Kinda hard to make a solid catalogue when you follow the live service trend and your projects flop one after another.

I agree the genre isn’t exactly for me, but I don’t think that’s really relevant. Stardew Valley and Sims more or less fall in the same genre and I loved Stardew Valley and could see the appeal of Sims. I don’t have an issue with those games being on the list but New Horizons just felt shallow. Outside of collecting things for the Museum there really wasn’t anything that engaging. I remember also checking if I’m just playing it wrong and the sentiment from the AC vets was that the gameplay of New Leaf is better.

I did a quick check to see New Horizon is still in the same state as I remember and some people are claiming the 2.0 update made the game better so I guess I’ll give it another shot one day. Maybe my opinion is dated because I haven’t really played since 1.3 update.

I’m going to give my probably controversial opinion. I don’t think Animal Crossing New Horizons should be on that list and the main reason it got critical acclaim is because it released at the height of Covid. Had it released any other time people would’ve seen that it’s a shallow game where in long term it’s mostly a repetition of the same menial actions. There’s nothing wrong with repetition, but having to check the store every day isn’t exactly the peak of compelling gameplay.

If you come from Windows Mint is an excellent starting point. People shit on it because it doesn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles you get with more latest releases, but on the flip side it’s super reliable and as a new user that reliability is worth more than all the bells and whistles.

Yeah, it’s definitely more of a case of being just unlucky because it’s not a common issue with the dock. Took me quite a while to find that wire trick.

I think Steam Deck is great and a huge impact on both Linux gaming and handheld gaming. My only gripe with the Steam deck is trying to use it in docked mode. I’m not sure if it’s the TV or the official dock but the only way I could get it working is when I disconnect all the wires from the dock and then connect them in the right order. I think it was 1) connect deck to the dock 2) Connect HDMI to the dock and finally 3) connect power to the dock. If I don’t connect it the right way the signal from the dock to the TV gets fucked up and I either get some really crappy resolution that doesn’t even get properly aligned, weird almost white noise or just straight up black screen. Not really a big issue for me since I mostly use the deck when away from home, but it still that using it at home is such a hassle (at least for me).

Yeah, I’m not continuing this discussion with you. You won’t even check if you’re talking out of your ass. The division 2 released simultaneously on Uplay and EGS

His question was not clear to me which is why I stated I didn’t understand what he was asking. And then expanded what I meant by exclusivity to see if that answered his question. And while I didn’t have time to go find the sources especially since finding the source for the other publisher IMO isn’t worth the effort (mainly because searching the web for anything very has become next to impossible unless you know exactly what you’re looking for). The Ubisoft one however is really simple, anyone with basic googling skills could find it.

If anyone is here in bad faith it’s you. You instantly assumed I’m being disingenuous and come attacking me without even doing a basic check to see if you have anything to attack.

I’m not sure what you’re asking so I’ll just expand on what Epic did. Epic made a deal with Ubisoft where Ubisoft releases their game on their store and on EGS but not on Steam despite all previous Ubisoft titles being on Steam. I remember there being another smaller publisher who made a deal with EGS and released their game on other storefronts (I think it was EGS and GOG but it also could’ve been the MS store) but not on Steam. I would consider that exclusivity targeting specifically Steam.

I’m not saying you should, I’m saying it doesn’t make them villains or a bad company.

I think it does. Instead of competing they chose to try and force customers to use their platform by buying exclusivity that specifically targets Steam. From the perspective of the customer they took the worst possible approach and, along with how Sweeney has talked about people like us, treated customers like a cattle to be herded, as if we couldn’t think for ourselves and would throw ourselves into EGS if our games went there.

But the end goal of EGS wasn’t just to make them more money, they offer every developer more money when they publish there.

That is the PR they sold that the money goes into the hands of the developer. That is true only if the developer is also self publishing. Actually that extra money goes into the hands of the publisher and then it’s up to the publisher to decide if the developers get any more money. And once again, from the customers perspective, we barely get anything out of that goal. Games don’t get cheaper for us, we don’t really get more games because of it. The publishers simply get more money per sale. They don’t even get more money (except for the exclusivity money that Epic threw their way) because you sell significantly more copies on Steam because unlike Epic Steam doesn’t treat its customers like cattle.

The underlying motivation for creating EGS in the first place was the recognition that Valve does not need to be taking a 30% cut of every game sale to provide the services they provide.

So to prove that Valve doesn’t need to take a higher cut they make a store where they take fraction of the cut Steam would take but also offer a fraction of the services Steam offers? I think that would be an argument if they offered at least half of what Steam offers but they don’t even do that. They made a barebones store for a barebones cut, that doesn’t show anything.

In his mind Epic doesn’t need independence from Microsoft because Microsoft isn’t taking a cut of his Fortnite money. Microsoft is bad but Apple and Google take it to the next level. Imagine if Microsoft needed companies to verify their software and with that verification Microsoft can take a cut of every purchase done in that software. So if Steam was verified games sold in the steam software would cost more than opening up a steam website and buying from there. That is Google and Apple in a nutshell. That is actually the case with Twitch subs, they cost more in the Twitch app because of the fee Google adds.

Reminds me of Creeper world except faster paced and more dynamic.

We already know lowering the cut doesn’t make us pay less. All it does is put more money into the pockets of the publisher.

And I very much doubt Valve’s cut is a reason indie game can’t be profitable. There are asset flips going up on Steam on a daily basis. If asset flipping wasn’t profitable we wouldn’t see them propping up like mushrooms after rain. When asset flips are more profitable than an indie game there’s something wrong with that game.

I’m pretty sure some of them are objectively broken. I had a mission where the mission givers partner was seeing someone else and I had to figure out who. The process of figuring out who the person was was pretty cool. Outside of some vague physical traits my leading clue was the mystery persons partners job position. I had to look up every restaurant, break into every single restaurant, find all the people who worked that position, find where they live, break into their apartments to find who their partner was and if they match who I’m looking for.

Eventually I was 99% sure I got the right person, but I needed proof they were seeing each other. I combed their entire apartment, found nothing. I combed the partners apartment, found nothing. I checked their workplaces, found nothing. I tailed both of them the entire day, still found nothing. I even checked their mailboxes and found nothing. I literally ran out of ideas how to solve the case because I found nothing.

Turned me away from the game because I got this cool investigation with some really out the box thinking, and then didn’t get rewarded because I didn’t find that last piece of information.

I used Truby9 but I just noticed that there’s a compatibility fix. Maybe that’s what I’m missing.

Well, you can check the scripts of the tool yourself. They’re all in the zip file you download from nexus. It just sends the credentials to the Steam API and uses the auth token for the rest. That’s exactly what the Steam app on Android does. And it’s also not some tool from a random dude, it’s the official downgrader tool from the FOLON team. They even link it on their homepage. I get being paranoid with credentials, but in this case i saw no problem. Sorry for my rambling, but this “issue” is blown way out of proportion imo.

Ah, I didn’t think about who made it. I just saw two options, either I go through the code to make sure it’s nothing sus or I do it manually and because I didn’t feel like going through code I did it manually. Should’ve paid more attention I guess.

As for the guide, I haven’t tried the Heroic launcher. I generally use Lutris but I will try that when the big patch comes out. Hopefully they also upgrade to a newer version of Fo4 because the ultrawidescreen mod is having some issues.

Not the guy toy responded but I can give my experience.

The first annoyance was downgrading Fallout 4. Now I know there’s a mod that can do it for you but I’m not going to stick my Steam credentials in some random piece of code. So I did it manually which wasn’t hard but it was annoying.

The second burden was getting F4se to run because for whatever reason I couldn’t launch FO4 without downgrading to wine 8.0.x. Luckily I found out glorious eggroll version of wine works with FO4 and actually starts F4se automatically.

But by far the biggest hurdle was the actual installation of Folon. I couldn’t get the installer to install the mod. I ended up unpacking the installer and manually copying the files into the FO4 folder.

Then I got the train bug and manually installed buffout. Then I got an XDI error so I had to manually reinstall XDI as well.

What’s the easier way?

But it’s broken and unplayable because the developer/publisher renders it unplayable and that’s where the initiative comes in. The initiative wants to make it so that if the developer/publisher wants to turn off their official services they don’t render the game unplayable.

You’re stating it like it’s somehow objective, but it’s not. Battlefield 3 and 4 have been delisted and it’s a matter of time until EA turns off services and those games are left for dead. Battlefield 4 still averages above 1k players a month. It’s clear that EA won’t see value in keeping the light on and will turn off the services in the near future, but do you think the players will go overnight from “I want to play this game” to “This game is worthless”. Don’t you think the people playing BF4 wouldn’t want to continue playing after EA shuts down the services keeping the game running?

I think it’s pretty obvious that there are two groups who decide if a game has value or not, the company and the customers. Right now after purchasing the game the customers no longer have a say whether a game has value or not. Only the company has a say and if the company says it’s not worth it then the people who bought it just have to suck it up. And that’s the idea behind the initiative, to make it so that the company isn’t the only one who gets to decide how long you get to use the product you’ve purchased.

I think if we expanded the idea of bricking software beyond gaming, if companies could destroy any piece of software they made, you’d also be in favor of this initiative. Imagine if Microsoft could brick Windows 10 when they’ve officially stopped supporting it. Or Nvidia effectively bricking their older cards by stopping official driver support. Would you then also argue that the software has lost value and it’s acceptable behavior?

I usually agree with Thor but on this one I probably couldn’t disagree more. Based on what he says I’d say his mindset is completely opposite to what his initiative wants to do. He essentially said he doesn’t see any value in (live service) games after they’ve reached their end of service and from that perspective I can understand how this movement is pointless or even potentially damaging. But that assumes that the (live service) game loses value after the company stops supporting it and I just don’t think that’s the case.

A lot of games continue live despite the company ending official support for them. If anyone remembers there’s a gem called Wildstar that was shut down in 2018. Despite the game being shut down and even trademark has expiring people are still running the game on private servers. People are putting in sweat and tears to make sure a game is preserved. Imagine how much easier it would be if Carbine or NcSoft had released proper tools for it. Even Vanilla WoW exists because private server did it first and Blizzard wanted to get some of that money.

And another point that Thor made how it’s not about preservation because you can’t preserve a moment in time. I think that’s a completely disingenuous argument because it feeds into FOMO. If you join WoW today you will never experience “the golden age of WoW”. Maybe another game you might be interested in is having a golden age right now, better buy into the hype. You can’t argue against preservation like this because it’s literally impossible to preserve a moment in time except in your memory so you have be at that exact place at that exact time to really experience that thing, that is FOMO at it’s purest form. That argument against preservation is an argument in favor of FOMO.

Thors points come for a belief that live service games don’t need to be preserved after official support has ended, and he views this initiative through that lens. Of course he will have issues with the initiative because he’s opposing the idea at a fundamental level. It’s like asking a racist how to be more tolerant with other races, the answer obviously is that you shouldn’t want to tolerate other races. And just like you would ignore a racist I think you should ignore what Thor has to say on this matter because anything he says is against the idea of preservation.