I've seen this old chestnut too many times. "Sorry, we advertised Linux and MacOS to get it funded, but we'd actually lose money if we really made those versions!". Seems like our money's always good enough when companies want Kickstarter backing to get it made for the Windows and console audiences, but it's not good enough when it comes to actually releasing what was promoted.

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Refreshing to see a reasonable perspective on it for a change! I may not be a fan of Nintendo anymore (got burned due to their actions, so I bailed), but that doesn't mean that I begrudge them this - though I do still find it odd how they turned a blind eye to the Steam Workshop stuff, and mods of games on their own consoles, for decades, and are only taking action now. (I have my own thoughts on the whys and wherefores, which I've shared with another GOL'er before via Steam Chat, but they're not relevant to this article, since nothing can be proven right now. )

QuoteYou would think we would have learned by now that you can't just take well-known characters, entire designs from companies, and not expect to get slapped by them at some point. All that effort would be better spent on something original.

You and I and others in our age-bracket would. Garry's point about the younger generation not being familiar with this sort of thing is a good one, though - YouTube (and presumably other places) are filled with amateur-made meme-filled Flash-style cartoons that are mostly based on properties that the animators don't own (I'm not talking fan-art, here, but rather channels that mass-produce this stuff; They're often based on indie games), and the younger generation right now is growing up with that sort of attitude towards copyrights. It's not quite another "Elsagate", but I don't imagine that most IP-owners would be happy with much of what's out there.

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Hahahahaha, wow. And I thought I was crazy for spending so much time with Placid Plastic Duck Simulator! Banana makes that look a whole lot more interactive.

Still, Dogenana is hilarious, I'll grant them that!

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I've been looking forward to seeing this - must update it on my Steam Deck soon! Regardless of what anyone thinks of the new name, I'm curious about what they'll be doing in the future, now that they've made the break from the old one.

Quoting: blindcoderWill it ever get proper PLAYER documentation? Like what to do early, mid, late game? How to get X, Y, Z resource? You know, stuff that kids want to know when playing.

There's a basic version of that on the Minetest wiki, though it's still under the old "MineClone 2" name right now.

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Quoting: jams3223Hotshot Racing is probably the worst game to get.

I got it as a freebie from Fanatical a year or two ago. Still, why so?

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Quoting: PhlebiacI see this too - usually after waking from suspend. I have to restart Steam.

At least it's not just me! It hasn't happened with suspend on my system, though - most often it's come up when a notification has popped up at the exact moment when I'm using Alt+Tab, for me, and one time it prevented me from opening Mousepad until I closed and re-opened Steam.

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QuoteWhat have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

A handful of classics via RetroDECK, for my next grab-bag for the "Emulation Recommendations!" thread. Most notably, the always-catchy Bust-A-Groove (PSX), the criminally-unknown Chippoke Ralph no Daibouken: The Adventure of Little Ralph (PSX), and the alien-rescuing Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600).

I've also been playing Saturn Bomberman (Saturn, obviously ) and Super Bomberman R 2 (Proton), and have been continuing to enjoy Stumble Guys (Proton), which I play a little bit of every day. Can't wait to see what next month's crossover event will be!

QuoteDo you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something?

I've only encountered wonky ratings a few times. Most memorably;

• Hotshot Racing was (and still is) marked as Unsupported but works completely perfectly out-of-the-box.


• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is Verified and immediately gave me all manner of game-breaking issues, ranging from showing question-marks instead of any kind of controller-glyphs, to random crashing, to the game handing over control before the intro had fully finished which caused the level to only partially load its geometry and not load its collision data at all which left Ratchet falling for eternity. It took way too much tweaking of settings to get it running acceptably and stably, and I cannot understand how it was given a Verified rating.

The latter left me finding Super Bomberman R 2's Playable rating to be a little bit galling, since it's perfect out-of-the-box in spite of the default resolution being 1920x1080 and the game not having Steam Deck controller-glyphs.

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Quoting: sonic2kkAlthough I thought the Switch one was actually supplied by Nintendo, but it's been many years and I may be remembering wrong

I ran into issues with the supplied one, back when I had a Switch - it outright wouldn't work with some monitors! I swapped in an Amazon Basics one, which is the same one that I use with my Steam Deck today, and never had any more problems.

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Quoting: sonic2kkCEC features on Preview are also hit and miss, currently with the latest Preview they aren't working for me at all (I reported this in a comment already on ValveSoftware/SteamOS) but to be fair, CEC rarely works with the Switch (the only other hardware I've tested with CEC support), and the Steam Deck Dock has so many other problems with my TV alone (even on Stable) that at this point I'm not sure if it's Valve's fault.

Just throwing this out there, but have you tried a different HDMI cable? I know that the Switch is super-picky about those, and it wouldn't especially surprise me if the Steam Deck also is.

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QuoteWhat bug or feature are you currently waiting on being sorted?

Everything is just gravy for me at this point - the Steam Deck already does everything I want it to do, and all of the bugs that had irritated me at various points (including the intermittent boot-hang bug that's been fixed here, which I've run into a few times) have been fixed.

That said, there is currently a bug in the desktop Steam client that's irritating me enormously: Sometimes (at least on Mint Xfce right now), notifications will start spawning in a large separate window in the upper-left of the screen, with decorations and all, instead of being in their usual spot in the lower-right corner of the screen - and worse, every time it happens, the big window steals focus from everything else I'm doing. I have no idea what causes it because it's not there all the time, though I presume it's of some relation to that previously-squashed bug where the notifications were stealing focus for a while.

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