If I can get the game DRM free at a reasonable price, I'm not going to pirate it -- even if the cracked, pirated copy is readily available. Piracy has been demonstrated to be a non-issue by GOG, itch.io and many of the indie developers.

The piracy paranoia that many publishers suffer from is a trust issue. Trust is the basis of a good business relationship. IMO, by telling consumers you don't trust them, you're just encouraging a bad relationship -- thus, piracy.

It has been said before, that most people who pirate were never going to buy that game/book/music anyway. Imposing DRM is just wasting a lot of time, energy and money on people that will never be their customers under any circumstances. By punishing their trustworthy customers, they're just increasing the chances of losing even more sales. It's unfortunate that some publishers cannot comprehend that.

"Piracy is a service issue."

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I, for one, get no nostalgia from seeing this name. I will forever remember Acclaim as the despicable company that ran one of the best comic book companies into the ground and then raped and pillaged their assets, before collapsing into much deserved bankruptcy themselves. The name holds no cache for me.

:angry:

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I'm sure that many of you hardcore gamers might disagree, but I don't understand this drive by developers to continuously force hardware upgrades on prospective customers anymore. It's going to start costing them customers.

Frankly, I've played AC2 and watched videos for Black Flag and Syndicate on "retro" hardware. I find the graphics in AC2 to be amazing. The same for the videos of the other two.

I honestly don't see any need to improve the graphics further. In terms of resolution, I've always felt that 720p/800p was good enough. Even though I have a 1080p screen, I usually set my resolution down to 720p anyway -- just to gain better game performance. IMO, developers should focus on story quality and a better gameplay experience instead.

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This is really good news! Installing GOverlay in Ubuntu looked like too much work, so I never bothered. I'll have to give this new AppImage a try ...

Edit [Mar07]: Sadly, no such luck. The AppImage didn't even launch. AppImagelauncher detected it, then ... nothing. I'll have to see if I can launch it via terminal to get a activity log.

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@Blisto

which game and GPU are you having issues with? dxvk-nvapi shouldn't be causing trouble.

The game was the GOG version of Styx: Shards Of Darkness.

Checking my notes (I keep notes for every game I install in Linux), I think it was on my old "gaming" laptop, which had an Nvidia GeForce GT 730M dGPU. The game stuttered and eventually crashed until I disabled DXVK-NVAPI. The 730M had other problems, as it was stuck on the 470 series driver and had incomplete dx11 support in Linux. I ended playing the game in Win10 because the driver had complete dx11 support there.

In retrospect, it may be more likely that the 730M's incomplete Vulkan support (up to 1.2 only) was the reason that DXVK-NVAPI had issues.

My current "gaming" laptop has an Nvidia GeForce MX150 dGPU. When I installed the game, I never bothered to test DXVK-NVAPI. I just disabled it. The game runs nicely with full dx11 support in Linux.

Are there any appreciable benefits to utilizing DXVK-NVAPI?

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Additionally, our Forum was closed in December 2024 due to the UK's new wide-reaching Online Safety Act. Not many at all actually used it as most of the community is on Discord

I understand your reasons and fully support your decisions but unfortunately it excludes those of us that don't do social media.

:sad:

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DXVK-NVAPI Enabled by default for NVIDIA GPU users on Linux.

Lutris has been doing this for a while. This feature is an annoyance for me. My Nvidia dGPU predates NVAPI. I have to make sure this feature is disabled to avoid poor performance that eventually leads to games crashing. It took me quite a while to figure out what was causing the problem. Made worse by the fact that most of the games I play are not enabled for NVAPI, so the game that was enabled for it took me by surprise.

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@ElectricPrism

Why has the state been allowed to monopolize power production and socialize it under their direct control with none of the responsibilities.

This makes no sense. Do you think that private, for-profit operators would handle it any better? Trust me, they wouldn't. I lived in a region where the government decided to privatize power production and distribution. It was a constantly escalating, expensive mess -- especially for the end users!

In fact, your quote applies better to private operators than it does to public ones. Private operators are happy to enjoy the profits while lobbing all the costs onto the government. Some utilities are better handled by the government. This is not socialist, just efficient. Better to keep this sector out of the hands of the shareholders, in my opinion.

@Pyretic

Is it not concerning to anyone else how many of these we've had in recent years?

Absolutely, but that's climate change, my friend! We're just going to have to adapt to it, I suspect. (I do sympathize with the Californians this affected, however.)

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The interior of British Columbia, Canada got hit hard a few years back. It was partly due to the extremely dry weather that year and partly due to the extensive amount of standing beetle-kill as well. Add a thunderstorm, a careless camper or roadside smoker (all too common!) and it was a catastrophe in the making.

The other factor that they never really talk about is the forest management in the first place. They level (strip-mine?) whole areas, burn away piles of all the unwanted trees (usually deciduous), and then plant an undiversified monoculture of softwood/evergreen trees (spruce, pine or fir). Softwood trees go up like Roman candles in a fire event, live or dead. In a natural forest, the interspersed deciduous trees help to slow the spread of a forest fire. In a unnatural monoculture, the fire just sweeps across the area.

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@eswan
Make no mistake, the DLC was planned during the design phase of the game and not an idea that just happened to come to them after the core game's release.

@phil995511

without thinking for a single moment that 2K would sabotage this game like they did...

Not the least bit surprised, myself. They've done it before.

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