beepnoise

This isn’t the first time they’ve pushed an update which crashes PCs.

IIRC, the development/testing is done on Windows under VMs rather than a sample of real world hardware, so it’s like “well yeah, duh, no wonder why you keep releasing updates that crash & freeze end users machines”

Between shit like this, Crowdstrike, and Microsoft Recall I wonder why anyone even bothers with Windows anymore. I have both Mac and Linux (both which I love equally). Both of them don’t seem to have anywhere near these levels of issues - Macs I would hope not given the eye-watering amount I’ve spent on it, and Linux I could be forgiven if it did give me hassle, but no.

Nevermind, I did a quick check on YouTube and the game runs absolutely terribly on the Steam Deck… so much for me supporting Konami, got that refund request in order.

I’m just downloading it to my Steam Deck as I bought advanced access to the game. I’ll let folks know how it goes.

And before anyone jumps on my neck about buying advanced access:

• I waited until review scores came out
• Even then I was originally planning to wait a few weeks until launch but with Steam refunds, I figured I can play for half an hour to get a good feel of the game
• Not only is this Konami’s first good game in ages, I dare say this is also the industry’s first good game in ages. RE4 was excellent, but the OG was great and Capcom at that point knew how to do well. I cannot say the same for Konami/Bloober.
• I’m someone who is lucky enough to have enough disposable income where a purchase like this doesn’t really negatively affect me financially.

Also from my experience the users on BlueSky are pretty much a straight swap from Twitter. And by that I mean nobody ever bothers interacting with me at all.

On mastodon if I so much as rip a fart on there, *someone* will engage with it. On BlueSky? Nada.

If you like what you see, strongly consider contributing to Servo financially: https://opencollective.com/servo

I did and I feel quite happy about it. Here’s hoping there is more web engines out there 👍

Well tbf I’m seeing the introdução hashtag trending on Mastodon (on my server it is second)

unions have layers

I think Valve has the capacity to make some truly excellent stuff, but they only seem to care if it increases their wallets in a significant way.

After Architect, I’m very cautious about any Valve multiplayer game as it is bound to become infected with ways to extract money (or “value”, as Gabe Newell puts it) from the customer.

Aw man, I recently bought RE5 and 6 from Humble Bundle just to see how bad the games are.

RE5 is bad, but in a somewhat enjoyable way. It helps that Chris Redfield’s biceps are as big as his head, which adds to the accidental funniness.

I remember buying Duke Nukem Forever in a Humble Bundle, a bundle that I had virtually every other game for the price. I remember only paying $1 and I gave *all* that money to charity.

I played DNF. I still felt robbed. To this day I haven’t completed it due to how terrible it is (if my memory serves me, I’ve been minaturised and I’m driving around in a tiny car? But the controls are awful and Duke now seems like a Trump like character whose charm is entirely devoid in modern times. It was already wearing thin back when it was released, too).

I think my neighbours cat experiences existential dread if she hasn’t eaten in 5 nanoseconds…

There was a time where Elon Musk (EM) was pretty much a nerd darling. The real life Tony Stark.

I don’t know where you are, but in the UK the positive image dropped quite quickly once he called a British cave diver a pedophile over the remarks said cave diver (Vernon Unsworth) said that EM offering his small submarine to help the Thai cave boys was a “PR stunt” and also to “stick his submarine where it hurts” (link). Admittedly the latter was harsh words, but to then go ahead and call a British person in Thailand a pedophile (obviously referencing Gary Glitter) was incredibly childish, petty, and virtually made a lot of Brits distrust EM as well as see him for who he really was from the online tantrum.

I do feel sorry for those who have been suckered into thinking EM isn’t some narcissistic arsehole, although the number is dwindling (a personal highlight was when he got booed after Dave Chappelle introduced him to his audience in San Fransisco)

Threads could never

I completely forgot about Whiskey. Managed to get GTA V running at 120FPS on it, which was (and still is, IMHO) absolutely mindblowing.

Truth be told, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

PC Gaming has had tons of DRM examples - from SecuROM (anyone remember those times?) to modern day Denuvo DRM.

So there are a few unpopular DRMs out there:

• Disc checking based DRM (if the disc was cooked, that’s your paid game down the drain)
• CD Key based DRM (if you lost the CD Key, that’s your paid game down the drain)
• Online activation (you registered the same game on two different PCs? Try that again one more time and you’re done for. For added bonus, sometimes the activation software would register the same PC as different hardware because someone had the audacity to upgrade their hardware!)
• Always online - need I say more?
• Cloud gaming - now with the added joy of not owning the ones and zeros you paid for!!

Steam has managed to use account based DRM while avoiding the trappings of pretty much all of the above (for some games you can enter a CD key, and that game is permanently attached to your account, which is great if you lose the disc, but sucks if you want to sell the physical game on afterwards), while the competition used any of the above (some used multiple layers of DRM, which is eurgh).

Then on top of that, hats off to Valve - they do tend to listen to their customers and give them what they want, even if the whole point is to keep them tied to using Steam and strangle out the competition:

• Cloud saving
• Steam Workshops
• Game streaming via local network
• Sharing the game library with family
• Controller support with button remapping for legacy games with poor support
• In store game reviews
• Store algoritm suggestions based on the game categories you buy and what you friends buy
• Discussion forums (even if they can be thoroughly toxic at times)
• Guides (the formatting is awful)
• Fairly deep and independent social integration
• Built in audio streaming via Steam
• Those card things that you can sell for a bit of money or craft

Compare that to Origin, Epic Store, GOG etc. They just cannot compete with what Valve offers in terms of features on top of features.

What bothers me about Valve is that

• They have such a chokehold on PC gaming that everything else feels inferior, and no other company can really compete in terms of features
• They have fought refunds in the past (as mentioned in the article)
• The whole paid modding fiasco because Valve really wanted to financially exploit a community known to give stuff away for free
• How they often abandon their own products due to lack of customer attention and their limited size due to wanting to remain a limited company
  • I’m looking at Valve Index, and apart from Half Life: Alyx, I don’t see much in the way of new games. Even worse is that I watched someone on YouTube basically explain that there are still glitches and weird stuff that occurs in the Valve Index - aa product that costs £919 here in the UK.
  • I’m also looking at the Steam Controller, which has been very, very neglected with no talk of a sequel (given how successful the Steam Deck has been, I’m shocked at the lack of a “companion controller”)
  • I’m also looking at the infamous Steam PCs that completely flopped
• How TF2 started the trend (at least on Steam) of microtransactions in games, and how CS:GO has carried that flag (and started a gambling community which has probably done untold damage to young children as they grow into adults and are confronted with the world of gambling)
• How Valve, as a company that started off making games, has absolutely no desire whatsoever to make games anymore because of how wildly successful they are.

And this is the stuff I can think of at the top of my head. I was going to say it also concerns me they don’t have a bug bounty program, but it turns out now they do.

On Intel Macs, it is fairly trivial.

On the modern ARM based Macs (the M1/2/3/X processors), it isn’t an option. The only real solution is to use desktop virtualisation software like Parallels to install Windows (ARM based) and try to get Steam going. There are cheaper alternatives to Parallels, but they are often a faff.

Huh. Thank you very much for clearing that up - I don’t really watch LTT anymore (not really for a long time, even before the whole i n c i d e n t) so it’s great to have some perspective.

Shame, really.

Linus from LTT is not behind the Framework company/products: https://frame.work/gb/en/about

He may have done a video about them, but that’s about it.

Cat.