Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: slaapliedjeI thought this happened a long time ago (the removal of Games for Windows). Like back when that service was murdered. Think of all those old games that had integrated this garbage, and the other one that died, Gamespy... definitely made a large section of software unplayable. But I know when it happened years ago, that most things that had any sort of community had Games for Windows removed.

No different to the fact that if Steam were to go bust all our games would not work either, not downloadable.

No, I'd say it's somewhat different. If you have a game that had GfWL integrated it wouldn't matter how much warning you had, there would be nothing you could do to make your game work once GfWL went away.
If you own a Steam game and Valve goes under, unless it's amazingly sudden you can, like, download the game before they finish dying. Sure, if you have massive numbers of games that would take ridiculous amounts of storage you might have to buy a big hard drive or something. But if you purchased that many games you are not poor, so whatever. And if you bought a bunch of games with no plans to have enough storage to so much as download them, it's really on you; I'm actually kind of in that boat, but I don't tell myself it's Valve's responsibility--the decision to not fully take ownership of those games by putting a copy on my own computer was mine, not Valve's.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Purple Library GuyCrypto is fake money.

I'd wager to say in effect it isn't money. Years ago, people started to sell coffee for bitcoins around here. I don't think anybody is still doing that. If you sell your coffee for x bitcoins, with which you could buy you new coffee beans and pay your rent and everything, you don't know if it's worth half next month and you cannot pay your rent - or maybe double. Same for the customer. Money with such fluctuations doesn't work. Even currencies with huge inflation are less bad - at least you know which direction it will take.

Really, it's more a vehicle for speculation. Which currently probably makes it a pretty good investment, if you're someone who can afford to be investing, because everything that's primarily a vehicle for speculation is doing well right now and will continue for as long as central banks pump money into the markets and the net worth of the very rich continues to soar (a not unrelated phenomenon). This is true whether it's crypto, high end art or antiques or other collectibles, or whatever.
Presumably there has to be a ceiling somewhere; as the guy said, "If something cannot continue forever, it will stop."

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Hmmm . . . In the play, all Ophelia would have had to do to survive was, not take it quite so hard that a dude (apparently) dumped her (well, and her dad died). So, looks like it's a bit tougher in this version of the Hamlet universe?

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Quoting: ManillaBuy bitcoin now(or start mining whatever crypto you can) unless you still think its fake money.

Crypto is fake money. So to some extent is actual money--government-backed money lasts as long as society isn't collapsing. But if that happens, nobody's gonna value crypto either; its perceived value depends on the same kind of social illusion. If anything, crypto would go down faster. If you think things are going to collapse, buy gold, and make sure you have the physical stuff in your hot little hands because again, if things start to collapse, getting some rube their gold is going to be low on the banks' priority list.

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Quoting: Lightkey

Quoting: LightkeyDon't know if it's wise to mention this but Microsoft already said that they will keep supporting Windows 10 up till at least 2025, by which you would probably already have upgraded and there really is not a big advantage in switching to Windows 11 from what I've heard. It's like the switch from Linux 2 to 3 where unlike previous number increases, there was no technical reason, so I don't get the need to switch.

I take it back. Looks like there is actually a good reason [External Link] to upgrade to Windows 11.

Heh.

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Quoting: robvvI started M&M with Might & Magic III. At the time I found I became really engaged in the M&M universe!

I'm more of a Smarties man, myself.

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Quoting: kuhpunktReally curious about Vapor. I mean they already have Luna... is anybody using that?

I can't believe nobody has pointed out this is obviously Vaporware.
Ed. to add: Oops! Brisse beat me to the punchline!

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Quoting: Arten

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

i certainly never wasted billion of dollars into something not expecting profits in return.

Do you have billion of dollars?

You think all the billionaires giving away their assets to charity are doing it for profit?

Yes. Bad example.

Mind you, in the very specific example of Valve and Gabe Newell + core team, I am not actually certain what their motivations are and am willing consider it plausible they could not just have but be acting on some relatively normal, human motivations. At a minimum, I'd want to say that the ways Valve pursue profit are seriously shaped by a certain style and set of beliefs and values--so for instance, they have a strategy of dealing with threats from Microsoft by pushing for open platforms in part because they like open platforms and want to think a strategy pushing them will work (I hope they're right). So I agree with you on your main point.

But this is a rare case. All those billionaires "giving away" tons of money are mostly doing it with the assistance of huge money-management companies like Price Waterhouse Cooper or whatever, and they don't actually give the money away. What they do, is dodges like putting the money into a "charitable trust", which is an organization theoretically dedicated to giving money to charity, which gets tax breaks because of this, but which they control and which has few rules about how much money actually gets given. And their press releases talk about this money in this trust which they control and which is still being invested for profit but paying less or no tax, as if they had just given all that money away. But they haven't, they've just shielded it from taxes. Billionaires do a lot of that stuff.

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: axredneck

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: TrollwutAny list for games that support this experimental feature? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_support_for_high-fidelity_image_upscaling [External Link]

It's actually pretty depressing how many of these went for the proprietary option. I suppose it got a head start, but still.

Looks like this story is similar to CUDA vs OpenCL where we have two solutions but only one of them is really good but it's proprietary.

In this case though, FSR is superb. Apparently DLSS is "better" (they use very different methods, I think), but again, proprietary, and only works on Nvidia. Frustrating.

And isn't FSR sort of . . . more broadly applicable? 'Cause, like, doesn't DLSS have to be "trained" on a per game basis? Whereas, doesn't FSR not have to do that? So in theory, FSR would work with any game, whereas DLSS would work on (any game whose devs have made the effort to "train" DLSS on their game).

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Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. I could have sworn I'd heard something on the interwebs about Valve planning on releasing some kind of device that ran games on Linux, and hoping to sell quite a few of them. The "Steam Duck" or something. Maybe I was dreaming it.

My point with this analogy is to say that since Steam deck (and steam for linux) are not their main revenue sources, they don't need to push so much other developers to support Proton (or make native linux builds).

It's very good for them if they do, but "it's ok" if they don't

I think "very good" is enough for a company worth billions to do a bit of bell-ringing. I mean come on, they're doing a major project launch and one of their repeated claims, which will make a significant difference to sales, is that their objective is for all the games to work. They've done sufficient behind the scenes persuasion and pressure that suddenly Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye and some other one officially work on Proton.

And you're saying you don't think it would be worth their while to take things the final step and actually put in a bit of effort to get the game companies to use the EAC and BattlEye that they just arranged to work? That strikes me as pretty dashed unlikely on the face of it. (And for a company the size of Valve, "a bit" of effort could plausibly involve millions of dollars)

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