I remember the “old days”. That was when dialup internet was still popular and running a server usually meant it was on your 10Mb LAN. When we got DSL it was better and you could serve outside your LAN. This was also the time when games had dark red code booklets, required having a physical CD inserted or weirdly formatted floppies (sometimes a combination of these). You could get around these things and many groups of people worked hard at providing these workarounds. Today, many of these games are only playable and only still exist because of the thankless work these groups did. As it was and as it is has not changed. Many groups of people are still keeping games playable despite the “war” that corporations wage on them (and by proxy on us). Ironically, now that there is such a thing as “classic games” and people are nostalgic for what brought them joy in the past, business has leapt at this as a marketing opportunity. What makes that ironic? These business are re-selling the versions of games with the circumvention patches that the community made to make their games playable so long ago. The patches that publishers had such a big problem with and sought to eradicate. This is because the original code no longer exists and the un-patched games will not run at all on modern hardware and the copy-protections will not tolerate a virtual machine. Nothing has changed.

We can even go back as far as when people first started making books or maps that had deliberate errors so that they could track when their work was redistributed. Do the people referencing these books or maps benefit from these errors?

Why do some of us feel compelled to limit knowledge even at the cost of corrupting that knowledge for those we intend it for (and for those long after who wish to learn from historical knowledge)?

What’s next? Rename New Mexico? Oh how about the Capital District of CoLuMbiA!?!? Wait the United States is just one country among many in just one of the American continents. Why not call it the Gulf of the Americas?

I agree with the sentiment but the order of words in the title and text appear a bit weird to me. For instance, “totally lost grasp…” and “can’t even seem to…” make more sense to me than how it was posted.

You can purchase the game in a web browser and use steamcmd, which (one could argue is still requiring an app) to download and install. In cases where the publisher is not invoking DRM (Larian games like BG3, DoS2, etc. for instance) once the game is downloaded you can certainly archive it and transfer it to another machine and run it there without Steam. In the end you are likely purchasing proprietary software (though again it’s not always the case on Steam) and we could say you don’t really own that either, so maybe take your complaints to the publishers or just use the power of your wallet and not buy those games and support libre games, of which there are many, another way. That said, Valve is actively making things better for users by developing and contributing to useful libre software like Proton (WINE, DXVK, etc) that can work outside of Steam.

Sony seems to be migrating out of the console market with good timing. The console itself is a loss and competing with emulation is another distraction. They have realized that focusing on games and peripherals are where they can profit most, it appears. As a pc user, I love their controllers and games so it’s a welcome shift.

el wiiwii

The DNC seems reluctant to back Kamala according to Jen Psaki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QUtJNbGgZs&t=365

I have to wonder if this is also racially motivated. Hard to say but, regardless the DNC needs to get their shit together.

In the end you are still at the mercy of their shareholders and their core mission of EEE over end-user empowerment. Every thing they build is designed with lock-in and obfuscation to protect themselves.

Sadly that’s mostly true, but that may have more to do with devs lack of experience with Linux in general. Often they would have to outsource the port to Aspyr or another team.

Fossil fuels are absolutely the cause for extreme heat, who could have any doubt? Electricity is also capable of extreme heat so why don’t we use this more instead?

Hmm something about this has me fantasizing about a phone sized deck. But considering Valves development of VR and this development, I think they are going to tap into the android based VR dev pool for porting titles to an official Android on Steam platform.

When games and stories about a dystopian future cross into becoming less dystopian and more engaging than reality.

Gee the Steamdeck lets people play nearly every game they or their parents played including their 20 year old Steam library. Nintendo could make a handheld console to do the same thing, but they wont. Good luck. When the Switch came out it was something unique, but the rest of the world makes handheld consoles with far more to offer. I think they should take note of how Sony has leveraged Steam and start releasing games on other platforms. Arguably Nintendo’s greatest strength is their software and it’s their hardware that is its weakness more than ever.

AMD is far ahead in the performance/watt here. Intel seems to have lots of trouble providing even stable drivers for their XE/Arc graphics on Linux. Maybe their Battlemage generation will have better support but it’s not something I’d count on. So many of these handhelds try to shoehorn Windows into this form factor but MS business practices are anti-user at any opportunity to extract personal data or money.

Minetest engine and its games are great fun. It’s super easy to mod with Lua scripts and there is awesome documentation. ContentDB has an abundant selection of games and mods for anyone to customize their play.

Not unlike the species of it’s creators, go figure.

Immerse us in dlc and micropayments no doubt. We pay for PSN to have multi-player and they kill servers beloved by many. RIP LBP series

I tried the Oculus 2 and liked that it gave me a very physical way to game as opposed to sitting in a chair. Unfortunately the weight on my head and sweaty headpiece were ultimately a turnoff. The glasses style devices (XReal, Viture, etc) are a much better fit for me and mine has 3DOF motion tracking so it works as mouse view in most games without requiring VR support. It’s much lighter and I can wear them for hours without the strain and sweat. Newer glasses are coming with cameras for 6DOF, hand tracking and eye-tracking is not to far off as well.

These glasses are powered by a phone or a pc with USB DP alt mode. This gets the battery and processor off the head and makes for an un-tethered experience (with a phone).

thank you for easing my personal self-loathing a bit!

U,D,U,D,L,R,L,R,B,A,B,A games when?