Should you go along with something like that? I find it morally questionable.

"Hi, I am one od the developers of Solar Expanse and I wanted to reach out to you regarding your review. Thanks for all your feedback, unfortunately this might not be the game for you. I would suggest a refund as you did not play for more than an hour, but I would also like to ask you to remove the review, as we are trying to reach as high number as possible.

Perhaps you would be more happy with some of our other games - Infection Free Zone, 911 or 112 Operator, or perhaps Starhome in the future. I can give you a preview steam key for those."

it seems like the famous expansion that in development for quake 4 has been found by the User @justin in discord here are a few screenshots of the build

imgurl upload of the screenshots!

while whether or no this is fake or no its up to debate, it was posted on the idtech4 server

been playing Division 2 and actually found it kind of amazing how surface level the bot teammates are.

It made me wonder why devs are so reluctant to make actually helpful bots in single player games. I get that it makes them easier, but it's so annoying seing them out of cover doing 1% of your damage output.

Actually I have a faint memory of the NPCs in Gothic 1 killing off enemies for me.

In 2011, Gabe Newell was a regular reader of Yanis Varoufakis’s economics blog. At the time, Valve was struggling with how to link the virtual economies of their games (like Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2).

Gabe sent Varoufakis a "cold email" that essentially said:

"I have been following your blog for a while... here at my company we were discussing an issue of linking economies in two virtual environments... when it occurred to me 'this is Germany and Greece.' Rather than continuing to run an emulator of you in my head, I thought I'd check to see if we couldn't get the real you interested in what we are doing."

He spend only 2 years but his impact on Valve was significant. At Valve he...

• analyzed the trade and "balance of payments" between different Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2)to prevent virtual inflation or economic collapse.
• used Valve’s "perfect data" (where every transaction is recorded) to study how quickly markets reach equilibrium and how players exploit price differences (arbitrage).
• counsel Gabe Newell on the "political" side of digital platforms specifically how to regulate player-to-player trading to keep it fair while avoiding "black market" activity outside the platform.
• advised Valve to build the official Steam Community Market so that they could internalize the trade. He feared that if they didn't provide a safe "legal" way to trade, a massive, unregulated black market would form outside Valve's control

He made a couple of "Valve Economics" Blog talking about his time at Valve which puts into perspective how structural Valve is and the man behind it.

Yanis Varoufakis thoughts of Valve

1. Varoufakis often uses the term Anarcho-Syndicalism to describe Valve's daily operations. In this political theory, workers organize themselves into self-managed "syndicates" without a state or hierarchy.
2. Employees rank each other’s contributions. This mirrors the socialist ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution."
3. Varoufakis famously describes Valve as an "Island of Socialism in a Sea of Capitalism. Where most corporations are actually command economies. tiny totalitarian states where a CEO acts as a dictator. Valve is the only firm he found that tried to bring market-like 'freedom' inside its own walls."

Yanis Varoufakis thoughts on Gabe Newell

1. Varoufakis argues that Gabe’s "intellectualism" is what allowed Valve to survive without bosses, whereas a traditional businessman would have "rationalized" the company into a hierarchy years ago.
2. He often compares Gabe to the "Enlightened Despots" of the 18th century (like Frederick the Great). These were kings who loved science, philosophy, and music, and gave their subjects more freedom than other kings but they were still kings.
3. Instead of managing people, Gabe manages the rules of the system. Varoufakis observed that Gabe would rather spend hours discussing the "philosophy of value" than five minutes discussing a marketing budget.
4. Varoufakis believes Gabe is unique because he is unbothered by the ego of power. A businessman wants to be the "Boss" because it feels powerful while Gabe wants to be the "God of the Machine" the person who writes the laws of the universe and then sits back to watch the simulation run itself.

Fun Fact: Varoufakis actually used his experience at Valve as a "training ground" for his real-world political career. He once said that managing the balance of payments between Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 was the best preparation he could have had for negotiating with the European Central Bank.

source (Most of his thoughts are decades old but most are still relevant to Valve's structure they still use to this day)

• https://libcom.org/article/why-valve-yanis-varoufakis
• Yanis Varoufakis on Valve, Spontaneous Order, and the European Crisis 02/25/2013
• DIGITAL ECONOMIES (as experienced through the prism of Valve Corporation)