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the city builder genre is always fascinating to me. There seems to be a never ending stream of eleventy billion releases per year in this genre, and I have a group of friends who are almost all active gamers, yet not a single one of them including me plays anything in this genre. LOL. I can only imagine the core dedicated players of this genre are just ravenous, and pick up a ton of releases. I guess if you're a fan, life must be beyond excellent.

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Absolutely love what S76 is doing with Cosmic. 🥰

Right now, a lot of people say "pick gnome or plasma" when installing distros and I can see a future a few years out where cosmic replaces gnome in that sentence.

I was actually thinking of trying out cosmic again but the github issue where the games aren't capturing the mouse and letting it go to second monitors is a deal breaker. So I'll patiently wait for epoch 2 / 3 / whatever.

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Hopefully it's easy to make the populous happy, cause we don't need a bunch of Angry Beavers. 🦫

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when I travel, I like to put my deck (inside its case) inside my backpack so I can play at the terminal, or on the plane. This would make that impossible, so while it seems like a great idea on paper, I think it's just too big for me.

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I bought a System76 laptop last year as I was teaching my trade at the local college.
I didn’t even try out Cosmic, I immediately installed Fedora KDE on it.

Does that make me a monster? 😂

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This looks like Gnome but without all the Bullshit.

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Quoting: tmtvlEvery platform has its issues, but at least GOG has an anti-DRM stance

eh, maybe im just getting tied up in word semantics but the word ' stance ' implies some kind of principled moral position. But in fact, it was just them carving a niche in a market that in any other way they could not compete. It was a financial business decision with the marketing aimed at "look see, we are authentic & care about freedom "

a 'Super ethical corp Inc' moment. Not so ethical now it seems.

(depending on your stance on 'Ai')

ohh and lets remind people that Valve have no hard 'stance ' on DRM games either. There are titles on Steam you can download and move from drive to drive without even launching steam and they will still run, on Linux.

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Do not charge your anything if it can not ventilate.
My macbook refused to suspend which I didn't notice, and it committed harikiri with a 0load machine. No thermal throtlling. Just a dead hot piece of trash.
Now that warning is out of the way:
If this has enough things to cool and ventilate, I would want it. My biggest problem with the steam deck I have when playing is that I want to lay it on my bed, which would block the fan ingress.

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Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: F.UltraHow one earth can you claim that I was misquoting people, this very quote below was your OP comment that I replied to:

I've already pointed out why.

And I pointed out why I think different.

Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: F.UltraNo the DSA is not fighting the power to take 30%, they are fighting the lock in, which is why they also have forced Apple to allow external app stores to be installed on iPhones in the EU. And ofc you can care about Apple's payment processing beyond the percentage that they take, perhaps you want to be able to sell in app items in countries where Apple does not conduct payments, perhaps you simply do not want to give Apple any money and might use another payment processor that takes an even higher cut (working in the Finance industry for 30 years I have seen many such cases so this is not as convoluted as it first sounds, some people/organizations simply are this way), and so on and on.

It's actually the DMA not the DSA, sorry for that mixup.

Emphasized by me: Exactly - challenging Apple's 30%.

Considering that you just replied to a list of reasons for why it wasn't about 30%, no.

Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: F.UltraGood luck trying to find that in their lawsuit (they are not), the only thing that they presents is in their FAQ where they claim that Valve is doing this with weasel wording trying to avoid the fact that is all about Steam Keys. We all went over this in 2024 when they filed it.

Case 2:21-cv-00563-JCC Document 127 Filed 03/23/23

204. TomG also explained to another game publisher that the publisher should “[t]hink critically about how your decisions might affect Steam customers, and Valve. If the offer you’re making fundamentally disadvantages someone who bought your game on Steam, it’s probably not a great thing for us or our customers (even if you don’t find a specific rule describing precisely that scenario).” In that same thread, TomG responded to a question by stating: “we usually choose not to sell games if they’re being sold on our store at a price notably higher than other stores. That is, we’d want to get that lower base price as well, or not sell the game at all.”

Valve's response Case 2:21-cv-00563-JCC Document 128 Filed 04/06/23

204. Valve admits that the quoted words appeared in forum postings. Valve denies the remaining allegations in paragraph 204.

Case 2:21-cv-00563-JCC Document 127 Filed 03/23/23

205. In response to one inquiry from a game publisher, in another example, Valve explained: “We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . .”

Valve's response Case 2:21-cv-00563-JCC Document 128 Filed 04/06/23

205. Valve admits a Valve employee made the statement quoted in paragraph 205.

Thanks for those. I had for some reason misremembering these from the Wolfire papers in that is contains so many "Valve denies..." that in my memory they had denied all of it, apparently not.

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I really like the glass look. Looking forward ro it, even when I still need a proper atomic image to use it on top of ublue or bazzite (origami I don't like browsers installed on the system, you are more or less stuck with zen unless you layer).

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Quoting: Tethys84Is it just me or are there more and more big co-op games coming out? This trend really sucks for the friendless.

For me it's not so much about being friendless, but I will make time to meet in person, and much less likely to make time to play a game with you.

And I'm just tired to large toxic game communities, alas.

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Linux

Fixed a bug that could result in Proton games showing up as "Not valid on current platform" for users with very large libraries.

If this is the bug where you see the Available for Windows and the Install button is greyed out, then they have not completely fixed that bug. It looks like I am on the Steam Beta. I have seen this in one of my games, and on a Steam Family library game and a demo

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Hey, I'm old, and this looks great! Why all the negativity?? 😆

It does look very Monster Hunter, but that's a good thing in my book - not only can I only play the first one (the rest are encumbered by Denuvo), but the MH games are so slow-going and grindy. This is an opportunity to have that experience at a slightly better pace. Fingers crossed.

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This looks excellent. Brilliant idea. Feels like it has hints of Backpack Hero, too, slotting new cards/abilities into your toolkit for experimentation.

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So long as GOG keeps using AI I'm not gonna buy games from GOG.

So long as Valve doesn't shut down the CS skin trading, doesn't reduce their 30% cut (and stops doing the stupid 'the more you sell the less you have to pay' nonsense), and doesn't stop ('allegedly') pressuring publishers to sell their games at the same price on other stores; I'm not gonna buy games on Steam.

So long as Epic doesn't stop buying exclusives I'm not gonna buy games on Epic.

So long as Itch doesn't properly re-index adult games and doesn't stop withholding payments from creators I'm not gonna buy games on Itch.

That leaves... er... Zoom? I'm sure I can find some controversy there as well.

Every platform has its issues, but at least GOG has an anti-DRM stance, which immediately makes it way better than Steam or Epic. If your feelings really are that strong, at least switch to Itch or Zoom, but don't come here to complain about GOG using AI and then go and buy games on Steam, because you're just being a hypocrite at that point. And for those who complain about 'IP theft', you don't know that they didn't use something like Adobe Firefly. Just going 'AI -> IP theft' is a clear sign you have no idea what you're talking about and are just looking for an excuse to put GOG down (and indirectly advocate in favour of current copyright law, which is horrible and stupid and should be reformed).

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I've had it a couple of times, but it always went away by itself. Still good to see them track it down. :-)

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Will 2026 truly be the real year of Linux gaming on the desktop?
…
"Linux is the next major frontier".

Pssh. That was so last year. Get with the times!😝

I'm honestly sadly surprised at the bad blood my fellow Linux gamers seem to have for GOG, for whatever petty reasons you are listing, are you forgetting these guys are the only ones with downloadable DRM free games fighting against "you'll own nothing and will be happy"? Get your heads out of your asses

That bears repeating. 🫤

Also, itch.io does have many DRM free games but, it's not their M.O. like it is GOGs.

I still find it mind boggling that GOG isn't focused on GNU/Linux as the objectives and principles overlap so much. What a weird disconnect. lol....

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as someone that spent hundreds of dollars on their platform last year, I will not give them another dime if they continue to use AI slop.

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Is it just me or are there more and more big co-op games coming out? This trend really sucks for the friendless.

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I miss THPS2.

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I feel like that Fortnite artstyle is the 3D equivalent to Corporate Memphis 2D art which in turn is practically Comic Sans for graphic design.

Maybe I am just getting old, but that game looks like everything I don't want to play. And it's not just because of the graphics.

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it is not a game, nor an interactible world. it is just movable screenshot.

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PUBG Blindspot but no PUBG Battlegrounds 🥲

I am waiting for years for them to add the original PUBG

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Quoting: chickenb00I bought Alan Wake 2

Since it's unlikely to come to Steam, I'm waiting for the PS5 version to have a nice sale. Or maybe Epic will make it one of their weekly free games eventually.

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Well, it's 57% over last year but one data point of improvement isn't enough to suggest a trend. Looking at the flow of previous years it's only 13% above their previous peak...which then dropped again in both of the following years.

It will be interesting to see if the proposed improvements and offering Fortnite Freebies to devs to hawk with their games will have any significant impacts.

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It's been nice having a Store out there with strong principles. DRM-Free was a very good message to have out there against the likes of Ubisoft trying to shackle gamers with ridiculous authorisation restrictions and installed malware.

But you can't use GenerativeAI and still call yourself principled. It puts the lie to every piece of loving game curation if you're using a tool built on the industrial-scale theft of content creators hard work, and depriving artists of future work.

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Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleMy logic remains perfectly consistent:

When the action itself is harmless / consensual / victimless, moral indignation about how someone spends *their own money* on it is often performative (status-signaling, puritanism, etc.).

When the action is harmful (especially criminal and victim-involving), then outrage is justified - and the fact that money changed hands is irrelevant to the moral assessment.

The distinction isn't hard to see unless you're intentionally blurring it. Either you are misreading or you are knowingly misleading.

Again, there is no point in bringing the money in and calling it "hard earned" unless you are trying to valorize the money (and its possessor). When an action is genuinely "harmless / consensual / victimless", one can simply say that nobody should be indignant about it because there is nothing to be indignant about.

As to whether activities involving the use of AI are that sort of activity . . . they're externalities, like a factory that emits pollution. People are being or will be hurt, but it's nobody you know and in the short term you have no real way to find out just who. Now, for factories that emit pollution, some moral censure is reasonable, and may have some impact if much of society can forge a normative consensus that generating such pollution is bad. But probably the impact will be small, since it does not remove the profitability of the externality. It's no substitute for a solid regulatory environment. But does that mean that criticism of people exploiting externalities for profit is pointless? Certainly not. It helps forge societal consensus that can lead to the enactment of appropriate regulation.

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Quoting: rea987Why on Earth someone spends a penny on that non-store is a mystery to me.

I bought Alan Wake 2. I suppose I could have pirated it, but I wanted to pay for it, and it was on a steep discount, like just $20 CAD.
If it were for sale on Steam I'd have bought there, but it isn't.
I won't be buying any other games on EGS unless they're exclusive due to a funding/publishing deal like that.

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Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative.

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous. So, Geoffrey Epstein spent his own hard earned money on sex with underage girls. I am morally indignant about that. Not you, though, that would be "performative".

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous! The morally repugnant issue is sex with underage girls, spending money on it or not is irrelevant.

Uh, yeah. Go look at what you said.

Your point was that if people were spending "their own hard earned money" on something, that meant we shouldn't be morally indignant about it. This appeared to be an admonition completely independent of the content of what those people were doing with their "hard earned money". I pointed out the absurdity of this. You have just confirmed it--yes, whether someone spends "their own hard earned money" on something is in fact irrelevant to whether we should feel moral indignation about it. So, your initial statement was ludicrous.

You're still misrepresenting what I actually said, and that's the core issue here.

My original statement:

"I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative."

Nowhere did I say - or even imply - that *spending one's own money makes any action morally acceptable* or immune to criticism. That would be an absurd, blanket claim, and I never made it.

Oh, please. Let's unpack a bit, shall we?

So, first, that implication is certainly there in the basic grammar. Clearly it is the fact that the things done are done by people with their own hard earned money, that makes the indignation performative. If it were not, there would be no point mentioning the money in the first place, but instead the money is the only thing mentioned that characterizes what the people are doing. No doubt the claim wasn't intended to have to handle a reductio ad absurdum, but rather the money was perhaps only intended to be sufficient to wash clean venial sins, but this was certainly on its face a claim that people shouldn't be getting on people's case if what they're doing is spending money.

But on what basis? The core of the statement is that the money is "hard earned". So this is not just any money--it is presumed to be money acquired by working hard, by adhering to the Protestant work ethic. It is virtuous money, and the possessor is virtuous through having acquired it. The current context relates to someone with enough money to own a company, so, considerable wealth. The invocation of the "hard earned" money suggests that the possessors of that much money are, by that fact, our betters. And so, anything they might decide to do with it can be assumed to be above our criticism.

It was an extremely loaded statement, and loaded quite cleverly at that, meant to get people to digest it without quite realizing what they'd swallowed.

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Quoting: tohurI will give Blizzard one thing.. their anti-cheat is mostly server side and the bits client side doesn't require kernel access and should be the standard way to implement anti-cheat as they do with their Warden setup

Yeah I agree, even if I forgot about it... but at the time I was playing Diablo III on Linux I never had issues on that side, what a pleasure! Even though I don't like their constant internet connection DRM.

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