I don't do online multiplayer so this doesn't affect me directly, but it does show again that Valve is serious about Linux support and Steam Play. Good to hear.

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Quoting: GuestOooh ! (C64 until 1996, i thought i was the only one)

:) I'm not sure which would have required more computing “survival skills”. At least I had a web browser (of sorts).

Honestly, if parts hadn't become so expensive, I'd probably have carried on with it for even longer. A further CPU upgrade would have cost me about the same as I spent on my first PC - which was still faster - and that's using the original onboard AGA graphics; 24-bit VGA-capable cards were crazy money.

I still have three or four Amigas lying around in various states of repair, though. Mainly A1200s, one A500+. I should probably get round to fixing them up.

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That's... terrifying. I could have sworn it was only two or three. :O

Seriously though, kudos to Valve for sticking with us. To (kind of) mirror Patola's story, I stuck with my Amiga until 2005, meaning that I was out of touch with mainstream gaming for around a decade or so. Probably a little longer since, obviously, I switched to Linux rather than Windows. A friend convinced me to buy an XBox 360 in 2008 (hard to believe that's over a decade ago too, now I come to think of it), but money's a bit tighter these days, and I had more or less resigned myself to losing touch again as that console generation came to the end of its life. Steam came to Linux at exactly the right time for me. I can't thank Valve enough.

Quoting: GuestI did get a steam account when they offered some half life 2 based demo if you had a nvidia card. Then i did not bother.

Heh, I'd forgotten that. I actually bought the Orange Box in the hope of running Portal under Wine. (For some reason. I had it on the 360 already. I must have had more money than sense back then. Not any more...) Never managed it. So yeah, I had a Steam account lying dormant for years too, and if it weren't for Linux Steam, it still would be.

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I think in the past, publishers probably got a disproportionate sales boost from a Linux version. It still might not have been huge, but it would be more than our overall market share might suggest because, with so few games available to us, a larger proportion of us would buy it than Windows or Mac users. But I expect that's not the case any more, especially since Proton. It shouldn't really be a surprise to see sales falling back.

And let's not forget that because we're still a very small market, it's fair to assume that, as a group, we have different tastes to the mainstream. Some games will sell better on Linux than others, relative to other platforms.

Quoting: EhvisSo it seems that this game doesn't appeal to Linux users as much as others do. I can't quite put my finger on the "why" though.

Precisely my point. I'd actually have expected it to be a fairly “Linux-ey” game. But that's just because it seems quite geeky. Maybe it's actually the opposite, and we Linux types like to escape from nerd-dom in our gaming. :)

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It also fixes a multitude of Linux-specific issues with the Steam client including those pesky zero-byte updates for Steam Play titles

I've been running the beta, and I'm still getting 'em. Not nearly as often, to be fair (mind you, I haven't been on Steam so much lately, due to buying TW3 from GOG), but they still pop up from time to time.

Quoting: benjamimgoisSame thing here... i have Witcher 3 from GOG and it doesn't work... i don't know what i'm doing wrong ether.

If you've already been running it under Wine, you'll probably know that it has a weird issue where it has to be run from within the directory which contains the executable. Navigating to the install directory and trying $ wine ./bin/x64/witcher3.exe doesn't work.

So, the "target" in Steam should be (something like):
"{Path_to_Wine's_drive_c}/GOG Games/The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt GOTY/bin/x64/witcher3.exe"

... and "Start In" must contain the full path without the .exe:
"{drive_c_again}/GOG Games/The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt GOTY/bin/x64/"

It should just work. If you change the name of the shortcut to “The Witcher® 3: Wild Hunt" (Shift-RAlt-R for the “®”, at least on a UK keyboard), then Steam will pick up the community controller templates too. (It's a bit disappointing that it can do that but not pull in the news and forums as well to make it appear like a “native” Steam game, but hey, the controller settings are useful.)

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Quoting: KimyrielleCorporations don't want to compete...

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Nobody wants to compete, at least not for their living, if they can avoid it. Competing is hard, and you risk losing. One of the great myths on (and about) the pro-market side of the economic argument is that if you support free markets, you must support every business in every action it takes (or at least, refrain from criticism). Smith understood that, on the contrary, businessmen can be the greatest enemy of market freedom.

Baseline is that all sufficiently large business is evil. Which is why we'd need regulations against such practices, but they keep telling gullible people that regulations are bad, so what can I say?

Sufficiently large anything is evil, including regulation and government. But sometimes it's a necessary evil. The problem lies in determining when.

The trouble with much modern regulation is that it starts from the premise that “corporations”, in general, are the enemy, thus raising the ire of businessmen themselves, who, like it or not, are powerful. But take this case as an example: if exclusive sales deals for videogames were illegal, it would help Valve, GOG, et al. here (in other cases, it might hinder them of course, but help others). Laws against “restraint of trade” aren't a new concept, by any means. A contract that forces other vendors to remove an item from sale sounds an awful lot like restraint of trade to me.

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Well, it's been over three weeks now, and I suspect The Witcher 3 will be with me for some time yet. What a game.

That, and tinkering with forced Proton on Steam.

Get well soon, Liam. I've been a bit under the weather myself this last week. It's that time of year, isn't it?

Quoting: vfjThe Talos Principle

Oh, that's a good game. It's just a pity that it's a bit like Portal in that once you've solved all the puzzles and discovered the “twist in the tale”, there's not much incentive to play it again except for nostalgia's sake. There are a few good levels in the Steam Workshop, though. (And some fun easter eggs to find. :) )

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Dangit! Grid Autosport doesn't seem to work. I got a 20% boost on F1 2015, and was hoping for the same. :(

(Not that I really notice that kind of thing. I've been playing The Witcher 3 recently, and until I checked, I'd have said I was pretty close to 60fps. In the 40s, maybe, at worst, but well above 30. Then I did check. It's hovering around the high 20s, occasionally nudging 30-31. I always knew I didn't really care about framerate much, but I thought I could at least tell...)

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Hmm. Feels more stuttery with The Witcher 3 than... well, actually it was 4.0rc6, now I come to think of it. Strange. I might downgrade just to confirm it isn't anything else.

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Quoting: queriaAnd if you build own kernel, you need to have it enabled either as ipv6 mod loaded (lsmod/modprobe ipv6), or compiled-in (CONFIG_IPV6).

Yeah, it looks like that's what it is. Well, kind of; I'm not building my own kernels, but I'm using a custom repo. Either its kernels don't support it or they don't load the module automagically. I'll figure out which it is once I reboot, but it appears to be working fine with the vanilla “-ARCH” kernel.

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