Now that I'm finishing my PhD and starting a new job this year I can finally start thinking about upgrading my gaming desktop I built back in 2014, and with these coming out next year what better time to switch from Intel & Nvidia to AMD? :smile:

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Oh, that drag and drop feature is neat! :woot: I got the update last night and thought the new Downloads page looked pretty (and saw some of the other new features), but didn't realize that was an option now. While I can appreciate drag'n'drop isn't trivial to implement, it just feels so necessary for any kind of list-sorting where there are more than a handful of entries.

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Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: AnzaIt seems to be hard to get right in FPS games even without trying to procedurally generate lore and story.

"Lore" is impossible to procedurally generate

Dwarf Fortress would like a word with you. :grin:

(Though I broadly agree, as I think that with procedural generation—as with anything else that goes into a video game—the quality of results you get out is commensurate with the amount of effort you put in. Dwarf Fortress is an extreme outlier on the quality scale due to also being an extreme outlier on the "effort invested" scale.)

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Quoting: CatKillerI just want everyone that wants one to be able to get one.

Indeed. I liked that Valve said they're handling production for different regions separately, so it's not like, say, North America can just buy of 99% of all the Decks produced.

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Quoting: scaineI kind of like the sound of that, but I feel like it's somehow illegal? Like selling petrol cheaper if you drive a Ford? Some kind of favouritism that I suspect regulators would take a dim view of.

I can't think why that particular example would be illegal*, though I can immediately think of why you might not want to do it: instant bad will with all non-Ford drivers. Which might be a reason Valve hasn't done anything similar. Maybe you could get away with it if Ford drivers were 90%+ of your buyers and you didn't care about anyone else, but if they're only 10% you'd probably be in trouble.

*obviously there are a lot of criteria that should be illegal, like price discrimination on the basis of race or sex or whatever, but I can't see why it should be in the case of voluntary choice of non-essential consumer product.

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Quoting: GuestGame support is a real thing that exists, that's what the little icons are, and if a developer indicates they support a certain platform, gamers expect them to fix bugs on that platform.

Game support is a real thing, but that's not what the icons indicate: they indicate which platforms a game nominally runs on. There are tons of games that are on sale on Steam which have icons which are no longer supported.

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Quoting: Alm888Overall, if we look at the picture as a whole, it seems this is a market share war and Microsoft seems to be the lead in this "dance". Valve does not act; it reacts to Microsoft's input.

And as we all know, Villains Act, Heroes React [External Link]. :grin:

Quoting: Alm888And CDProjekt? A reaction to a reaction… Does English have a word for that?

A counter-reaction?

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: subIf Valve is serious about Linux, I'd still propose charging like 5 % less Valve fee if the published game features a Linux build.

That wouldn't help.

Sure, it would encourage them to press the "build for Linux" button for some free money, which is more than many devs do, but it wouldn't encourage them to do any testing or provide any support. At all.

"But," you might say, "the discount should only apply to proper Linux versions, not those other ones," and suddenly Valve has to be a gatekeeper, creating lots of uncertainty for devs as to whether they'll have their funds withheld, and Valve are having to do (a lot) more work in exchange for less money.

Hmm, what about 5% less Valve fee on every Linux purchase only? Then developers have incentive to make a good Linux version and to get people to buy it on Linux, without Valve necessarily having to play gatekeeper. Players can vote with their wallets and refund if they don't like it. Hearing devs begging players to buy on Linux would be amazing. :whistle:

Of course, the time to have done something like that is a few years ago, since any purchases on an unmodified Steam Deck will be a Linux purchase anyway, which would skew the numbers somewhat once it comes out (I think that's how it works even if you play on Proton, right?). But maybe that'll make developers more interested in a Linux version if the fraction of Linux purchases goes up over time even without any direct monetary incentives on Valve's part…

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Haven't played RimWorld in a while now, and the first expansion didn't really catch my interest, but this one seems a bit more interesting. Might get back into it soon…

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That's cool about Valve limiting games to one appearance (per year, it sounds like) to give more devs a chance to show their stuff off. I know I've found a few games through previous Next Fests (demos help a lot for getting me interested in something coming!) and look forward to more in the future.

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