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GOG might be in trouble in the future if people keep balking at donating to help out. I'm not optimistic about preservation anymore. I think the corporations will win, sadly. Just like with everything else now, the consumer is losing. People in general will almost always take and rarely contribute when given the option, even when the economy has been good in the past; it's just that now people can point to how bad things are as their reason.

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Personally, between Fluxer, Stoat, Movim and Sharkord, I pick Movim... Is the least similar to Discord, but that's a plus for me. I don't like Discord's workflow, I find it confusing and cumbersome. I used Discord a couple times a year and everytime was confusing and unintuitive...

I find Movim more like a chat + blog + social netwotk app were I can do several things in one place if I want to or just stick with what I want and the other functions won't get in the way. Plus, since it uses the XMPP protocol, other people can communicate with Movim users using Conversations, Gajim or other XMPP apps if they prefer.

Movim still needs to add some functions to really replace Discord, but I'd rather wait for them than jump on another hyped platform (Fluxer, Sharkord, Kloak or even Stoat) with very little time under the sun, unproven protocols, no E2EE, unclear licence/monetization, etc.

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[The Death of He-Man. lol](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93KdbUtKFck)

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Literally the other day I was thinking "god I wish there was a game like Teardown but multiplayer" so to whoever was reading my thoughts: thank you!

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It's been already 10 years? omg... well, for once it's a well deserved success. Anyone who played Grim Dawn in the last years know how giant it is, how easy it's to be immersed, and how it's the perfect evolution from single player Diablo 3 -specially if you like play on Linux. I should reinstall it again to check the new updates while escaping from the current harsh world...

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These are great news, but I wonder why the sudden change

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Quoting: halcyon

Quoting: tmtvlI presume that those AI chatbots all run locally on my PC without needing any connection to a company I don't trust? Would be quite unfortunate if I had some spyware running while I was, as a completely random example, doing some online banking.

only the translation, the rest is OpenAI and co, why should they even care. they dont even listen.

There's more that's listed under On-device AI, which sounds plausible to me...

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Quoting: JarmerI think I've played through GD ... 4 times? 5 times maybe? I think it's got to be one of my most-played games of all time at nearly 500 hrs. ITS SO GOOD.

I agree.

Quoting: Jarmer[…] to get to the highest difficulty you have to do the most boring thing ever of all time: slog through the game mindlessly once all the way to the end […].

That’s true if you play SSF (solo self-funded) characters. Otherwise, you can do it once only and then put 'merits' - which unlock the highest difficulty - in the stash for other characters to use. 🙂

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Quoting: JarmerI think I've played through GD ... 4 times? 5 times maybe? I think it's got to be one of my most-played games of all time at nearly 500 hrs. ITS SO GOOD.

About the only complaint I have on it, is that getting the best gear to really make your builds shine requires being on the highest difficulty for the drops. BUT to get to the highest difficulty you have to do the most boring thing ever of all time: slog through the game mindlessly once all the way to the end (because you don't give a shit about items or upgrades) and then after spending countless hours you will unlock the highest difficulties and you can actually start playing. Due to this I've never actually played the highest difficulty, because: aint nobody got time for that shit.

It's still mechanically, build wise, and FUN wise: one of the best arpgs ever made!

Yeah, I know what you mean. The higher difficulties is also what puts more importance on your build to be good and a lot of them become increasingly reliant on you actually having some proper gear in order to function properly. But if you then need to grind for every single piece of equipment and runes and trinkets and whatnot it just becomes plainly impractical to play that build, especially when you can just google some other build that isn't as gear reliant and works much more easily.

It's nothing especially wrong with Grim Dawn, though. Difficulty modes cannibalizing a game's own variety is a very common occurrence.

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I don't like Fluxer. I checked the website and it just screams Discord 2.0 to me. Same font and look, and the monetisation was blasted up front which I very much did not appreciate. Apparently, they sold out their lifetime subscriptions already, I think it's in the hundreds of thousands in sales. That's a lot of bag, hopefully they don't walk back on their promise... It'd also be funny if those who paid lifetime to get their server hosted by Fluxer for them get hit with age verification again at some point because as Liam keeps saying, it's only a matter of time for these centralised services.

I've also read posts from technical people criticising the codebase with regards to self hosting. I'm not well versed in this topic so can't affirm the findings.

Point is, I think it's highly unwise to pick the projects that are trying their hardest to be 'literally discord', as one should learn and attempt to not make the same mistake again. With this in mind, my criteria for eligible projects is: open source, and zero money involved outside of donations, grass roots, strictly self hosted and decentralised.

Someone made a list of the difdiscord-selfhosted-alternatives:
https://github.com/Vigno04/discord-selfhosted-alternatives
Out of those, I'm going Sharkord as I mentioned in my forum post last week.

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I always wondered how valve always seemed to get away with their lootboxes. Everyone was saying EA and others are bad but valve has been doing that crap for years.

Now the american gun problem, i don't live there so i don't know, but i think the problem is not video games or movies, but the culuture itself. Banning things doesn't really help imo, it needs to change from cultural level i think... but what do i know.

Lets just play games where you pick flowers only i guess...

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2ship2harkinian just released 4.0.1, and GhostShip released 1.0.2 on 1/24.

I found this nice list:
https://readonlymemo.com/decompilation-projects-and-n64-recompiled-list/

Which led me to a nice Linux-compatible version of Perfect Dark.

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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. :)

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Quoting: nullzeroabout the connecting steam account. As an example I already got one of the games, Boltgun

Same. I have some questions; anybody know answers to any of them?

1) They say the keys expire 90 days after the bundle starts. So if you have not redeemed, gifted, or exchanged when the expiration is getting close, do they warn you in any way? Or do they just silently expire?

2) If you have not synced your Steam library, and redeem, you can get a Steam key for something you already own. Do unused keys expire after the 90 days, or just keys that have not been redeemed/gifted?

3) If you choose to gift a key, it prompts for an email address, which seems reasonable. Does the recipient get a key, or do they need to have/create a digiphile account first (like humblebundle requires for using gift links)? Has anyone sent a "gift" to themselves? I've seen random grumblings that gifting wasn't working, but I took it with a grain of salt.

Like others, I have Boltgun already. The exchange value is fairly low / there's nothing interesting for that value at the moment (and the Steam library syncing does not filter out what you already own from that list). I could hold onto the points for future accumulation, assuming they will have another bundle that looks attractive (previous ones didn't do it for me, although I was tempted a bit by Fallen Aces). But I may also want to gift it to someone within the next (slightly less than) 90 days. I just don't want to forget about it, and have it silently expire...

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So basically, you want to set up a spare Steam account and link that account to this. Allowing you to get access to all the keys.

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I 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

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Quoting: Luca

Quoting: ShmerlStill waiting for Debian team to package 6.6.x.

Still waiting for Mint team to package any 6.x!!

Understandably slow for Mint with its long term releases, but I'm talking about the rolling versions of Debian.

I think in Debian it depends on newer Qt, and packaging that is usually a pretty heavy lifting. Not sure how other distros manage to do it so quickly. They might simply ignore all the bugs fallout caused by that, while Debian Qt/KDE team have do that carefully.

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Got it today on Manjaro Kde Plasma - unstable branch. Btw it is not "unstable" at all and we get the new stuff immediately. Wayland, Kernel 6.19. Kde Plasma 6.6.1, MESA 26.0.1. Works perfectly. Linux games are incredibly smooth. Love Crysis 3 Remastered, the most beautiful game out there with RT.

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Quoting: tmtvlI presume that those AI chatbots all run locally on my PC without needing any connection to a company I don't trust? Would be quite unfortunate if I had some spyware running while I was, as a completely random example, doing some online banking.

only the translation, the rest is OpenAI and co, why should they even care. they dont even listen.

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I didn't notice any bugs. I guess the biggest problem for me was that I wasn't having that much fun. Though maybe getting enemies stuck in acid pools was bit fun.

Partly it might be that it's somewhat simple. There are some hints things getting more complex, but I felt that I didn't need to progress to second floor.

Another reason is that there's sort of uneasy feeling all the time without any kind of release. Probably something to do with sound design. I stopped playing Ring of Pain for the same reason.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt's not just guitars. I have a friend who's a self-described sax maniac.

Tell him to be wary of time travelers! They hate the saxophone and even try to prevent it ever being invented. The story of the inventors childhood clearly show all their failed attempts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Sax#Early_life

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Quoting: fabertaweInteresting, I find you can never have enough guitars 😄

It's not just guitars. I have a friend who's a self-described sax maniac.

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about the connecting steam account. As an example I already got one of the games, Boltgun, from Humble Choice. It appears there with the following note (emphasis mine):

Already Owned - Trade it for 90 Credits!

You already own this game on Steam, so you can't redeem another key. However, you can trade it in for 90 credits to get other games from the Exchange!

On a previously bundle I had the same with Shadows of Doubt which I also owned, so I exchanged for credits and switched for Dishonoured instead.

It might be a bummer not to get extra keys, but frankly they were either collecting dust or being gifted away on Steam Gifts, so having the option to select other games instead (even though if not a big variety / trade ratio) is welcome.

From the lasts entry of their [Exchange FAQ](https://sites.google.com/digiphile.co/help/exchange)

Why This Matters

Unused or unredeemed keys affect our ability to negotiate high-quality collections with developers and publishers, while also impacting their ability to obtain keys from Steam. By linking your Steam account and keeping your play data current, you're helping us:

- Reduce key reselling on the grey market
- Obtain better titles for future collections
- Help our partners obtain more keys for future collections
- Launch upcoming community-driven features

We believe the Exchange is the first step in building a stronger, more rewarding experience for the Digiphile community, and we're excited for everyone to try it out!

As long as they don't sell the data, and keep the analytics / business optimisation to themselves as any other normal company I don't see an issue. It's not like they'll have Steam's credit card info, and even then, steam should best not be tied to personal info in the first place, specially has lots of features (first & third party) that rely on having a public profile.

If it were not a steam only key reseller, I would be more wary.

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For the loot boxes, it's alright, Valve probably deserve it, but for the guns... LMFAO! Why not take down the whole gaming industry, at this point?!

Hey! Dear Leticia James, I'm killing demons with gore all over the place with big guns and rockets, in Doom Dark Ages, atm!!! 😆

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What makes them fascist? I need a detailed breakdown of their economic system 😅

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This is based af. I hope other states follow suit.

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This is absurd:

it is important to note that Valve’s promotion of games that glorify violence and guns helps fuel the dangerous epidemic of gun violence, particularly among young gamers who can become numbed to grave violence before their brains are fully developed.

Quoting this [tired trope from the early 2000](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/video-game-health/201907/blame-game-violent-video-games-do-not-cause-violence)'s is bizarre and ill considered.

Sure, go after loot boxes, they're rotten to the core, mostly. Although as someone has already pointed out, it would be nice to see some consistency - also get rid of Magic the Gathering packs, Pokemon packs, Pannini packs, or anything else that's marketed to kids that is a lottery.

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Nintendo: YOU MUST CONSTRAIN YOURSELF TO *OUR* HARDWARE, IN *OUR* ECOSYSTEM PRISON, ON *OUR* TERMS IF YOU WANT THE PRIVILEGE OF PLAYING OUR GAMES *heavy breathing

PC Gamers: No problem, we'll just port it ourselves

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🍝🏎️🍄🏁

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Quoting: KimyrielleWhile I do agree that lootboxes need to be banhammered out of the gaming industry, I am curious of why they picked Valve of all companies to target first. And not, you know, the studios actually famous for predatory business practices, such as EA or Ubisoft.

It's not the lootboxes, it's the market place. Valve created a system where the contents of loot boxes can be turned back into money. This is why they are banned in The Netherlands and this is why they are the absolute worst in the gaming world. I'm not familiar with a lot of lootbox games, so there might be others, but probably where they can go after them easily.

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