jijikuya

1. That's Valve's prerogative, not the developer's. If they're not partnered with Valve they may not have had the option to enact pre-purchases. [1]

2. The game has no DRM and Steam preorders (in my experience) download the game files so people can play instantly on launch day. (They call it 'preloading'). For a game as highly anticipated as this, it'd likely just be cracked, leaked and pirated the moment preorders came live.

[1] https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/prepurchase

This is about 3 years too late to have any impact.

Exactly this. I do find it kinda funny that Google Docs/Word and their ilk have HTML export options. Kind of a weird funny/sad anachronism. As if there was some hope that people would use Google Docs to make their own contributions to the independent web.

It's marvelous that we can do so much, so fast, for free, with minimal computer skills. We should aim to make the independent web this easy.

Actually, I'd argue that our takeaway is the same. That's exactly the wider point I'm making, I'm just using this emergency as a synecdoche for it. This is good, the independent web would be better. Why is the barrier for entry to the 'normal' web so high that these people didn't consider it?

Lots of information that should be hosted by local, independent groups is being hosted in these closed un-indexable platforms. It does the creator a disservice and the end-user a disservice.

Had this disaster happened 10-15 years ago, I wager that this information would (I think) likely be displayed and posted here as a website (or at least turned into one).

And zooming out, how much good info is tied up in Google Docs alone? Indulge me.

- Here's TaranVH's (The editor from Linus Tech Tips, and a very technically skilled, impressive person) guide to colour grading.[This one hurts particularly because it's such a good document and desperately wants to be anything but a Google Doc.](https://shorturl.at/InI89)

- Here's a great resource for buying products for [Curly Hair.](https://shorturl.at/ZbNF9) This should be a blog.

- How many times have you seen YT drama or open letters be Google Docs? (https://shorturl.at/fJapj) If they were here, it'd be <motherfuckingwebsite.com>

- Here's a guide to video game stats. This should be on a Wiki. (https://shorturl.at/db49s)

- Here's a worldbuilding calculator. This should be a tool website.* (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AML0mIQcWDrrEHj-InXo...)

Whatever your opinion on whether or not these should or should not be documents vs. webpages, can we at least agree that they have information that people would be interested in? This stuff makes up the internet, this is where all the cool shit is. 10-15 years ago, these would be in search results. They're not anymore. It's all here, in undiscoverable Google Docs, unsearchable Discord servers, slow meandering Reddit threads, locked-down Facebook Groups and anti-discoverable TikTok feeds.

I keep hearing too much about good content leaving us (AI Slop in search), and not nearly enough about where it's going. If you find out where the good, creative stuff is going, you'll get your good, creative internet back.

*: I've said 'should' a lot, when what I mean is 'it would have been one when I was a kid'.

I think you're the only one who understands what I was trying to say here, which means I didn't say it nearly clear enough. But thanks.

I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions.

I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of the World Wide Web as we know it.

This should be a website. This should be at the top of search results. This should be viewable on mobile devices and desktops. And yet, it's being shared through a proprietary office suite service in the form of a spreadsheet that can't be quickly referenced or copied without loading an entire webapp.

If you're one of the many people who wonder why Google stopped being useful, if you're one of the many people who think it's getting harder to find stuff online, here's your answer as to why. All the good, salient, pertinent, well-formed information that you want to find, is being shared like this.

This is what's easiest for people, and that's at odds with how we find content these days. This comment came out kind of half-baked, but I think it's interesting to think about, and it's not a viewpoint I see here often.

Dan usually publishes transcripts on Patreon (or, at least he has done for 'Line Goes Up' etc.). He even puts them into EPUB format for e-readers which is quite nice.