Quoting: Al3s

Quoting: wytrabbit

Quoting: BeamboomThere's just something about a physical stick that can't be replaced with a touchpad.

My thoughts as well. The touchpad can be nice for a casual game, but trying to move or turn with it quickly and accurately in an intense boss fight (say for example Dark Souls 3, or Hellpoint) is impossible.

I've finished DS3 recently using the Steam Controller. Practice makes perfect.

I certainly feel like I can aim far more precisely with the Steam controller.
The only games I can't get used to on the Steam controller are basically Twin Stick shooters. For them it is truly awful!

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80I do not believe that Linux desktop gaming is a strategic target for such a huge company. Such small pet projects are usually the first things to be stopped after a merger by the controllers. They seek to streamline acquisitions and cut such things off.

Finally I think the majority of the mentioned Linux games have been released before the aqusition by Embracer of the specific studios. Therefore I‘m quite pessimistic regarding effects on gaming on linux of this move.

I have to admit I tend to agree I do not think we ll be getting more linux native games as a result. So far THQ has ported desperados to linux and said at the time more would follow they have not. Metro another THQ owned property now apparently is totes coming to linux only no dates for release or information on whether its in house or using fereal generally not a good sign.[/quote]Weren't the previous two ports not done by Feral? I am guessing Epic and then Stadia are the reasons we don't have a native port of Exodus more than any technical reasons. The reasons I refuse to support either. Exclusives within the PC based on stores is some crap.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuySo I'd have to say that, given the existing legal framework, patent system and so on, this is a fair cop.
There was a patent, they knowingly infringed on it, and they shelled out a cost-of-doing-business 4 million bucks for it.

That said, it's a stupid patent.

And beyond that, the patent system is . . . only insane if one imagines its purpose to have anything to do with increasing innovation. Who knows, maybe that was true 200 years ago. But the modern patent system has been carefully designed, increment after increment, to do something very different: Siphon more money and power to the already wealthy and powerful--create barriers to entry, encourage monopolies, oligopolies and cartels, and enable price-gouging based on artificial scarcity.

Spoiler, click me

Note that in the modern patent system, inventors never patent anything. Corporations with teams of lawyers patent things, the inventors working for them who actually dreamed up the innovation hold zero "intellectual property". Even if inventors were independent, they don't have the amounts of cash needed to successfully file a patent, let alone defend it. Also note that a lot of the innovation which is then patented by corporations was actually innovated by public sector researchers; the profits were then privatized. For instance, the messenger RNA technology used by Pfizer to create their new-type vaccine which they have patented, was invented at the US National Institute of Health, doubtless building on a bunch of other public sector research conducted worldwide and published in scholarly journals. But the National Institute of Health ain't seeing any cash from it. This is normal; the whole point of the exercise is for the Pfizer types to make money.

The other shit thing that happens is companies buy other companies solely for their patents and then lay off all of the engineers that developed whatever tech was patented. Often times with the sole intention of burying that thing so that they don't have competition of their own product / patent.

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Quoting: Massinissa

Quoting: JuliusAnd the back-paddle buttons are probably the most useless part of the Steam controller anyways...

The back-paddle is the only reason I bought the steam controller, I went from bronze to diamond on Rocket League with these buttons ahah. But I'm too poor to buy the xbox elite pro2 controller

I have a Thrustmaster eSwap Pro, and it took me a while to get used to NOT hitting those bottom buttons on it, though it also would help if I could remember which buttons mapped to the top buttons on that controller!

By the way, it's an excellent controller with one of the best D-Pads I've ever used!

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Quoting: rustybroomhandle$4 million does not seem like a lot of money to even bother suing over. Are we sure this is not a desperate company in financial trouble with over-inflated stock value?

Ha, like Gamestop?

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Quoting: SeegrasPatent systems are very broken and need to be abolished.

For anyone interested, here's the book, where they show that in most fields (except chemistry/pharma), patents don't even work as they should according to the patent system itself. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3 [External Link]

The patent system itself isn't broken. The people running the patent system are. There are legitimate reasons for a patent. 'buttons on the bottom of the controller using a paddle / grip' shouldn't be a legitimate one, as it's an obvious one.
Patents should be for things that are not obvious.

Side note, apparently that's why we don't have any modern joysticks with actual force feedback beyond a rumble, because of patents. But considering it was an API+hardware work, I feel it is more of a legit one. Problem is they charged too much for too long and the support within games was pretty low because of it, so it stopped being a thing.

Now when you're talking about patenting and IP and copyright for software, there definitely are things there that should be changed / adjusted because they are terrible. Should be some things about 'if something becomes no longer profitable, it should be archived and become open/free.' instead of copyright holding over things for 70+years...

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Zlopez

Quoting: slaapliedjeThis is why it's almost a breath of fresh air for me to just play games on an Amiga or Atari ST. That and to be able to just double click on an icon or put in a (sometimes virtual) floppy disk and have it load up the game. No DLC, no pay to win, Just the game to play!

I'm now playing Blood Bowl 2 and it could be played without creating an online account, but the game is just missing some of the functionality. But I can't agree with the DLC part, we had them in the 90's there were just called datadiscs and added plenty of new functionalities. What is shame, that the DLC often lets you pay for only cosmetic things or something that should have been in the original game from beginning.

And the worst DLCs are those that are just dividing the online community, like DLC with multiplayer maps, which are not playable for others.

As you said the games should be just fun to play and not only for making money. I have some favorites developers in this case, which are creating games that are fun to play and you don't need to pay additional money to enjoy them. Some of them are even updating the games years after release. :-) You just don't see them creating any AAA titles.

Yeah, I separate DLC with full blown expansions. Like Crusader Kings II is a good example, they had shit loads of DLC, with a few expansions. Sure they are called DLC, but they really are expansion packs for the game. Like a new civilizarion or sound tracks are DLC. When you are adding continents and new rules, etc it is an expansion.
The worse offense is when they sell you the data on the physical disk but you have to pay extra to unlock it...

Reminding me of the one of the first crapple touchpod things (basically an iphone without the phone component). The hardware itself came with Bluetooth, but you had to pay extra about 6 months after release for an OS update to actually use it.

But anyway yes I agree with you in separating DLC from expansions. Quite often DLC is already part of a basic game, and just gets carved out before release so they can try make more money for no extra effort. I lament how (big budget) games used to be about gaming, and now so much of it is about trying to squeeze every last drop from the customer through trickery rather than actually making something decent in the first place. And I'd best stop there before I descend into the madness of a wall-of-text rant on the matter.

Speaking of trickery, has anyone seen the mess of eBay and RTX 30 cards? People are selling 500+ dollar PICTURES of graphics cards. Some at least claim it is to mess with bots. But still, wtf?
This video carx and CPU shortage from AMD/Nvidia is really pissing me off.

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Quoting: Zlopez

Quoting: slaapliedjeThis is why it's almost a breath of fresh air for me to just play games on an Amiga or Atari ST. That and to be able to just double click on an icon or put in a (sometimes virtual) floppy disk and have it load up the game. No DLC, no pay to win, Just the game to play!

I'm now playing Blood Bowl 2 and it could be played without creating an online account, but the game is just missing some of the functionality. But I can't agree with the DLC part, we had them in the 90's there were just called datadiscs and added plenty of new functionalities. What is shame, that the DLC often lets you pay for only cosmetic things or something that should have been in the original game from beginning.

And the worst DLCs are those that are just dividing the online community, like DLC with multiplayer maps, which are not playable for others.

As you said the games should be just fun to play and not only for making money. I have some favorites developers in this case, which are creating games that are fun to play and you don't need to pay additional money to enjoy them. Some of them are even updating the games years after release. :-) You just don't see them creating any AAA titles.

Yeah, I separate DLC with full blown expansions. Like Crusader Kings II is a good example, they had shit loads of DLC, with a few expansions. Sure they are called DLC, but they really are expansion packs for the game. Like a new civilizarion or sound tracks are DLC. When you are adding continents and new rules, etc it is an expansion.
The worse offense is when they sell you the data on the physical disk but you have to pay extra to unlock it...

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How is this any different than commercial stores doing price matching?
Way I read it is that Steam says if a publisher wishes to sell their game on Steam, it needs to match the same price as eslewhere, right?
So say Cyberpunk 2077 is sold on GOG (owned by the same company) and they choose to sell it for 10 bucks less there. I mean they get all the money from those sales anyhow. But some people want all their games on Steam (for Proton, or achievements or whatever added value there) so they have to pay extra? Why does that also seem fair to everyone?
If you go to Target or Walmart they will likely price match each other as well...

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Quoting: TheRiddickHaven't experience much shader caching on my 6800XT, but there are other issues I'm facing with proton game performance. Problems which don't exist on the windows10 AMD driver now (they did in the past).

Might move back to Mesa20.3 from 21-dev, not much else can be done.

Ha, at this point I keep looking to see if I can find either a 6800 or 6900 ot 3080 for sale and can't find any at all. Though since I have gotten nvidia cards for years, I will probably get that the 3080 and call it a day, but lack of supply by either of them have forced me to linger on with my 980 and 2080.

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