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*steamsad*

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Quoting: EikeAccording to what I read, most US states do have sales taxes

Generally not on digital items, and also usually quite a bit lower than VAT (rough guess average of about 8%).

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Quoting: PhiladelphusI must be misunderstanding this, because I don't really see much benefit from foveated streaming.

The benefit is in limited bandwidth. The Frame doesn't have a wired option - it can only be used wirelessly. Foveated streaming doesn't reduce the rendering load at all, it's true, but it does maintain the perceived quality of the image where bandwidth is limited or variable.

Should eye-tracking become a baseline expected feature of VR headsets following its inclusion in the Frame (and which will necessarily be the case for, say, ARM and Android games put on Steam for use on the Frame) then game devs can justify utilising it for foveated rendering, which does reduce rendering load. They haven't been able to rely on eye-tracking being available generally, so they haven't generally bothered with foveated rendering. Foveated streaming makes sensible use of eye-tracking orthogonally to the foveated rendering chicken-and-egg. Both techniques can be used together with headsets that have eye-tracking.

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• Foveated rendering uses eye tracking data so the game only renders high resolution data in the portion of the viewport that the player is looking at.
• Foveated streaming, on the other hand, uses eye tracking data so that the PC only streams high resolution data in the portion of the viewport the player is looking at.

I must be misunderstanding this, because I don't really see much benefit from foveated streaming. Foveated rendering makes sense; the game can selectively render a small area in higher detail and save compute power for the rest of the frame that's not in the user's central vision (thus allowing potentially higher framerates). For foveated streaming, it sounds like the PC still has to render the entire frame in high resolution, only for a bunch of that data to be lossily dropped in the streaming process. (This seems to be the only way it could be a "system-level feature" that "applies to all games".) I get that that has the benefit of lowering the amount of data streamed, but that doesn't seem like a particularly large benefit for a device that will likely be kept in close proximity to its broadcasting station; it might marginally improve battery life or provide redundancy in electronically-noisy environments, but as far as I can tell it neither improves the image the user sees nor reduces the amount of computing power the GPU needs. What am I missing here? 🤔

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So, will this be [banned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_in_China) in China is my first thought, sad I know 😁

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A delay on the Machine might make sense but also means that if they going to release it, for example, next year, it will get even more critique on the low specs since a year has passed and cpu/gpu will continue to develop. Add to that the fact they probably must have signed some deal with AMD for the current chip they sort of stuck with it.

So they can either sell now at to high a price because of the market
Or they sell next year with outdated specs for a still high price (memory won't drop big time next year)

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A delay on the Machine makes sense to me but it's the Frame and the Controller I'm most interested in right now.

If delayed to next year the Machine might need an upgrade but I would definitely be more interested in it by then.

Right now gimmie Steam Controller ASAP.
Early adopters already know they want it.

Too bad for Lighthouse not being part of a planned implementation for Frame but I do hope it gets implemented later or done by fans cause I think VR needs it for the best it can be.
Least it's an open platform so sky's the limit.

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I wish they'd go ahead and release the controller, but I understand why they'd want to release all three at the same time.

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The biggest troll Valve could do is to launch it on march 3, together with HL3. But unfortunately is not gonna happen in today's situation.

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They can probably launch the controller this year, but I'm not holding my breath. As the Steam Machine itself, I don't think it is gonna happen with today's market. I don't think Valve will sell hardware at a loss hopping for the best at the end of the year.

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What makes them so exited? We had procedurally generated worlds for years. Game engines to quickly import some character model to do basic stuff in them aren't new either. But now you call it AI and everybody acts like it's the second coming of christ.

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I played it several years ago on Steam. The only problem I had at the time was a mod which restored some content but didn't seem to be Linux-friendly (strange filenames). I'll have to check it out again 😀

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The big question is: How consistent are those interactive worlds, and for how long?

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I do hope the steam machine will succeed, due to pricing and the current world climate I do worry it will struggle

Definitely buying a steam controller 2, I'll be using the 2.4ghz dongle with it, neat that you can use the dongle to charge the controller as well

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Quoting: GustyGhostI'll be the one to say it:

Consider all those who got gassed up on the cyclical $NEW_WINDOWS bad streak who tried out Linux on their gaming computers, only to feel overwhelmed or burned or whatever by the differences (of which newbies will always make mountains out of mole hills) who then promptly return to the familiarity of Windows.

I suspect we'll see another small decrease next month too.

You can say that, but it really seems to be just the usual Simplified Chinese uptick.

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Quoting: NociferAI is selling like hotcakes

AI* is all over the place, but mostly not because any end-users of anything have bought it. Can you really call that "selling like hotcakes"?

*A term which for purposes of the current discussion I am using to mean the Large Language Model "AI" currently bubbling the economy.

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A couple of things here:
1) I think Alan Wake 2 being exclusive to EGS played a strong part of this increase. Especially since they funded the game to begin with.

2) Tim Sweeney whines about competition and fairness yet, he keeps stealing games from steam and making exclusive to EGS. (Rocket league, fall guys, Alan Wake 2). Man, I HATE exclusives. It's not competition, it's desperation. The guy is a hypocrite. Competition, for the consumer, is having those games on BOTH stores and having a price war.

Now despite me having over 4000 games on steam, I've always said, of anyone can make a game store as good or as useful as steam out better, I'd be happy to purchase my games there. The biggest trouble with EGS is the fact it is just a store. There's no community, workshop, competent voice chat, game recording, etc.

As long as EGS remains the petulant Little featureless game store, why is it worth my time?

I read in an interview with the store boss, they have great plans to take on steam. They plan to optimise the software so it is faster and lighter on resources. They still don't get it. It can be as fast as you like but still, why would I switch to buying games there?

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Quoting: bekoAlso: This happened with every iteration of the game. A very vocal "fan" group shunning it claiming the last version was peak.

Every.
Single.
Time.

😩

I don't think you can say that this time. Most of the very vocal fan group is probably saying that the one two versions before was peak.

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. . . Anyone read "Darths and Droids", the webcomic that does the Star Wars movies as a tabletop RPG campaign? In that, they don't call it the "Death Star" . . . it's the "Peace Moon". This "Star of Peace" really reminds me of that.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleCopyright law is very outdated for current technology.

So is capitalism. But if we're going to insist on capitalism, then within that framework I'm not sure what's going to stop anyone who creates anything from starving without copyright. We can fix copyright if we fix the overall system it's in.

For me, the strongest case for sticking with markets is the historic drop in extreme poverty: from high 60s–80% globally in the 1970s down to under 9% today.

Oh, sure, the drop in extreme poverty. So first of all, I've heard plenty about the supposed drop in extreme poverty, but I've never heard anyone mention a figure that extreme, that's just in the ridiculous propaganda realm. Don't know where you got it, but I'm pretty sure it's nonsense even in terms of the official stats that are generally bandied about.

Second, "extreme poverty" is defined in these sorts of statistics as "making less than $2 per day". That's in purchasing power parity with the US dollar. So then, if you're an American, and you make more than $60/month, you're not in "extreme poverty". Homeless people can starve to death in the US on way more than that. It's ridiculous. And since it's purchasing power parity, it is equally ridiculous everywhere else. Masses of people are, in real life, extremely poor, but the statistics claim they are not. They are quite simply statistics built to generate reassuring lies.

Third, much of this drop in "extreme poverty" represents the destruction of the peasantry. People are driven off their subsistence farms by various modern "enclosure movement" equivalents, they move to the cities and live in shanty towns where they are half starved, scraping by on whatever informal ways to scratch out a living they can find. But! Before, when they had adequate food that they grew themselves, decent shelter and generally were poor, but more or less OK, they weren't really in the monetary economy, so they made less than $2/day. Now that their lives are precarious and they can barely eat and their homes are made of cardboard or some damn thing, they make more than $2/day so they're not in "extreme poverty". Lucky them!

Fourth, another massive proportion of the drop in poverty is China. There was a period where China represented more than 100% of the drop in extreme poverty . . . which is to say, in the rest of the world extreme poverty was increasing, but it was decreasing so much in China it more than made up for it. This is not exactly a triumph of free market capitalism.

In any case, "markets" and capitalism are not the same thing. You can have markets without capitalism, it's easy, just replace all the firms owned by individual rich people and stock market investors with firms owned by governments and worker co-operatives, but leave the markets in place. Badabing, markets but no capitalism. And, you can have capitalism with no markets--we see this in US military contractors, who are often the sole source of a good which they sell only to their sole customer using cost-plus contracts which define the price paid as a function of how much it costs the firm to make the product, plus a percentage for profit. That isn't a market. And yet they are capitalist firms--private individuals own them, capital is invested in them for the purpose of generating a profit which can be reinvested.

Maybe you should talk about things you know something about. Nobody who, confronted with the term "capitalism", responds with the term "markets", knows much about either.

The ~80% in the 1970s/early 1980s down to under 10% today is based on World Bank data (via their Poverty and Inequality Platform). For example, in 1981, extreme poverty (at the then-$1.90 line, now updated to $2.15 in 2017 PPP) was around 44-50% globally in the 1980s/1990s, but longer run historical estimates (back to post-WWII or even 1800s) from sources like Our World in Data and economic historians put it much higher historically (often 80-90% pre-20th century in many reconstructions). Recent World Bank updates (as of 2025) put it around 8-10% (roughly 700-800 million people at $2.15-$3/day lines, depending on the exact revision). It's not propaganda; these are from household surveys compiled by the World Bank, UN, and others. But, you're right that no single number captures everything perfectly.

On the $2/day (now $2.15) threshold being too low: Totally fair point — it's intentionally a rock-bottom line to track the very worst deprivation (bare survival needs like food/calories). No one claims $2.15/day means a good life; it's extreme poverty by design. In the US, someone at that level (adjusted) would indeed struggle massively, and homelessness shows how even higher incomes can coincide with hardship due to costs, etc. The line uses PPP (purchasing power parity) to account for cheaper basics in poorer countries, but critics (including some economists) note it can understate urban/rich-country equivalents or non-monetary deprivations. Higher lines like $6.85/day (for upper-middle income relevance) show much slower progress — billions still below that. So I agree the "extreme" label can be misleading if it makes things sound rosier than they are.

Regarding the "destruction of the peasantry" and subsistence farms: This is a critique I've seen from folks like Jason Hickel and others— enclosure-like processes, urbanization, and market integration can push people into precarious informal work/shantytowns while monetizing previously non-monetary subsistence. In some cases it arguably worsened welfare temporarily by raising the relative cost of basics. But the data overall shows that, even in rural areas, on net the shift has coincided with huge gains in life expectancy, child survival, literacy, electricity access, etc. Many former subsistence farmers report preferring urban opportunities despite hardships (per surveys), and global hunger/calorie availability has improved dramatically. It's not that the transition is painless — far from it — but the absolute improvements (health, longevity, reduced starvation deaths) seem real and massive for billions.

China: Yes, a huge share of the drop is China (often >75-100% in certain periods, meaning other regions were flat or rising). But China's growth since the late 1970s/80s has been market-oriented reforms (Deng's opening, private enterprise, FDI, etc.), even if state-guided and not pure "free market." It's not socialism vs. capitalism in black-and-white; it's a mixed system that unleashed massive productive forces and lifted ~800 million out. Without crediting markets/incentives at all, it's hard to explain the scale/speed.

On markets vs. capitalism: Yes — markets (exchange, prices) can exist without full private-capital dominance (e.g., worker co-ops, public firms competing) and crony/contractor examples show "capitalism" without pure markets. I used "markets" because the historic poverty drop ties to global integration, trade, specialization, and incentives that reward production/efficiency—things that can happen under varied ownership, but in large majority, it's been capitalist markets that have reduced poverty.

I agree that cronyism, regulatory capture, and violations of fair competition (like illegal collusion or government-granted privileges) create real problems and distort markets. But in a truly free and competitive system, these issues stem from law-breaking or improper state intervention, not from capitalism itself. Inequality, meanwhile, is a natural outcome — people differ in talents, effort, risk-taking, and choices, and rewarding those differences drives innovation and growth. I don't see it as a flaw to be "fixed"; it's the way the world works, and what matters far more are the absolute gains in living standards that capitalist markets have delivered for the poorest. Abandoning the growth/productivity engine that has correlated with these gains risks stalling or reversing them, especially for the most vulnerable. We can (and should) enforce laws against monopolistic abuses, price-fixing, and fraud without throwing out the incentives that lift everyone.

Your points on poverty measurement flaws, enclosure dynamics, and the China factor are worth wrestling with, and I've genuinely thought about them. I don't think we're as far apart as it might seem on recognizing that stats can hide real suffering or that change is needed.

That said, your tone shift raised my eyebrows. Lines like "Maybe you should talk about things you know something about. Nobody who, confronted with the term 'capitalism', responds with the term 'markets', knows much about either" came across as pretty dismissive and petty — assuming bad faith or ignorance rather than just disagreeing. Sure, these topics get heated, (especially when they touch on big ideological stuff), but I'd rather keep this as a discussion between two people trying to figure things out than let it slide into snark or into gatekeeping who knows enough to participate. I have faith in you wanting what's best for people - I'd ask you place similar faith in me.

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I am sorry, but I believe the term "problem" is not appropriate for the current article, in this case. It's not a problem of the OS, hardware, or environment that people cheat, and there's no option to crucify transparency, customizability, and privacy.

More to that, I believe, an open-source and transparent Kernel is not a problem, absolutely not, but a dear miracle... which acts as a marvelous balm for the mind, heart, and soul these days... of people who still believe in human...

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Google has had quite the trajectory. At first, they were just purely a search engine, and a good one, and that was OK. And then there was a time when if I heard that Google was announcing some new thing they were doing, I'd be sort of pleased and interested, my assumption being that chances were it would be something interesting or useful. After a while there was a phase where if Google announced something I'd be kind of dubious, both over whether it was a good thing and over whether it mattered because probably they would abandon it soon anyway.

Now we've reached a point where if I hear Google is doing some new initiative my instinctive reaction is more like "Oh, God, what is it this time?" and hoping it won't do too much harm.

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Each new day without a Steam Controller 2 is a painful eternity.

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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.

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Probably just x amount of toddlers using their nouveau riche parents credit card.

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I kept thinking it was weird this game wasn't in my Steam library, as I was sure I bought it. Turns out that was back when I was young and naive and still had faith in GOG. I think it's time to repurchase it on Steam and get actual customer support.
(for reference, the Steam Linux depot was updated along with the Windows and Mac depots; the GOG Linux version has indeed been ignored for about 7 years)

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Quoting: doragasuNow Nintendo needs an AI tool to automate Cease & Desists.

Rest assured they're way ahead of you. 🤬

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Since my language version of Pooh was not named Winnie, the only association I have with this name is Danica McKellar in The Wonder Years. 😇

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Quoting: HamishI actually came across this game just the other day while looking into something else. The GOG.com version does not have the patch yet but they usually take longer to get it so.

It's worse that just a delay... The macOS and Linux releases on GOG didn't get any updates since 2019!
That's what I was talking about, we always hear the excuse of "it's because GOG Galaxy isn't on Linux", but what's the excuse for the macOS download then?
I don't think we'll ever see them.

On the topic still, what a changelog thought!

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Quoting: LoftyThanks for the info. Not to be lazy but i do sometimes wish Linux had more native apps with an actually decent GUI for doing cool stuff like this.

You know I had almost the same discussion 6 days ago on Reddit so here is a verbatim copy:

There is not really a way to do this even on e.g. Windows. This will always require tinkering with the game. Each is different, each uses different head tracking systems (if any at all and it doesn't require mapping to virtual gamepads or even mouse input) and almost no game ships with native SBS support.

When ReShade is involved you have a list of supported games but when it's missing you have to start tweaking and configuration your own config. That's worthy of an extended article in itself.

This is really exactly what VR solved (and even here it's YMMV) handling various devices and making data available via a well known and unified API. This is where Monado is a nice alternative but afair they don't support Vitures [yet].

Oh and don't get me started why there is no unified API for head tracking at all. Can probably thank Naturalsoft threatening everyone with a law suit for years while trying to protect sending 6 digits to a game for decades 🤢

tl;dr: some things users have to understand the basic concept. Too many moving parts.

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