Quoting: Mountain ManI can remember the early days when there was only a handful of native Linux games in Steam. How far we've come.

The only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

Quoting: Pengling

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

A handful of classics via RetroDECK [External Link], for my next grab-bag for the "Emulation Recommendations!" thread. Most notably, the always-catchy Bust-A-Groove [External Link] (PSX), the criminally-unknown Chippoke Ralph no Daibouken: The Adventure of Little Ralph [External Link] (PSX), and the alien-rescuing Cosmic Ark [External Link] (Atari 2600).

I've also been playing Saturn Bomberman [External Link] (Saturn, obviously :tongue:) and Super Bomberman R 2 [External Link] (Proton), and have been continuing to enjoy Stumble Guys [External Link] (Proton), which I play a little bit of every day. Can't wait to see what next month's crossover event will be! :grin:

Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something?

I've only encountered wonky ratings a few times. Most memorably;

• Hotshot Racing [External Link] was (and still is) marked as Unsupported but works completely perfectly out-of-the-box.


• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart [External Link] is Verified and immediately gave me all manner of game-breaking issues, ranging from showing question-marks instead of any kind of controller-glyphs, to random crashing, to the game handing over control before the intro had fully finished which caused the level to only partially load its geometry and not load its collision data at all which left Ratchet falling for eternity. It took way too much tweaking of settings to get it running acceptably and stably, and I cannot understand how it was given a Verified rating.

The latter left me finding Super Bomberman R 2's Playable rating to be a little bit galling, since it's perfect out-of-the-box in spite of the default resolution being 1920x1080 and the game not having Steam Deck controller-glyphs. :tongue:

Quoting: SamsaiLet it be known that I challenge Liam to a duel! My Shining Kuneko and Ramtasm will throw you in a Binvader!

Quoting: Woodlandor

Quoting: tfkSo, in layman terms, it does Bleep bloop Bleep instead of Bleep bloop bloop bloop Bleep, and that makes it faster?

That’s bleep-oulutley corr-bloop 🤖

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: grigiWhat do you think is a good cadence for updates? 3 years? 4 years? more?
The 8 year cadence of the switch is too long as it has definitely been losing developer interest in the last two years as it's too weak to support on multiplatform releases anymore.

It's far too long, the Switch was low-powered even at release and it has missed a fair amount of games as it's just not strong enough.

For the Deck 2, my suggestion there about announcing it late 2026, would mean a release in 2027. Making it about 5 years between Deck and Deck 2 which for a PC platform seems pretty darn reasonable to me, considering the Deck struggles a lot with newer games right now.

Quoting: Pyretic

Quoting: ToddLSounds like you're setting up for a LAN party (if that's still a thing) :wink:

Haha, if I need to! Hopefully, I can just use the LAN mode to connect two instances on the same machine

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: M@GOidI can enjoy a modern game that pays homage for ancient games from 20, 30 years ago. You feel nostalgic and stuff. Hollow Knight was released too recently for someone to be "paying homage" too it.

Those ancient games themselves were all copying each other's homework too, though - it's what grows genres. :wink:

We used to have the phrase "If you like that, you'll like this too." for a reason, before it became taboo for reasons I've never understood.

Quoting: Viesta2015so i really don't understand all the anger...

It feels to me like some indies are allowed a free pass for "Sticking it to THE MAN!", but others aren't for some reason, even though they're doing exactly what this industry has always done. :tongue: