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Latest Comments by dibz
Get a free copy of Prey with Prime Gaming
5 July 2023 at 2:48 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: HJ
Quoting: Jarmer
Quoting: HJThat isn't Prey though, it's Prey (2017)

I honestly think this idiotic naming convention is one of the big reasons it had mediocre sales. It was an AMAZING game (still my all time fav from Arkane) but I think a ton of people just thought it was a remake of the 2006 game. The former game was average at best, but when people saw the same name and looked at a screenshot and saw it was an fps, they just passed on it.

ho ho, that might have been the reason but for me it was quite the opposite - i thought it was a remake/reboot/continuation of 2006 game but turns out it has nothing to do with it which just makes me angry because i liked original game, so I just ignore it entirely. At least Doom 4 and Tomb Raider remake have something to do with original, Prey and Prey (2017) have about as much in common as Quake and Quake 2, it's just developer/publisher reusing their trademarks/copyrights.

Well, it's the publisher's fault in this case, it's actually a pretty well-known story. Bethesda forced Arkane Studios to use the name Prey for Prey (2017), despite them being very much against it.

Overkill drops Linux support for PAYDAY 2
12 June 2023 at 4:34 pm UTC

Honestly I bet it's as simple as something like they outsourced adding EOS to Payday 2's engine, and whoever they outsourced it to was incapable or unwilling to handle the Linux version be it a branch/fork/whatever. Plus money, things are always related to money somehow, lol. Heck, a project manager could've simply assigned the task to a Junior Developer who balked at Linux and that was that.

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
30 May 2023 at 6:30 pm UTC Likes: 1

Honestly I'm not sure why Nintendo keeps getting vilified for this, while there is a lot to be annoyed about with them, in this specific instance, they honestly seem to be in the right to me.

My understanding is they don't care about the emulator itself, they care about the encryption key specifically. Many emulators do not include things like that for this very reason, and I think most people were likely unaware that Dolphin did/does. I'm fairly sure if Dolphin wasn't distributing that then there would be no issue here.

I'm a little baffled that the Dolphin team thought courting this kind of attention while knowing a key like that was in their public source code would end well. Queue literally any meme for "Surprised <animal>".

It's not that surprising to me that Nintendo hasn't come after them until now. This is the first time it's been on a storefront, even if it's free. They typically only go after things that potentially involve money, even if there isn't any there (remember that youtube etc COUNTs). They never sold the emulator or anything related to it as far as I know. The Dolphin team just stepped over a line -- to the surprise of absolutely nobody.

I really don't get why they wanted it on Steam anyway, maybe to make Steam Deck installation easier? Otherwise it's kind of an awful way to handle emulators...

Goodbye to Roblox on Linux with their new anti-cheat and Wine blocking
9 May 2023 at 2:41 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: pogofe
Quoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback, marginally better than post-development ports;
2) Keep in mind that Steam provides a "Review" feature.

This will only happen when enough PC users change from Windows to Linux systems. And that will only happen when people feel like everything they need is on a linux system with easy access to it and great user experience. That's why things like proton/wine exists in first place.

Other than that, I don't get why they don't want to support linux, since Roblox is available on Android, which is a linux based system and is more close to SteamOS than Windows is. I don't think a linux port would be that hard to do, unless the armv8/x64 differences are the main problem to tackle.

I would guess it was probably recommended by their anti-cheat vendor. There is a stigma around linux that that's where the cheaters are, and that it makes it easier for "hackers" to attack the game. Honestly it's pretty similar in thinking that cloud storage companies intentionally don't release clients for linux, because there is a stigma that linux users are more likely to be heavy users. Frankly, there is probably at least a little truth to both.

I hate to tell whoever needs to hear it, but at least with cheaters, if they're good at linux w/ cheating they're going to be good at cheating in Windows too.

Goodbye to Roblox on Linux with their new anti-cheat and Wine blocking
9 May 2023 at 2:22 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: IzaicThat's how these changes generally seem to go. "Oh we broke wine? Oh well. But don't worry!" And then later after release: "Oops, time to worry! We justbwont be supporting Linux at all."
This doesn't sound like they accidentally broke Roblox on Wine, but, rather, they intentionally stopped it from working.

I believe I read that on another site actually. It's not that anti-cheat simply won't work but apparently the new update intentionally blocks running through Wine. Which, as nobody would fail to notice knowing that, their "official response" skirts around entirely -- the fact that they're outright blocking it from working. Thankfully, I have never been a fan of the game and haven't allowed my kids to play it for years now due to how toxic and exploitative the game is (though my original reason for blocking it was primarily how toxic it was when observing my kid playing it on occasion).

Picma - Picture Enigmas gets a free Steam release, lots of Picross styled puzzles
18 April 2023 at 7:52 pm UTC Likes: 4

I tried it today, before I saw this article actually, and the monetization severely put me off. It seems like a fun game from the little bit I played, but I'll absolutely be removing this from my library due to the lack of a one-time purchase option (for a reasonable price).

GOG giving away Deep Sky Derelicts during the finale of their Spring Sale
31 March 2023 at 9:36 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: StoneColdSpiderMan so many free games I will instantly forget about cause they are on GOG and not Steam.......

Amen to that. Though, perhaps not that oddly, the recent Windows 7 Steam announcement will probably get me to revisit a bunch of my GOG games. I still use a laptop with a 32-bit processor that can't upgrade to Windows 10 because of that, so games that were working just fine before will eventually stop working for me on that laptop. Except the GOG versions, which should continue to work fine.

Fresh Steam Deck and Steam desktop Beta, Valve dropping old Windows support
28 March 2023 at 4:06 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: rcritNot that I have a lot of sympathy for Windows users but dropping 7 is going to be hard pill to swallow for some. The 10/11 compatibility with some games is apparently pretty bad.
This is that moment, you sit back and notice: You have better "Windows games" compatibility on modern Linux than modern Windows.

That's not a new thing either, Wine has been pretty magic like that for a long time.

Ubuntu flavours to drop Flatpak by default and stick to Snaps
23 February 2023 at 3:45 pm UTC Likes: 3

I honestly don't know why people recommend Ubuntu over Mint, or some other long-established-well-maintained fork.

Forspoken gets an update to improve Steam Deck performance
1 February 2023 at 3:29 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: slaapliedjeThere was some talk about this for Launchbox (emulator front end) to be ported to Linux, and the developers have mostly said that the Linux development tools just aren't as good... though I tend to think it is more like 'it isn't as good for the language that we chose to write things in', as development tools under Linux have always seemed superior to me over Windows.

I believe the issue with Launchbox is it's written in .Net and specifically WPF. WPF in particular is very much windows only. Dotnet GUI applications are pretty much garbage on Linux, you can do it, but you have to develop and plan for it from the start, and each major Dotnet version changes what that means entirely.

There are plenty of good ways to develop cross platform things with GUIs, but not really if you're a .Net WPF developer.