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That's exactly what I said. And if GOG are having cashflow problems that's entirely the choice of their parent company, which, I'll say again, is the largest video game company in Europe.

Ubisoft has at least 10 time the employees CD Projekt has.

And just because share holders value them highly doesn't mean they can wish money out of thin air. It produces opportunities & they invest it into their games (6 at various stages, at least 3 are more actively pursued). It has shown that this is also the best opportunity for GOG.

They don't need your charity.

You're right. Instead, they could produce scummy free to play title & prey on kiddies to sell them nothing (stuff that used to be available free in old games). That's obviously a more honest income.

GOG actually wanted to provide a subscription service with the preservation program. But it seems that was rejected by their customers.

So, let's go back to wishing. I'm sure then everything will be well.

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GE-Proton10-23 Released

HOTFIX:

import upstream fix for Killer Instinct crashing after match end
added fix for Heroes of Newerth Reborn not running after Juvio client closes
added protonfix for Ghosts n' Goblins Resurrection skill videos not playing
rebased patches to work with -Werror build option to match upstream proton's build options.

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Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh ....

nfts are 100% dead.

crypto is super weird. Despite its "worth" which is hilarious to even type, it never really went anywhere or did anything. You still can't use it do DO anything, and it's functionally and socially a complete failure. After all, the "blockchain" is still just the same exact thing as any database ever thunk up. So people invest in the thought of it. Weird.

So now AI. yay.

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NFTs died. Crypto's still griftin' away pretty hard. Especially in the US--buying up politicians and deregulations like anything.

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I played the first one, but wasn't very good at fighting back against the gates, so I'd end up overrun eventually.

Tried the demo for Eighties and it was pretty amusing, although I lost there too.

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If you haven’t played any of the Kindom series yet I challenge you to play Kindom: Two Crowns for 30 minutes without getting addicted. Definitely pulls you in more than it should. :)

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@eggrole

I think the anti-AI crowd is in for a rude awakening. While I often hear people saying they don't want AI, at the end of the day if the game (or whatever) is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

How many people don't have a phone because of some exploitation used to mine or manufacture it? Almost none. And this is rationally WAY worse than some AI slop. People like to virtue signal they care, but if the product is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

AI will be the same. If (and I think this is a when even though I am no fanboy) AI gets "good enough" people will slowly stop complaining and buy the fruit. Will there be the odd holdout? Sure. But, and I can't hammer this enough, if the product is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

I hate how AI is being shoehorned into everything these days as much as anyone, but I'm also sure there is a way to make products people actually want with AI.

You might be right. But at the same time, you might rest your case solely on 'conscious consumerism' push back - which I would agree, is less likely to have much of an impact on the market. Yet if you consider social push back as a whole, you would find more cases of markets adapting to public perception - and thus would change the probabilities of your predictions of fruitfulness of being a part of the 'anti-AI crowd'.

I'm not sure how in touch I am with the markets (and I really lack examples here too), but I'd guess NFT and crypto still aren't popular and the 'anti-NFT' and 'anti-crypto crowd' won out? What about the anti-Internet-Explorer crowd dethroning it? If the product is bad enough, people will drop it?

All this said, I think there's no putting this genie back in the bottle (as with most technologies). Fingers crossed for getting the good ending.

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@doragasu

Nice! Unfortunately I seldom use the store from the browser, most of the time I use the desktop or phone apps.

For myself - I tried the Augmented Steam browser extension and after going through the options page for it, I can no longer go back. I will jump through any hoops necessary to browse Steam from a browser because the QoL is sooo sweet. Also I get the Tux Linux icon back!

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@Kimyrielle

I am starting to develop a serious contempt for devs not releasing the server files when they shut down a game. There is really zero reason not to. You're commercially done with that game, so no harm done.

I think one legitimate barrier is that once you did the absolute bare minimum to launch the product, it would be extra work (and thus extra cost) to adapt it to user-run servers. You would need some extra boilerplate for previously hard-coded things, new UX/UI for connecting directly to IP-s, localization, testing etc. Even then - there is risk of worse PR (loss of market value / future sales) if things are done in a botched way than if nothing is even attempted (the industry standard). So from the perspective of the upper management with dollar signs for eyes (who actually call the shots 😢) - they really do see all risk, no gain.

The token conscious consumerism action would be to demand publishers/devs demonstrate a working off-boarding/end-of-life scheme at launch and/or a legally binding promise to do so when shutting down the first-party servers. (Haha, one must dream of steps towards utopia 😂). There may then even be some much-touted capitalist innovation in making such end-of-life setups more convenient and featureful.

Personally, I've come around to giving up my faith in 'conscious living' / 'individual action' and believe only social/collective action can get anything done (as scary as that sounds as a person interested in Linux AND gaming 💀). Conscious consumerism is just another trap to keep us complacent, quiet and complicit 😔. Expecting me to always use a bicycle, avoid hot showers or sort my trash is more of the same bullshit - at least as long as some of us are legally still permitted to take a plane daily for luxury reasons or pollute more for profit margins. Collective action sounds more scary until you realize that the entry level options are:

• voting


• following people (social media or in-person) who align with your views for potential points of action


• kindly talking with (and listening to) people whom you know about the politics that matter to you


• showing up to a protest you think you probably align with

Plentiful extra points for finding tolerable voices (and heads to converse with) that are outside your own bubble (conflicting perspectives) 🤩.

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That's all of CD Projekt, not GOG.

That's exactly what I said. And if GOG are having cashflow problems that's entirely the choice of their parent company, which, I'll say again, is the largest video game company in Europe. They don't need your charity.

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I got the feeling that fits quite well the fact that they're dying some day...?

I guess "life support games" would be more accurate then

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I got the feeling that fits quite well the fact that they're dying some day...?

@Eike LOL yes you could look at it that way.

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I love the aesthetic of it

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From Wikipedia's page on live service games:

"This often leads to games that work under a live service model to be called "living games" or "live games" since they continually change with these updates."

Living games. Riiiight. Contradiction in terms maybe?

I got the feeling that fits quite well the fact that they're dying some day...?

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I can only imagine it's the publishers scumbag lawyers that prevent them from ever open sourcing the server software and releasing it free to run.

but whatever, I too, like @Kimyrielle am developing contempt for the devs as well. It's just such shitty behavior.

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I don't know what is worse, AI or popups... why not put it neatly in the infobox, like the protondb extension? It could just say AI / no AI and pop more info on click.

I think this extension (formerly userscript) is for people that wants the details of the section to be immediately visible, beyond a "yes/no" flag.

AI tools, AI generation, etc. is a lot of things, and as unpopular as it might sound, I can perfectly see some pretty acceptable usages. Not in generating assets for production, but the whole gradient of helpers that might or might not be based on LLM or similar technologies and might or might not have to fall in line with the AI disclaimer on the store page makes it very complex to produce a simple "AI: yes/no" block.

This also varies with how people declare things; some go very far in talking about the use of AI gen tools at various preliminary stage of the process, so much that not much of it is left. Other "forget" to declare that their whole game is AI slop wrapped in a cardboard box.

In respect to that, shortening that section to a smaller box with a "details" button sounds like a recipe for people going all pitchfork in situations that won't warrant it, and vice versa, an extension actively displaying "no AI" on the interface just because of the lack of details would not always be very truthful.

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I would definitely use something like this if I didn't exclusively use the Steam application itself to browse the store. Unrelated note - anyone else remember when Steam had skin support? I miss that :(

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This reminds me of how you can show people forged art, like the Mona Lisa, and 99.9999% of people can't tell it isn't original, but when they find out it is "fake" they no longer like it.

It would be interesting to do a study where you have people that are anti-AI play games with various degrees of AI (or none) and have them try to guess what was AI.

If AI is good enough that you can't tell and need a disclosure, who cares? I suppose for some there is a "moral" component, but as I've said before the vast majority simply wants a good product - morality never even enters the chat.

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"By September 2017, it was the largest publicly traded video game company in Poland, worth about US$2.3 billion, and by May 2020, had reached a valuation of US$8.1 billion, making it the largest video game company in Europe."

That's all of CD Projekt, not GOG.

Take a look at GOG's results which is much more "humble": [https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/regulatory-announcements/consolidated-annual-report-for-fy-2024/](https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/regulatory-announcements/consolidated-annual-report-for-fy-2024/)

Net profit 2024: 1,134,000 PLN (268.085,11 €)

It alternates between profit & loss with huge profit spikes when a CD Projekt game is released (2023 was much higher due to the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty).

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From Wikipedia's page on live service games:

"This often leads to games that work under a live service model to be called "living games" or "live games" since they continually change with these updates."

Living games. Riiiight. Contradiction in terms maybe?

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Oh no, Unreal Engine 5!

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Very cool. I missed TimeSplitters when it came out somehow, it was just something other folks talked about. Looking forward to giving this a shot (and hearing about how accurate a remake it is).

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Meanwhile I'm playing Bloodlines 2 - it's quite different from original Bloodlines, but it's not bad.

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I was just wondering what happened to this game and now I now. I wanted to play it when it came out, but it wouldn't work with Proton back then, so I never got to try it.

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Interestingly, this is one of the Denuvo titles that was actually cracked a couple of years ago.

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I am starting to develop a serious contempt for devs not releasing the server files when they shut down a game. There is really zero reason not to. You're commercially done with that game, so no harm done.

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Good to see! Not sure I love this series enough to buy after Denuvo is in the bin, but at least buying it is an option now.

I'm always a bit torn on buying after removal. At the end of the day, Denuvo has already flicked their finger at paying customers, and had their slice of the pie, a slice that won't have been applied to the developers, artists, music, or quality assurance. So it's got to be something I love before I'll pull the trigger.

Looking at the Denuvo-encumbered titles out now, I'd say that list is probably quite small: Hifi Rush, and Deathloop are the only two certainties. I also have a weird craving to play Strange Brigade, even though it's over seven years old now. And I'd probably have tried the Persona series by now too.

So yeah, Denuvo can still get in the sea. But if it can piss off outta those games there, I might consider purchasing them!

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Nice! Unfortunately I seldom use the store from the browser, most of the time I use the desktop or phone apps.

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I would have still preferred to see it implemented in Augmented Steam, but this is good!

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The game that taught me how to play FPS with a controller! I played about 3 hours of this, maybe, and it was enough to convince me that FPS games simply MUST be played Kbd/mouse... if you're me.

Of course, I've since played many, many Playstation FPS titles with a controller, but when Valve released Steam for Linux in 2013, I knew my time of torment was near an end!

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