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I remember having fun with the game when I played it back in 2018. Definitely worth the measly 3.75€ it's going for on Steam currently, if you enjoy the genre.

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most cursed game name of all time?

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Quoting: Egonaut

Quoting: williamjcmThe reason the third-party sale numbers increased by that much is because they now include VAT, while previous years didn't include it to my knowledge.

That makes no sense, where in the world do we have 57% VAT?

I mean, it would still have increased compared to the previous year, just *much less* than what Epic's claiming. For example, if we assume that everyone on the EGS paid a 20% VAT, then the "before VAT" spending would have been around 333M$, which would seem much less impressive.

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I don't get the hate for Epic. I've never bought from them because I didn't want to have more launchers, but now that I use Steam and Heroic I have no real reason not to if the price is right. I get all their free games and have played plenty of them with no issues.

I am glad Epic is doing better. More competition means that Steam (and GOG) won't be able to sit around.

Now, I'm not saying everyone should start buying on Epic - you do you - but clearly enough people are buying that Epic isn't failing, and that IMHO is a good thing.

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I'm curious to see what the future holds for the Epic Games Store. It's well known that Tim Sweeney is very anti-Linux and with more and more people leaving Windows behind, sooner or later he will have major problems with that attitude.

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Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: scaine[Duckduckgo did a survey](https://voteyesornoai.com/) asking their userbase if they wanted AI features. They closed the poll after a week or so, 175K votes counted, and 90% said no, they don't want AI.

Yes, it's very skewed - DDG's userbase is privacy-focused. But "tiny but super vocal butt-hurt minority" is a shitty and antagonistic way to describes people's perfectly valid dislike of this planet-burning technology.

Asking in good faith: If non-local AI features were able to operate in an ecologically viable way, would you then not dislike AI? Are there other aspects about ML/AI that keep you from engaging with it?

I've already answered the bulk of this here, so no point repeating it: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/valve-tweak-steam-ai-disclosure-form-for-developers-to-clarify-its-for-content-consumed-by-players/?comment_id=288587.

To answer you more specifically, a few of those issues I outlined could definitely be addressed, yes. Will they? Probably not. I suspect the ship has sailed on most of them, such as plagiarism / non-attribution. We'll see.

Quoting: NociferAI is selling like hotcakes, so Mozilla have decided that they need to provide these cool new trendy AI features out of the box

I don't actually think that's the case. Which is why they're adding adverts to ChatGPT, for instance, and also see Satya Nadella's plea that more people need to use it. Perhaps it's selling better in the Enterprise/Corporate world, and maybe that will fuel the AI growth that Nadella is desperate for - but you should be going into any AI tool with eyes wide open here - this technology is front-loaded. It is NOT paying for itself, and so it will either become heavily subsided by adverts, or sustained by a significant monthly subscription.

And the advertising element gives me serious concerns. It's bad enough that I'm profiled by Google via email, calendar appointments or searches... imagine what insight ChatGPT would get if it had all my "private" conversations with a chatbot over years of use. Does ChatGPT have an incognito mode? Yes, it does. Do you trust it? I don't.

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I seriously hope all the AI enthusiasts just hook up to that thing and stay there. 😝

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Quoting: QuadrantThreeA sizable portion of it is probably from Unreal Engine. UE5 is currently the industry standard game engine, being used by both indie and AAA. Unfortunately, UE5 being the popular engine also means more money goes to Tim Sweeney.

It's just the third party purchases from the store - licensing fees for the engine would be extra.

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It probably means new AMD GPUs are also not going to come out until 2027.

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Ripped from the headlines of tomorrow: "xAI revealed Project Grokie - their new experiment to have generative AI create exploitable interactive worlds"

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Quoting: kuhpunktI'd be curious how much of those $400 million even ended up in Epic's pockets.

Technically they take 12% - so 48 million would be the maximum. But they don't charge for the first million at all. And then they have that reward system as well where you get money back for your next purchase. Wasn't that like 20%?

How much money have they lost running the store this year?

A sizable portion of it is probably from Unreal Engine. UE5 is currently the industry standard game engine, being used by both indie and AAA. Unfortunately, UE5 being the popular engine also means more money goes to Tim Sweeney.

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Quoting: ArehandoroSame. I read, on RPS I think, that the Frame could probably be also around that. I hope that doesn't mean that the controller will go up to the $100 mark.

While I don't know what they are going to charge for the controller, I am pretty sure that it doesn't use any kind of memory, so it should not be directly impacted by the current insanity regarding prices.

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Quoting: ArehandoroUnEpic however is a great Metroidvania parody (although the humour is very teenager-stoner like 😅)

I was about to post the same. And the humor is what makes it so fun. 😄

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Quoting: neolithYou guys know about Valve Time, right? 😆
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

yes, that's why valve is also releasing the ' Zimmer-Frame ' to account for the time it will take to release the product.

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Imagine the computation cost of that nonsense 🤣

"Heat a village by creating slop"

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Quoting: beko

Quoting: LoftyWhen you say you use ReShade is this on Linux ? Why is is needed for this, i get that OpenTrack is needed for head movements. What is handling the 3D'ification of the XR glasses for games.

Sorry for the late reply. Must have missed the notification mail. There are various shaders for ReShade that split and shift the image for stereoscopic 3d. This requires access to z-depth buffer maps (and sometimes it picks up the wrong but this can be fine tuned per game).

External Media: You need to be logged in to view this.

In theory this could also be done with Vulkan but vkBasalt (which seems to be rather dead?) does not expose the depth maps at all so it's either native SBS or SBS with e.g. the Depth3D shader. ReShade requires DirectX so this works AFAIK(!) only for Windows games and this also works fine via Proton where the render pipeline with Wine/Proton looks like this: DirectX => ReShade => Vulkan.

The steps to get this running are exactly the same as on Windows. Install ReShade, fire the game up with the DLL overrides and configure the paths to the shader folder. There is a nifty script on Github that eases the process but it is really not required.

Thanks 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.

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With Firefox's shrinking market share, they better start listening to the users they have left. This could have been an extension so those who want AI can add it, it also would keep the browser from getting bloated with frivolous features.

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Quoting: ArehandoroIf we're too late to say "Happy New year" to friends we see for the first time in 2026, we are too late to say "Early 2026" for this as well. Or maybe May counts as early as it's in the first half of the year? Do they mean early financial year?

P.S: I'd like the devices out now, please.

In some interviews during the first hands on reports Valve said it would launch in Q1. Does that mean it will still happen that early? Not really. But that was their target.

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Quoting: kuhpunktYou're just playing a video stream, not a static product. Nothing "exists" here. It's just so dumb.

in before speed running Google maps.

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I'd be curious how much of those $400 million even ended up in Epic's pockets.

Technically they take 12% - so 48 million would be the maximum. But they don't charge for the first million at all. And then they have that reward system as well where you get money back for your next purchase. Wasn't that like 20%?

How much money have they lost running the store this year?

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Quoting: SzkodnixI'm still worried about the price. Even the most pessimistic scenario of $1,000 is becoming less and less realistic option.

Same. I read, on RPS I think, that the Frame could probably be also around that. I hope that doesn't mean that the controller will go up to the $100 mark.

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I have every expectation that Genie will turn out to be a giant nothingburger in the end, which will not be adopted in any significant way by game companies save to use as a threat against workers wanting decent wages. Then in a couple of years Google will quietly make it go away and never mention it again.

In terms of functionality I don't expect it to be able to create more than short, inconsistent clips (much like the "top of the line" video generators out there), and it will not fit into *any* existing workflows, requiring great disruption even if it did work.

Executives probably love the idea though.

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That 'ultra AI subscription' is about $250 a month. I guess they have to pay for their graphics chips. Maybe a subscriber could use it to code games that work on integrated graphics?

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🤬

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What I don't understand... if they are so hard into pushing AI at any cost, why aren't they just telling their AI to use one of the pre-existing engines like Godot or Unity or Unreal or whatever... and let the AI design levels and missions or whatever.

This crap that they are doing here is just mental. You're just playing a video stream, not a static product. Nothing "exists" here. It's just so dumb.

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Quoting: scorp10n2000Why would anyone want to buy games on Un-Epic (shit)Store? 🤔

I only buy games on Steam and GOG.

UnEpic however is a great Metroidvania parody (although the humour is very teenager-stoner like 😅)

I also buy only on Steam and GOG.

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Quoting: williamjcmThe reason the third-party sale numbers increased by that much is because they now include VAT, while previous years didn't include it to my knowledge.

That makes no sense, where in the world do we have 57% VAT?

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A 57% increase from a low number still results in a low number. I'm all for competition but I have zero interest in EGS and all the drama around it. I'm not creating an account there no matter how many games they give away.

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The reason the third-party sale numbers increased by that much is because they now include VAT, while previous years didn't include it to my knowledge.

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Avid Civ player here and I like that they tried something a little different adding some extra spice to the game. I will also adjust to the next change and I welcome it that they still tune the experience and boy I could not be happier: The Linux native build using Vulkan is rock stable for me. This is simply not a given.

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

Every.
Single.
Time.

😩

Remember this when Civ VIII eventually happens - that is if the review bombing doesn't break their necks. This is a perfectly fine Civ! It makes me click just one more turn, like all Civs before - just a little different, more beautiful and even with plenty of QoL improvements (heck that UI scaler is awesome)!

Is it expensive? Yes! It's catering to an absolute NICHE in a heavily saturated market and they keep improving it. IMHO review bombing because of the _costs_ should not be allowed at all.

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