Quoting: pleasereadthemanualLike any GNOME purist, I completely disagree with the premise. GNOME is great even without extensions and I don't use any.

I'm sure that's true now, (for you and many others, even though I still disagree) but back in 2010, the original Shell beta was baffling and largely unusable unless you followed blogs that described the philosophy behind it.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThere were definitely previews of Gnome-Shell long before Unity was out. Unity was literally Ubuntu's answer to Gnome-shell being weird for people.

Yep, Unity was developed over the six months following Gnome Shell's first preview. Because Shell was absolute ass and unusable without extensions, and the Gnome developers wouldn't build in the necessary extension framework that would allow Canonical to keep using it.

The extension framework did eventually land, making Shell usable again, but by that time Unity had a groundswell of fans.

As usual, it baffles me that people pick on Canonical as the bad guy whenever they innovate. They're not afraid to drop things when better things come along, but they have a vision and when existing tech can't supply on that vision, they innovate. The essence of Linux, but they're constantly trashed for it.

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Quoting: sarmadCan someone explain what's wrong with Denuvo? Does it work on Linux/Proton or not?

Denuvo works okay on Linux under Proton. So far. Who knows if they'll break things in future, like anti-cheat does.

There are several issues with Denuvo:

1. Cost - protecting a game with Denuvo costs the publisher $25K per month. There is also a one-off fee of $0.5 per activation. So if your game sells 100K copies, that's a $50K up front fee, plus the $25K every month you keep Denuvo on there. This is all money that isn't going into development, QA, DLC, paying staff, or advertising your game.

2. Performance. Mixed reports on this, but there's a perception that Denuvo encumbered games will perform worse. Reports on how much worse vary wildly, from a few frames to (e.g. Resident Evil Village) 50% performance. When there's a big hit, the publisher is often forced to remove it (e.g. Village, Rage 2).

3. What it's designed to do, which is prevent you "activating" the game more than 5 times. Probably not a huge issue normally, but if you play about with different versions of Proton, every time you delete your prefix (the PFX folder), you're re-activating the game on a "new PC", which will eventually lock you out of the game.

4. The principle its based on, which is that it "protects" sales, by forcing would-be pirates to buy the game. There are two issues with that. First, would-be pirates are proven in a couple of studies (such as this [External Link]) that they wouldn't buy the game anyway, if they can't pirate it. So it's not protecting sales. In fact, piracy can actually encourage game sales, where the pirates download cracked versions as "demos", and if they're impressed, they buy legitimately. Second, Denuvo encumbered games are often cracked anyway, and pirated anyway. So, in those cases, money wasted.

5. It's anti-consumer. That is, it provides the paying customer a worse experience than if you pirated the game. It "protects" the publisher by punishing the very people the publisher relies on to succeed. It treats paying customers as untrustworthy scum.

...which is why I never buy anything encumbered by Denuvo.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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I don't know what I expected, but... it wasn't a break-dancing, ninja cross between Max Payne and Duke Nukem.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: BlooAlien

Warning: This title uses 3rd-party DRM (Ubisoft Connect, Denuvo Anti-Tamper).

:sad: Well, that dashes that hope right to the rocks...

Denuvo doesn't stop games working with Proton.

Yep, it's surprisingly proton-friendly, and I can't imagine its performance impact (real or imagined) will have much effect on a game like PoP.

But personally, I don't buy Denuvo-encumbered games as a point of principle. I follow this curator on Steam [External Link], and that reminds me if any potential purchase features Denuvo and their anti-consumer bs. Really helpful.

This is another title that I'd have bought in a heartbeat if it wasn't for Denuvo. The character movement has a nice Dead Cells feel to it, and some of the fighting counters reminded me of Salt & Sanctuary, two amazing games. I had high hopes. But given that it's Ubisoft, I suppose I should have known better.

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Played the originals back in 2018 for the first time - struggled with it for a couple of hours, trying to see the "magic" that everyone loved about this series, but it didn't click for me either. Good to hear it's cultural references, and not gameplay that made it so beloved.

I doubt I'll pick this up. It looks very similar in style to the Metro series, and I've had my fill of them.

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Quoting: nwildnerAnd just as a reminder: ITCH does not automatically adds games to your library. While you will be able to download them, you have to manually enter the game and add it to your library.

It is kinda weird but, it is their way of managing game collections. That happened back in 2020 with the "Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality" which had tons of games and you could get lots because it is hard to keep track of the games you own on Itch.

And that is something that it will not change as per Itch owners/develpers: https://itch.io/t/1979459/give-me-an-option-to-add-all-ukraine-bundle-items-to-my-library [External Link]

So, a greasemonkey script on Firefox/Chrome is a good idea if you want to add those games to your library.

I gave up on Itch for this reason. Ended up buying a game I'd already gotten in a bundle. Tragically poor consumer experience.

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I picked this up shortly after the recent article on it and I've already sank over 20 hours! It doesn't quite have the build-depth of Tales of Maj-Eyal, but ability to spam-save (if you want) creates a much more accessible experience. Lovely interface too, and once you get a few levels, the travel system opens up the overland map in quite a natural way - I hated "stumbling" into areas in ToME that instantly killed me. Whereas here, the travel system keeps you within a tolerance of your actual level, which is pretty clever. Great game. Happy giveaway everyone!

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Quoting: elmapulthe issue is that every investiment is a risk

And that would be fine if Kickstarter was open and honest about your "investment" garnering zero reward. But as I've already pointed out, they don't. You pledge at a level, you get a reward, according to their platform. Stretch goals are promised, frequently broken.

And you know what? If an ACTUAL startup took money from an investor based on promises they had no intention of keeping - that's actually illegal, and is called "fraud". So it doesn't fly with me. Kickstarter want their cake, and to eat it.

Once I realised that, over ten years ago, they never got another penny from me.

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[quote=EagleDelta][quote=scaine]

Quoting: EagleDeltaNever go into Crowdfunding of any kind thinking you're money is related to being a customer. It's NOT, you're an investor that doesn't get any stake in the company or payout. Instead you get exclusive content and (usually for physical products) earlier access to the product than the rest of the public.

Okay, but I'm not arguing the definition of crowdfunding. I'm noting that KS doesn't look, or encourage a crowdfunding engagement mentality. KS encourages engagement through awards and promises. But they have no accountability when their platform is used to blatantly break those promises.

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