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@Cybolic

I've actually started using XR glasses more and more with the Deck

Fascinating idea. Glad it works for you, but ... the price! It costs the same if not more than the Steam Deck itself!

How are these glasses for people who are prone to vertigo/motion-sickness though?

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AI will become a tool like Photoshop or a calculator.

I suspect a lot of what you're saying has the potential to be true. But the reason people quite reasonably despise AI in particular, and definitely don't hate Photoshop or calculators, is that those products aren't destroying the planet.

Also, they're also rarely forced on to you. There are alternatives to these things (that doesn't quite work with calculators as an example, but hey ho - spreadsheets, or abacuses. Okay!) and so these things have to provide real, measurable value before you buy them.

Finally, they didn't absolutely piss on existing creators by stealing their work (and hence livelihood) in order to exist.

I sincerely hope the article below is spot on, and that AI is absolutely unsustainable in the medium or long term. The only reason it exists today is because big tech is front running the costs in the hope to establish dependency, so that when they price this tech according to its actual cost, there are enough subscribers unwilling to do without the tech, and they'll pay up.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/costs/

Fingers crossed.

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This is good especially considering Microsoft sent their "Xbox" handheld out to every content creator with even a small following.They're undoubtedly hoping influencers will do a lot of the promotion work for them.

but i still think microsoft is dumb for not puting an killer price like 100USD.

Microsoft said ASUS set the price. After all, despite the Xbox branding, it's still an ASUS product.

Anyway, I don't think the "play everything" claim is as much of a flex as they think it is. Yes, there are some people who really want to play fortnite on a handheld, but realistically, anyone serious about online competitive gaming has an expensive mouse and keyboard, a high-refresh rate monitor, etc. Casual folks love the Steam Deck, and I don't think that's going to change for a more expensive handheld that still has Windows on it, despite the Xbox branding.

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The problem isn't just the lack of oversight, it's the ethics of it. People losing jobs due to AI, all the AI generation being trained on the works of others without their consent.

Pretty much every transformative technology destroys jobs and businesses. That's normal. People who feel threatened by said new technology typically turn into haters, thinking they can stop or at least delay it. That has never worked.

Some of the same artists now throwing spite at AI and anyone using it or being even mildly in favor of it, said the exact same thing about Photoshop and why it will kill all art. They're all using it now. And it hasn't killed art. It just made it different.

I wrote a lengthy post a while back why I really don't think that AI will ever replace human art. Or writing. Or coding. But if you guys insist on not buying anything remotely touched by "AI slop", as some of you refer to it, you will soon find yourself unable to buy any games at all anymore. AI will become a tool like Photoshop or a calculator. Everyone will use it at least in some capacity, because the alternative is losing your job or business. You think you can avoid games using AI even now? Think again. I am not aware of any professional software developer not using AI at least for some mundane tasks already. Maybe some are still out there, who knows. But fewer every day. Chances are that the vast majority of games already have at least some AI generated code in them. Just because you can't see it and its less obvious than art doesn't mean it isn't there. And soon you will be unable to identify AI art assets by counting fingers of characters on the images, too. It's hard to enforce "have to declare AI" rules, if not even experts will be able to tell the difference. And we're about 2-3 years away from that.

Technologies always had that tendency of not letting people stop them by hating them or people using them. The more constructive approach would be to talk about how to compensate creators for their works being used for training (just put a tax on the providers of commercial/non-open source models, really). Because in the end it doesn't matter what made a game as long as it's fun to play.

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All that still doesn't necessarily make a game on Deck usable with older eyes. The basic thing about the Deck is that it makes up for the smallish screen by being closer to you than a big screen would be. But, lots of older people can't focus from close up. I myself don't have this problem big time, but I have noticed that when I'm looking at a fine print label, and I bring it closer to try to read it, I lose focus just before it gets close enough. That didn't happen when I was younger, I could focus from quite close in. Many older people have this problem worse than I do, plus not great sight in other ways; a Deck just isn't going to be that usable for them--not because anybody's done anything wrong, just because that form factor isn't going to work for them.

elmapul, I do think maybe it's getting to be time for a Steam Deck II. Maybe a couple of recent/upcoming chips and stuff make it worth while? That and Valve are going to need to strongarm the anti-cheat situation somehow.

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What is this, the 80's again?!
Seriously this is looking amazing. As a life long comics geek and Marvel fan (not MCU), this tickles my fancy.

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I can't wait! I'm so excited!

Hades, Cult of the Lamb are huge favorites of mine. The story-lines & artwork are amazing and I enjoy the side-work. The new DLC seems to give us more stuff, so... yay!

Honestly, I wish there was an explosion in the genre.

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i think its a bit too late for that, because the competition "can play everything", and its geting close price-wise (i mean the rog xbox ally normal edition, not the x version), this will help sell those games that get verified but not help put an spotlight on the deck, valve time is killing the deck/steamOS momentum.


but i still think microsoft is dumb for not puting an killer price like 100USD.

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they need a better quality control/polishment for the content.
some content is pretty beautyfull (or good in the case of the musics) other is not that much / bad.
i think the "adventure mode" should be a curated experience instead of the current mess, then the aditional content be treated as if it was Free DLCs or Mods.

i know they rely mostly on volunteers work, so im asking too much, but still...

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Lovely looking game, and feels a bit more accessible than similar types of this genre.

That link you posted made me think that it would be wonderful if Steam could create a symlink, during PFX creation, for all that dross that makes finding the actual game content so tedious.

So create a "game" symbolic link for:
drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/TheFarmerWasReplaced/TheFarmerWasReplaced

And that way, instead of
steamapps/compatdata/2060160/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/TheFarmerWasReplaced/TheFarmerWasReplaced/Saves/Save0/

You'd just have:
steamapps/compatdata/2060160/pfx/game/Saves/Save0/

A boy can dream.

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I believe the problem is that buying a piece of media and feeding it into an algorithm to create a model isn't considered copyright infringement because the result is a piece of software rather than a copy of the original piece of media.

You're probably right, but that just means that copyright law needs to be updated.

If they want to create a new AI that's a great interior designer, but the creators of that AI need to knock doors and be shown the insides of people's houses - let's face it, they'd be told to do one.

The issue here is that they didn't have to knock doors and be let in. They just scraped everything they could find on the internet and considering all that data "free".

Even when it was provably not free, such as when Meta, absolutely scumbags that they are, scraped terrabytes of LibGen for pirated books, to train their shitty model. And then the ball-less judge ruled against the authors. Nothing about them breaking the law by torrenting LibGen, nah, just a weak excuse about "not dilating the market through their actions". Holy fuck, Zuckerberg makes me feel physically sick.

If you're still using Facebook or Insta after this, you have no soul. I can't judge you for Whatsapp because I know from personal experience how difficult it is to get people moved to alternatives, when they just don't care.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/26/meta-wins-ai-copyright-lawsuit-as-us-judge-rules-against-authors

Remember Kazaa in the early 2000's? Remember that single mother being sued into oblivion because her son shared songs using it??

In Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 30-year-old single mother. On 5 October 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they had focused on in this case.

(Where are those guys? She ended up owing over £2M - which was reduced to around £45K after YEARS of retrials because who the fuck thinks that anyone should be fined £2M for downloading/sharing files in 2003. Insane.)

Anyway. Clearly anything on the internet is free now. So that's nice.

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I really like this! I don't think I ever do anything with the steam labs so thank you for highlighting.

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This looks so cool! Definitely on my wishlist for the Deck. Of course, after I get to Quartet.

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Most text in most games is around the size of text on a phone or a paperback, or bigger. The OLED screen is marginally bigger than the LCD screen.

... and there's a Steam Deck verification category like "text hard to read".

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It's great and it gets much deeper that I initially thought.
In-game documentation at some parts is great, but other parts it's lacking.

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Ubisoft Connect

Awww, maaaan...
I used to own a compilation of the first 3(?) Splinter Cell games – maybe I still do have that DVD somewhere...

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What I would like to see is a way to find games I don't know about from a bit longer ago. I'm sure that there were a bunch of games released in, say, 2014 which I would like and which I don't know about. It would be interesting to have a way to browse games like that.

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What i don't understand is where the lawyers at ?

I believe the problem is that buying a piece of media and feeding it into an algorithm to create a model isn't considered copyright infringement because the result is a piece of software rather than a copy of the original piece of media. Yes, if you ask a picture generating model to generate a picture of an archeologist with a hat who uses a bullwhip it generates an image which is easily infringing on a well-known intellectual property, but then it's still not the model which is infringing. Now, machine generation of media is a tool, so creating an infringing text or tune or image isn't a problem per se. If I put a bunch of cans of paint on a shelf and then knock the shelf down and the paint splatters form an image of a familiar Italian plumber with a red hat I haven't done anything wrong. Distributing the result, however, will likely get me into hot water (if the rights holder decides to bother itself with me).

Typing this comment got me thinking, though, this kinda reminds me of software libraries. Machine generating models are basically turning various forms of media into something like software libraries from which pieces can be reused to make something new (in as far as anything can be new when, of course, all original ideas have long been had and we're just rehashing the same stuff over and over again). Back in the day software didn't have licenses and you could freely reuse things from programs made by others but those days came to an end. Maybe we'll see media start getting licensed to not allow machine generation model creation.

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This is a great idea, and I'd love to see something like that for console games too. A complete "upcoming games" list based around your personal tastes. Only problem would be finding a way to maintain privacy; way too easy to fall into the trap of selling user data.

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Why?

Why Not? It's the human way - consequences be damned!

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Why?

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Oh that's a nice new way to finding games, i like it, i think.

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@vertigo

The changes are great and all but my only concern is VRR.

I have AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE and the integrated AMD Radeon 780M in the laptop and have no problems with VRR here.

@Lofty

I can't imagine how good it would be on 6.5 ! But i don't really know of a stable distro with an upto date version of KDE?

Try openSUSE Leap, KDE Neon or Kubuntu. They get latest KDE Plasma and other software either normaly (KDE Neon) or through backport repositories you can add. openSUSE Slowroll is also an option if you are a bit more adventurous.

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If you like 2000s FPS games you should definitely check it out.

In the first moment I thought: Yes, such graphics should do 2000 frames per second - but why should I like this?!? 😋

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In The Finals they use it for the voice of the match commentators with mixed results... And most of the time you are too focused or talking to your team mates to pay attention to them.

but who's voice signature was it trained from ? would it be possible to ask the studio ? if there is no reply could you use a FOIA request to find out ? what's the law around this , does anybody know ?

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The upcoming Embark Studio game, Arc Riders, uses AI generated content in some capacity. I'm curious to know how they used it In The Finals they use it for the voice of the match commentators with mixed results... And most of the time you are too focused or talking to your team mates to pay attention to them.

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@vertigo which GPU and cable.? I'm on a 7800XT running CachyOS and Bazzite (both on KDE), using a DisplayPort 2.1 connected to an AOC monitor, and have zero issues with VRR.

@Lofty Bazzite and CachyOS are both good options. Expect CachyOS to get 6.5 soon (available already in the Arch testing repo if you want to try it now), Bazzite will be a bit later but still will get it sooner than most other distros. I'd recommend CachyOS only if you're a bit technical and don't mind ocassionally getting your hands dirty (aka using the terminal, maybe to fix something). Bazzite on the other hand is a great option if you want something that "just works™".

Avoid Ubuntu-based distros like the plague, they're always outdated and tend to break when you do upgrades.

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I really don't get why people use wordpress for static webpage content...

It's a huge attack surface to keep secure with all its features.

What's also a bit embarassing is this happening to a server managed by Canonical, as far as I understand. Linux Mint went through a similar issue years ago, but their team is really tiny.

I hope they're as swift and transparent as the Mint team on how it happened, who may have been affected, what they did to prevent new issues, etc

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The only thing that puts me off is the small screen. My eyes aren't getting any younger.

Most text in most games is around the size of text on a phone or a paperback, or bigger. The OLED screen is marginally bigger than the LCD screen.

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But i don't really know of a stable distro with an upto date version of KDE?

Kubuntu has Plasma 6.5.0 in the backports PPA.

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