I would agreeish, but from a different perspective. However,
“consider the amount of data needed to load procedural assets in under 3 seconds” is a laughable response considering the very real criticism of having so many god damn menus, all of which revolve around picking things on a map.
They have the tools to make the game however they want. I find it pretty insane that there’s no consistency in how the game allows you to fast travel in space - sometimes you can select a solar system/planet and travel right from there, no map required. Other times you get to a planet and then you can’t land on the planet until you open the map and “fast travel” to it, even though you’re right there.
And the response says “consider” no, no I won’t consider something you should have optimized before release lmao. It is how it is now and that’s what I’m considering, and I’ve decided that it’s got potential and in it’s current state it sucks.
And I actually liked the game. I did not like NG+ whatsoever though. Disappointing
More of my last couple months overview… I’ve been continuing Monster Hunter: Rise basically since the beginning of October, went across the country for a road trip and since getting back near the end of October have been pretty heavily attempting to 100% the game. I’ve put thousands of hours into the MH series but this would be my first technical 100% in these games since MH Tri.
In between all that I also rebuilt my music PC downstairs which has enough space for VR, more than I’ve ever gotten to try before. It’s been great, although I’m still mostly doing my usual games, Pistol Whip, Blade and Sorcery, Holoball with some hobby applications like Vermillion and Vinyl Reality.
However outside of that, my friend got me Lethal Company which has been pretty fun. I like the Phasmophobia style game when I have a friend to play it with, and Lethal Company fits that well focusing on junk collecting and monsters instead of ghosts. I’ve also been playing games I wouldn’t usually play on the PC on the Steam Deck instead. Much better experience for my preference, Kingdom Two Crowns, Hero’s Hour, Everhood, and the more arcade style games like Moose Life and Ubermosh.
But this past week? MH: Rise, Moose Life, Ubermosh, Crypt of the Necrodancer!
It seems pretty fair to want equal pricing. You’ve been speaking as if Valve is actively killing small storefronts like itch.io and these little guys would be the one to gain from something like this. They might, but not nearly as much as Epic Games would which is the lead in a very similar lawsuit. Epic wants to be able to sell games available on Steam at a lower price to influence people to use their storefront instead. They’re literally giving games away so I think they’d love a chance to try and recoup some of that while still getting to look like the pioneers of cheap.
I honestly don’t think that’s a viable strategy. Retail businesses mostly have the same practices, so one could say that Valve just doesn’t want to start doing game price-matching like Best Buy. The closest I’ve ever seen is a store not having stock of something and a worker there suggesting a different store that might have it. But I’ve never been on Gamestop’s website and seen that Funkopop for sale cheaper at Walmart or Target? An individual working there might tell me because they’re not a corporation.
Given they also have pretty steep sales, I would imagine cheaper pricing could influence sale availability as well - if the game is always $20 cheaper somewhere else maybe the dev doesn’t want to put the game on sale as often/at all. None of that is antitrust though, so why use that as their argument? I guess the case will tell us for sure.
I also think that, probably to a lesser extent, it’s been to help Valve prevent the grey-market key selling. I’m of the opinion that Valve likely doesn’t care too much about you or I selling our Humble Bundle key of a game for $3.74, however they do want to avoid stolen credit card key sales and revoked licenses. I personally don’t think that Itch or Fanatical relates to this, but I do think there’s a general misunderstanding that people conflate Fanatical/Green Man Gaming and grey market sites like G2A and Kinguin. It can’t look good for Valve when a user buys 3rd party and their key is revoked and the user gets mad about it, and boy are there a lot of angry vocal people out there complaining about this very thing.
Frankly, you buy on Steam because you get the Steam Overlay to completely change your controller scheme and use community templates, access to per-game notes, and the Steam Workshop, in addition to whatever other peripheral things like cloud saving. It’s all very user positive so of all things I don’t really understand why this is the move that influences your decision when the other options, save literal indie stores, are decidedly worse.
Itch.io is great, it’s unfortunate that devs who want to sell on Steam can’t advertise to their alternate store listing but it also seems sensible? No business actively advertises the ability to buy somewhere else to give the devs 20% more of the sale. Does anywhere actively promote anything like this? Not as far as I’ve seen, so it seems odd to single out Valve when literally every single business in existence works the same way? And I’m not saying that I personally think it should/shouldn’t, I’m more trying to see if there’s any precedent in existence that would implicate Valve to have to do this in order to not be… “shitty?”
For posterity I just opened up Epic and checked out a few games and there’s no place where the storefront shows the existence of its availability on other stores. The Witcher 3 has no references to GOG Galaxy, Red Dead 2 has no references indicating to buy it on the Rockstar Launcher anywhere. For that matter, nor does Itch.io or Fanatical, ironically neither of these have links to go buy it on Steam instead either.
I’ll happily change my opinion if the arguments in court make sense but as of right now I’m skeptical. Personally when I google a game I discover it from a series of sources and Steam is where I end up choosing to buy it. I choose Steam because it offers the best service. I’ve regretted buying Control during its hostage situation on Epic because it’s caused me nothing but problems (lost saves, validation issues, needing to redownload the game every time instead of pointing to the existing location). Ubisoft and EA only have games that were bought on Humble Bundle and because of it I didn’t have access to Need for Speed: Heat for about 2-3 months while the Origin/EA App transition was happening. “You need to play this game on the EA App!” says Origin. “Sorry, we’re working on getting this game to the new EA App! Check back soon!” says the EA App. A waking nightmare.
I feel like the chances are high that these are the winners if the outcome of a suit is against Valve, not itch.io. Itch will just get drowned out by Humble Bundle and Epic and only indie indie developers will get sales through itch. I also doubt that the point of this suit is to allow devs to put everywhere else the game is available.
From Valve’s perspective I think it’s important to note that their ToS seems to indicate that other developers are allowed to sell on store fronts, but Valve does not get any of the commission despite providing Steam keys. However, since Steam keys are being provided, Valve is still providing quite a large service with cloud saves, forums, everything I mentioned earlier. I actually didn’t know this, so I can also understand Valve not explicitly wanting to give that service away for free and not get anything from it. I mean, that would basically mean that by advertising on the store that the developer can get 20% more if you buy on Itch while still getting a Steam key and access to all of its features…
All told, I am personally of the camp that I think equal sales on storefronts is fair. If Steam has a sale, other store fronts don’t have to have one. Other store fronts are allowed to have sales as long as an equitable sale is had on Steam in “a reasonable amount of time” per the ToS. And it legitimately seems insane to expect one store to advertise an unrelated store just because it’s available at both.
Anyway, these are all just thoughts. I don’t know anything and no one will until the evidence is shown and it’s settled. However, having liked Humble Bundle and the Wolfire team I personally am disappointed to see this suit coming from them. If I’m not mistaken this is literally being funded by Epic Games, they actually are the same case. If you’ve scrolled by the Epic. vs. Valve lawsuit ad on Instagram or Facebook, I’ve seen it quite a bit. That’s this one.
We’ll have to see what evidence they submit. I’m skeptical given that this lawsuit is funded by Epic. I have other skepticisms, but learning that Epic is the root of the lawsuit is what makes me doubt any legitimacy the claimants have. I posted a very long series of thoughts just elsewhere in the thread that goes into more detail. It’s mostly nothing though since it’s just my thoughts and we can’t truly know until the case is settled or releases details.
My opinion, it comes down to Steam’s ToS is regarding Steam Keys. Steam Keys sold not on Steam do not get 30% taken by Valve, but Valve still provides its services - cloud saves, forums, per game notes, complete controller remapping support and more. So, for example: A developer sells a game on Epic and generates 1,000 Steam keys - has 500 on Steam and 500 on a 3rd party site. The developer can sell the game on Epic for whatever price they want. $5. $20. $50. Whatever. Steam asks that whatever Steam Key is being sold is priced the same on every store front. No matter what they sell for though, none of that 30% is taken by Valve from the 3rd party sale. The Epic storefront in unaffiliated to the developer since they are not Steam Keys.
500 of those keys are now utilizing Steam’s services without any of that sale revenue going to Valve. I have 20gb of Cloud Storage, if every user has that much and there are how many users on Steam… (120 million active users turns into 2 billion 400 million gigabytes, or far over two hundred thousand Terabytes. I think I mathed it right). They must have some serious cloud storage.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to me that Valve not want developers to advertise other storefronts, nor does it seem unreasonable that they ask to have equitable pricing between store fronts i.e. if it’s $5 on Itch then at some point it should go on sale for $5 on Steam.
Out of curiosity, what do you think Wolfire is in the right about? From my understanding, Humble Bundle can do whatever they want within the developers wishes regarding sales, and if they want to continue to sell games then they don’t have to sell Steam keys to do it? It seems to me that Humble Bundle is trying to sell games for even cheaper on their storefront, while providing Steam keys which would be actively be putting strain on Valve, while Humble Bundle gets to benefit from the services being provided. What exactly is the issue here? Is it just that Valve is so large? So then at what point have they used their size to prevent games from being sold? I didn’t see them during Control, Metro Exodus, Chiv 2, or Kenna or Mechwarriors 5 or really any of the other ~100+ games this has happened to. Or what about when Epic bought Rocket League or Fall Guys and removed it from Steam’s storefront? Hm. I guess the video game giant that literally makes the Unreal engines doing far more egregious business is exempt from the same critiques.
I see a lot of instances of $$$ gating games, specifically away from Steam, but I feel like I’ve yet to see an example where Valve actively restricted the sale of a game from itch.io or Fanatical or quite literally any kind of exclusive whatsoever? So I’m just really curious what merit someone thinks that this suit actually has? It’s just that none of what I’ve seen anywhere puts Valve in a bad light. Funny, the only actual bad court case I can think of was against AUS and resulted in worldwide refunds across the entire platform. Looking at Apple in the EU, I doubt U.S. will have any of those changes come our way. The other lawsuit I’m familiar with Valve is how Corsair is suing them for the bumpers on the Steam Controller. Patent trolls.
Anyway, like I said I am curious if there is any legitimacy surrounding it, or if there’s an aspect that I’ve been missing. However, I am very skeptical simply because it’s being spearheaded by Epic. He straight up is saying in the blog post that “no cheaper game anywhere, not even if they’re not Steam keys!” Overgrowth is not some hugely popular game, he was literally doing this move to try and sell more copies of the game. I highly doubt that Valve as a company threw their weight against this guy over this. Especially to the extent of which he claims "it’s why all other storefronts have failed*.
I will say, I could understand more an employee mis-speaking or a miscommunication, but then to take what a random employee person allegedly said to court… Furthermore it goes onto say that developers are afraid if they don’t sell on Steam then they will lose a majority of revenue… It has no acknowledgement of why that may be, like say the value of services that are provided by Steam? That whole cabal of devs could happily go to Epic or Itch or the Nintendo Switch. Only a fear of losing revenue for not supporting a platform because of the immense value it provides.
Literally, if it were any other series of storefronts - like if Fanatical, GMG, Itch.io all came together with a civil suit then I’d hear the fuck out of that antitrust case.
But… Humble Bundle complaining and Epic funding it? Hard pass, pass so hard I didn’t even hit it pass. If Humble Bundle has an issue they are in a fine position to no longer sell Steam keys and that solves their problem. I don’t think there is much merit in “I lose revenue because I chose not to sell my game on Steam.”. About as much merit as making that argument for any console.
I mean, seriously! Just think of how many sales were lost by Wolffire just because they chose not to port the game to Switch PS4 and XBOX!
I don’t really see a difference between the two, and I definitely do not see a monopoly or antitrust where Valve meddling in store sale pricing affects the success of competing stores. For one, price parity is standard everywhere - whether that’s wrong or not is irrelevant, it’s the reality that the case is ignoring. For two, as I said it completely ignores the services Steam provides which in my opinion are far more likely reasons for why people continue to use Steam. Steam gets us with the extreme sales and keeps us with the stellar services. Other store fronts are free to have those sales, but if they do not succeed I doubt it’s due to price meddling and has far more to do with the services that are missing.
sigh sorry, I didn’t mean for it to get this long. Especially since I just posted another comment about this length. However, I do feel this one does a better job explaining my understanding of the situation so… lol
Regarding your last point, that is not what Steam T.O.S nor the blog post from 2 years ago specify, it said “within a reasonable amount of time” which has been what I’ve been familiar with, releasing a SteamPlay title back in 2012. Fairly, that could have been within the time period of it just being changed (after, I think my time) However…
Yes, it has been about price parity from the beginning. If parity didn’t depend on Steam keys, that doesn’t make sense. For Valve to try and use that pull against Ubisoft/EA, and more recently Epic. They were they only doing it to indie? And that affected these indie stores so heavily they failed? Okay… They still exist and have devs selling on them. Selling… .steam keys… so if it were an issue, don’t use steam keys?
If they were failing, why would they continue to sell on Steam? Until they felt safe enough to be protected by… Epic money? That seems laughable. So Valve has been actively inhibiting sales towards Fanatical, Itch, and Humble Bundle but allowing Ubi/EA/Epic whatever they want? If the evidence shows it, okay sure I’m game. Evidence. Please?
Like I said, if small devs came together with some kind of class action or similar antitrust, but the Wolffire case from the start seems to be pretty much composed of Epic has been-exclusive signers - that is to say more clearly, the nameless “group of devs” Wolffire mentioned in their blog have since yet to have show their support to the case. I’m not sure if I mentioned this here but I genuinely loved Lugaru and the 24-Jam Receiver - but I always was unable to buy Overgrowth because of how highly priced it was. Come to learn that Wolffire then led to HB before being bought out by IGN. I’ve been a HB subscriber from very early on and have had it going for a long, long time as active (only until recently due to personal fund prioritization).
It seems like since that acquisition in 2017 Wolffire’s.existence has been ever so slightly involved in post HB transition and, now seemingly since 2021 about 2 years after that has been trying to make excuses to “lost sales” on their overpriced game (funny how only Overgrowth is the only game ever mentioned) by going after Valve for the… 3rd time now? There was the one filed April 2021 (dismissed afaik), the one in August 2021 (blog post and dismissed) and the recent February 2023. All funded by a certain T.S. of E.G. would you guess??
Why would these devs Wolffire mentioned not actively and vocally boycott Steam? Oh man! Valve totally shut down our only chance, I guess now we’re forever relegated to Steam! …as if GOG and Epic don’t exist?
At this point, I just want some legitimacy behind a Valve lawsuit if they’re going to happen, but from my understanding this ain’t it, nor is Corsairs scuff bullshit. If you’re going to take on a giant , have some merit.
Why go after the platform that is providing so much to its users? Why side with the Epic platform that came out swinging with a whole lot of nothing in 2018 and have since literally been pushing money and litigation while providing gamers with absolutely jack shit? Frankly, I will never understand siding with Epic (though crazier things have happened in my lifetime).
Look - I admit I am pro Valve, but I feel this way because they have proven to me they are pro service when they were the only storefront outside of Mac-specific ones to support OSX (SteamPlay Titles). Did it take a court case to make them more pro-consumer? Yes, unfortunately. And look at where we are, with Steam now known as the storefront that provides a safety net for gamers that until that case nowhere was able to provide, something that happened globally, not just rolled out to a single or small set of countries. In terms of hardware I have gotten replacements for my steam controller and steam link and valve index at the drop of hat free shipping no charge, The first two years after they had stopped officially supporting these devices.
I would feel different if Epic had even attempted a sliver of what Valve delivers. They do not. They have actively shown they care otherwise with their timed exclusives paid off to devs and free games that only pay devs per-install, not per claim, and have actively removed support for games - Paragon and Rocket Linux to name a pair. I am anti-Epic because the CEO is a vocal nutjob who is all too happy to work with Tencent (though I’ll admit, at least it’s in the open - the one good thing) who is all too happy to try and utilize the features of Steam when they can (proton) all while undercutting the actual developers - short term payments are not long term support. We.know this because the 2019-2021 Epic exclusives had no advertising, save for Metro, why would they, Epic paid them for their games.
Tim Sweeny takes any kick at Valve he can and I simply have yet to see any validity to the case to prove this isn’t more of that. I’d be interested in seeing any of the developers Wolffire mentioned and I’ve been following these cases closely. With all this in mind to me it seems this remote deposition is nothing more than an attempt to bring discomfort to Newell who has shown to be not particularly open to public showings outside his will (like his medical showings).
Anyway again, like I said, should any evidence or congregation of devs come to light condemning valve then I am more than on board, I have no love for any corporation that pervas evil but at the moment with the options available, no vocal, no believe. Why not GOG? Why not Epic? No itch? No indiegala or GMG? Not good enough to be bought by EA/Ubi? Hm, that’s a lot of options that don’t provide nearly as many services as Steam and yet are all clearly viable storefronts that aren’t providing the same service.
To me, it seems kind of unfair to generate some ~5000 steam keys then expect that even the half 2,500 utilize Steam services while Valve gets no portion. But maybe to some it’s what Valve deserves for offering so much and subsequently being successful. Surely, they only could make that by being shitty (lootboxes not withstanding here, lol), definitely not by providing a litany of services everywhere else seemingly refuses to.
I don’t think Valve is perfect nor exempt from critique. If anything, I hope this makes them more pro consumer regardless of the outcome. However, none of what I have seen from any of this makes me feel angry at Valve, it only makes me disappointed in a developer I previously believed in.
These article titles need different headlines and they need to date them. We’ve seen this same headline 3 or 4 times now within the last week and yet nobody knows which point is what unless we cross-reference the dates in the articles. Which coincidentally are always in ^^small text hidden by the title^^ and could simply be solved by having a date in the title.
I mean, if a board member sees issues around them, they are still only one person.
This gives them the power that they should have been able to utilize when they were on it. Plus, I’d bet she assumed it will likely succeed and it’s probably better optics to side with the employees than to double down. That said, I am confused about this portion:
We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join. We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign, and the board appoints two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd, and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
Signed the reinstatement after being the coordinator for the coup is definitely odd, lol
The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.
Why do you need to know? Just pick one and go with it!
Deep Rock Galactic
I haven’t played much but, it’s not complicated? There’s a main lobby where you select a quest, then you go on it. It generally involved following a path and gathering/dropping off stuff with some fighting in between.
Overwatch
This one is just anticipating other people’s movement on a map, which can be chaotic but I don’t really think it’s complicated? Honestly if you’re having issues just play Paladins instead I would stick by 1 or 2 teammates and just focus on staying with them no matter what. Over time you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work.
I just want my games to have all the necessary information in the game.
Something that I meant to say in my comment but slipped my mind; a lot of these games will have you learn by playing. IMO, games either show too much trying to show you everything or they don’t show you anything and have you learn the mechanics of the game and its engine.
It sounds like you are wanting some information from the game before you start it, but the game is going to do that by experience not by text, which is why so many people have said “oh that’s why we look it up online!”. They’re just doing the same thing you are, just not in the game. I understand not wanting to be in the game and then having to get taken out of it for something though.
It sounds like each game you mentioned you wanted information from the game before you started playing it, which is the same thing that everyone else has done just with the internet. Personally, I’m in the camp of jump in and go and then 40 hours in if there is still something the game hasn’t explained (or realistically, something that I skipped over) then I look it up. Otherwise, you spend all your time reading about what to expect instead of just having it happen to you.
This sounds like it might suit you as long as you give up some expectations. Like I said, from how you’re talking it sounds like you’re still trying to preload on information (like everyone else) but expecting it from the game. The game will show you eventually, you just gotta see the response from your actions and suffer the consequences!
FWIW it’s a wide range of genres out there. Games at this point are being made from decades of existing gamer techniques. There’s games like Monster Hunter where the game gives you an hour and half of learning the game and there’s still more to learn in entirely different aspects of the game (crafting weapons/armor/items and the actual attacks and monster patterns), there’s games like BG3 where there are character traits and specifics that are there for nudging you to play a certain way (where min/maxing is minimum amount of effort for maximum amount of gains - it’s not very ideal to have a strength warrior focusing on magic).
Then there’s games like Pathologic that do tell you exactly what you need to do, but the entirety of the game is made to dissuade you from playing it.
You should try Shadow Warrior. It is a first person slasher where all of your abilities are gained one by one and grow on top of each other. It tells you everything you need to know, no guesswork. Max Payne 3 is a third person shooter that is very straightforward. And Okami, a third person open-area puzzle explorer, where the game makes you think outside the box for abilities it has taught you how to use, and just a few points where you have to do an explicit objective before continuing.
Story based progression games akin to Borderlands but free from inventory and stats. No bothering with how many levels you have to get through before you can level up your abilities, just good old point A to point B action.
Tl;Dr don’t preload information from games, compile information from playing them
Hey, glad I had a good guess that was already up your alley! And sorry for some of the responses - unfortunately elitism has a high correlation to certain min/max communities.
Oh my mistake lol, some people are just social and being seen as present is important to them. I’m not one of them but I know a number of people who are - a few years younger than I which I’ve wondered if growing up more linked to socials attributes to that mindset.
People in my group use these tricks for work chats to at least look active if they’re not. For friends? I don’t think I’d care lol.
It’s about scalability and all the options on the table. We’ve got self-recharging diamond batteries that contain plutonium from refined nuclear waste estimated to last a minimum of 20,000 years. Theoretically this could entirely replace batteries needed for pacemakers and any small cell battery. There could be ways to scale it up even further, we’ll just have to figure out a way how.
That’s just as promising as sodium power because it gives us another opportunity. It’s a way to reduce waste (nuclear waste is tricky to get rid of). It’s just about ability to deliver. Diamond batteries have been in production and were supposed to be available this year - chances are slim that will still be the case though lol.
This was something I started wondering about when I was reading a thread about Star Citizen, and about how space combat flight games were much less-common than they had been at one point, how fans of the genre were hungry for new entrants....
I’ve been thinking this one over for a couple days now and it just occurred to me, but independent character driven mechanics wrapped in a silly story. Spyro, Crash, Sly, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Okami - the games they inspired are good and interesting and have many unique elements but I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve come across one of these kinds of games which really push a boundary and focus in on each aspect of that character.
Also, I want Goofy’s Skateboarding again. Give it to me.
Looking for those games that you may have heard about but never tried until you got a Deck. Or old games on systems you never had that you’re trying for the first time. Or new AAA games that just released in the last year or two that you picked up for the first time specifically to play on Steam Deck and have kept you glued to...
I really enjoyed Hero’s Hour, it’s eeriely similar to Mount and Blade but… pixel.
My gaming history is so diverse that I only recently realized that certain games have baises to certain styles of console now. Growing up I played a lot of NES and SNES games on an old hitachi laptop with the roms and a control scheme I didn’t know how to chance from PGUP PGDN and arrow controls. Never the less, my platforming 2D top down exploration feeling kicked in. Then the PS2 introduced me to 3D games and the different dynamics, but it was stolen so I got to explore the world of flash games until the Wii expanded the PS2’s dynamic games with depth of controllers. (Honestly it’s not talked enough about how Wii Sports is a form of AR.) Anyway, now as an adult the last nearly decade of gaming has been done mostly on PC, with just a few Nintendo games here and there between the 3DS, Wii U and Switch.
And through all of this, Nintendo has had very strong 3rd party titles - Retro City Rampage, Shantae, Shovel Knight, I mean the list could go on for forever. But what’s interesting is none of these kinds of games, even some dear classics like Phantom Brave/Disgaea, none of them fully appeal to me on PC. When I use the Steam Controller it helps immensely, but even then it can take some work to really feel “right”.
It wasn’t until I got the Steam Deck that I realized this connection between the smaller/portable nature of certain games to certain consoles. I mean, I was aware of it in the sense that I preferred certain games for certain consoles, but I never realized just how strongly “retro” games just need to be on a small screen with gamepad controls - and I loooved playing flash games on mouse and keyboard but the nostalgia of the screen format is just so overpoweringly nostalgic.
Anyway, all this to say - I have found a previously “nearly useless” part of my very large game library to be no longer “nearly useless”. There are now so many games that I have some interest in to at least try, because playing them on the Steam Deck just feels right.
Forager, Hero’s Hour, Monster Sanctuary, Blasphemous, and Yakuza (refound love for this one) are my 2022 replays top Steam Deck games. However during that time I also ripped all my Switch games to format shift them to the Steam Deck, so Marvel’s Ultimate Alliance 3 also got a lot of playtime.
Within the last year I’ve come across Smile for Me, Guts and Glory, and Narita Boy which I wouldn’t have normally played either.
It is, though 2 years is a little short. I just got back into my very first Yahoo e-mail not long ago and that wouldn’t have been possible with a policy like this.
But, they have so many that have been stagnant for so long so I’m not really faulting them for this particular move.
As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of...
Good recommendations so I’ll just add some specifics.
For whatever emulation route you choose, I recommend using a separate SD card just for emulation. Makes it really easy to just get it set up on an SD card, the games appear and they are ready. No SD card, no emulation finagling. Keeps your ROMs off main deck storage which even 512gb fills up fast.
I like emudeck, some don’t, ymmv.
I don’t think I saw SSH recommended. I use FileZilla to transfer files between my PC and steam deck - handy for emulation files, small-medium sized games. It makes the process of transferring and setup so much easier. I like FZ cause once it’s set up there’s a quick connect so you don’t have to remember the details.
Hardware accessory: I highly recommend the Deckmate, it’s basically a VESA mount for the Deck. I attached a battery pack, mini dock, and have mounted the Deck to VESA stands. Seriously, it’s worth it.
Apple’s strategy with it is actually evil though. Sell you low amounts of storage at high prices with little to no options to upgrade, then force you to pay for cloud storage when inevitably the budget iPhone 64gb isn’t enough.
I’m assuming my area is somewhat similar to others in how technology is partly a fashion statement, but these are also people not rich enough to buy more than 128gb phones. I have a feeling that Apple knows this and does it by design to funnel people into their cloud storage.
The insane part is that they do it with all of their products and that people actually use it. In some cases it makes sense, but for the majority of people it’s buying a subscription to use your phon- er, computers storage.
FWIW, I don’t think the last sentence is quite right. I think it’s more like, “oh, some geeks made this thing in their basement? ok, but I have this already made by a rich company.”
Privacy isn’t on the radar, ease of use, design, and how it makes you look to other people are.
Most current locally hosted software has some option to offload to RAM, CPU, and disk. VRAM is fastest, but RAM and CPU offloading lets you cut down to less than 4GB VRAM for certain applications, at plenty reasonable speed.
Remember when we could just remove and swap the battery? Now we could go back to that, removing the part where we charge it and the battery just… does it.
Not quite there yet, but holy hell this looks far more promising than most things we get. The idea of getting away from cell batteries entirely is… momentous.
For me it would be Spider-Man, Cyberpunk 2077, and anything VR.
The polish of a Sony game, something I haven’t had since the PS2, on PC was refreshing. The absolute insanity of pushing the scale of a rendered world to make Night City something that feels genuinely huge. And expanding that into real-world space is something that I had dreams about as a child.
However the 3rd is a bit different for realism, as VR done well doesn’t need graphical fidelity (=/= resolution). Games that require it, like a painting simulator, sure, but there are games like Moose Life which just recreate the old arcade style of game. No realism needed. And this is where I begin to ramble some!
If I were to go back a generation, I’d say the list is much stronger in art-directed styles. The watercolor of Okami, the cel-shading of Borderlands - now timeless classics sheerly due to their artistic direction while other games of the same era are the subject of title. Opposed to Call of Duty or Battlefield, it’s clear that each generation with some stagnation “looks” better than those before it.
But again, what exactly is it that makes current day CoD or BF “different” from something like say, 2007 Crysis?
Crysis has a bit more aliasing. That’s pretty much it? This whole idea of “realism” in video games is just preposterous to me because there are so many examples of amazing art, and then there are drab games aiming for “visual realism” which could have been something much more impressive. Crysis not only pushed the hardware of its time but it also made stylistic choices which have kept the game visually relevant.
I think another example somewhat fitting into this is games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding - clearly more cartoonized games that are surrounded by a world influenced by realism, but rather than focusing in on what visually is most realistic they aim for stylistic choices. I would say that GTA 5’s story somewhat falls in here as well, but it’s something that RDR2 fails at exceptionally for me. On the flip side, the Darksiders series just doesn’t mesh with me stylistically, while Elden Ring is everything that I felt Darksiders could have been (visually). But even Elden Ring is just a few lines more detailed than a game like Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen - render distance taking away from DD:DA’s “realism”, something that Elden Ring particularly shines at.
Ultimately I think this sort of thing comes down to our subjective perceptions. When I was a kid I played a lot of 2D side scrollers and pixel art games, I got a PS2 and experienced a lot of 3D and 2D platformers, and then the PS2 was stolen and I was relegated to flash games until the Wii. I experienced such a wide range of games before the age of 10 that now as an adult I find the aesthetic of a game to be just as important as the gameplay or its story. Quite frankly, I don’t really care if a game looks like Heavenly Sword or Darksiders or some abstract blobs and hitboxes. If it’s designed well, I’m interested, although I do have a harder time with 2D pixel games these days (the Steam Deck helps! It’s the feeling of the right console for the right game that usually prevents me from playing them on PC)
It seems a shame that even today this discourse of “best graphics or bust” is still around. It’s always been surrounding the console war culture and invades games that it had never been an issue for before, but seems nonexistent when realism actually fits a genre. For example, the graphical fidelity of Monster Hunter: World is beautiful but very out of place for the MH series, aiming for “realism”. They did a great job stylizing the game but it doesn’t detract from the more animated MH games.
Now, almost any horror game ever. So many of them push for visual realism because that’s how to get the most effective shock from gore, meanwhile there are some games that are clever about their horror, like Outlast using the perspective of a camera with night vision. Realistically, I think a game like this, or Phasmophobia, or Hellblade Senuas Sacrifice show that horror games don’t entirely need realism and too many use it as a crutch.
I don’t really think realism is “necessary” for any game with a strong art direction, and more often than not the art direction is what keeps the visual strength of a game relevant. That said, I think there are good examples of realism that have existed, but ultimately they seem likely to fade away until a remaster comes to remind a new generation of gamers that it exists, whereas a game with strong art direction seems to tend to have more staying power.
Finally - what is realism, anyway? Photorealism? And how much does realism affect immersion, since that seems to be a component?
RDR2?
Mirrors Edge?
Horizon Zero Dawn/Spider-Man?
Hitman 3?
Call of Duty?
Crysis?
Fallout/Outer Wilds?
Ace Combat?
Counter Strike?
Far Cry?
Alien Isolation?
To me, all of these stray pretty far from “realism” if the definition is avoiding things that look animated? Like the character models or aspects of the surrounding world. I feel like if I were so focused on realism then I would be distracted by the foliage of RDR2 or the animated models of Fallout/Cyberpunk 2077. However other aspects of those games look absolutely incredible, but don’t always mesh with the rest of what’s going on. This is why I feel that art direction is just more important than “realism” - because photos in 2077 just look better with the character models and the world matching than RDR2 does with it’s semi-realistic but still animated human characters in a semi-photorealistic world but it’s still pixelated grass and dirt so there’s obvious spots where a screenshot is a video game, not a photo. Sorry, that was a mouthful!
I guess what I’m getting at is what exactly does attempting visual realism bring to a game that proper art direction wouldn’t do just as well?
Is it just the innate desire to get movies as playable games?
The side quests really make the game. My issue came down to after that first playthrough I did all the quests… So in ng+ what do I do, different choices?
I remember seeing those articles. It was just tough putting together a life and stacked character and complete quests to throw it away for my experience which was another normal boring one (clarify, only boring because it was all exactly the same, I liked my first playthrough).
I like the game, it has a strong message behind it. It’s tough rebuilding your mantis ship decked with other quest ship materials and your alignments when you get a not crazy NG+
I’m with you and I don’t think the other person really gets just how expensive a WoW subscription is. It will never be integrated into Gamepass, it makes far too much money on its own.
A fake meta profile for your games attached to it. Meta also has asked for ID confirmations, so you better either be okay with risking it or losing access to your account and your investment.
500 not even on sale. It often goes for $350 these days.
Honestly, it’s a steal. The reverb G2 is really good, easily used with Valve Index controllers.
In the long run though, anyone currently interested should probably wait for Valves next release. Then you can decide if MS-lock is worth it, it can certainly be frustrating at times being locked to Windows.
So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then...
Google has slowly been really pushing their way or no-way. They announced that 3 strike policy against your account for ad-blocking, from my understanding it had only rolled out to chrome but someone within the last couple months posted an image of Firefox showing them the adblock message.
Ublock Origin does still work for some, but I believe it’s per account. Honestly, the moment I heard about the policy I immediately switched to Piped. I don’t really care about the YouTube algorithm, I hardly use the site outside of information searching (guides mostly) and so the homepage always being YT front page doesn’t bother me. I can create an account with piped and have subscriptions, can make playlists and on the LibreTube app I can download videos. That’s all I need. Unfortunately there is some downtime sometime but you can host your own instance of it really gets to you - I’m nearly at that point myself just for the peace of mind.
So, fuck YouTube and Google tracking, fuck their forced ad policy, use a wrapper like Piped/Invidious and be done with them.
The game shut down after the play test. There was nothing they had the opportunity to change.
If you’re talking about systemic issues with the games design, that I will agree with. From my understanding it’s a 5 team of three PvP/E heisting game in space.
That means that there’s zero gravity sections, maps large enough to have heists, and, again, 5 teams of 3. It’s not so much that the game itself has any specific issue, the issue the game has was sheerly its scope and ambition. It seems like it could have had a lot of potential if it just weren’t so many systems being combined.
When, in your opinion, does a modern rock song expire into a classic rock song?
A: 15 years B: 20 years C: 25 years D: 30 years E: 40 years F: 50 years G: other
Here's A First Look At Amazon Prime's Fallout Series - Game Informer (www.gameinformer.com)
Bethesda responding to negative Starfield reviews on Steam (www.eurogamer.net)
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 26th
What have you all been playing? I’ve been playing more dicey dungeons and cross code! Want to really commit to finishing cross code this time
Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Steam Sale Games
What are people excited about for with the steam sale? Any hidden gems you’d like to share with the class?
Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI (www.theverge.com)
See also twitter:...
Hundreds of OpenAI staff tell board to resign or they'll quit (www.axios.com)
How are you all playing these insanely complex games?
Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate....
Windows PCs can't sleep properly, and Microsoft wants it that way (www.spacebar.news)
Sodium-ion battery breakthroughs may be key to our electric future (www.techspot.com)
What game genre would you like to see more entrants in?
This was something I started wondering about when I was reading a thread about Star Citizen, and about how space combat flight games were much less-common than they had been at one point, how fans of the genre were hungry for new entrants....
Steam Deck Owners: What’s been your favorite game that you first discovered on Steam Deck and now you can’t seem to put down?
Looking for those games that you may have heard about but never tried until you got a Deck. Or old games on systems you never had that you’re trying for the first time. Or new AAA games that just released in the last year or two that you picked up for the first time specifically to play on Steam Deck and have kept you glued to...
Google Announces to Delete Inactive Accounts, All You Need to Know (samrome58.substack.com)
Google decides to delete any account that has two years of inactivity. See how they decide to go about it.
A threat actor abuses Google Ads to distribute malicious CPU-Z app from fake Windows news site, Malwarebytes reports (feddit.de)
Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/5535431...
Bought my first Steam Deck after seeing the deep discounts on refurbs...what should i know as a first time Steam Deck/PC gamer?
As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of...
You may need to provide a reason now when quitting OneDrive (ghacks.net)
Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster (www.theverge.com)
WhatsApp head confirms ads in the messaging app are still in the works (www.theverge.com)
ChatGPT subscribers may get a ‘GPT builder’ option soon (www.theverge.com)
So, turns out that nuclear-powered pacemakers were a thing (www.ans.org)
In today’s episode of “weird shit I stumbled onto on the internet”, I bring you: nuclear-powered pacemakers....
isn't it weird how newer games manage to look more realistic than older ones? - GST Channel [5:32] (www.youtube.com)
Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best (www.pcgamer.com)
Why did the metaverse die? Because Silicon Valley doesn’t understand the concept of fun (www.fastcompany.com)
Microsoft completes Activision Blizzard acquisition, Call of Duty now part of Xbox (www.theverge.com)
Disney's CEO Is Reportedly Being Urged to Consider Turning Company Into a 'Gaming Giant' [and buying EA] (me.ign.com)
Meta Quest 3 review impressions - one of VR gaming's best options (www.eurogamer.net)
I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is
So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then...
Zero Caliber VR key
DM me for a steam key, its a duplicate from the recent humble bundle for me. First one gets it...
Hands-on with AMD FSR 3 frame generation - taking the fight to DLSS 3 (www.eurogamer.net)
What's the most surprising facts about a game you've gleaned by reading a game's achievement/trophy acquisition percentage?
I’ll start with a few:...
Cancelled Hyenas was ‘Sega’s biggest budget game ever’, it’s claimed | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com)