I'm a little surprised that the Build Your Own Killer Bundle deal was stuck in here as a footnote, when it's arguably one of the best bundles Fanatical has ever had and deserves its own separate article IMHO. I picked up 20 games for £18.04 (use OMENVIP promo code to get 5% code at checkout), so that's 90p each and I counted 7 games with an RRP of £30 or more (my RRP total for the 20 games was £479!).

No idea why Liam didn't highlight Strange Brigade Deluxe Edition as the standout either - 90p for a AAA game that's still selling for £64.99 on Steam? Surely one of the bargains of year?!

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I'd have thought the first step would be to make sure that libraries (of any bit size) are definitely in their own *-libs RPM and not included in the main RPM package. Once that's been confirmed, then simply stop building all non-libs 32-bit RPMs as the next step (we don't need 32-bit binaries, only 32-bit libraries). I believe Fedora currently builds the entire set of RPMs as both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, which is unnecessary at this moment in time.

Once we're down to just 32-bit libraries and no other 32-bit RPMs, then some discussion is needed as to which 32-bit libraries are used by 32-bit applications outside of the Fedora ecosystem such as Steam and other proprietary applications/games (both Windows and particularly native Linux). It might be that WOW64 can work flawlessly and play 32-bit Windows games on Linux via Proton, which would cut out the need to audit/keep a bunch of 32-bit libraries.

You do feel that eventually all 32-bit libraries would have to be dropped from distros and workarounds used like WOW64 or having to ship 32-bit libraries with, say, Steam Linux runtimes/Proton to be able to run 32-bit applications/games. Yes, I could see Steam being a 32-bit Linux native app launcher (rather than just for 32-bit games) because we're not going to see Flatpaks for proprietary 32-bit Linux applications (of which there probably aren't many outside of some old games).

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The current Steam prices for the now pretty old individual FlatOut games are arguably a bit higher than they should be, particularly the 8-year-old FlatOut 4 which is still selling for £24.99 and has mixed reviews (better than Flatout 3 though, which pretty well everyone hated).
The best buy at the moment is the 4-game "Complete Pack" (not complete really - no FlatOut 4) for the price (£6.99) of just one game until 19th June: https://store.steampowered.com/sub/12467/ [External Link]

I've got all 5 FlatOut games (bought very cheaply of course) and installed both FlatOut 1 and 2 on my LCD Steam Deck to try out the new changes. Being pretty old games, they ran smoothly at 60 fps and what few controller inputs I needed (am I the only who doesn't use the brake in FlatOut games? I just ease off the accelerator just before the bends) seemed fine to me. Both games were fun, with FlatOut 2 feeling a bit more polished than 1 - both games had "rubberbanding" (AI cars slow down if they're ahead of you and speed up if they're behind you), but I don't actually mind that in this sort of crash/bang/wallop type of game.

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Nobody's mentioned it here and I wonder how many Windows 10 users know about it, but there's a one-year-only Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for $30 for Windows 10 Home users - I think it's the first time they've offered it to consumers rather than just businesses. It gives you exactly one year of security-only updates to Windows 10, but after October 2026, ESU ends.

I suspect that if people haven't switched to Linux by now, this End of 10 campaign isn't going to persuade many people to try Linux. People are clearly clinging to Windows 10 because they want to stay on that particular OS release - they're far more likely to pay the $30 (or nothing at all and run Windows 10 insecurely) than install a different OS. Remember that the vast majority of Windows users have never installed an OS from scratch (and that includes Windows itself!).

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We need this system on humble bundle. ;-)

I'm not a fan of Humble Bundle because they don't allow you to pick and choose the games you want (never mind that some of their bundles can start at a mid-price and end up quite highly priced for the top tier). Fanatical do it properly - many of their bundles are "pick your own" where their tiers cost less per game the higher the tier you go, allow you to pick any games to reach each tier and if you're inbetween tiers, they'll charge you for those inbetween games at the highest tier rate you already reached. It's why I buy 10 Fanatical bundles for every 1 Humble bundle!

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The Bridge Constructor games are on offer on Steam at the moment with 92% off on individual games. If you don't have any of them, the 5 game + 2 DLC bundle for £3.32 is a good deal (I bought it a few days ago): https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/13383/Bridge_Constructor_Bundle/ [External Link]

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As far as game compatibility goes (mainly anti-cheat), I do think Valve should offer a Proton/Linux "bonus" to game developers - some reduction in Valve's 30% take if the developer announces that the game is officially fully supported with either Proton or native Linux (maybe an extra 1% off for Linux compared to Proton which might start a shift away from relying so heavily on Proton). We probably want Proton and Penguin (Linux) logos in the store for this to properly differentiate the two runtimes.

A Steam Controller 2 is an obvious must, but I think - assuming installable SteamOS 3 has been released - Valve should also look to pair up with OEMs for, yep, Steam Machines 2.0. Have OEMs offer a Steam Machine version of their most popular desktop/laptops and throw in a free or subsidised Steam Controller 2 - all on the same product page as the Windows version as a simple radio button. I remain unconvinced that Valve will sell a huge number of Steam Machines on its own - it doesn't have the economies of scale or distribution network to match the biggest OEMs.

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Racing is my favourite gaming genre, so predictably I had a few of these already. Still managed to find 8 of these to buy, with surely WRC 10 with a current Steam price of £39.90 - a bit steep for a game over 3 years old - being the star purchase that I picked up (it worked perfectly on my Linux desktop).

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It kind of reminds of a more hi-tech version of the long-discontinued Pertelian X2040, which I had to write code to display stuff on (not as easy as it sounds!) for our company's clock in-out system (we're still using that display to this day, which - yes - was scary enough for me to code a fallback using ncurses to a normal display just in case). See: https://www.quietpc.com/pertelian-x2040 [External Link]

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I bought just the base game for 77p and then also picked up 4 free DLC that are listed on the Steam game page (there's supposed to be a 5th free DLC if you look at the DLC list, but it looks like it's been withdrawn).

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