https://store.steampowered.com/app/3908100/

Exciting looking game! Reviews rate the mechanics well, but it seems it lacks depth a little but I think some time in development will fix that. I’ll keep it on my radar.

Precisely. While I do think it is frustrating that original replacement components are being phased out right around the time these components might start failing…

As long as Valve aren’t artificially blocking 3rd parties from making compatible parts, then I don’t see it as anti-consumer as much as it is a technically poor way to supporting the long-term legacy of their own product.

It does put a small concern in the back of my mind for the Steam Frame, which I desperately want to know more about.

You’re not “expanding your consciousness beyond the stars”, bro… aliens want to play Xbox so they are totally part of the addressable market, for the purposes of stock valuation.

But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That’s true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn’t apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you’re doing.

Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven’t so far, thankfully). All you need is to get something called the Goldberg Emulator, replace the SteamAPI file, then add an app_id.txt file. Done. You can play any Steam game offline (assuming the publisher didn’t put their own DRM like Denuvo). I’ve done this a lot, and it is legal as long as you don’t share your game to other people.

This part bears repeating anytime someone says “Valve killed ownership”. They can break the trust that is formed with their customers at any time, but so far they have not.

I mean everyone that wanted one gets a fair shake at it in the randomized queue. I suppose I’m just hoping and speculating that Valve can detect and remove mass preorders from scalper bots.

PC component prices are a little higher in Japan on average than in North America, and the shortages are affecting Japan more acutely in the DIY computer space.

Even at a higher price, a compact, quiet offering of a decently capable machine does have a solid appeal to that market.

I’m not in the market for the Steam Machine, but if I was, $1100 Cdn might be reasonable for this offering, I’d consider it.

Still hoping we can do better on pricing for the frame, that’s what I really want but I’ll wait a year if the launch prices are over $1000 Cdn ($700US)

Keeping a server up in perpetuity has never, ever, not once, been an official demand by the Stop Killing Games movement. I’ve seen it from French consumer advocate orgs, but please cite who from SKG other than Twitter or Reddit randos have said companies should be obligated to keep their servers up or support the game forever.

Yes, the industry lobby has intentionally kept misrepresenting SKG’s argument as that.

What SKG has advocated for according to the movement’s documents, presentations and Ross’s original ideas, is for a company to provide an end-of-life plan, to ensure that purchasers of a game, still have a game to play that does not require any involvement, support or expense from the provider when they wish to stop supporting the game. This can be achieved in a multitude of ways:

• work in-house or with a contractor to create an offline or LAN mode with some functionality disabled like matchmaking and leaderboards.
• release the server code, even if it requires several enterprise servers to host.
• work with modders to patch the game to not require the provider.
• Sufficiently de-obfuscate the code/remove DRM in a way that it would be trivial for the community to produce a working version.

As for LoL, these are still “actively supported” so is not the target of SKG except for proactive preparation for when Riot doesn’t want to continue development and hosting access.

Not sure this makes things better or not, but I think more accurately it’s a question of whether games are considered a service or a good. The games industry wants to treat game software with online connection components as a service, while in some respects presenting it as a good at the point-of-sale.

Jensen Huang says Nvidia is also not a car.

At that time it was still kind of a research project than a “it’s going to take over everything” hype and FUD machine.

His opinions on AI today seem more enthusiastic than I would be, but well clear of the delusional level of AI-boosters.

Your setup is looking sweet! Enjoy gaming on your shiny new Linux battlestation :)

Yes if you’re time horizon is 10yrs, then spending 15% more for the upgrade to -70 gpu will be worth it in the short and long run and your 750W PSU will handle it just fine. There will hopefully in 2-3 years be cheaper RAM and SSDs again after the AI bubble. You will also have the opportunity to upgrade your CPU at least 2 generations forward without changing your motherboard, if you ever need to.

Looks great, what’s your monitor going to be? If you use a 20 year old one with a VGA connector it will not look good no matter how powerful your PC will be. I know you said 1440p so you probably have something in mind already, but it would be meaningless with a 768p so I’m just sanity checking for you. My suggestion for a new monitor would be a 27 inch 144 Hz 1440p IPS panel, would run under 12000 INR.

I looked carefully at the PSU since it’s a brand I’m not familiar with and it’s very important. A 10 yr warranty offer sounds very confident, and they at least have a clean record for their previous PSU offerings.

If you don’t have headphones or you live with other people and worried about noise, check reviews of the CPU cooler, case, GPU and PSU for any reports of coil whine or other annoying sounds. You might easily get used to it but it’s something to avoid getting surprised by since it’s your first build.

Ok works great! One bug report, one feature request:

• 4 frigates ran aground from their guard circling… if near the coast they should circle the other direction. Or this is Hegseth’s Navy.
• As an oil tanker can we get a red or green flag/spot to indicate whether our destination is in bound or outbound? I survived for a while but wasn’t sure if I was going the right way and autopilot was going crazy.

I was “playing” on mobile, but since there are no touch controls, so my cute little quadcopter was flying straight with no aim in particular and got blown up :)

The PRS needs to pay the wanker down the street for the licence to act like such bellends.

Right? I think this is the answer to why people don’t get invested in a game like this. The publisher asks customers for money upfront, then continues to ask through in game purchases, forcing a connection to them whenever you use it all the while holding a button that can cut off access to everything you paid them for. The rational response is to refuse this skewed bargain, and play something better.