-called online CrackFix exists. Not to mention, there's a chance that a connection to a publisher's remote server might still occur along with the potential initialization anti-cheat software that has kernel-level access. All of this is blatant user mistreatment, and it's not enough that piracy exists; in the grand scheme of things, piracy is just a band-aid, meaning most cracked games don't have the most basic online functionality, while offline multiplayer with an online workaround would have to involve something like Moonlight, and now we're in self-hosted cloud gaming territory, which can't be as optimal.
I also hate the fact that YouTubers care so much about what's trending RIGHT NOW!!! to the point where important timeless matters can easily be swept under the rug because they don't have the potential of going viral anymore. Oh, and “voting with your wallet” is just stupid, because we all know random people can buy the most ridiculous anti-consumer shit, and then act like they're part of the pro-consumer movement, which is like farting, and then when everyone looks at you, you point at somebody else.
Sometimes I wonder if SKG asking for the minimum is a good idea, because the corporate world has no problem abusing us consumers left and right, so maybe being reasonable by letting publishers decide what to do in order to keep a game in a playable state is like the equivalent of all three of you ignoring this email due to “receiving volumes”, i.e., the publishers can simply choose not to do anything about it, and all we're left with is a major potential personal data leak of 1.4M+ citizens from the EU and the UK, and considering your video titles over the years, my take is nowhere near as black-pilled or fear-monger-y.
What's even more depressing is the fact that, as a guy from Morocco, I can't do shit about fuck. I don't even use Google services anymore, mainly due to systemic shadow-banning and the blatant enshittification, so the idea of starting a YouTube channel is out of the question for me. And just like latency sucks when a Moroccan plays a game in an EU server being the closest possible (the game is rigged for us, literally), a Moroccan with quality international content would simply be suppressed into oblivion. Back in 2015, Google AdWords charged me 50 bucks when I hadn't even started the campaign yet nor had I entered my credit card info, and for whatever reason, a video from my then-tech-channel got 10,000 views from Mexico, then they just suspended my AdWords account out of the blue. Seriously, guys, I'm surprised you haven't moved to a different platform already.
I honestly don't know what to do, guys, except of course, not care about any of this shit, continue sailing the high seas like I've had for the last 27 years, feeling more justified than ever before, grab some popcorn, and watch you guys do your thing.
Peace.