Latest 30 Comments

It's funny that almost every article on this has focused on it including Linux but it's clearly aimed at Windows and MacOS. The bill doesn't actually define what an "operating system" actually means. It specifies that this applies to "account holders" but what does that actually mean? It's fairly obvious what it means in desktop environments, but TTYs? Is root an account holder? How old is root, the number of days since you installed your distro?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Jarmer[…] I may or may not have to look up if there's a way to hack or mod these into new chars without ever getting them to begin with!

Why the hassle? Didn’t you say you played through the game 4 or 5 times already?
If you have the Forgotten Gods expansion it is a matter of buying the merit from the NPC in the Conclave of the Three and throwing it into your stash. No internet required.
SSF means you delete your savefile (or move it to a different directory) every time before you create a new character, it has nothing to do with multiplayer.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Jarmerjust curious: what was the scam?

It was me being silly on a secondhand platform (kleinanzeigen in germany), transferring funds via paypal family&friends. I've had just good experience with these in the past, buying lots of things with this method. Well, one should not do that anymore...

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

As someone who lives in the US, this is one of those issues that would be bipartisan. Make no mistake, I expect legislation like this to pop up in "red states" like Texas, Florida or Tennessee; if they haven't already.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: JarmerI'm not a huge controller user (only on deck) so I'm wondering: isn't this just recreating the steam community layouts feature? Why not just utilize that?

Author of SteamInputDB here

Well, the community features of Steam are not really that great - And have been not that great for ~10 years...
The filter and sorting options especially.

Additionally, it's not really that obvious to some people when it comes to sharing specific configs on third party platforms like Reddit / Discord, etc.

The website is at the current stage what I would consider the absolute bare minimum viable product.
Just imagine what it could be in a few months from now with proper and more direct SteamClient integration and community features Steam lacks

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: pb

Quoting: doragasuAnd what about my smart light bulb? Will it have to verify my age to turn on?

Your light bulb will stream the picture to the central server where AI will evaluate your age. If you're <18, The light will automatically turn off at 22:00 so you get a proper rest before school.

Also, it will have the wrong time zone, and thus turn off the lights between 15:00 and 03:00

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

#ExcludeCalifornia in the EULAs

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Since the Chinese are probably using pirated versions of Windows, what's stopping them from using something Kylin? I'm guessing it is that darn anti-cheat not working on Linux. Or the Chinese don't care.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I am above 18, so I will tell: I have 120 years - no matter how old I am. Does telling your age should not be prohibited? Why Google, MS and other should known, how old you are?

Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

I always told: add special tag to http, so it will inform material is for adult. Parents will install special browser on children PC, which will cut every material marked with that tag. No nonsense law!

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Are there any changes for English only clients? This has been used in the past to avoid bias from Chinese Steam clients.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Is it just me or does anytime you hear "age bracket" you think about advertising (and/or taxes)? I really want this bill to go away. It sets a bad precedent, or maybe a gateway for worse. Perhaps it's intended to be a "good enough" solution to a pretend problem so that we don't get an even worse solution, but I agree that it's a slippery slope.

If I had to compromise, I might annoyingly settle for a checkbox for being under/over the age of majority. Any more than that binary option is giving away data that doesn't need to be given away. Does age bracket info fall under any US data privacy laws, like HIPAA? Will every single website that requests your age bracket be required to follow HIPAA data security requirements?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

^ LOL I always do the earliest date possibly in the picker. So I was often born on January 1st, 1901. I've seen some stuff man.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I think that we will discover there are a lot of users born on 1/1/2008 out there. 🤔😁

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I'd love to see actual counts in addition to the percentages, since a drop in percentage doesn't necessarily mean an actual drop in users. But I don't see such detailed info on Steam's survey results page, so I don't expect that's possible to report on here.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: EWG

Quoting: Chrisznix

Quoting: EWGI don't understand games like this. Instead of virtually pretending to do things. I could actually pick up an instrument, book shows, and all the rest. lol

That´s cool, you probably should then. :)
For me, i never stepped above hobby levels and went down the Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) path of instruments and synthesizers. I know some folks that went that route, and quite well actually, but man is that a tough life. So... i'd rather play Legends of Rock. :)

The [Mod: Dwarf](https://mod.audio/dwarf) solves GAS. It's fully libre and does everything from effects, utilites, amp+cab sim, to loops, metronome, and other stuff. Forget the AxeFX or huge pedalboards that cost in the thousands. lol

That sounds like more gear though (just kidding). It also only solves part of the problem, what's stopping the urge to buy multiple guitars? I have a Stratocaster and a Spanish guitar, but I should also get an electric guitar with humbucker pickups and an acoustic guitar with steel strings.

I'm a 30 something with young kids who has just picked up the guitar again after dropping it when I went to university. And while I really enjoy (re-)learning this skill, I don't have the time or desire to do all the things you do in this game. They're very different things, this game isn't even about playing music and more about the life of a musician.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

This has nothing to do with parents properly parenting their kids or not. This is all about control and consolidation of power. Taking the power away from the individual and putting that power into the hands of the gov to tell you what you can and can't do. This is just one tiny aspect of the overall goal. The gov doesn't give two shits about parenting.

so instead of you going about your day doing whatever you want with your computers and websites, now you have to check in with the gov and ask them if it's okay if you go about your day doing whatever you were doing. Then they can tell you yes or no. They have the power now, and you have lost your freedom. Yay Murica.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

The last diagram in your steam tracker page "Linux market share on Steam, another way to look at it" is also interesting.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

It's sadly not about protecting children.

It is simply a lazy and easy excuse because any criticism of the law will open you up to be marked as "dangerous to children" and thus socially destroy you. It has been used for all kinds of things going back hundreds of years. It is unfortunately quite effective on the species as a whole.

These laws also hurt small businesses and marginalized groups harder than large businesses and privileged groups, so it is unfortunately very apropos in the current political climate.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I liked Windrose.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

proper comment is something about fornication and the equine transport
🤬

The lunatics are running the asylum.

(and yes, 1984 was not a "how to")

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I am above 18, so I will tell: I have 120 years - no matter how old I am. Does telling your age should not be prohibited? Why Google, MS and other should known, how old you are?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Jarmeroh didn't know that! I always play every single arpg ssf because I dislike multiplayer, but ..... now that you've enlightened me to these "merits" I may or may not have to look up if there's a way to hack or mod these into new chars without ever getting them to begin with!

You don't even need multiplayer - SSF means "never trades items from your other single player characters" and that's presumably not you - you just need a character that's already reached that difficulty. Go buy a Merit with your Elite or Ultimate character, stick it in the shared stash, et voila. You do need the Forgotten Gods expansion for them.

That said (and I have over 1,000 hours in) I've never really found the GD story to be that much of a slog to work through in all honesty. You can complete the base game in a few hours when you know where you're going and have some decent equipment shared.

Of course there's also nothing wrong with just not playing Ultimate if you don't want to. The game has plenty of content without it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

It's funny reading the comments to this because I wonder how many actually read through the article.

This is the compromise we could hope for; if they're going to keep demanding an age verification, having that verification instead ONLY on the host device instead of it being face or ID scanning, and that host device simply sending a signal to any requesting site, etc, that "this user is in this age bracket", that's about as secure as you could hope for while still meeting a requirement for an age check, especially if it remains as just a "enter your birthdate" text box at the setup of an OS. It keeps the onus of verification off the website providers, which means user account creation isn't required to verify age because it can just ask for the proper flag from your OS or app provider, and is better for privacy overall than what others are proposing.

The BEST for privacy, of course, would be to never have to ask for that information in any way, shape, or form, but it appears that bridge has already been burnt, so we're now just hunting for the best and most secure and privacy-enabling compromise without just streaming your damn face to every web page 24/7 while you're using it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I hope they do not search for reason to made GNU illegal.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Eocene84Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

Too late. There are reports that they are doing the same thing.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: JarmerIf all they're doing by this idiotic law is making a new checkbox that says "are you over 18?" then 🤣

Even that would be a risk. It would signal to law makers that the idea works and that they just need to change the requirements for how age is checked.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Networking. Netplay is experimentally supported on all games that can do it, both DirectPlay and Windows Sockets.

Oh my god!!! It is possible to play again "Star Wars Episode I: Racer" in multiplayer mode??? Like in the good old days?
I will vérify this asap.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Monster Hunter Wilds and Everspace 2 have been my poison this month, with a healthy majority of it streamed from GeForce Now while I was playing docked to my TV.

THAT SAID, both are actually playable on the Deck natively, they both just suffer from the same thing: specific environments will drop the frames down to the mid 20s (Planets for Everspace 2, Windward Plains for MHWilds), and the amount of upscaling required can sometimes render the game difficult to read; less of an issue with Wilds just because the monsters are as big as they are.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

on deck: nothing really. Just no time right now.

On desktop: I gave up on Ghostwire Tokyo about 2/3 or 3/4 through. AWESOME GAME! Absolutely loved it, but my god that end game just got REPETITIVE. Wow. I pretty much maxed out the combat and exploration skills, so there was nothing left to unlock there, and they had the same ol collectathon missions over and over again, just getting more tedious with their mechanics which makes them LESS fun. Overall I'd give it a solid 7.5/10 and I absolutely loved all the cool x-files side missions.

So now I moved on to Sector Unknown. A small indie crpg from a solo dev. I've had this one on my radar for a long time, and it just recently released out of EA! so far so good! I'm just at the beginning building my base up, but seems cool! I'm a sucker for a scifi crpg since there's so few of them.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment