Their post about development and the authorization process is pretty interesting: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791462185842/announcements/detail/2754443176884853645

It’s a good reminder of the amount of pressure on indie developers, particularly with regards to choosing a good release date to ensure that they can be seen between AAA releases and big sales sucking up the spotlight.

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I finished The Pillars of the Earth and got sucked back into Hand of Fate. The camera and movement seem somewhat less frustrating with a controller, but I still can’t best the darn Dealer. One day...

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Quoting: TheSyldatThe steam controller only LOOKS girthy but when you take the time to assess button placement and spacing and overall shape of it all no actually the steam controller is one of if not the best designed controllers in the world, so using it as a your point of comparison isn't exactly the best of all ideas .

Ironically, you say that like it’s universally better for everyone, as if we all had the same hands and experience with it. To me it was awkward to hold and the texture (especially the touch pad) chafed my skin to the point that I was eager to get rid of it.

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Quoting: ShmerlAs before, I'm looking forward to Stadia pushing more developers to work with Vulkan and Linux, and speed up the demise of DirectX, Metal and GNM lock-ins. But I'm not going to use Stadia itself, unless it's for some on-line only games that are such by design, like MMORPGs and etc. Then I might consider it

Strangely, such games which are a more natural fit for Stadia, aren't even represented on the initial launch.

Yeah, not only would it be a presumably much more effective solution against bots and cheaters, but it would be a great way to not have to worry about computer performance in crowded instances. I’m curious to see if any MMO companies make the switch to a Stadia-only infrastructure. I suppose there would need to be a convincing userbase first for them to make that leap of faith.

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Quoting: orochi_kyoNow according to VR owners, what I need is to get a better job, or not eating something else than rice or bananas so I can get the money to play any new possible Valve game from now.

It’s not like Valve owe you anything. They’re putting out a product on a specific platform for the consumers who are interested in that product, platform and price point. It’s up to anyone to decide whether they want it and can afford it. You don’t see me bitching at Tesla for not being able to afford their cars.

We’re talking video games here, not affordable housing or health services.

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For me, fear of missing out expresses itself mostly in always wanting to be the last person to leave (a place/party) and trying to maintain high availability/flexibility for anything that comes up, and has nothing whatsoever to do with social media. If people use it in relation to consumer goods and "exclusives" then no, that tends to have the opposite effect on me. I don’t feel thrilled about owning something others don’t, and if a company is selling something in limited numbers I assume in most cases it’s either not good enough for ongoing sales or artificially expensive; either way I’m happy to "miss" it. But collector types have always been a good source of low-effort profits for companies willing to cash in on people’s ego.

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I too am surprised by the fact that people are surprised by the lack of features at launch. This is a challenging service to implement and Google has an incredibly large audience. It makes sense to expect breakage across so many potential devices, networks and use cases and to expand the service slowly, not unlike Valve’s Proton whitelist. I do however believe they should have more clearly expressed that it would be a beta at "launch" for those who did not see the obvious and thought they were pre-purchasing something like a full-featured console launch.

That said, I don’t understand why they would need a mobile app to be involved in any of this, and it’s just making me even more wary of the whole thing with regards to spying on the users. I’m going back from "I might consider it if..." to a big fat no.

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They do have twice the number of games planned by the end of the year. If they keep adding more high-profile titles every few weeks, I could see it becoming competitive with services like PlayStation Plus in a reasonable amount of time.

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I could have been interested in Assassin’s Creed, and maybe RDR2, but they’re not enough for me to trust Stadia. Borderlands 3 is kind of tempting, though. There is no guarantee that it will run well on Proton when it drops on Steam. I can wait and see, though. And obviously I’d rather buy Tomb Raider straight from Feral.

On a different note, Just Dance definitely isn’t the kind of game I expected here. I feel like the slightest lag would ruin the experience.

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Oh, I tried this one a while ago. Not my usual cup of tea but I enjoyed playing a few games to figure out the resource economy.

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