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Dat timing...

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: williamjcm

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe basic question is whether the 30% cut generates windfall profits. If it does, then lawsuits that successfully reduce that cut will leave Valve in place but reduce costs for the consumer.

It most definitely will not. It's not a "tax" that gets added on top of the game price like Tim Sweeney would want you to think.

Really? What is it then? Monopoly money?

Profit?

Good, old-fashioned profit.

By which you agree that yes, it is a tax.

But anyway. How much profit? There are levels of profit that are not OK. This is one reason that monopolies were traditionally held to be a bad thing--competition on price was supposed to cause companies to keep their prices low, limiting their profits. That's what market efficiency supposedly is. Where it is agreed that there is no such competition, regulated utilities used to be given like 6%; in this age of regulatory capture it's probably a bit higher.

Now. If it costs a platform 10% of sales to offer their service, and they are collecting 30%, that means they are making three times their costs . . . So, 200% profit? I think that might be a wee bit on the windfall side. We don't know just where Valve's expenses fall between the lowest bound anyone usually suggests of 10% and what they actually charge, 30%. But I really don't think it's unreasonable to want to find out, and to hope maybe the courts might have a shot at doing so.

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so, about the new version... what exactly is gonna be new about it, other than being new and incompatible with the old one?

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In my youth as a tabletop gamer I of course consumed vast quantities of ham-and-pineapple pizza. So much that I grew to hate the sight of it, and wholeheartedly joined the anti-pineapple faction. But decades have passed and I have mellowed, come to an accommodation with the sins of my youth, and now I don't mind a bit of pineapple-and-bacon pizza now and then.

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Their script just sets up their Flatpak and their repository for it. You don't have to be given a flatpak file for it to be installed via a Flatpak.

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Interesting interview! M. Gospodnetich sounds like a level-headed person and actually got me interested in their project. Respect for the humility when considering Bazzit as a "distribution" and massive kudos for the answer about anti-cheats, clear and so true.

Pineapple on pizza absolutely rules.

Honey, get the botnet out, GoL is going down! 😡

(that's a joke, please don't ban, I will never seek to harm someone, no matter how heretically wrong their statements are)

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The original Huntdown really nails the 80's era Cannon action movie look and feel, and it's a solid run n' gun. This should be awesome.

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But wen i go to downaod page is offer just GeForceNOWSetup.bin and not flatpak. Idont understand

https://international.download.nvidia.com/GFNLinux/GeForceNOWSetup.bin

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... and the current version being delisted, as usual. A bit of burying the lede there.

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Why can't they have a decent numbering scheme?

There is one Final Fantasy VIII but about 10 Final Fantasy VII for fucks sake!
https://ff7.info/every-ff7.htm

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: drenAgain this is misleading. Once you download your game from GOG, you can completely remove them from the scenario of installation at all. You have the files, you can install it on as many computers as you want and you don't have to login to play the game. You absolutely cannot do that with Steam.

You absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

@Caldathras is absolutely correct. GOG provides standalone executable installers, steam has no such feature. Games being DRM-free on steam isn't normal. Devs can and sometimes do add Steamworks DRM after initial releases, etc. The permanence of the Steam install being DRM-free isn't there. Also the Steam installation doesn't include other necessary dependencies, such as DirectX or C++ redistributables, that are included as part of an actual installer. Steam also doesn't advertise or tell you which games are DRM-free. On GOG EVERY game is DRM-free with all dependencies included as part of the installer (both Windows and Linux). In a lot of cases, these DRM-free directories still need the Steam client to act as a wrapper or handle activation. With GOG, you don't even need to use Galaxy, you can just download the installer from the website and install it where you want. This is why Heroic is able to provide direct access to your GOG library and is able to install everything you need for a game. It just feels like you are trying to make an equivalency argument that isn't actually equivalent.

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The community will love it when their saves don't work with the new version!

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I seriously thought about backing this. I went as far as going through the pledge process on kickstarter. I ended up cancelling though before the end of the day.

It costs just about $400 to have this shipped to the US if you get 8GB of memory, 128GB eMMC, the MX95 and all three of the IO devices added on.This is basically maxed out.

For $450 you can get a maxed out AYN Thor that has two screens, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB NVME SSD. Don't get me wrong, this is not a 1:1 comparison at all. The Thor has pretty limited linux support, but there is some out there. It's definitely going to be better for a handheld gaming device though especially for emulation. It normally runs android though, not linux.

But when you compare it spec for spec, it's really hard to want to drop so much on a device that will probably feel dated the day you get it. 8GB of ram just isn't much anymore. A super tiny screen isn't great. It's going to be a meh blackberry, an ok gameboy emulator, or an oddball tinkering device. I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy it but the price doesn't feel right to me.

A version 2 in a few years once memory prices calm down and another generation of better processors is available might make more sense, and i'll get to see how they do with the kickstarter launch. I've never had a kickstarter ship on time before so I don't expect them to.

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I feel like this should be a broader thing than gaming, especially with some of the... interesting decisions some of these projects have made over the years to "improve" gaming.
This channels into the "Ooh there are too many distros" conversation. We need a much larger push for interoperability of dependencies than just a handful of "gaming" distros pushing tweaks they like upstream.

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Quoting: robvvI'm wary of Netflix these days as Trump has bought around $1m in bonds in Netflix.

Netflix has been beholden to the likes of Obama and the Clintons for decades, but it's only now that you're worried? 😆

At any rate, as long as Blender development stays independent then I'm fine with Netflix throwing their dirty money at it.

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"We've inflated the computer hardware prices to be unattainable... so now no one can buy pc hardware and you'll have to rent a cloud computer... mwahahaaa * mustache twirling intensifies * " -- nvidia probably

At least they've preemptively put time limits on the cheaper accounts too.

Go (back) to hell nvidia.

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Quoting: eggroleYou can install them fine with Heroic. It is as simple as Add Game -> Select Executable (or installer) and go.

I simply haven't been as lucky, or maybe I should give it a try again. To me it feels like Lutris is more reliable when installing games. Or it could be the Proton version I'm using being the culprit... Which one do you use to install games on Heroic ?

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The best time to release a game is when it's done. The second best time is when it's mostly done and just needs some more content (like Assetto Corsa Rally).

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Quoting: Tethys84I'm probably one of the very few people on the planet who not only loves FF8, but that consider it to be their favorite of the series. I actually played this before 7 which I didn't get around to until much later. So much nostalgia with it and I still enjoy it to the present which is rare for things I have nostalgia for.

FFVIII was my first Final Fantasy, I like it a lot, but my favourite is (and, considering the direction Squeenix has taken, will always be) VI.

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: drenAgain this is misleading. Once you download your game from GOG, you can completely remove them from the scenario of installation at all. You have the files, you can install it on as many computers as you want and you don't have to login to play the game. You absolutely cannot do that with Steam.

You absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

Have you read the link you provided? Steamcmd is nothing like a GOG offline installer. You are not downloading the game installer through Steamcmd, you are installing the game! It is just an incredibly convoluted command line version of the Steam client (for which, the client is likely the GUI). Yes, you can run some of the games without the client but that does NOT make it the equivalent of an offline installer. There is one fundamental difference: if you lose Internet access or Valve's servers go down, you cannot install the game!

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I'm quite happy to wait as long as it takes. Concerned Ape has long since earned my trust on this.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: williamjcm

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe basic question is whether the 30% cut generates windfall profits. If it does, then lawsuits that successfully reduce that cut will leave Valve in place but reduce costs for the consumer.

It most definitely will not. It's not a "tax" that gets added on top of the game price like Tim Sweeney would want you to think.

Really? What is it then? Monopoly money?

Profit?

Good, old-fashioned profit. Be it gross or net, it is the lifeblood that a business needs to survive. It is the incentive that motivates the business owner to open the business and continue offering the products and services year after year. This is not a government department, after all. If all the business does is break even, where is the incentive for the business owner to continue investing his time and resources over the years?

Note: I am not talking about corporations. Although they are similar, they are not the same "animal".

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I will be pleased to see this when it comes out because chocolate.

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I remember when 1/4 Life was but a simple source modder. It's incredible to see how he's grown successful over the years.
When I first started playing with Bazzite, I didn't even realize he was the creator.

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Quoting: pbIf valve's cut inflates the prices, then how come games that are not on steam (ubi/origin/nintendo exclusives) cost the same? $60/70 at launch? They're selling on their own stores, so shouldn't they be 30% cheaper or something? Or how about epic exclusives? Dead Island 2 was $59.99 at launch (one-year epic store exclusive), and a year later it launched on steam at the same price. Shouldn't they take advantage of epic's lower cut and give the consumers a better price in the first year, before the alleged steam price parity was enforced? No? Anyone?

Certainly pricing on things like software is tricky, because you have to charge for it like you would for a normal commodity where there is a unit price to produce, when for software, including games, there effectively isn't, copies cost zero. The cost of producing the game is basically a single lump, and you are trying to make enough money on (unit price * number of sales) to pay for that single lump and ideally a bit more. Epic store is not going to get you much number of sales, so I expect there's a need to get as much as you can per unit. On the other hand, I understand Epic store exclusives involve a payment up front from Epic. And then on the third hand, there is generally going to be some relationship between price and how many people will fork over that much money. On this, Steam's system with sales and discounting works pretty well to catch buyers willing to pay at different price points. But, so, pricing is tricky, sure--there isn't going to be an immediate one-to-one correspondence between the cut and the price.

But still, that 30% is coming off the top and it is real money; it increases the number of sales or the price level needed for a developer to break even on a game, and there's no way around that. If, say, the store's expenses are only 10%, both developers and consumers are ending up with less money in the end than they could have. I don't know how much of Valve's take is pure profit, because they play those cards very close to their vest. But it would be worth finding out.

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Interesting, as ShabbyX said, there will be a day when my kids will want to play Minecraft. This might do as a subsitute with the proper minecraft-inspired mods.

No pesky Microslop involved grabbing cash and sniffing telemetry even if I host the games myself.

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OK, sure. Here we go again with this GOG preservation rodeo. I really like the concept behind GOG, but they should do better.

Does the more widely (and going forward it's likely that: exclusively) available FF8R qualify as preserving Final Fantasy 8? I'd really like to see the rationale here.

I'd argue the regular PC FF8 qualifies for preservation before FF8R. The latter is a standard boneheaded Square "remaster" where new, ill-fitting in terms of art style and fidelity models clash with the blurry mess that are the new pre-rendered backgrounds in a perfect botched mess of an upscale job. There's a list of issues, but the main thing is that FF8R does not (sufficiently) accurately replicate the intended original experience. That also goes for FF8PC if we're comparing to PSX, but I'm assuming we're preserving the PC version with its original warts, instead of... adding more warts where there have been few before, but with built-in cheats, so who gives a toss, slap a sale on it.

Realistically, I'm amazed the original is still sold on Steam. Kind of looks like Square... forgot it exists? Or that someone at Square is aware they dropped the ball.

In any event, this is closer to re-writing history than it is to preservation. Par for the course, sadly.

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The key to pineapple pizza is you need to combo it with savory and/or spicy.

So instead if Ham which makes the whole pizza sweet, do pepperoni or nduja. That will balamce the pineapple sweet but let the flavor work.

Also corn ans a Rosetta sauce (usually some kind of marinara/white sauce mix) can really elevate. Same with jalapeños, especially if you want to keep it vegetarian.

The interview was great too.

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Pineapple exists to be put on pizzas. The high acidity works so well with cheese.

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And the only anticheated game I really want to play is missing from the catalog... 😡

Yes, still fuming that Rockstar changed the A/C and GTA Online is not playable anymore in Linux.

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