Maybe too simplistic for what you’re looking for, but Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager allows you to do some of it.

It’s based on an older title IIRC, and it’s a game more tuned towards education with relatively few graphical elements. You won’t be flying missions directly, nor do you have sandbox capabilities, but for mission planning / R and D / mission control, there is some fun to be had.

I go back to it occasionally.

Along with anything else costing less than $500.

Gonna be a rough few years for PC gaming. Or any gaming, for that matter.

But hey, at least we’ll keep killing jobs and the AI cat videos will continue to flow

I leave my Steam update settings to only update on Play. This allows me to pretty easily review what is being patched in to any particular game and choose if/when to apply it (true that choosing not to apply means no longer using the Steam client for that game).

It’s also trivial on Linux to keep the Proton prefixes and game installs backed up automatically. This has the added benefit of making all game installs portable.

Unfortunately GOG still has no official Linux client, though there are workarounds. The “apocalyptic scenario” would ultimately kill either company, so you’re right to think it is moot.

Neither can Steam. Then the difference is down to those games on Steam which are not DRM-free.

Oh, I absolutely would – I’m just making a point based on a previous statement earlier in the thread:

Considering games with no DRM can have it added retroactively, that Steam pushes updates I may not want with no option to decline

If the practice is that you need local backups on purchase anyway, then I fail to see the difference between non-DRM games on Steam and those on GOG. It feels like a different goalpost is being used depending on what service is being discussed.

Does it? What recourse do you have if they change their policy and you don’t have local backups of your games?

Maybe. If you trust them, though now… I don’t.

Depends on the game. As I mentioned in another thread, there are many games on Steam which are DRM-free and do not require the client. GOG’s advertising suggests they are the only method for getting such games, but as always, the devil is in the details.

Mostly it comes down to how much you feel about one issue over the other, but I don’t see how they can be unrelated if there’s a monetary transaction involved.

Because supporting GOG now means supporting unfettered AI usage. If you disagree with such policies, the only way to voice that discontent is with your wallet.

I’m guessing by your wording that you’re aching to bash Steam, so I’ll preface this with: no corporation is ever going to get this 100% right; the world is drawn in greys, and only a Sith deals in absolutes.

“Better” is not very useful without context. In the context of AI usage, Steam is better. In the context of GOG, their main claim about game preservation is “no DRM”, but there is an important point often missed: lots of games on Steam also do not have DRM.

I have no issues “buying” games on Steam which have no DRM. For others, I factor the DRM into the price I’m willing to pay for access. These tend to be larger titles anyway, so I’m not terribly worried about it long term.

Long term game preservation? More about unofficial channels than relying on yet another corporation. GOG wasn’t changing that before, and they definitely aren’t now.

Something tells me the “double down” is to distract from that fallout

I care. Enough to abandon my qualms about AI usage? Not really, it just means GOG is not the answer.

I would have said GTA6, though it doesn’t seem like things are great at Rockstar and I wonder how much that has affected the product.

Also, if HL3 actually comes out, I am obligated by the years of swooning to name that as my GOTY. It actually seems close but I’ll believe it when I see it.

This is exactly why this shit constantly annoys me. Steam is not unique in how they handle their store. If you don’t want to pay Valve a fee as a dev, then don’t put your game on Steam. No one is forced to do that.

Now, you will lose many sales. But a service being popular does not make it a monopoly. Other stores exist, and are even discussed in the article. All of them have some similar method of getting add-ons. Steam’s happens to be very easy – again, that doesn’t make it anti-competitive.

Also: the fact that this is about “PC monopoly” and “Microsoft” is not mentioned is just… wild. And sad.

Xero is publicly traded. Generally it’s shareholders wanting endless return that pushes every company to enshittify. The specifics of the company matter less if they have public shareholders.

Valve is extremely unique in that it is absolutely giant by value but not publicly traded. For now.

Would they release this thing already? I’m salivating.

Black & White was genuinely good. But now it is old. At the time, I’d say it was worth its hype.

This is ironic. Just yesterday I was reading the reviews of this game on Steam, one of which said the game was abandoned and the promised Steam Workshop support had never materialized.

I agree with you that it’s slow – and yet, it is one of the very few games I actually finished. That’s highly unusual for me. And then I went back and played it again.

It’s a game designed to be sipped, not gulped.

I legitimately don’t understand why people pay these prices. If no one buys, prices drop. Impatient rich people poisoning the well

$70 is still crazy.

The original one was OK. Not great, but OK. Felt and played like a $40 game. Felt much better for $20 on sale.

This idea that $70 should be the baseline for games is insane on its own. Tbh, some of the most fun games I have played with the best replay values have been sub-$30.

Being able to see your actual performance versus your framegen performance is really quite cool.

Should have just used AI, at least then people could debate whether or not it was plagiarism

Starfield would be fine if there was a way to get from place to place without constant reloads. This is a limitation of the (ancient) engine the game is on, as I understand it.

The thing is, we already have games like No Man’s Sky which do this very well. Starfield may have been better received if it came out 15 years ago, but against modern space games, it just sucks.

That’s ignoring anything else wrong with the game, of course, and there is plenty. But I could get over a lot if it didn’t feel like I was playing a menu instead of flying a spaceship at every change of scenery.

No 4k TV either. I don’t really see the point.

I really hope this is true. The only thing that will stop Rockstar from the delayed PC release nonsense in the future is actually stopping the double dip.

I ended up with a PS4 just for Red Dead 2. But I still haven’t bought it on PC and have no plans to do so.

The thing is, the PS4 kind of made sense because I also wanted a Blu-Ray player. I still have it for that, so a PS5 would be an impossible sell to me. It’s like Rockstar tries to sell consoles but this time around is one of the worst ever console eras.

HL3 has been rumored to be on the way for longer than lots of people on the internet have been alive

I think CS:2 was far too ambitious, and there were very strange design choices around subsidies which effectively removed any challenge from the game – at first. I just played it the other day, and frankly it has turned around a lot. Decent game now.

KSP2 was just a corporate shit show – devs were well intentioned but ultimately were unable to continue based on factors out of their control. It really sucks because KSP1 is one of the best games ever made and KSP2 had a lot of promise.

Maybe tariffs were just a way to convert what could have been corporate greed into Trumpian incompetence

I don’t feel bad. It’s a big number, but it was spread out over 20 years. I’m sure I’d be shocked at a lot of numbers amalgamated over 20 years.

Dogshit dogeshit

I’m not sure why any of this is surprising. The US was perfectly fine letting China manufacture all the things. That manufacturing know-how leads to design know-how. The desire by US corporations to keep wages low or eliminate US labor entirely to use outsourced manufacturing leads to this.

It isn’t just military hardware: it is products across entire industries. China is producing good ones, and even when they aren’t, they’re producing them at volumes the US could not dream of touching.

Hm, I may need to rewatch it myself. That also doesn’t match what the link above suggests about interpreting the ending: “Algren finds redemption through his newfound purpose and ultimately sacrifices his life for the cause he once opposed.”

Edit: I just checked the last scene. You’re right, he doesn’t actually die. Which means the link is also wrong.

Still, I think it’s a stretch to say he’s the last samurai, since he never really becomes a samurai. One important note is that samurai is “samurai” in the plural, too.

What did he save? Literally everyone but Meiji-backed forces dies at the end.

It is implied that Tom Cruise dies at the end. I think the confusion comes from a voice over, but you never see the character on screen again.

He also does not “become a samurai”. He fights alongside them, but at no point do they call him a samurai.

Edit: looks like that link is wrong. He doesn’t die at the end. I guess memory is a fickle beast.

The fun thing about The Last Samurai is that the title doesn’t refer to Tom Cruise. He does not play a samurai in the film. He plays an American officer.

He hangs with a group of samurai, who are collectively the last of their kind.

That said, plenty of people complained about it in its day.

It’s more expensive for a worse game than V or VI, both of which can be had for the price of dirt.

Not surprising.

It’s also way different from the goal of HL2. Downloading a launcher called Steam for free is not the same thing as buying specific hardware to play one game.

Sonic 2. It came bundled with a lot of Sega Genesis consoles.

A fantastic game that you can technically complete in a sitting.