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Quoting: KimyrielleI like that trend line. :D

And it's better than that, really. It looks an awful lot like two trend lines, one of very gradual increase up to the Steam Deck release, and then a significantly steeper rise from Steam Deck release to now.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: chrBut that is my taste, we may well disagree in our likes. Discussion about perceived text and subtext very welcome.

Not sure the trailer really gives us enough to judge. It could be played basically straight, and implicitly authoritarian. Or, it could be satirical, along the lines of a Starship Troopers kind of thing, but played a bit quieter.

Very fair!
But I'd also argue that a Starship Troopers with too subliminal satire ends up playing out as glorifying for too large part of the audience for my personal comfort.
But ofc overdoing satire is also possible. And some people can ignore even the most blatant of ridicule and still worship the militarism and the skulls on the baddies' caps 🤷‍♀️

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The trend is insane.

10% by 2030 or so seems inevitable now. I think at that level, it's the point where people can largely stop caring.

I mean, if you just want to see Microsoft lose OK that won't be done.

But at 10%, you'll be able to buy a mouse or a monitor or whatever, and assume its firmware is on LVFS. Any game publisher not bothering to at least test with Proton, will be truly an outlier.

From the consumer's point of view, pragmatically, it'll be about the same as 50%.

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I have two games on those lists. Perhaps my preferences are less mainstream? 😀

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So if they've added bees, should they now call it Bzzzite?

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Quoting: geckofish52

Quoting: dibz

Quoting: vic-bay

Quoting: ShmerlI think it's good — looks like they made GOG private so they can pursue their own vision and not be pressured by shareholders of CDPR.

I.e. may be they can spend on Linux now more, while before shareholders could tell them not to prioritize Linux support. Just my guess. In the end, it's really up to what they want.

yeah, looking at valve and other game companies, private company is a better model for company-customer relationships. it allows for following long term strategies without being pressed by shareholders.

In my experience it really depends. Private is great but usually only when a company starts. Not speaking about GOG specifically, but in general, when a public company "goes private" the $$$ often comes from private equity firms which in turn is typically absolutely terrible for everyone - meaning both consumers AND employees, especially employees - other than the top-most leadership themselves. When you work for a public company that announces going private, it's frankly a good idea to start brushing up the resume and looking ahead to your next career move, even getting a jump on it, before you get surprised.

Anyway, at least with GOG it sounds like it's probably fine or even a good thing. Reads to me like this move is just saving GOG's existence before future changes occur; Which is great.

Yes. I'm a big fan of everything that Valve has done versus other game distributors, of course, but the weird veneration of non publicly traded companies who are probably have a lot of private investor relationships every time this comes up in gaming forums rubs me the wrong way.

On one hand, I do think it's true that Valve can get away with being a better company than most companies because they are not publicly traded, since stock market investors are quite accurately known for being very impatient and short-termist in their outlook and, these days, usually downright viciously resistant to the very idea of any profits being reinvested in the company rather than simply handed over to them.

But that definitely does not mean that not being publicly traded is going to make a company good. Very often it just means exchanging one style of horrible investor for another, and private equity firms often go past "short termist" into "deliberately destructive and fraudulent". Even if it's an owner/CEO thing like Gabe (I know, he doesn't own the whole thing, but he has enough control to set the tone), that won't help if the person at the top is someone like Sweeney, or a Koch brother. Companies of any size are just very rarely good, no matter how they're financed. I do think that publicly traded takes the chances down from "slim" to "none" though.

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Quoting: _wojtek

Quoting: JarmerLibrewolf
Zen Browser
Waterfox

there you go, three alternatives that have no ai integrations whatsoever.

Yes… and they develop everything… oh wait - they rely on Mozilla work and simply remove couple of things, so if Mozilla/Firefox bites the dust, those will vanish into oblivion…

Just a minor correction, but Zen also adds a bunch of custom UI code as well as a feature or two (tab "modals" and split view). Your point remains, I just wanted to clarify this.

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Shame. RCU was an awesome game I thought didn't get the recognition it deserved.

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I have 100+ hours in Ghost of Tsushima and never experienced a crash on my 7900XTX.

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I like that trend line. :D

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Quoting: JarmerLibrewolf
Zen Browser
Waterfox

there you go, three alternatives that have no ai integrations whatsoever.

Yes… and they develop everything… oh wait - they rely on Mozilla work and simply remove couple of things, so if Mozilla/Firefox bites the dust, those will vanish into oblivion…

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Good enough for me, buying it once I have the money to do so

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That's all I needed. I pre-purchased it!

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Quoting: williamjcmOh, nice, it also has that fix for what broke SteamVR in earlier 25.3.x versions. I'll be able to unpin the mesa packages, then.

Was just going to post that, too - looks like I'll get to test that a bit later today! 👍❤️

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My impression is that programming itself is slowly moving towards Linux, and that this movement is not as big in games development (due to obvious reasons), but it's touching game development as well. The case sounds a bit like Baldur's Gate 3 - some developers that are just too much into Linux to ignore it. I like.

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I've been using Bazzite on my Steam Deck because Decky Loader doesn't break after an update happens and desktop mode has been less of a pain to use for me. I've also wanted a more powerful handheld but nothing is that big of a improvement to warrant a purchase of anything and having the official dock would mean getting a new dock so double not worth it to me.

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"Windows 94.95%"
Poor Microsoft, they lost some of their data sales from when I last checked.. :c

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Thanks for all the warm words everyone. Back today as you can see, and full-time as normal from Monday. I'm as excited as you are to see the Forum come back. Bit of work left to be done, but should hopefully be next week.

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Oh, nice, it also has that fix for what broke SteamVR in earlier 25.3.x versions. I'll be able to unpin the mesa packages, then.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThere is also space for a 2nd Gaben in the gaming industry, but only from a private company who has no other masters other than their customers.

Not sure you know, but Valve is also private? I assume you knew that and are just stating we need another private company like "Valve", although GOG is different in that they are definitely for game preservation and ownership.

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The "retro" part of Good Old Games was never really a target for me. But DRM free, download and own, offline, and games not seen elsewhere, yes. I've stopped GoG entirely for Steam, because despite DRM sometimes, i can much easily-ier play on Linux, native or via Proton, and get a refund too (many times, but less now, as proper demo seem to be back in the trends...). I think now refund are a thing on GoG too, but they would need a "huge" effort toward Linux to be in my choice again.

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Quoting: dibz

Quoting: vic-bay

Quoting: ShmerlI think it's good — looks like they made GOG private so they can pursue their own vision and not be pressured by shareholders of CDPR.

I.e. may be they can spend on Linux now more, while before shareholders could tell them not to prioritize Linux support. Just my guess. In the end, it's really up to what they want.

yeah, looking at valve and other game companies, private company is a better model for company-customer relationships. it allows for following long term strategies without being pressed by shareholders.

In my experience it really depends. Private is great but usually only when a company starts. Not speaking about GOG specifically, but in general, when a public company "goes private" the $$$ often comes from private equity firms which in turn is typically absolutely terrible for everyone - meaning both consumers AND employees, especially employees - other than the top-most leadership themselves. When you work for a public company that announces going private, it's frankly a good idea to start brushing up the resume and looking ahead to your next career move, even getting a jump on it, before you get surprised.

Anyway, at least with GOG it sounds like it's probably fine or even a good thing. Reads to me like this move is just saving GOG's existence before future changes occur; Which is great.

Yes. I'm a big fan of everything that Valve has done versus other game distributors, of course, but the weird veneration of non publicly traded companies who are probably have a lot of private investor relationships every time this comes up in gaming forums rubs me the wrong way.

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The forum will be back?!
Time to ping Pengling!

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Quoting: chrBut that is my taste, we may well disagree in our likes. Discussion about perceived text and subtext very welcome.

Not sure the trailer really gives us enough to judge. It could be played basically straight, and implicitly authoritarian. Or, it could be satirical, along the lines of a Starship Troopers kind of thing, but played a bit quieter.

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But the most important question is: will he bring back the native Linux support?

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Interesting, I wonder what will come of this in the next few years.

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(Criticism of "reading too much into it" doesn't add much to me personally. I am very aware that many people choose to ignore what the text or subtext of their entertainment media says, but our opinions and perceptions about the world are not independent of our media diet.)

For me personally, with this one, the subtext (based on the embedded trailer) is too authoritarian - not rules-based, abuse of power part of the job, and the light-hearted presentation of it all is a tad repulsive.

But that is my taste, we may well disagree in our likes. Discussion about perceived text and subtext very welcome.

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Quoting: tpauI hope they will add more payment types soon. Independence and robustness depend on being usable without credit cards that are run by US companies

I realise the payment options might vary by region, but for me GOG offers non-US payment options like PaysafeCard and Skrill. Not endorsing either, but they do exist.

Personally I'd like to pay using SEPA bank transfers when a store is based in the [Single Euro Payments Area](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retail/sepa/html/index.en.html).

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I hope they will add more payment types soon. Independence and robustness depend on being usable without credit cards that are run by US companies

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About Linux support: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_is_getting_acquired_by_its_original_cofounder_e1a0d/post347

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