In my itch library I have liked:

River Bones (storydriven short gamejam game)
Lost Constellation (excellent narrative platformish thing)
CELESTE Classic - hard cute platformer
PERISHER - hard cute platformer

Well worth the time!

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I don't like scary stuff anymore, Outlast absolutely terrifies me! I want to buy Papers, Please, but I am not sure I can take the emotional strain hinted in trailers (like, choose between migrants and your family :( ). I had zombie nightmares tonight. What's going on?!

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I have to say this update helped performance for me (FOSS radeon driver) ALOT when I get to use my custom config (like chris's max-frames), that is when playing casual - very smooth now, and I think it even bumped my texture settings a bit above the rock bottom I've been using (it looks nicer). With the forced settings of competitive I still have crap FPS. It very rarely crashes at least. I love tf2 no matter how crappily optimized it is :P

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Quoting: subI'm currently playing Shenzen I/O and I love it.

Unfortunately it has not been covered on GoL so far.

The game is in the same vein as TIS-100 (same developer - Zachtronics).
While it's currently marked "Early Access" it's actually done - including the campaign.
I didn't face a single issue so far (apart from the PDF manual not loading directly from in-game)

If you like(d) TIS-100 go for it.
Such a great game.

I just bought TIS-100 today and I do love it, so I guess I shall be looking into Shenzen I/O after that! It is a shame that GoL has not covered either, they both seem great and of course linux friendly. I also miss (altough I haven't yet played these) Pony Island and Papers, Please covered here, they seem very interesting, and have been linux all along AFAIK.

TIS-100 gives me the same joy and sense of achievement that I felt in high school programming classes when solving problems after a lot of grumbling and thinking, it's just awesome and absorbing, and I really find the story very intriguing this far (10 segments in or so). I have not felt inspired by any games recently, but this is great! I've always been interested in programming (still reading books on it etc.) since younger days, but never had any problems to solve (I work in an archive...), well now I do, and it's awesome. And only like 7 dollars on GOG! Get it! [External Link]

Does Shenzen have the same kind of "story" to keep me interested?

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: buenaventuraAnd I've always had trouble figuring out how to optimize my usage of it, when/if I can use AMDGPU (and/or -PRO?).

As an Nvidia user, I have the same problem. Too many names to keep track of. If I switch to AMD, I'll have some studying to do.

Quoting: buenaventuraAbout shaders, what are they?

Shaders are little programs than run on your GPU. They replaced the fixed logic that present in the rendering pipeline of the older graphics cards (then 3D accelerators). What's a rendering pipeline? Uhm, if you really want to know more about the subject, have a study session on the internet. It's a fascinating subject, but it can be quite hard when you first start out.

Hum, well, I guess I'll leave it at that :P It was funny how just disabling GSLS instantly made my FS2 game run super nice on mega settings, but perhaps that was just some bug in that game and not anything to do with shaders in general.

If I could wish for an article, it would be a "what foss driver to use for your graphics card, and HOW!" or some such, with like nice tables describing each case, updated regularly with news etc. And also, in depth how-tos on how to enable stuff in kernels and such. I am quite skilled at other terminal-operations and linux-know-how, but this stuff has always confused me - there seem to be no simple answers/wikis.

edit: wtf quote tags

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Graphics driver's have always been a bit of magic to me. I have a low end AMD card:
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] [1002:9851] (rev 05) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
And I've always had trouble figuring out how to optimize my usage of it, when/if I can use AMDGPU (and/or -PRO?). Even when asking (ubuntuforums) [External Link] I find it difficult to follow - I wonder if I should get some custom kernel or so? When?

I recently switched from ubuntu's repo-radeon FOSS driver to padokas [External Link] to try them out and see if there was a difference, and I can't say I've noticed that much. Are these new features mainly for high end or newer graphic cards?

About shaders, what are they? I played FS2Open (Freespace2) and for a long time it ran horribly even on rock bottom settings, then someone suggested disabling GSLS-shaders and BOOM, all other settings at max and it looks stunning. Why is that?

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So, short answer to mountman (again) - I have never argued that everything should be free or that I am entitled to free stuff or whatever. I am happy about all the nice free options and good pricing systems there are. Please read again - hint, issue is "relevancy of bashing people in current article".

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: buenaventuraSorry, but you are the one arguing that culture should not be free, that it is a bad thing if it is.

I haven't seen a single comment saying that culture should not be free, or more accurately that no games should be free. In fact I am sure none of us even suggested anything to that effect. Not a single word against libraries, itch.io... any of it. You're fighting strawmen.

What many of us have suggested that until we reach that utopia where artists—and more to the point, game development studios—are able to profit from their work without having to rely on sales, we have no moral right to dictate the terms on which we consume their output. Feel free to help yourself to any media that is given to you by copyright owners, and do by all means take advantage of legitimate sales. None of this hurts the artist. It is the notion that you should be the one to decide that is basically the definition of self-entitlement.

OK, so when did I say that I should be able to decide, that I have a moral right? I have only said, that I believe it to be good with such things as you describe (itch.io) etc., that it is something that I want to see more of. I have given various reasons to why I believe that, including that equal access to culture is good for people and society, and that it is in line with what we should strive for and often as societies have agreed to strive for (for example by ratifying the UDHR, and yes games are culture god dammit).

So what is the complaint? I have expressed understanding of and compassion for people who do go outside the law to get their hands on cultural products, not because I approve of breaking laws, but because I understand that a cultural product can mean a lot to a person, and sometimes people make mistakes or are otherwise put in situations where they make imperfect choices; I even trust them to make it up somehow, perhaps by paying back in the future, or giving something of themselves back or whatever. I do not believe in moral absolutism, where no matter the circumstances, any act prohibited in law (something which in itself can be imprecise) is morally wrong. At least not any act that does not involve violence or coercion against people.

I believe that moral choices are personal/individual, that they are rightly judged by God if anyone, or by a just court process until that comes to pass, and that I have no right - I am not entitled, as you would say - to judge other people's actions - in fact, probably, I do not understand the whole situation, and I very possibly could be a worse person myself than the one I am judging. Also, I am not entrusted with being a police or a criminal judge, thus, I should not frivolously judge people.

But that is just my personal opinion, and irrelevant really - what is relevant though, is whether it is objectively effective, helpful or even relevant to engage in such judging when one's goal is to write an article about something else (namely, about informing people on their purchases). I think, as I've said, that it is not.

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Quoting: liamdaweHonestly, this has been argued to death now and I won't be personally commenting any more. I've said how I feel and no one has said anything at all to change how I feel about it all.

OK, thanks. You still haven't commented at all on the whole reason I engaged myself here though (and the thing that I am arguing about, that no one else seems to notice I am arguing about :/ ), that is:

What do you think, is it not counter productive, in an editorial that seeks to inform people about how they can purchase games in a good way, to devote entire paragraphs to your own feelings about a specific group of people? I have not heard anything about why those feelings are relevant, or how they contribute to the information in the article. In fact, my advice is that you should separate you article into two, to lessen confusion:

1. General guidelines about how to purchase linux games ethically, and
2. What I think about people who purchase games on g2a (editorial).

That would be more correct, accurate, descriptive of the article's content, and more useful. Don't you think?

Anyway, thanks for a great site!

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As an aside, are there actually people who think that games are NOT culture? What? Games have been accepted as a part of mainstream culture for a long time now, which I am sure you know right? The industry is huge, entirely comparable to Hollywood and publishing books. There is entire TV-channels devoted to E-sports in some part of the world, but I guess you consider sport to also just be a hobby? :D

Edit: And as someone noted, games can be found IN LIBRARIES, do you consider reading books to be just a hobby, and not consuming culture, as well?

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