Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI love how much of a difference it has made to the desktop overall, even down to work on Wayland protocols.

I think that the knock-on effects of the Steam Deck have turned out to be the Linux equivalent to Microsoft throwing money at claiming Windows 95 was a viable platform for gaming (in spite of its never-fixed bugs with redbook audio and all that :tongue:) - except done right by actually investing in addressing the issues. :smile:

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That Linux fix is especially good, because honestly I thought I was going mad with how Steam was being so unresponsive lately, and couldn't figure out what was causing it and it seems others I spoke to saw it working fine. Turns out it was a bug and now it's fixed.

Oh thank God that wasn't just me! It's been driving me mental, too! :dizzy:

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Quoting: StoneColdSpiderJust looking at the gifs I can hear the music....... [External Link]

Quite fond of both Deja Vu and The Top [External Link], myself. :grin:

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAsk users, Is This Game a Good Experience? and Do You Agree With Our Rating? once in a while. With enough reports, Valve could get testers to re-investigate.

The Steam Deck occasionally asks if your experience with Verified games matches Valve's rating, but not often enough, and it's only for Verified titles, not any other rating.

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Quoting: PyreticThe problem seems to be that Valve doesn't really give games a second pass once they've gone through the Verification process once, unless the game is popular enough for Valve to notice.

The oddest thing is, I've got a delisted shut-down free-to-play game in my library that's definitely had multiple passes because they've both given it a rating and then changed it since it was delisted. It's been bizarre to see.

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Quoting: EikeI wasn't even aware paying for emulators is a thing.

I got into emulation due to the attention that Sony drew to bleem! with their lawsuits - bleem! was a paid emulator (as was its "bleem!4DC" variant for the Dreamcast), as was the Mac equivalent, Connectix Virtual Game Station, which Sony also lawsuited before that.

It certainly was a thing that happened in the gaming space, and I'm sure that paid emulation solutions must've existed in the business space, too.

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Quoting: EikeHe, that's funny... I clicked on the link to Steam, and Steam though I'd be in my recommendation list and showed a link to the next entry. :D

That's happened to me a few times, too - it's always amusing. :grin:

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Quoting: LupertEverettHere is an excellent writeup that I've stumbled upon. [External Link] I find it hard to symphatise with them after reading this.

That was incredibly eye-opening - particularly the bit about Yuzu's telemetry-data apparently being handed over to Nintendo as part of this settlement. Good luck to everybody who used it. :sick:

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Quoting: ElectricPrismOn the switch hardware note, the first time I held a Switch I noticed how tiny all the buttons and joysticks are. I'm sure it's okay for kids, women, asians, and people with smaller hands --

Woman-gamer here, and I can honestly say it's not ok for me either - the Switch is too damn thin, and it hurt my hands and wrists quite a lot.

The button/stick sizes were fine, though. But keep in mind that one of the handhelds in my fleet is this tiny little thing;


:tongue:

Quoting: ElectricPrismbut it seemed like the joysticks had poor resistance, the material seemed like it would degrade easy, and I could see medium or big hands cramping up on that.

They're incredibly badly-designed - using them causes the insides of the sticks to scrape away at some metal plating underneath, and this then builds up and causes the sticks to drift (i.e., make unwanted inputs). Spraying contact-cleaner into them helps briefly, but before too long you're forced to outright replace the sticks, thus creating unnecessary waste.

Nintendo claims that this poorly-made solution was unavoidable because they had to create analogue sticks for a portable device. This annoys me to the extreme because the Nintendo 3DS had a very elegant solution for this with its "Circle Pad", which was precise and extremely durable, and could stand up to thousands of hours of intense use.

Quoting: ElectricPrismFor me the Steam Deck felt lightyears ahead in terms of comfort.

It definitely is. The ergonomics are so well-thought-out. It's my ideal handheld, honestly.

Quoting: ElectricPrismAnd then when the Steam Deck OLED came along it felt like the reduction in weight made it even more comfortable.

I can't look at OLEDs because my eyes are very sensitive to the flickering they use which causes terrible migraines and eye-pain (I was the same with CRTs, ouch), but I'm glad it was an improvement in other areas. :grin:

Quoting: ElectricPrismAll in all -- I think the perfect Steam Deck could shink 10-15% and stay the same weight and reduce the border, but that would be a optimization, I can't think of any above minor criticism I have against SD.

Yep, I see it the same way.

My taste in games makes me hope to see a "Steam Deck Pocket" at some point, but even if it doesn't happen I think I've already got the ideal machine as it comes.

Quoting: ElectricPrismI hope you didn't have to buy that warranty only to be screwed by it later, this was part of my experience many years ago. I'm so thankful for PC and the ability to play my 1998 StarCraft and other games nearly 30 years later.

Oh absolutely not! I took one look at the repair prices and learned how to do it myself (I used to collect watches as a kid, and often took them apart and put them back together again, so it wasn't a big deal for me - but normal users shouldn't be expected to do that!). Much cheaper, but also totally shoddy and shocking that this has been allowed to happen in the first place; The precedent set by people's acceptance of Microsoft's behaviour with the Xbox 360 directly led to this.

A class-action lawsuit in the US let Nintendo off because they assumed that all users were children (not even close to true) whose parents accepted the EULA on their behalf, and that the EULA covered the hardware defect they knowingly launched with and to this day have never fixed through various revisions.

Quoting: melkemindTheir actual argument against Yuzu is from a different part of the DMCA (Section 1201), which prevents the circumvention of TPMs (technological protection measures). This is the same argument they used against Dolphin Emulator when they convinced Valve to block it from the Steam store.

My understanding is that Yuzu doesn't ship with anything that does that (they need to be user-provided), whereas Dolphin does.

Also, it was Valve who alerted Nintendo to the Dolphin thing - Nintendo didn't convince them of anything. :wink:

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Quoting: ElectricPrismI would love to root for Nintendo but they need to make some changes for me to vote with my dollar. Anti-consumerism shouldn't be rewarded in my opinion.

Nintendo lost me completely for various reasons*, and these latest shenanigans feel like a final "final straw" to me, on top of already having ditched them. :tongue: I can't imagine any change they could possibly make that would cause me to consider their products again.

*For example, they took all of my favourites off in directions I don't enjoy or stopped making them entirely, and they also started leaning way too much on overpriced subscriptions and often-pre-planned DLC, sometimes whilst also releasing unfinished and buggy games. And then the Switch hardware was incredibly poorly-built and I got sick of having to repair carefully-handled in-warranty gear (in the UK, they didn't cover the design faults under warranty until much more recently, and the repair-costs were identical to buying new replacements). It was a love/hate thing for years, and I already found there to be an ever-decreasing number of games I wanted to buy even before all of that, so it was inevitable that I'd end up taking my entertainment-money elsewhere eventually.

Quoting: ElectricPrismEdit: Also this may seem odd, but thank you for having contrary opinion, it's only through discussion and scrutiny that we can add contrast to what we believe is true and learn anything at all.

Glad to share it! I do totally agree with everything you said, though - it's just that there's zero evidence that Nintendo is in any financial difficulty, hence why I pointed it out. :smile:

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