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Latest 30 Comments

News - Valve reveal all the Steam events scheduled for 2026
By Solitary, 15 Jan 2026 at 7:12 pm UTC

VR fest for our new VR goggles where? 😭

News - Steam Machine verification will have "fewer constraints" than Steam Deck - but text sizing worries me
By ScottCarammell, 15 Jan 2026 at 6:21 pm UTC

text scaling was always a stupid point against verification honestly. it's just too arbitrary. a bunch of indie games with perfectly legible text might have one line that's kind of small and get a tick off of verification, meanwhile games like Elden Ring are composed almost ENTIRELY of tiny text and are verified. should just be removed from the verification process

News - Nexus Mods retire their in-development cross-platform app to focus back on Vortex
By GoEsr, 15 Jan 2026 at 5:37 pm UTC

Quoting: eldarionI don't know about the cross platform app, but Vortex is a buggy and overcomplicated mess. I miss the days of Nexus Mod Manager...
It's funny the NexusMods is best known for Skyrim modding, because this really reeks of Bethesda being adamant that the Creation Engine totally isn't just a Gamebryo rebrand and is totes the best at modern game development actually.

News - Valve's documentation highlights the different ways standalone games run on Steam Frame
By san, 15 Jan 2026 at 5:25 pm UTC

Liam, do you happen to know if they make a distinction for stand-alone optimized games and games to stream for best possible graphics?

The former would be great to have on Frame when traveling, while the latter would be great when at home.

As an example, VR devs often released ARM64 optimized titles for the pico/meta platforms at the cost of graphical fidelity. On Steam these titles would be released targeting higher specs and thus a better experience.

Although I understand their concern about bad ports, there are cases, especially for VR where I think it would make sense to have both.

News - Valve's documentation highlights the different ways standalone games run on Steam Frame
By Ardje, 15 Jan 2026 at 5:15 pm UTC

The most important game I want to run on it is a 3D desktop that can run a bunch of *readable* wezterms and maybe a few browsertabs.
I am still between xreal glasses on my steam deck and a steam frame...
The steam frame will be a desktop replacement, so if either the frame or the deck breaks, I can still use the other.
In the end I might stream desktop from my cluster. But for travel: deck+xreal or frame...
I reckon the deck+xreal is more expensive than the frame.

News - Valve's documentation highlights the different ways standalone games run on Steam Frame
By doragasu, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:34 pm UTC

They must trust FEX a whole lot if they are not encouraging devs to make an ARM build...

News - Even more AMD ray tracing performance improvements heading to Mesa on Linux
By Jarmer, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:29 pm UTC

Love this improvement! I'm going to do an Avowed replay after they release all the dlc / expansions / patches / etc... so probably at the end of the year maybe? Or next year? By then mesa should have a TON of raytracing improvements and my 9070xt can run with it all turned up. Should be gorgeous. It was already gorgeous when I played it on my 6800xt with no RT.

News - Steam Machine verification will have "fewer constraints" than Steam Deck - but text sizing worries me
By Persephone the Sheep, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:27 pm UTC

Text scaling support is why Baldur's Gate 3 was the only game I played when visiting my sister for Thanksgiving. Even though the TV where my family was staying was 55 inches and I wasn't sitting far from it, I had to sit to the side of the TV causing bad contrast and it also had low pixel density. So I had a hard time reading text in games so I just when though what games I had installed and Baldur's Gate was like the only one with text scaling so that's what I played.

I don't always need accessibility stuff but when I do I'm usually disappointed at what a game supports. Stellar Blade did surprise me with a pretty alright list of stuff you can change. My hand was locking up from fishing you have to spam Square while using the analog stick to fight the fish and then hold the trigger in a certain position to real in the fish. Had to fish a lot for missions and the fact I had to do it quickly caused me pain. Luckily in the Menu you can turn on a setting to have each action turned into a single press so all you have to do use is the analog stick. There is also an option to just change the reeling in part to a timing game instead of holding a specific position.

Also FOV should always be able to go high its accessibility as well. I can't play a lot of games because I get extreme motion sickness from an FOV being to small I usually need a FOV of 110 sometime 90 is fine like in source games. Starting playing the Snowbound mod for borderlands 2 and needed to increase the FOV to 130 not to get motion sick do to that mods increased speed. I don't know if devs use this excuse anymore but it use to be devs would say if we let you increase the FOV to much cut scenes might look wrong. One that's a you problem and two I DON'T CARE IF A CUT SCENE LOOKS A LITTLE WEIRD I WANT TO BE ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME.

News - OBS Studio 32.1 Beta is out with a new Audio Mixer, WebRTC Simulcast support and more
By syylk, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:27 pm UTC

Proper Wayland support when? (Especially wrt shortcuts.)

News - D7VK version 1.2 brings more Direct3D 6 improvements and a little Direct3D 5 too
By dpanter, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:07 pm UTC

doing things so cursed that there's no plausible approach for supporting them
Ah, we call that classic Microslop. 🍌

News - Steam Machine verification will have "fewer constraints" than Steam Deck - but text sizing worries me
By eev, 15 Jan 2026 at 4:03 pm UTC

I hope a good scale in 720p is required for full verification, entirely because as much as the high end crowd is already beyond 1080p, a lot of average people still carry ~720p screens around (myself included).
It's still HD and actually looks fine!

News - Valve's documentation highlights the different ways standalone games run on Steam Frame
By benstor214, 15 Jan 2026 at 3:47 pm UTC

This documentation actually went up last month[…]
And this part shows that Liam is a pro.
In the meantime, a whole cohort of YouTubers, Redditors and Discorders want to make you believe that Valve put this up just a few days ago, only because one of them happened to stumble upon it a few days ago.

I was reading this on Christmas Eve, and I am certain it was up way before then…

News - Multiple years later Terraria 1.4.5 has a release date for January 27th
By Penguin, 15 Jan 2026 at 3:38 pm UTC

Very nice! Time to start a new Terraria world soon 😄

News - Even more AMD ray tracing performance improvements heading to Mesa on Linux
By Brokatt, 15 Jan 2026 at 3:18 pm UTC

Quoting: eevWhatever the price may be, I'm hoping Valve can at least make the new Machine a very stable experience with all the lessons learned through the Deck and with these updates. We should all care a bit more about the easy on boarding for people unfamiliar with Linux and PCs perhaps, especially in keeping performance up.
I agree. Even if the Steam Machine turns out a failure, the software improvements will hopefully be a huge boon for Linux distros.

News - Less Miserables is an upcoming point-and-click parody of Les Misérables
By Calinou, 15 Jan 2026 at 3:16 pm UTC

I thought this was about [Less MSIérables](https://lessmsi.activescott.com/) for a second. :P

News - Linux Mint 22.3 "Zena" is out now and supported until 2029
By RetroGamerCA, 15 Jan 2026 at 2:55 pm UTC

For anyone interested in running XFCE version 4.20 on Mint, install LMDE7 (Linux Mint Debian Edition v7). That includes Cinnamon by default. However, add XFCE via:
sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies xfce4-screensaver catfish

News - Even more AMD ray tracing performance improvements heading to Mesa on Linux
By eev, 15 Jan 2026 at 2:16 pm UTC

Whatever the price may be, I'm hoping Valve can at least make the new Machine a very stable experience with all the lessons learned through the Deck and with these updates. We should all care a bit more about the easy on boarding for people unfamiliar with Linux and PCs perhaps, especially in keeping performance up.

News - Even more AMD ray tracing performance improvements heading to Mesa on Linux
By geckofish52, 15 Jan 2026 at 1:45 pm UTC

Things are continuing to line up for a much improved replay of Stalker 2 whenever "2.0" comes out...

News - D7VK version 1.2 brings more Direct3D 6 improvements and a little Direct3D 5 too
By legluondunet, 15 Jan 2026 at 1:42 pm UTC

Gaming news for Linux are so rich and exciting this last years !

News - Even more AMD ray tracing performance improvements heading to Mesa on Linux
By Atom, 15 Jan 2026 at 1:23 pm UTC

Better ray tracing and official FSR4 compatibiliy for Steam Machine would be game changer !

News - Cygames announced an AI studio, and then put up an apology over it
By Lofty, 15 Jan 2026 at 12:18 pm UTC

Quoting: eggrole
Quoting: LoftyWe want Passion over Profits.
This sounds great, and I agree when it comes to art/games and even life in general, but I don't think this statement stands up to scrutiny. Do you, and/or how many people do you know, that work a job they are passionate for versus a job that pays the most?

I know there is a limit when more money does not matter, but from what I understand that is somewhere around 75-100kUSD/year. Most people (in the whole world) don't make that much. Hell, the median income (individual) in the USA is only ~40k. I don't think people are working these "low" paying jobs because they are passionate. I think they are taking whatever they can get.

As the old saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks.

I'm not saying this is good/right, it simply is the shitty nature of our for profit (and put a price tag on everything) world.
I think you missed my point that as Ai skeptical consumers it's what we want (as literally stated) it's not what the 'company' wants.

And yes i can delineate the difference between the Artist/coding and the management structure of a company. Also I don't think bringing employee salaries is valid considering on of the main objections to the use of Ai is entire workforces are let go because of Ai. It feels like your saying 'they were just doing their job ', they had no other choice. It's an oxymoron.

However if your making excuses for shitty industry behavior & glossing over it with a " money talks and bullshit walks." statement which is akin to saying " the proof is in the pudding " well the proof might be the overwhelming negative consumer reaction to generating games using Ai.

As a side note your statement implies that only those with money or power have valid opinions. You probably think that, but we have seen from some recent news articles that a the collective voice is starting to slowly resonate back to developers that in general gamers don't want game studio's pumping out generic Ai slop.

In the end you may be right about the financial incentive to make cheap Ai slop games but we have the option to state our concerns using our wallets and our voice to explain why.

This is why GOL is a valuable news source, because it alerts us to which companies are trying to go this route and decide how much this means to you as a consumer.

*edit Some people don't care about the use of Ai in game and that's fine too.

News - Cygames announced an AI studio, and then put up an apology over it
By eggrole, 15 Jan 2026 at 11:29 am UTC

Quoting: LoftyWe want Passion over Profits.
This sounds great, and I agree when it comes to art/games and even life in general, but I don't think this statement stands up to scrutiny. Do you, and/or how many people do you know, that work a job they are passionate for versus a job that pays the most?

I know there is a limit when more money does not matter, but from what I understand that is somewhere around 75-100kUSD/year. Most people (in the whole world) don't make that much. Hell, the median income (individual) in the USA is only ~40k. I don't think people are working these "low" paying jobs because they are passionate. I think they are taking whatever they can get.

As the old saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks.

I'm not saying this is good/right, it simply is the shitty nature of our for profit (and put a price tag on everything) world.

News - Nexus Mods retire their in-development cross-platform app to focus back on Vortex
By eldarion, 15 Jan 2026 at 10:14 am UTC

I don't know about the cross platform app, but Vortex is a buggy and overcomplicated mess. I miss the days of Nexus Mod Manager...

News - Cygames announced an AI studio, and then put up an apology over it
By Eike, 15 Jan 2026 at 8:59 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThis is the only important part of the corporate blabla:
urthermore, we won't implement generative AI into our products without prior notice.
So the only thing they are saying is that they'll do it anyway, they'll just tell you about it.
... which I'm fine with. Have an informed decision.

News - Cygames announced an AI studio, and then put up an apology over it
By TheSHEEEP, 15 Jan 2026 at 8:54 am UTC

This is the only important part of the corporate blabla:
urthermore, we won't implement generative AI into our products without prior notice.
So the only thing they are saying is that they'll do it anyway, they'll just tell you about it.

News - Windows compatibility layer Wine 11 arrives bringing masses of improvements to Linux
By mr-victory, 15 Jan 2026 at 8:53 am UTC

FYI, I tried crossover almost a year ago so my info may have fallen out of date.

Crossover downloads the installer of Office 365, the constantly updating variant of Office. The installer is executed in a 32 bit Wine prefix with Windows version set to Win7. The installer detects this and downloads an old version of Office 365 with fewer components ie. no OneDrive. Using a 64 bit prefix or Windows version Win10 immediately crashes the installer.

There may have been improvements in the last 1 year & few months so don't quote me on this info lol.

News - GOG plan to look a bit closer at Linux through 2026
By Purple Library Guy, 15 Jan 2026 at 8:34 am UTC

Quoting: foobrewThe comment about Windows was far more shocking to me. I'd like to believe that after 30+ years the tide might be turning...but I'm not holding my breath. Seriously though, how is it possible that young people don't even question that they're running the same OS, just a newer version of course, that their GRANDPARENTS ran? Youth don't do this with any other product that I can think of. The unquestioning fealty to Microsoft is something I suppose I'll never understand.
Well, up until recently they might have not questioned it because they just didn't notice it. I mean, your OS (and where there's a distinction, your desktop environment) are kind of just a substrate you run your software on. And at this point the desktop environment is . . . sure, people innovate, but if you're not getting cute it's a pretty mature thing, so if it's done decently people are barely aware it's there. It's like how people don't rebel against how their grandparents used refrigerators.

On Windows, though, people are no longer barely aware it's there, because MS insists on making it get in the way. Lately it seems there are a ton of "I switched to Linux cuz Win 11 sucks so hard, so should you" videos on the internet. It feels like there's a shift happening.

News - Valve tweak Steam Community Awards to deal with point farming and "attention-grabbing content"
By Feist, 15 Jan 2026 at 7:30 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPShame, really.
Large amounts of clown awards were a good way to quickly notice idiotic postings without having to read them entirely.

The idea of "purely showing appreciation" sounds like coddling and participation trophy nonsense to me.
Only positive thoughts allowed, no critique please.
Not really my style.

I had no idea that points got transferred that way, though.
Then again, I assign no value to these points whatsoever as they are so plenty I don't think anyone could even spend them all.
Exactly! I used this as an indicator that a post was silly/nonsensical, which (in my experience) when I bothered to read such a post, it usually was. Now there will will be no clear indication, so you'll have to.....ignore all posts that doesn't have massive "thumbs up awards"?

Lol, not exactly an improvement.