I can’t even think of the last AAA game that I played through. Maybe Ghost of Yotei, which was fine but nothing to sing praises over (though the cast was fantastic, I’ll give it that).

Indie and AA games have been far more interesting than any AAA slop for years now, especially console exclusive slop. PoE2 and Warframe are dominating the AA live service market, Deltarune’s back in conversations with the new chapter release, so many weird little obscure titles that are just far more interesting than whatever Sony and MS are pumping out. Hell, over the past year some of my favorite single player games have been super oddballs like Cruelty Squad, Funi Raccoon Game, and Fuck’s Quest II

Rambling aside, I don’t see myself ever caring about a game enough to buy a new console for it at this point. Even Nintendo’s lost my interest ages ago and I grew up obsessed with their games.

Maybe I just got unlucky but running an update today absolutely borked my Steam Deck running this build. Been running it smooth for a few months now, but after updating today I couldn’t launch anything in game mode, proton or native. Worked fine in desktop mode, and if I let things sit for 5+ minutes in game mode they’d eventually launch sometimes. Spent a few hours trying to fix it until I just said fuck it, wiped the thing, and went back to SteamOS.

I swear by CachyOS for my desktop, but the handheld edition has given me more trouble than is worth, at least on the deck.

Edit: Opted for a fresh install before totally giving up and it seems to be fine now. Very bizarre but that’s just how it goes sometimes

Edit edit: Nope, happening again. Seemed to work out of the box, but after customizing a bit and installing a bunch of junk in desktop mode, it seems to be doing the exact same thing again. Figured it might be Decky Loader, but it still keeps happening with Decky uninstalled (tested before the wipe too). No idea, might see if I can try a different gamescope-session package

Triple edit: Figured it out. The new gamescope session package doesn’t play nice with Steam’s Background Recording feature. Turning recording off completely fixed this for the time being.

After how badly Bungie botched D2 pvp over the years in every aspect, from the sandbox to the matchmaking, and continued to double down on those decisions instead of changing course, I have zero faith in them to keep a pvp-only game alive for very long. Can’t wait to see it become a FOMO-ridden mess with half the game taken away.

On top of that, they’re using the same rootkit anticheat that barely even works for D2. And on top of that, Battleye has stated themselves that Linux support is a very simple opt-in for developers, yet they refuse to do so for either game in 2026. While I have a lot of issues with Arc Raiders (mostly their genAI usage), at least they enabled Battleye’s Linux support with zero issues.

Even if I could play it this is a hard pass. Their management and c-suite can rot. Such a waste because the actual devs clearly have skill and talent and can make cool shit, they’ve proven this time and time again, but Bungie management is actually abusive, both to their employees and the players.

Oh yeah, it’s probably an Nvidia thing isn’t it. Yeah sometimes swapping works, though overall it’s just not consistent enough to bother with sleep.

Probably something funky on my end but my CachyOS machine struggles to wake up from sleep mode. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it takes 5+ minutes on a black screen, sometimes it just never comes on. Regardless, I use an elgato stream deck (I like my funny buttons + dials and it powers my XLR mic), and it flat out doesn’t turn back on after sleep.

This thing is up and running in like a minute tops from a cold boot anyway so I usually just run an update and full shut down every night.

All they’re doing is finding a new vendor, not canceling this plan entirely.

Plus fully admitting they have enough data on most users already to skip it is blatantly admitting to privacy violations.

Let them rot. Don’t let this shitty “we’re sowwy” post fool you.

It definitely seems like the best competitor popping up. Familiar UI, nearly all essential features already functional, open source and self-hostable. I will say it feels like it came out of nowhere and having paid options out the gate feels a bit sketchy so I’m not completely placing any bets on it, but after trying it out for a bit I’ve been liking it far more than any other alternative.

Matrix is more mature and established but very clunky, confusing for casual users, and most clients are terrible. Stoat feels extremely dated and buggy, and it feels exactly the same as when I first tried it a year ago before the name change. Alternatives are few and far between and nothing really excels just yet, but Fluxer feels the most promising.

Yeah honestly. Like I work in IT, have my own home server, run linux on everything, etc etc etc, but even I found Matrix to be a convoluted mess, and most clients have their own issues. I can’t imagine trying to get someone who’s not tech-savvy to try it out.

Yeah honestly. Running the teamspeak server executable is hardly selfhosting, and they’re just another closed source proprietary service. Cool they’re still around after all these years I guess but they shouldn’t even be considered as a migration option.

Stoat and Fluxer are both open source, very straightforward and familiar, and I believe self-hostable. Much easier for casual users than Matrix too.

This is also why bluesky picked up over all the other twitter alternatives. The average user doesn’t want to learn all this shit, they just want to use something that works (which in that situation is unfortunate, because Mastodon is right there and works perfectly fine out of the box with their default public instance, but it is what it is I guess).

Realistically I don’t see Matrix picking up as a widespread discord clone. Just the entire idea of Matrix being a protocol and having different clients to choose from is enough to turn a lot of folks away from it. Meanwhile, Stoat is practically building a 1:1 discord clone, and is much easier for the average user to understand.

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.