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I have every expectation that Genie will turn out to be a giant nothingburger in the end, which will not be adopted in any significant way by game companies save to use as a threat against workers wanting decent wages. Then in a couple of years Google will quietly make it go away and never mention it again.

In terms of functionality I don't expect it to be able to create more than short, inconsistent clips (much like the "top of the line" video generators out there), and it will not fit into *any* existing workflows, requiring great disruption even if it did work.

Executives probably love the idea though.

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That 'ultra AI subscription' is about $250 a month. I guess they have to pay for their graphics chips. Maybe a subscriber could use it to code games that work on integrated graphics?

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🤬

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What I don't understand... if they are so hard into pushing AI at any cost, why aren't they just telling their AI to use one of the pre-existing engines like Godot or Unity or Unreal or whatever... and let the AI design levels and missions or whatever.

This crap that they are doing here is just mental. You're just playing a video stream, not a static product. Nothing "exists" here. It's just so dumb.

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Quoting: scorp10n2000Why would anyone want to buy games on Un-Epic (shit)Store? 🤔

I only buy games on Steam and GOG.

UnEpic however is a great Metroidvania parody (although the humour is very teenager-stoner like 😅)

I also buy only on Steam and GOG.

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Quoting: williamjcmThe reason the third-party sale numbers increased by that much is because they now include VAT, while previous years didn't include it to my knowledge.

That makes no sense, where in the world do we have 57% VAT?

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A 57% increase from a low number still results in a low number. I'm all for competition but I have zero interest in EGS and all the drama around it. I'm not creating an account there no matter how many games they give away.

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The reason the third-party sale numbers increased by that much is because they now include VAT, while previous years didn't include it to my knowledge.

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Avid Civ player here and I like that they tried something a little different adding some extra spice to the game. I will also adjust to the next change and I welcome it that they still tune the experience and boy I could not be happier: The Linux native build using Vulkan is rock stable for me. This is simply not a given.

Also: This happened with every iteration of the game. A very vocal "fan" group shunning it claiming the last version was peak.

Every.
Single.
Time.

😩

Remember this when Civ VIII eventually happens - that is if the review bombing doesn't break their necks. This is a perfectly fine Civ! It makes me click just one more turn, like all Civs before - just a little different, more beautiful and even with plenty of QoL improvements (heck that UI scaler is awesome)!

Is it expensive? Yes! It's catering to an absolute NICHE in a heavily saturated market and they keep improving it. IMHO review bombing because of the _costs_ should not be allowed at all.

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Why would anyone want to buy games on Un-Epic (shit)Store? 🤔

I only buy games on Steam and GOG.

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This delivered a measurable halo effect across the broader PC ecosystem, including a 40% lift in Steam CCU while the title was free on the Epic Games Store.

Been there, done that. Tried a freebie game on EGS and liked it, but I wanted the DLC too. Went ahead and bought the whole kit - but on Steam of course!

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So far the only good thing in Epic is that they got regional pricing right for me (or at least in Poland).

I still don't trust that clown Sweeney.

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I'm still worried about the price. Even the most pessimistic scenario of $1,000 is becoming less and less realistic option.

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Film preservation has Robert A. Harris, and us lucky folks have lordquacksmith.

Thank you, lordquacksmith.

No, really, this is great.

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waterfox is new firefox now

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I would say the start of May would no longer count as "early".

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Quoting: ArehandoroIf we're too late to say "Happy New year" to friends we see for the first time in 2026, we are too late to say "Early 2026" for this as well. Or maybe May counts as early as it's in the first half of the year? Do they mean early financial year?

P.S: I'd like the devices out now, please.

Chinese New Year? That way even March is passable.

Or, it might just be a shareholder nod. "AMD has fulfilled its commitments blah blah."

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Quoting: ArehandoroIf we're too late to say "Happy New year" to friends we see for the first time in 2026, we are too late to say "Early 2026" for this as well. Or maybe May counts as early as it's in the first half of the year? Do they mean early financial year?

P.S: I'd like the devices out now, please.

In the frame of a full year, February is early in my book. Maybe May. But that's it.

P.S: I'd like the devices out now, please.

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You guys know about Valve Time, right? 😆
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

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Quoting: LoftyWhen you say you use ReShade is this on Linux ? Why is is needed for this, i get that OpenTrack is needed for head movements. What is handling the 3D'ification of the XR glasses for games.

Sorry for the late reply. Must have missed the notification mail. There are various shaders for ReShade that split and shift the image for stereoscopic 3d. This requires access to z-depth buffer maps (and sometimes it picks up the wrong but this can be fine tuned per game).



In theory this could also be done with Vulkan but vkBasalt (which seems to be rather dead?) does not expose the depth maps at all so it's either native SBS or SBS with e.g. the Depth3D shader. ReShade requires DirectX so this works AFAIK(!) only for Windows games and this also works fine via Proton where the render pipeline with Wine/Proton looks like this: DirectX => ReShade => Vulkan.

The steps to get this running are exactly the same as on Windows. Install ReShade, fire the game up with the DLL overrides and configure the paths to the shader folder. There is a nifty script on Github that eases the process but it is really not required.

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The Pocketstation was available only in Japan, but I think they just cancelled other regions too late for FF8 to cut support out.

Regarding the prices what you're describing just isn't the current market, no matter what those exceptional individuals trying to peddle very common games for stupid prices might tell you. If you're impatient it's 40-ish or maybe 50-ish for NTSC right now, for a mint copy, half that or lower for PAL, dirt cheap for non-English at that - ebay/auction site prices. There's a Canadian listing for ~10USD buy now, no takers.

These are out of print goods, but not difficult or that costly to get. It's just that usual rules for buying old games apply, some patience is required, and people will try to sell you stuff for exorbitant amounts so don't just grab the first thing you see. Also: better prices outside of ebay. Same goes for the Pocketstation, just grabbed one recently for ~$30 and left those $250 listings alone for the youtubers.

All that said, the argument wasn't price or retail availability, it was which version to choose. If you can't afford, say, $40, a PSX and some hunting for a fancy Japanese memory card - that is why I say play emulated. Don't even launch that Square port, either one, it's not a good way to experience the game. Buy it if you want to be legit, for the lowest price you can manage. For the "effort" Square put into these paying any price means getting ripped off.

I'm playing FF8 off the discs on the PSX right now and can't complain about the load times, they're fine. If your sole criterium is no load times, but a terrible upscale job is perfectly acceptable then... you do you.

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If we're too late to say "Happy New year" to friends we see for the first time in 2026, we are too late to say "Early 2026" for this as well. Or maybe May counts as early as it's in the first half of the year? Do they mean early financial year?

P.S: I'd like the devices out now, please.

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Quoting: tmtvlI don't care about the Steam Machine, but hopefully an early 2026 release also means an early 2026 release for the Steam Controller 2.

This VR thing whose name was so generic that I seem to have forgotten it even though I'd pay a thousand bucks for it...!

"Frame". It's Frame, right?

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I don't care about the Steam Machine, but hopefully an early 2026 release also means an early 2026 release for the Steam Controller 2.

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Quoting: fabertaweAnyone notice any benefits with the optimisation and/or engine update?

I just did a quick test with the new update, chose the new "performance" setting and gave it a try (i play on mouse&keyboard normally). I visited a big multiplayer base, and it was absolutely smooth. It did not stay on 60fps, but quite consistently around 50ish. It feel responsive and lag-free for me, despite all the nice buildings my former teammates came up with. So yeah, seems good to me!

Quoting: GustyGhostNot sure what they're waiting for to finally drop "early access".

i absolutely agree, its so much fun to have. They want to "complete" the story, which they intend to do with the final biome, the deep north. So the lore, which i really like so far, will have a real ending. They are slow, but i'll take that over any rushed content any day.

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Quoting: doragasuTranslations and OCR are not the things that have caused the hatred.

(I'll ignore your second sentence, if you're able to discuss without personal attacks that is?)

Caused it: no, but they do get included in the hatred.
Because Mozilla's marketing grouped those features together under the “AI” buzzword, and because some people freak out at “AI” → large image/text generation models → sloppy work, license infringement, high resource usage and whatnot (and I agree with most of these claims).

The comment I was originally quoting called for all those features to be disabled by default, so does the latest comment as I'm typing this:

Quoting: EhvisI would like to think the majority of users would want it all turned off.

And I sincerely disagree: I'm pretty happy when my browser politely asks me if I want websites written in German to be translated into French for me.

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Quoting: hardpenguinHow about you disable them by default, Mozilla, and have people unleash AI at their own peril -_-

This is dumb. So dumb.

AI is selling like hotcakes, so Mozilla have decided that they need to provide these cool new trendy AI features out of the box in order to try and attract more users (who of course wouldn't know how to manually turn them on if they were turned off by default). But they do recognize that there are people like you who don't like anything AI, so contrary to everyone else in the competition they're actually giving you a switch that you can use to completely disable everything.

And yet you still complain, and instead want Mozilla to shoot themselves in the foot by disabling all their cool new trendy features and thus lose potential new users who will instead run even faster off to Chrome, which will mean even less revenue for Mozilla in the long term and will force them to sell out even more of their core values in order to attract funding and stay in the green, all for the sake of your personal crusade.

This is dumb. So dumb.

Quoting: grigiI would love to turn off "AI" features by default and then only turn the ones I need on manually. Instead it's either "all OFF", or "ON by default".

It's not like that though. It's either "all OFF", or "ON by default", or "some OFF and some ON, pick and choose exactly what you want to use". As far as I can tell by the pictures, you'll be able to do exactly what you want to do.

Quoting: syylk...Until you are the one shopping for a pair of DIMMs.

That's a side-effect of out-of-control capitalism though, not of AI itself. Yesterday it was bitcoin mining and GPUs, today it's "AI" and RAM, tomorrow it will be something else. It's an unfortunate that we live in a society of gullible fools, but what can you do.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ArehandoroI'd consider Blade Runner a traditional point&click :)

Hard to say, Lucas Arts SCUMM engine itself was initially about 2D adventure games, but in practice it was something more like a programming basis, same way ScummVM may be more than just about adventure games.

But overall I'd say majority of ScummVM games are still adventure games.

Exactly. My question to @Geamandura was semi-rethorical, it probably wasn't clear enough, to make a point that OpenMW or Heroes would not fit the ScummVM ideology.

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: sanBring back memories of another Road Rash remake a while ago called Road Redemption.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/300380/Road_Redemption/

Wow. That's a very modernized update to Road Rash's look. Stunning visuals. It includes a Native Linux version too.

I was about to mention Road Redemption as well, but san beat me to it :p

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Quoting: JarmerYou gotta give #3 a go! It's SOOOO GOOD. I didn't like the overworld traversal all that much, but EVERYTHING else is so well done. The humor is great, and it's got such a good power creep. Mid-game when your builds finally start shining it's just crazy fun to unleash all hell in random encounters.

Oh I fully intend to! It's on my wishlist, just waiting to whittle down my unplayed games a bit more before I pull the trigger on buying anything else.

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