Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this article was really really good - it condensed a more complicated and long topic to concise points in simple-enough language (to the audience made of me anyway 😅) and achieved all of this using select direct quotes!

Thank you, Liam!

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I liked the replaceable batteries of SC1 more. Also I preferred the circular trackpads instead of thumbstick and d-pad. But I get it that I am definitely the minority in the latter and possibly also in the former 😅

I wish I had a job so I could consider Steam Frame as well 😭. I wanted to sell my Index before any announcement drops, but now the cat is out of the bag 😅

A small part of me doesn't like the inconsistency of their previous VR device starting with Valve (Index) and this one being Steam (Frame). But autistic marketing preferences aside - looks very very appealing.

I wonder if SF technically also support foveated rendering (i.e. in addition to foveated streaming)? I.e. can this create a PC VR market where games implements this feature?

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@tpau

I still hope for a way to split an ultrawide screen in two virtual monitors so i can have a game in 16:9 on the left side and chat on the right side.
Right now having custom regions and boxes with shortcuts and scripts that resize and move them feels too complex.

Whatever scripts you have - you can map to some keyboard hotkeys. Or if remembering arbitrary combinations isn't you jam, I recommend using Kando [External Link] or fusuma [External Link] 😊

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My friends and I are just about to launch another Minecraft run, but this time we are using a lot of mods - so once more I will skip Luanti 😢. But I will not forget it and hope to have a longer run eventually. I am just really irked if I don't like a game's gamefeel and Minecraft has so much more mods (for now).

I'm always glad to see Luanti progressing. And I'm looking forward to a day where Microsoft messes up bad enough that a majority of players (or at least modders) flock away from it. Or they turn it open-source enough. One can hope.

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@scaine:

I enjoyed The Cycle: Frontier for a while, back in 2022, but the constant drag of having to insure your kit for a decent run meant that the grind was a bit crazy.

But it was Dark and Darker that made me realise that extraction shooters weren't my bag. At least ARC is trying to match solos together... Dark and Darker was an absolute shit-fest. I remember, as a newb, I was walking around the waiting lobby, examining players randomly, and I came across a team of three, fully kitted out, and each member had at least (!) 15 healing potions. As a newb, I could afford, perhaps three. Sure enough, they were waiting at extraction. I hope they enjoyed the rusty sword I'd looted, and a couple of arrows. I never did find a bow...

Maybe ARC's community will prove me wrong, but these games almost always skew towards a small group of try-hards with too much time on their hands basically griefing newcomers. Too early to tell right now though.

Shooters are not my cup of tea, but I wanted to share that I am this try-hard griefing newcomers that you describe 🙈.

War Thunder's matchmaking is based on the tier of your load-out/kit, not your skill level/rank. So when I feel especially powerless and incapable in my real life, I can go to lower tiers than usual and restore the impression of being competent at something - by dominating some lobbies. There is still an aspect of luck (also in terms of opponents) but I have a deep set of skills/strategy to get the win (or achieve the arbitrary daily/weekly quests).

In abstract, I am personally adjusting my level of challenge to my abilities and needs at that particular time. When I'm feeling especially capable (curious and safe; and still play WT for some reason 😅), I go to a game mode or tier where I struggle.

I'm not excusing the harm me and others like me are causing. I'm not even demanding empathy for them/us. (Although it is a well documented fact that since we always see ourselves with context and others without - we tend to attribute our own failings to circumstance and that of others to character). I simply thought this might be an interesting diatribe or discussion.

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@AsciiWolf

OpenRazer is great, but sadly still unusable in immutable systems because of the very custom udev rules and other system-wide changes needed.

Like on the Steam Deck?

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@eggrole

I think the anti-AI crowd is in for a rude awakening. While I often hear people saying they don't want AI, at the end of the day if the game (or whatever) is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

How many people don't have a phone because of some exploitation used to mine or manufacture it? Almost none. And this is rationally WAY worse than some AI slop. People like to virtue signal they care, but if the product is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

AI will be the same. If (and I think this is a when even though I am no fanboy) AI gets "good enough" people will slowly stop complaining and buy the fruit. Will there be the odd holdout? Sure. But, and I can't hammer this enough, if the product is good enough, the consumer will buy it.

I hate how AI is being shoehorned into everything these days as much as anyone, but I'm also sure there is a way to make products people actually want with AI.

You might be right. But at the same time, you might rest your case solely on 'conscious consumerism' push back - which I would agree, is less likely to have much of an impact on the market. Yet if you consider social push back as a whole, you would find more cases of markets adapting to public perception - and thus would change the probabilities of your predictions of fruitfulness of being a part of the 'anti-AI crowd'.

I'm not sure how in touch I am with the markets (and I really lack examples here too), but I'd guess NFT and crypto still aren't popular and the 'anti-NFT' and 'anti-crypto crowd' won out? What about the anti-Internet-Explorer crowd dethroning it? If the product is bad enough, people will drop it?

All this said, I think there's no putting this genie back in the bottle (as with most technologies). Fingers crossed for getting the good ending.

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@doragasu

Nice! Unfortunately I seldom use the store from the browser, most of the time I use the desktop or phone apps.

For myself - I tried the Augmented Steam browser extension and after going through the options page for it, I can no longer go back. I will jump through any hoops necessary to browse Steam from a browser because the QoL is sooo sweet. Also I get the Tux Linux icon back!

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@Kimyrielle

I am starting to develop a serious contempt for devs not releasing the server files when they shut down a game. There is really zero reason not to. You're commercially done with that game, so no harm done.

I think one legitimate barrier is that once you did the absolute bare minimum to launch the product, it would be extra work (and thus extra cost) to adapt it to user-run servers. You would need some extra boilerplate for previously hard-coded things, new UX/UI for connecting directly to IP-s, localization, testing etc. Even then - there is risk of worse PR (loss of market value / future sales) if things are done in a botched way than if nothing is even attempted (the industry standard). So from the perspective of the upper management with dollar signs for eyes (who actually call the shots 😢) - they really do see all risk, no gain.

The token conscious consumerism action would be to demand publishers/devs demonstrate a working off-boarding/end-of-life scheme at launch and/or a legally binding promise to do so when shutting down the first-party servers. (Haha, one must dream of steps towards utopia 😂). There may then even be some much-touted capitalist innovation in making such end-of-life setups more convenient and featureful.

Personally, I've come around to giving up my faith in 'conscious living' / 'individual action' and believe only social/collective action can get anything done (as scary as that sounds as a person interested in Linux AND gaming 💀). Conscious consumerism is just another trap to keep us complacent, quiet and complicit 😔. Expecting me to always use a bicycle, avoid hot showers or sort my trash is more of the same bullshit - at least as long as some of us are legally still permitted to take a plane daily for luxury reasons or pollute more for profit margins. Collective action sounds more scary until you realize that the entry level options are:

• voting


• following people (social media or in-person) who align with your views for potential points of action


• kindly talking with (and listening to) people whom you know about the politics that matter to you


• showing up to a protest you think you probably align with

Plentiful extra points for finding tolerable voices (and heads to converse with) that are outside your own bubble (conflicting perspectives) 🤩.

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Does the demo support VR (on Proton) too?

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