The way licensing is handled in video games bothers me greatly. To build a product that you want people to enjoy and play but using a license that can either expire (putting a timer on your product) or be pulled on a whim... why do this? It's one thing if the developers, themselves, choose to withdraw their product, but for the IP holder to have the power to do this seems absurd. You either let developers create their game with your IP, and then, there it is, or you don't.

This doesn't happen with movies! If a movie is made by a studio using some other company's IP, you don't see those movies suddenly disappearing from distribution once some license expires. If this happened, I'm sure that Super Mario Brothers movie from the 90s would have disappeared a long time ago, but it didn't. All those Uwe Boll movies, that butcher the IPs they used, are still available.

Why do video games get abused this way by IP holders? This bothers me greatly.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt sucks. More consolidation is bad. I have no fondness for Activision Blizzard, but then I'm not a big fan of Microsoft either and neither of those is the main point. Corporate behemoths are too big; in general they should be getting chopped into smaller pieces, not allowed to stitch together into even gianter Frankenstein leviathans.

I feel most countries (USA especially) have long ago abandoned even the pretense of fighting against monopolistic behavior. I cannot say how bad this merger will be over time. I fear, in maybe a decade, it will be bad for people not on Windows or XBox... then again, I have a very negative bias against Microsoft and A/B (especially the Activision potion), so take what I said with a grain of salt, I suppose.

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I feel the biggest risk to the Steam Deck is the ROG Ally actually being in a store. As far as I'm aware, Steam Deck is only available from Steam (at least in the US). That means most customers would either have to already be familiar with Steam or (to a much lesser extent) be willing to "risk" the Steam eco-system sight unseen. The Steam Deck had a *HUGE* amount of positivity after it's release (definitely a key benefit to not over-hyping your hardware before release), so Steam Deck saw converts who were not normal PC gamers.

But ROG Ally will be in a store. This means it will be *A LOT* easier for (grand)parents to buy the Ally for their gamer (grand)child's birthday or as a holiday gift. This is a huge deal! Even if the ROG Ally is only half as good as the Steam Deck (and more likely it'll be, all around, on par) that could lead to more ROG Ally units in gamers hands after a year than Steam Deck units.

I feel Valve *really* needs to find a way to get at least the base-line model Steam Deck on store shelves (including Amazon, Walmart, etc). Otherwise, I fear the Steam Deck (and more directly, Steam OS) will be drowned out by more easily purchasable devices.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: slaapliedjeFallout 76... the game failed so hard that they are now giving it away on Humble Bundle and PS4/5 at the same time.

It's not the greatest game that ever exited, even for a live service, but, to Fallout 76's credit, it's going a lot stronger than many other such games that both released after and died before it has... like... IDK... Anthem? Fallout 76 was never worth it's original sales price, but, it's often on sale for $10, which, even ignoring all the added FOMO stuff, gives you a decent game to wander around in and shoot stuff... doubly so if you have a friend or two to play with.

Was watching a video about all of the games where the live services were killed off. Makes me think that some of those should basically have some consumer protections in place, like if someone spends X amount of time into it to make it worth the money they spent (including loot box type purchases) that if the company doesn't just go under, but instead cancel a game's support to try to make more money with another one, then they should provide some sort of refund (or bonus stuff for their new game) or something...

Can you imagine if something like World of Warcraft decided to end, and how mad all the people who have dumped their lives into playing it for a long time, and the money people have spent on it? Granted this is one reason of many why I stay away from MMOs.

I feel this very much falls under the category of Consumer Beware. These businesses are under no obligation to make sure your time/money investment is secure or given some form of compensation, and, as much as I hate the capitalist system at times, nor should they. If consumers are not aware that a publisher/developer can yank their online game from them at the slightest whim, then that's on the consumer for being ill informed.

Like I said, as far as Fallout 76 is concerned, I wouldn't spend more than $10-ish on that game alone, but, if you even have a passing enjoyment of the Fallout franchise, then you should easily get at least $1/hr of entertainment or better out of the game without needing to drop more money into it. If you do buy any of the "extra" stuff (for Fallout 76 or any other online service), that's fine, but it's your responsibility to know there is always the probability that as soon as you drop real coin into the game, it will up and poof on you.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeFallout 76... the game failed so hard that they are now giving it away on Humble Bundle and PS4/5 at the same time.

It's not the greatest game that ever exited, even for a live service, but, to Fallout 76's credit, it's going a lot stronger than many other such games that both released after and died before it has... like... IDK... Anthem? Fallout 76 was never worth it's original sales price, but, it's often on sale for $10, which, even ignoring all the added FOMO stuff, gives you a decent game to wander around in and shoot stuff... doubly so if you have a friend or two to play with.

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: EikeI found this one, games supported with more than a million...

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Ok, but why? What's in it for the society/country? Most of the time I don't have an idea what country a given game is made in until Steam puts it on a country-focused sale, nor do I care. From the list, I only ever heard of a few and only because they are sequels. Also what the hell is "codename mashed potato" at #5?

Quite simply it has to do with keeping more money within the German economy.

If a German purchases a game made by a developer in the USA, for instance, that money is ultimately transferred out of the German economy and into the USA economy. The same happens in reverse when buying a game made by a German Developer. When I, a US person, purchase a game from a German Developer, my money leaves the US economy and enters the German economy. As video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, it makes sense the German government would want to build up and promote the video game industry in their country. The more German Developers there are, the more potential to not only keep more of the money from the sale of those German games within the German economy, but money from people in other countries flow in as well with every purchase.

Of course, that's a bit of a simplification, but more or less accurate.

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Not that I plan to use it, but not going to lie, I really like and appreciate how Valve just embraced the whole custom boot screen thing that's less than a month old and already made it far more accessible.

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Quoting: GuestSecond and this isn't really specific to this game. Every time I see something has a Native Linux build/client anymore I just think "for now." There have been so many games that promised or had that and yanked it. The yank the table cloth off the set table analogy just lingers over every game like a nasty fart.

While I do not disagree with the worry behind this statement, I'm not exactly clear what alternative there is. You could not trust the developer, to which the developer will drop the Linux native due to lack of interest. Alternatively you could actually be happy the developer actively took the time to release a Linux native port in the first place (don't know enough about the game to know if the developer was pressured to do it or it was native from the get go, but I think it was the latter) and buy the game, showing the developer there is actual interest in there being a native Linux port. Going around griping about what might be could only lead to a self fulfilling prophecy.

I say don't make the developer feel damned if they do and damned if they don't about making native Linux ports. Just buy the game if the game looks interesting or don't buy it if it does not. Don't shun it for something the developer may or may not do.

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Quoting: GuestThe only way Intel will get my attention is if

#1 their pricing is "pre-pandemic." I'm not paying $1000 for a card that I could buy for $250 2 years ago. This is going to be a rough time for Intel due to this because their costs will be higher and they are going to want to recoup all that R&D and material overhead bump somewhere.

#2 they offer a decent number outputs. I run 12 screens on my machine and the only GPU that comes close to my needs is a WX6800 with a piddly 6 outs i.e. I'd still need TWO and they cost like $6K!

#3 Obviously they need to be on par with other brands performance. This will probably be a pipe dream given my use case which means I and others like me are probably not going to care about this and it won't be competitive in a way that brings choice or better prices to the market as a whole.

#4 The drivers will have to be hella good. Right now because I run multi GPU I can deligate work with no disruption. Watching videos on one GPU, surveillance and logs on another and playing Tarkov on the main GPU: max performance no BS...for a single GPU it will need to toggle many different video demands with no hiccups to catch my eye.

I definitely agree with your first point, however, while I can't say I disagree, points #2 - #4 feel way out of proportion for a company's first foray into Graphics cards. You're talking about running TWELVE screens and splitting workflow between those screens... a task you seem to claim can only be handled by two of one specific card. There's no way ARC could come close to that out of the proverbial gate (I'd be floored if wrong). You are most definitely not the "market as a whole", but, rather, a very niche customer.

Like I said, though, I very much agree with your first point. Price-wise, ARC definitely needs to target their pricing very aggressively. Intel is a big company, to be sure, but they are a serious underdog in the graphics market. NVIDIA has decades on Intel, and so does AMD to be fair. Furthermore, AMD, I feel, is heftily outperforming Intel in integrated graphics as well, and Intel has been doing IG for some time.

At minimum, I feel ARC has to be able to handle 1080p, 60hz, High Quality at a cost of $50 to $100 less than either AMD or NVIDIA's comparable cards, and maybe double or triple that price gap at 4k. Intel is fighting a serious uphill battle and their best bet is to target the more budget conscious gamers willing to take the risk on new hardware.

That said... I remain very much a 1080p/60hz gamer myself, and still, I probably wouldn't consider ARC for a generation or two.

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Quoting: subThere was a VR mode for Half-Life 2 from Valve.
At the time the Occulus Rift DK2 hit the road.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/290930/discussions/2/611701999528654463/?ctp=1

Never got it to work back then.

I had the Rift DK2 myself and I definitely remember playing the HL2 VR version back then. I thought it was amazing! I don't own the latest VR gear, though, so I cannot try this new VR implementation. My most recent VR is the PSVR and it's been a couple years since I've played anything with it. A thousand for a Valve Index is still a bit pricey for me. Maybe when Valve releases their next iteration of it.

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