Warren Spector has a series of blog posts [External Link] about what immersive sims (“Player Powered”) mean to him. They're quite detailed, and worth a read if you're interested in that kind of thing.

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Went to put this on my wishlist and... it's already on my wishlist. Guess I'm quite interested in this one.

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Quoting: DarkhoggThe Proton trick works but the game slows down considerably for me, so let's hope they fix it...

From the bug report, it seems the shaders aren't being run (which is why those pixels are just FF00FF rather than whatever the shader is supposed to provide). When the bug is fixed you'll likely have the same performance natively as when you're running the game in Proton now, since your GPU will be running those shaders rather than skipping them.

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Quoting: NyxWasn't this in relation to Lost Ark, which was blocked in countries that had outlawed lootboxes, as they wanted their MTX sales?

No. The formal proceedings started in 2017. Valve say that the investigation started in 2013, and that they stopped doing the regional blocking (except in cases of legal requirements, like Germany's content laws) in 2015. Lost Ark didn't release in Europe till 2022.

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Quoting: GuestCorrect me if I am wrong, but EU comission ruling is against regional pricing, not against regional blocking.

No, it's about the blocking. An EU citizen getting lower prices buying elsewhere in the EU is Working As Intended as far as they're concerned. What they really don't want are barriers to goods and services. Like these. Or, as they put it, "today's sanctions against the "geo-blocking" practices of Valve and five PC video game publishers serve as a reminder that under EU competition law, companies are prohibited from contractually restricting cross-border sales. Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU Digital Single Market and of the opportunity to shop around for the most suitable offer in the EU."

The EU Commission made a handy picture previously



that Liam included in his earlier coverage.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou are always a veritable mine of relevant information.

Survivorship bias: the times when I haven't got something useful to say, I try not to say anything.

In this case, it was really from reading Liam's prior coverage.

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To sum up Valve tried blocking people buying games in different EU regions to get them cheaper, which is a breach of EU rules.

To be clear, it wasn't an action by Valve as such, and it wasn't sales on Steam. The publishers had their region restrictions on sales (which aren't allowed within the EU) and gave out Steam keys (for which Valve didn't get money); the publishers used Steam's region locks to prevent activation of those EU keys elsewhere within the EU, and Valve let them. That's why Valve got fined, but that's also why the fine is quite small. Valve subsequently fixed their tools so that publishers can't prevent activation within the EU of something sold within the EU, so it's just that historical breach.

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Quoting: M@GOidNice. Loved the first game. Finished it about 3 times. It scratched my itch for a new puzzle game after Portal 2.

But without Linux native support, I would only take it on a Steam sale when it will be heavily discounted, a couple years from launch.

Same. And it was one of the first games that my now-seven-year-old loved. But we'll be waiting either till it gets native support or gets 75% off (assuming it gets the Deck Verified green tick) - whichever happens first.

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Crimsonland [External Link] and Neon Chrome [External Link] are both good. Tesla vs Lovecraft [External Link] is also good, but isn't in the sale.

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Quoting: tuubiBut forwards in a 3D game is "into" the screen, along the z-axis, not towards the top of the screen. And on the Deck that would mean towards the bottom or back of the device. It would be different if the screen flipped up like one of those laptop-shaped GPD devices. Or the Nintendo thingies with the flip screen. (Handhelds and consoles in general aren't my cup of tea.)

We agree, and apparently so now does Valve: the orientation of a device with a screen - which defines the other axes - has into the screen as forwards (the front of the plane in the image above).

Quoting: tuubiMaybe I don't quite grasp what you mean, but I don't see how I could hold any of my modern gamepads in an upright position, as in the bumpers / shoulder buttons facing the ceiling, unless I pull the controller right up to my chin. I hold them on my lap, thumbsticks pointing up.

They aren't pointing up so much as pointing towards you. Modern controller grips fit into the palm so that the controller is oriented in a way that means that they're facing you wherever they are in a circle centred on your head/shoulders, which means they're generally going to be oriented at around 45° to the ground. You're looking at the face of the controller, not the bottom of the controller. So there's no reason to define the axes of a controller without a screen any differently to the one correct way of defining the axes of a controller with a screen: the forward direction is into the controller's face. That's what I mean by "more upright than flat." The N64 controller was different, in that the shape of the grips did orient the controller away from the user so that it was mostly parallel to the ground.

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