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It’s a stupid argument to begin with. Trademarks should die with the original entitiy that used them. Neither of these companies have anything to do with the original brand but both want to cash in on its recognizability. Both should build their own fucking reputations. I hope they both go broke fighting over this.
Like for instance, when epic came out with their exclusive access titles being a part of their business plan, valve could have responded with their own exclusive access system and had a good chance of killing off epic and others in the process. Instead they just ignored it and people like me continued using them and didn’t even consider epic even when their anticompetitive actions switched to ones that would have benefitted me (free games), because I could see the shithole they wanted to bring gaming to if their platform achieved dominance.
I’m not very impressed that they used an optimization that blew up the game size 5x that they knew would only benefit a subset of users without even doing any profiling on it until 2 years after release. Good that they eventually revisited it, but someone fucked up making that decision in the first place.
One thing to add, prices can be manipulated in the short term to make or avoid certain options from getting into the money. They won’t do this to target specific individuals, but there’s a value called “max pain”, which is the price such that the most puts and calls expire worthless and the ones that are in the money pay out the minimal value, when all outstanding contracts for an equity are considered in aggregate, and prices trend towards those at expiry time.
The move equivalent to buying stock when you think it’s going to go up is to sell stock you own when you think it’s going to go down.
Or you can look at the series of actions, where buying when you think it’ll go up is just step 1, then step 2 is wait for it to go up, and step 3 is sell it for a profit, and step 4 is look for the next stock you think will go up (or wait and hold the cash if you don’t think any will).
In which case you can do step 3 if you own the stock, or step 4 if you don’t. Then, if it does crash (and the crash is stock prices and not the currency itself, like what happened to a degree in response to the money printed after 2020), you can buy back in at the bottom and wait for it to go up.
But if the fed pumps money into the system to prop up the stock markets, or the government bails out firms that might go under, then that money can be used to keep the stock prices high. And with the richest 1% owning such a high portion of the entire economy, if they have a lot of cash, they could also do that without any help from the feds (reserve or government).
So depending on how a crash is responded to, the best bet might be holding cash or avoiding holding cash. Or maybe investing in some good that holds value well.
However, holding stock might still be fine, assuming the equities you hold are able to survive the crash and everything that comes next. If you look at the historic crashes, the value does always return and pass the previous before crash value, at least on average. You won’t get rich playing it like that but you might not lose those unrealized losses unless you’re in a position where you have to sell.
Don’t forget the first response that always gives the steps to solve a simpler version of that issue, almost like the responses are being copy/pasted from a guide by people who barely understand anything about it themselves.
Plus these days the number of solutions that refer to some setting that no longer exists in the location it did at the time the solution was written.
Meanwhile on Linux, I haven’t even had to search as much for solutions. Yesterday I installed a new desktop that I’ve never used before (KDE-Plasma) and was quickly able to figure out the changes I wanted to make because it’s designed to be discoverable and obvious. Whereas I’d say that Windows seems designed to make people either feel tempted to pay for a solution or give up and just do it the way MS wants.
I remember being annoyed that I had to install yet another launcher and make yet another account when I was installing portal. But I didn’t know at the time that this was the launcher to end most other launchers and accounts, or at the very least made most of that transparent other then adding an extra click to launch some games.
Iirc, Blizzard had just replaced the wow in-game patcher with a launcher (though I don’t recall if they had a unified launcher for each game, if they all had their own at that point, or if it was just wow), Oblivion had a game launcher, and I think there were a few others. Some of them even needed to be installed separately iirc.
Steam is nice because, being the launcher for most of my games, it’s just always open and helps organize my games. And it doesn’t feel like its main purpose is to make money, with everything else just being about opening pathways to that money. And even though it is meant to make Valve money, it’s the lack of blatant dark patterns and constant upsell attempts that makes it feel better than most of the rest of the commercial world.
They say that about the company that has <professional sports league> <insert next calendar year> which are even more forever games because (as I understand, not really a fan of sports games either way) the changes from year to year seem to mostly be rosters.
It looks like one exec thinking he’s dunking on another and will look cool hating the hated one, but from my pov it just looks like two of the asshole kids in the playground trying to one up the other, thinking the others egging them on are laughing with them instead of at them.
Also, EA made over a billion (non-GAAP) in FY2025 while Ubisoft lost $175 million (GAAP, so not completely apples to apples, but switching to non-GAAP won’t turn that loss into a profit, let alone 1 billion worth). Not that I like EA or anything, it’s just that they are doing a much better job of what ubisoft wants to do and don’t need edgy execs trying to dunk on companies they hope are more hated than they are.
So far I’ve been impressed with what AI can do with coding. I had it write some scripts for me on one of my previous work tasks and it did the majority of the code writing and even majorly assisted the debug process.
And now I’m using it for another task and it’s already improved significantly since the last one. You can now interrupt it if if gets stuck in some kind of loop and the required debug phases are fewer. Hell, it’s even reading between the lines of my prompts effectively and implemented a verbosity feature in a second script just because I had requested it in the first one.
With the first task, I was holding its hand as far as data structures and such were concerned. This time, I’m instructing it at a higher level. And while it does help that I can understand the code it generates, I said last time that it was good enough to start replacing interns, I think at this point it’s ready to start replacing junior programming positions.
One area that I’m glad to have my console is for games that I expect the publisher to include anti-consumer bs but I still want to play. I dont gaf if they install a kernel mode anti-cheat on my ps5, but I’ll never install that on my PC.
That said, I don’t spend much time doing that anyways and don’t have any plans to get another console in the future. And in case nintendo is listening, the switch 2 would have been an exception to that if you weren’t so lawsuit happy.
It’s because it was pretty much the Netflix of video games. Pay a subscription and you get access to a collection of games.
When it was 5.99 it was a no brainer. I think I cancelled mine around 13.99, though not because of the price but because I always forgot it existed and it tied me to windows. Switched to Linux and cancelling was a part of that transition.
I think translations should involve a pair of people where both know both languages but one is fluent in the one while the other is fluent in the other. Or a single person fluent in both, but if you don’t know the other language, it can be hard to verify that fluency and I’m sure it’s not very hard to find people willing to lie about their proficiency to get a job.
Some arcades were actually a bit more manipulative than that in that they’d get harder depending on how long it was since you last put a quarter in.
Mortal Kombat was one. I noticed this pattern on the snes version of MK3 (can’t remember if it was ultimate or not that I had): I’d easily win one fight, then get demolished by the next fighter. Then continue and that same fighter would be easy, only for the next one after that to be much more difficult. I didn’t have to put quarters into my snes but they just used the same tuning from the arcade machines.
Eventually when I played that game, I was spending much more time on the space invaders minigame lol.
I can say that personally, I do hesitate if I see a game with mixed reviews and will at least check out why people don’t like it. And if steam says a high volume of “irrelevant” (or whatever word they use) reviews are not shown, I’ll click through to see what they are about to decide for myself if they are relevant or just losers whining about “woke” shit.
I was surprised to see the 9070 xt at about double the 6800 xt performance in benchmarks, once ones with both of those started coming out.
I got it because I also see that if China does follow through with an attack on Taiwan, PC components are going to become very hard to find and very expensive while all of that production capacity is replaced. And depending on how things go after that, this might be the last GPU I ever buy.
I’m so glad that I looked up some cheat codes for Turok 64 back in the day. It had two powerful weapons that were meant to be used sparingly after finding a rare inatance, in one case, or searching the entire game for pieces, after which you only got 3 shots with it. I used those two weapons until I got bored of them.
Then I tried to play the game again without the cheats and realized it was ruined for me. Why would I care to spend time searching for each piece of that weapon, knowing it only has 3 shots, when I was already bored with it?
And then later on, after I had been raiding in WoW, very focused on getting my loot upgrades, I noticed the loop of raiding to get better gear to get better at raiding to get better gear and realized it only had a point if I enjoyed the raiding, otherwise the gear didn’t matter, regardless of what stats or graphics it had.
Those two things together have made it easy to never spend any money on game progression. It’s basically spending money to either get bored of the game quicker by trivializing the powerful things (monetized cheat codes or powerups), or to avoid playing the game in the first place (getting the gear without the raid, when the whole point of the gear is to help with the raid).
And yeah, often the game isn’t worth going through the loop, but they design the early stages to give fast progression to build up an expectation but tune it so that it’s a slog grind if you don’t buy anything, hoping for a few bucks from people as they learn this, or a lot of bucks from those who set strong habits and never do learn.
And when progression is pinned to an exponential curve while upgrades are non-exponential but tuned to be ahead of the curve when you first get them, it doesn’t matter how much money you spend, eventually you’ll always be back at a curve that looks more vertical than anything else and you’ll need to spend money or wait a crazy amount of time.
I enjoyed below zero but found the big moments weren’t as big. Like I’d categorize Subnautica as an exploration horror survival crafting game for the first playthrough but then drop the horror for subsequent ones. I didn’t really get the same sense of horror from below zero and don’t think 2 could do it either.
The way the original dripped the information was an experience on its own, you know, the whole reason I’m being vague to not spoil it while being OK with using quotes like “Multiple Leviathan class life forms detected. Are you sure what you’re doing is worth it?”
The second one didn’t have that, even though they really expanded on a lot of things and did a great job at making a successor exploration survival crafting game, it didn’t make me reel or feel like a hopeless situation just entered a whole new level of hopelessness. That experience is what I wish I could go back to but can’t.
TAA looks worse than no AA IMO. It can be better than not using it with some other techniques that cause the frames to look grainy in random ways, like real time path traced global illumination that doesn’t have enough time to generate enough rays for a smooth output. But I see it as pretty much a blur effect.
Other AA techniques generate more samples to increase pixel accuracy. TAA uses previous frame data to increase temporal stability, which can reduce aliasing effects but is less accurate because sometimes the new colour isn’t correlated with the previous one.
Maybe the loss of accuracy from TAA is worth the increase you get from a low sample path traced global illumination in some cases (personally a maybe) or extra smoothness from generated frames (personally a no), but TAA artifacts generally annoy me more than aliasing artifacts.
As for specifics of those artifacts, they are things like washed out details, motion blur, and difficult to read text.
TSMC is the only proven fab at this point. Samsung is lagging and current emerging tech isn’t meeting expectations. Intel might be back in the game with their next gen but it’s still to be proven and they aren’t scaled up to production levels yet.
And the differences between the different fabs means that designing a chip to be made at more than one would be almost like designing entirely different chips for each fab. Not only are the gates themselves different dimensions (and require a different layout) but they also have different performance and power profiles, so even if two chips are logically the same and they could trade area efficiency for more consistent higher level layout (like think two buildings with the same footprint but different room layouts), they’d need different setups for things like buffers and repeaters. And even if they do design the same logical chip for both fabs, they’d end up being different products in the end.
And with TSMC leading not just performance but also yields, the lower end chips might not even be cheaper to produce.
Also, each fab requires NDAs and such and it could even be a case where signing one NDA disqualifies you from signing another, so they might require entirely different teams to do the NDA-requiring work rather than being able to have some overlap for similar work.
Not that I disagree with your sentiment overall, it’s just a gamble. Like what if one company goes with Samsung for one SKU and their competition goes with TSMC for the competing SKU and they end up with a whole bunch of inventory that no one wants because the performance gap is bigger than the price gap making waiting for stock the no brainer choice?
But if Intel or Samsung do catch up to TSMC in at least some of the metrics, that could change.
Just in case you are thinking this like I used to, don’t go by “unplayable on steam deck” to determine what games you won’t be able to play on a Linux desktop. While those games include incompatible with Linux games, they also include ones that the deck hardware can’t handle at a decent framerate but otherwise play fine on Linux.
I played a lot of games this year, but there were main ones that “stuck” more than others. I’m a patient gamer, so most of these aren’t new releases.
I was playing a lot of Satisfactory earlier in the year. Not much more recently but I know I’m not done with that game. I started a second save to organize things better, though not sure how well I’m accomplishing that. Though this second one uses more trains while the first one had more of a road setup, including a raised highway to access the oil area in the south east. Still nothing like some of the megaatructures I see in other builds online. I try to plan for expansion, so don’t tend to “finish” buildings, but rather build up a frame that can be added to in any direction. I’d give the game a 9/10 overall.
Another game I got into for a bit was TCG Card Shop Simulator. It was fun for a bit but then dropped off hard as the novelty wore off. I think that’s how “pretend to work a job” games generally go for me. Fun and satisfying at first, but then repetitive and unrewarding later on. I’m going through something similar with Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 right now, though I’ll get to that. I’d rate it about a 6.5/10, though it feels like an 8/10 at first before dropping off to more like a 4/10 once it gets old.
I’ll give Healed to Death an honourable mention, even though I moved on from it pretty quickly. It’s a great concept IMO, since sometimes I want to do a “healing the raid” type activity but don’t want to invest the time into a MMO to get there again. But this one isn’t just playing the healer, you also need to manage a constantly revolving party’s gear and switch them to follow mode (where they do no attacking even if they are ranged) to move them out of the fire during fights. So it’s basically healer simulator but your party is always the worst. If they (actually it’s one guy I believe, so impressive job even if it is lacking overall) added better AIs that didn’t need to be micromanaged, it would be much better. I’d give it a 4/10 in its current state but it could be a 9/10 with better execution.
TMNT: Splintered Fate is very similar to Hades (in fact, I’d call it a clone). I liked it but didn’t stick with it for long. 8/10.
Schedule I is another one of those “work that is fun at first but gets old”. Though they’ve added a bunch of stuff since I last played, so I will probably check it out again at some point. Game loop is basically find a spot, produce drugs, maybe modify them by adding shit to them, then selling them either directly or via a dealer. Then use the cash to produce more drugs or get new places (both areas to produce drugs and businesses to launder the proceeds, though I don’t know if laundering even makes a difference at this point), hire workers or buy vehicles and weapons. I believe they added competing cartels in an update since I last played, so it could be more interesting now. 7/10.
Then had a short period where I was interested in speed running, though mostly just against myself, since I’m nowhere close to the top charts on anything. Did a bit with Subnautica (best time to leave in rocket was under 10 hours now iirc) and Grim Dawn (I think I got my best Act 1 time to beat the record full game time lol). No rating for speed running in general (though it does not go well with ADHD unless you hyperfocus on one game), but Subnautica 10/10 and Grim Dawn 8/10 (it’s similar to Diablo).
Widget Inc was another, it’s pretty much an automation game without logistics, where each new production building rises in cost exponentially and prestiging to increase overall production. Apparently they just released a major update yesterday (looks like it adds enemies). Not sure I’ll look into it. 6/10.
Did House Flipper for a bit, which followed the job game pattern of being fun and engaging for a bit and then repetitive. At first, I intended to get the second game, but my interest in the whole thing waned before that. It was cool that they had Kame house in the game, with hidden dragon balls to find. 7/10.
Also was playing some Dark Souls this year off and on. I realized that there was a lot more to the world than just a hard path through tough enemies. Like there’s shops, blacksmiths, and a ton of hidden things. I also tried builds other than highly mobile swords builds and found 2H is actually easier because your hits often stagger the enemies (and do way more damage), so instead of dodging and timing carefully, you can rush in and overwhelm opponents, eliminating members of groups before the others can even react. Got stuck on the gargoyles, though there were some close attempts and I’ll probably get farther the next time I pick it up. 8.5/10.
I 100% Particle Fleet: Emergence. This game is great if you like systematically picking apart an opponent’s position. Took 15.8 hours to get 100% of achievements, though there’s also a bunch of other maps without achievements that I haven’t done yet and will return to when I feel the itch that those games scratch. 7/10.
I didn’t play it for very long but tried Breathedge, going for a subnautica kind of experience. It does feel like it, but I don’t think the game is tuned very well. I’m not sure if it changes later on in the game, but the part I was playing had me constantly returning to the start. I could go farther out as I upgraded, but progress felt stagnant and I gave up on it. The game did set goals at points of interest, but they were pretty far between and I felt like either I didn’t know what to do to extend my range that far or that it would be tedious as hell doing it the way I could see was possible. I’ll give it a 7/10 on the assumption that part of my issue was needing to git gud, but if I was right about it being the tedious route, I’d drop it to a 5/10.
Played a bunch of Dota 2 for a few months. They give you free dota plus access when you start, which gives access to some useful meta information, but then when it expires, the amount they want for a subscription is kinda high. I’ll give credit for coming up with a f2p system that can generate revenue without any p2w (between the dota plus and cosmetics), but the price turned me off and I didn’t feel like playing as much without that info. Maybe I’ll return to it eventually, as I did enjoy the game itself and like that the full hero list is free (unlike LoL with a rotating set of free ones, though I also don’t mind that monetization system, but I’m on Linux so LoL doesn’t really exist anymore). 7/10.
Stuck in Time is an interesting idle-ish game. You play a regressor, so a character for whom the world resets and plays out exactly the same (depending on your actions) each loop, and as you loop, you get better at doing everything. You give a series of actions to perform each loop and can tweak that list as you go for the next loop. 7/10.
Icarus is a survival game on an alien planet that was teraformed and seeded with a bunch of earth life. You start out with stone age tech (though with a modern understanding, like you can build stone age tools for water purification). I like that, even though there’s oxygen on the planet, they still have you in a atmospheric isolation suit because the air contains microbes we can’t breathe safely (though no idea how it would be safe to consume food and water in those conditions, but hey, it’s still more accurate than most “visit alien planet with oxygen” fictions are which usually just do analysis that says it’s safe to breathe the air). The open world mode is very well done, a nice combination of freedom to do what you want plus missions to do something more specific for a reward or direction. I’ve more or less mastered the forest biome and have started branching out into the arctic biome. The wildlife can be tough to deal with before you figure out how to fight certain animals (like bears and polar bears), especially when you’re stuck with stone or iron age weapons. I almost rage quit the game a few times due to a scenario that spawns a bear, which then tends to stick by your corpse and gear. But there are multiple strategies to handle them, so I suggest sticking with it and even looking up how others do it if you’re really stuck (I did for bears, though they get easier to handle with shotguns). 9.5/10.
Nova Drift is a recent game I’ve been playing, a bullet hell roguelike, so far 2.8 hours in, it’s a lot of fun. 8.5/10.
And Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is the latest in the job games I’ve been playing. It’s following the trend, as I’ve finished tearing down the biggest ship in the vanilla game and am now on the fence about whether to a) finish up the smaller ships I skipped along the way to the biggest, b) buy some DLC with more ships, or c) just move on from this game. I will say that it is more satisfying than other job games I’ve played, but at only 23 hours in, it’s hard to say if it will have more staying power than the others. 8/10.
And on my playstation, I’ve been playing through FFX remastered. FF7 was always the “main” FF in my mind, but I think I like the FFX gang better now. I’m not as into JRPGs and the turn-based combat as I used to be, but don’t mind it so much in this game. 9.5/10.