I've been playing a lot of F1-2018, lately. I was a big fan of the Grand Prix series games in the early 2000's and just rediscovered the pleasure of playing F1 games, when I got it for free, couple of weeks ago.

Also, on last week "What have you been playing" thread, there was a discussion about Deus Ex games, and it made me want to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution which I did.. And I will probably start a new run of DE:MD too...

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Quoting: ElectricPrismIt's pretty similar to how you buy a ROM aka Ocarina of Time for say Nintendo Wii from their and it stops getting updates someday.

Yeah, I see your point. Still, I can play a fully featured version of Ocarina of Time on my Wii, if I have the determination. :wink:

In the case of BL2, it's not a hardware issue, it's the game that changed. You can still play BL2 fully on Windows, on the same hardware... It's just that dropping support for a platform, in the middle of a product cycle... I understand that it's a business decision, but... Totally open question that might even prove me wrong, have you ever seen that happen on another gaming platform? I don't have the answer to that question, I'm really curious to know...

Quoting: ElectricPrismI disagree, Proton is about creating "Containers" around games to preserve them. As long as they're not targeting a "Moving Target" and the game is in a static-state they seem to consistently knock down barriers and enable Games on a Steam Linux OS Platform.

I might not have been clear enough on this, you are right, and it's doing an awesome job. I was referring to new game releases... Aka Marvel's Avengers that is not working on day one and might never work on Proton. Wee need these AAA titles to break that 1% barrier and Linux needs to be at the lead for new features, not waiting on Proton to catch up on Windows features.

Quoting: ElectricPrismHonestly, I think it just underlines the hardships businesses are having this year from Corona-virus lockdowns. Adapting is hard.

They really should have never broken cross-platform compatibility.

As long as the core games still works I'm not a fan of bitching too hard. For me that's what I bought it for.

I assume you can play it via Proton if you want without too much hassle.

Totally true... That's why I used the term "sad". I'm not putting the blame on Aspyr. It's a business decision.

Still where Linux shines it's in dedicated appliances. As long as there won't be an hardware platform dedicated to a Linux gaming platform that represents the core business model, Linux gaming will always be an afterthought, imo. Microsoft's grip on the dekstop is way too strong. I don't think we'll ever see that 1% barrier being broken anytime soon, in the actual context.

If we make abstraction of who is behind the deal, if Google decided to offer a Stadia hardware console to compete with Xbox Series X and PS5, beside the streaming service (choose your solution), it might become a winning concept (because Stadia is a console in the cloud). I know, it would probably mean creating competition between 2 internal services, at Google... Quite weird, I admit... But I'm not sure it would mean targeting exactly the same "audience" either.

Oh well... Gamescope is still being actively developed, at Valve and SteamOS is regularly mentioned as the OS being used to develop it, so... Who knows? :smile:

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It's sad to see these "legacy" 2012-2016 native Linux ports (failed Steam Machines) falling into decay like this, one by one, but it's unfortunately not unexpected.

Proton is not the solution either... Linux gaming is still "dependent" on Windows, playing a game of trying to catch up with Windows' new gaming features, thus making Linux a perpetual second grade citizen. Still better than nothing, though.

It's just that it highlights the fact that no solutions are 100% thrustworthy. That's the saddest part, imo.

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Sure would be nice if those older hints of a new Steam Controller came true don't you think?

YES! PLEASE! Can't resolve myself to playing a shooter with a right stick. Total lack of precision!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: GuestI just hope old gpu prices goes down, but it never happens.

They'd really prefer to price gouge you at all points in time, not just at release.

All that needs to be done is:

a) passing laws that force companies (...).

How about the complete opposite? Throw away all laws that currently pose an obstacle to competitors, don't force companies to anything. New players on the market will appear trying hard to get their niche, boom, prices drop. This is actually happening with VR sets right now.

Creating more laws against businesses does not make things better for the consumers. It onerates the entire production chain and makes it harder for everyone to get that. And it keeps competitors away for the big players. That's exactly what you don't want to happen.

A big problem is that all the players in a market tend to end up being bought out by the larger players. That's basically just part of capitalism. (...)

And that happens because of the State -- specially laws and regulations --, not in spite of it. Big businesses do constantly skew the perception of the public to make it look like there is lack of regulations, and they win double by more and more obstacles which they are able to work with but not their smaller competitors. A freer market with no rules and thus no barrier against newcomers would be the best deterrent against monopolies. Sure, I understand there is a complex production chain, but these very same suppliers would benefit from more customers too, so it's not this chain that prevents competition. Conversely, it's hopeless to try and use the State against the big guys, they are best buddies and will use this whole perception to their profit.

Removing laws that prevent a business from polluting will suddenly stop pollution?

I guess we should make murder legal too so that all murder stops.

As for prices and wages, capitalism is a failure and laws are made in order to prop up capitalism from failing. Without laws such as anti-monopoly ones, you get monopolies. That is the natural order of things. You can't have infinite competition, especially on a finite planet, and that competition doesn't necessarily magically result in lower prices especially once you get duopolies/monopolies/etc because if the controllers of production seek higher prices then no one cares about trying to give cheap prices because that stops making them more money at a certain point (lowering prices more doesn't result in increased number of sales/money). The only thing that really kept capitalism afloat anytime in history where there weren't yet laws stopping them from doing evil things is because the controllers of production had morals.

It's not efficient to have ten different delivery trucks driving down a neighborhood street. It's the cheapest and most efficient to have ONE, and one that is owned by the people or has laws preventing profiteering so that everyone gets the cheapest service possible. As long as that service is democratically and decently managed like the USPS here in the U.S., it will always be the best system. The only way to have that kind of efficiency with capitalism would be to have a monopoly, but then you'd instantly get price gouging unless you had laws to ensure that they were fair and not abusive like that. Why have a mini economic dictatorship entity like that when you can have it democratized instead and owned by the workers or the public at large?

Capitalism ALWAYS results in monopolies and extreme profiteering without laws to stop the greed from spiralling out of control, but inevitably capitalism also corrupts the government to undermine all that which is why so many monopolies reign supreme right now because of corrupt governments.

Likewise, I can also argue that governments ALWAYS are susceptible to corruption and ineptitude, and that's why having watchdogged democratic governments to prevent such abuse is required.

So, you want fight monopoly with... monopoly? State is also monopol.

You do have a point. In theory, the advantage of the state is that it works for the public rather than private shareholders. The "shareholders" of the state is us. In practice, generally not so much. What's needed is deeper democracy, including in arenas currently considered off-limits to the concept because they're "the economy". Whether it's via a truly democratically controlled state, or democratically controlled companies (ie co-operatives) or some combination, what we need is that grand cliche that's so rarely tried: Power to the people.

My ancestors alredy tried it and we get out of totalitarian dictatorship of comunist party in 1989. Never again. We need free marked economy with minimal state. Not another example of horrible results with good intention.

First, I don't recall advocating anything resembling Soviet Communism, whose state and production were very much the opposite of democratically controlled. Second, bad though Soviet Communism was, when Russia stopped being Communist and introduced a free market economy with a minimalist state, people started dying like flies. The place went into freefall. Things didn't start going back to normal until they reasserted the authority of the state and went a bit more mixed.
Within capitalist countries it is noticeable that the most prosperous ones with the least poverty and misery are generally the least free-markety with the strongest states--the Nordics and such like. So I really don't think there's a strong case to be made for everyone imitating the US or some Baltic hellholes that caught the free market bug.

Unfortunately, politicians and people in general are making weird amalgams where it's black or white... There is no shade of grey between 100% capitalism and 100% communism. People are driven by their fears, which is a pretty bad thing.

There is social-democracy in Canada where people live quite happy and free (violence free too). It's not perfect, but it's not a shark pond either (no matter the side these sharks come from).

Seriously, I'm pretty happy to be Canadian, when I look to what's happening, right now, in the US...

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Quoting: FerroTiCI am really not looking forward to the times that label "sweet-spot mainstream graphic card" at 700 $, give or take a hundred.

It must not happen, else cloud gaming might become the real deal. Personnally, PC gaming will become a thing of the past, if it ever happens.

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Quoting: slaapliedje... Like 3DFx was huge back in the day, but they couldn't get a normal 2d/3d card out to save their lives, so nvidia bought them....

Or when ATI got bought by AMD... :wink:

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Quoting: ShmerlI'm waiting for RDNA 2 as well. Even if Nvidia will claim 3x increase in performance, it won't impress me until they'll upstream their drivers.

Seriously, I'm more hyped about the RX 5300 launch than this one. :grin:

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-quietly-launches-radeon-rx-5300-graphics-cards [External Link]

... But, OEM only... Snif!

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Quoting: Patola

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: GuestI just hope old gpu prices goes down, but it never happens.

They'd really prefer to price gouge you at all points in time, not just at release.

All that needs to be done is:

a) passing laws that force companies (...).

How about the complete opposite? Throw away all laws that currently pose an obstacle to competitors, don't force companies to anything. New players on the market will appear trying hard to get their niche, boom, prices drop. This is actually happening with VR sets right now.

Creating more laws against businesses does not make things better for the consumers. It onerates the entire production chain and makes it harder for everyone to get that. And it keeps competitors away for the big players. That's exactly what you don't want to happen.

Yeah but no regulations gets what we have right now in many examples on many markets: big players buying smaller ones thus swallowing the competition and creating monopolies which is absolutely bad for consumers too. There is no definitive answer to that. There must be some regulations mechanisms to prevent that. The magic thought of the free market that generates it's own competition is a myth too.

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Quoting: Shmerl2x performance increase claim sounds very bold. Let's wait for benchmarks.

Still being a 1080p gamer for the foreseable futur... Overpowered and overpriced for my needs. I feel kind of left behind. :grin:

Give me stutter and tear free drivers instead and I might be interrested. In the meantime, I'm still waiting for RDNA 2. 1080p RTX, on a 300$ GPU, that would be nice.

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