I absolutely swear by these things, and the upcoming Steam Controller is the only thing that’ll make me shelve it. I’ve got 3 of them lying around at this point.

The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing’s on the walls, they jump ship.

This especially. Just as an example, I sunk way too much time into Destiny 2, and recently picked up Warframe after putting D2 away last year, and the difference between the studios behind them both is night and day. The former feels like an abusive relationship, built on constant FOMO, removing content, and constantly skirting around the community’s numerous issues with the game’s systems and sandbox (and that’s all on top of Bungie/Sony execs treating the actual devs like garbage).

The latter feels like a game where the players are genuinely treated as the game’s lifeblood and rather than nickel and dime them for every last thing, the devs give them what they want, and the devs get to make what they want to make. Not to mention literally everything in the game minus community-created cosmetics can be earned without spending anything at all.

These sorts of comparisons are all over the place. PoE2 compared to Diablo 4 or post-Krafton Last Epoch for example. You can’t just pump out a live service game and hope shit sticks, you need to foster a community around it.

The only ones I play these days are Warframe and occasionally PoE2, both relatively smaller dev teams with large publisher backing but mostly left to their own devices to do whatever the fuck they want. Coming from the predatory FOMO hell that was Destiny 2, getting into similar games but ones that actually respect the players is refreshing.

I have zero interest in throwaway AAA slop in general, let alone with all the usual live service shit tacked on.

The amount of genuinely good and successful live service games is so minimal that it’s actual insanity seeing AAA execs trying to reinvent the wheel and failing every time.

I love the new area, I do think the bosses are a bit overtuned (especially the two new superbosses, but those should be a huge challenge), but I was also super rusty and on NG+5 so I can’t really say for certain.

Super cool stuff. All 5 new bosses kicked my shit in after I’d been steamrolling the rest of the game, only beat the new area boss and called it there - the new tower shit is way too much for me. Might edit my save back down to NG+ and see how they feel.

Not a fan of the Breaking Death nerf though, I will say that. It really cripples endgame autodeath builds. One of those changes where even if it were a bug, it’d been around so long that they should’ve let it stay as-is.

Yep, exactly

I’ve seen a lot of folks waiting for this to make the switch, it’s silly but having a familiar name attached to it gives them a sense of comfort, and SteamOS is solid for what it is.

I’m not a fan of its whole “read only filesystem” shenanigans and wiping things on upgrade, so I switched my Deck to CachyOS Handheld, but I acknowledge it does those for a reason, adding a safety net to the “console-like” experience for most users. Admittedly that feature may be just the thing some inexperienced users would need in order to not break the thing.

Tbh I need to replay 2, I can’t even remember if I actually finished it back in the day. Didn’t play 1 either, though I never really hear anyone talk about it, everyone goes straight to 2.

I do think 3 was really good, it was definitely a bit too much but they still made it work. 4 was where they took those ideas and went off the rails with it for some reason.

I was interested in the reboot until the feedback starting coming out and yeah I’m not touching that one

Seriously. SR3 was like a goofy spinoff. Then 4 happened.

Yeah honestly. Fuck Microsoft and all that but this sounds like there’s a strong reason behind it, and the owner’s post about “free speech” and “totalitarian China” is a MAJOR red flag.

I hate the name so much. I’ll use it with games where artifacts aren’t noticeable and input delay is negligible, but I’d never pretend it’s “lossless”. Same goes for any other framegen method.

I ran a dual boot back in college to dabble with Linux a bit but gaming support back then was literally nonexistent. The Deck and Proton really reinvigorated that drive nearly a decade later.

This past winter I started a huge degoogling push and trying to replace big tech platforms in general, and I’d also recently quit the only the game I regularly played that didn’t run on Linux due to anticheat bullshit, so I said fuck it and set up a CachyOS dual boot and I haven’t looked back since.

The dual boot is just there in case I ever need it for some odds or ends, or in case I break Cachy, but so far I’ve booted windows maybe 4 times since January.

This works since it feels grounded enough and really does help move the story forward - the anonymity in particular really drives this plot point. It’s also not a real cameo or anything of the sort.

DS2’s cameo is fine, it’s a game full of bizarre cameos and weird shit as-is, I had no idea at first that they were a real person and not just made for the game lmao. It fits in that universe, especially with the uncanny animations.

But what else can you really do aside from those two options? It’ll be incredibly difficult for this to not feel like a forced trend if it keeps happening.

Seconding this one. Legitimately the best casual use controllers I’ve ever used. Does everything it needs to, works flawlessly out of the box, offers plenty of customization for those who want to dive deeper, and just feels great to use.

The only game I actively played that didn’t work on Linux was destiny 2, and switching to cachyOS has really helped me kick that toxic game out for good.

The last bit is the key here. Is it gonna be objectively a better pick than any distro on the market right now? Not really. But the Valve name carries a lot of weight and will definitely bring in a lot of interested folks.

I’ve had mixed results doing this. Not really sure why

It’s almost as if ripping out 2/3 of the game’s paid content was a dogshit decision, who could’ve seen that one coming

Not even, pirating it still keeps the name in relevance.

so is Windows