/e/OS always seemed kinda pointless to me (the OS itself is just LineageOS + MicroG, which is easily available at https://lineage.microg.org), but I didn’t realize they are actually being malicious, too.

This article is frustratingly non-specific. What are they actually planning to do? From the article it seems they’re trying to create a mobile ecosystem to compete with Google and Apple, but on the Mobifree website the “What” section only mentions using “workshops and pilot-tests” with the aim of figuring out how to best improve some existing projects (with the only one specified being /e/OS).

IMO crunch has no excuse; it is a decision that benefits the business while hurting the workers.

“A few weeks” of crunch translates to hundreds of extra working hours.

but we did have to do a bit of crunch. And I think, to be honest, you will always have a little bit when you’re trying to finish something, especially when there’s so much complexity that needs to be brought together.

What does doing “a bit of crunch” even mean? Crunch means you’re (practically) forced to work overtime, there is no excuse for this IMO. The game was on early access for a while, surely they could’ve delayed its full release by a bit to prevent this.

Looks cool. Kinda hard to understand your post though, to be honest.

I was trying to say GOG isn’t comparable to Itch…

Edit: Btw I buy games from all 3, if I didn’t do business with every company I don’t trust I’d probably starve by now

Ok? I didn’t claim anything about Steam

Knowing Valve, even if it was in development for years it might never come out anyway, so this doesn’t surprise me.

GOG is a subsidiary of CD Projekt (which I personally don’t trust after the disastrous release of Cyberpunk 2077, and the empty promises of bringing GOG Galaxy to Linux; they also stretch the definition of DRM-free in some cases).

I did this in my very first comment to you, realized it was very subjective, and stopped.

All my comments to you after that did not, in fact, try to argue this. Work on your reading comprehension.

Did you even read the comment you replied to? The last line was:

Whether or not you consider the Steam Deck a handheld PC doesn’t change this.

You then proceeded to try and convince me it isn’t a handheld PC in your comment, anyway.

I don’t want to argue the semantics of whether or not it is a handheld PC (it’s pretty subjective anyway); I’m just saying since it uses hardware and software which is common to PCs it can run most games a “normal” PC can, which means it can run way more games than the Switch (even if you install Linux on your Switch you won’t be able to run the vast majority of PC games, as they’re built for x86 processors).

The original comment in this thread compared the Steam Deck to a PC to highlight the fact that the amount of games available on these platforms isn’t comparable, so articles such as this are pointless (especially when it’s wrong, as the difference in the amount of games you can play on the Switch and the Deck is way more than 29%). You replied that calling it a PC is wrong, but that comment was only calling it a PC to highlight this obvious difference.

Yeah cause my favorite thing to do when programming is debugging someone else’s broken code.

It’s not supposed to replace a laptop.

You could use it as a desktop computer with a dock though, I suppose.

Companies making similar products seem to be aiming for this use case (for example, the GPD Win 4 has an optional dock, and can connect to an external GPU (they even sell one) through its USB 4 port).

Sorry but no, you’re the one who missed the point. The point (in the comment you originally replied to) was that it’s obvious a handheld PC will have more games than the Switch, as the Switch is a console that came out a few years ago while PC games have been a thing for decades.

Whether or not you consider the Steam Deck a handheld PC doesn’t change this.

While the Steam Deck is technically a handheld PC, as a Linux enthusiast who’s tried to use the desktop mode for laptoppy things… No it isn’t.

Desktop mode is literally just KDE, and you can install whatever OS you want on it anyway. In what way is it not a handheld PC?

Sekiro feels much more approachable but it doesn’t have the replayability of other Souls games.

Interesting perspective; I actually have double the hours in Sekiro (164) compared to Elden Ring (86) and DS1 (88). And I also didn’t really like Elden Ring (though I really wanted to).

Honestly, I disliked Souls-like games until I played Hollow Knight (at that point, I tried Dark Souls but didn’t get very far). It isn’t a Souls-like game (2D Metroidvania), but as it shares some of their themes and elements, after finishing it I was motivated to try Dark Souls again (and ended up doing a full playthrough).

Weird that Minecraft now, at 50% off, costs more than the full price I paid for it in 2011

For Bethesda RPGs: afkmods.com, tesalliance.org, loverslab.com (NSFW but has normal mods too). There are a bunch of small sites like these.

For other games with large modding communities Nexus Mods is often not the main site.

I agree that the situation would be better with more sites, but it’s pretty clear this is a special case for GOG (I don’t think they’ll start hosting just any mod), and even if it wasn’t, this mod won’t be on Nexus, so the total number of sources for it would stay the same.

I wonder why they don’t also host the mod on Steam (like SKSE for the original Skyrim). Also kinda weird that the GOG employee they interviewed used this project as an example of how GOG is different from Steam, when Steam has a long history of hosting mods…

Is it really surprising? It’s not like it’s their first competitive shooter.

There’s no chance this won’t happen again IMO (though since they abandoned their own engine maybe it won’t be as buggy this time).

Idk the last few years have been pretty good when it comes to PC ports of Japanese games IMO.

We got stuff like the RE remakes, good PC ports for japanese franchises which never had PC ports (for example Ace Combat 7 and Armored Core 6), not to mention that it seems much more likely for new japanese IPs to just have a PC port when they release these days (as long they’re not exclusive).

That’s true, but isn’t contrary to my point - Fallout 76 is a disaster because they set out to create a mainstream Fallout live service game, instead of focusing on the strengths of the series. This was further reinforced when they introduced a battle royale mode IMO.

You criticized Todd Howard for his game design skills in your original comment, I just pointed out that the sentence you quoted didn’t refer to designing the story of a game.

You also claimed “He bought a franchise” which seemed unnecessarily personal.

I don’t see how Van Buren is related to this at all (except for its relation to New Vegas, I guess, but I don’t see what this has to do the article or either of our comments).

I don’t think their games are necessarily becoming more simplified, it’s more that they seem to focus on areas of the games which would help make them more “mainstream” (for example, Fallout 4 made crafting and upgrading more complex compared to 3 and NV, but this is similar to other AAA games), while focusing less (and thus simplifying) other areas.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, I personally think Fallout 4 improved over 3, and Skyrim over Oblivion (though NV and Morrowind are still better). But this also leads to disasters like Fallout 76.

That quote actually makes sense in context, it’s talking about handling the story of the second season of the show.

Also, I doubt Todd Howard was in a position to independently decide to buy the Fallout franchise in 2004.

Todd Howard was the project leader for Morrowind and its expansions

Is showcasing your game, putting it on early access and talking about it to gaming journalists not considered marketing now?

It doesn’t though? There many games for which I use ModDB and many games have modding communities on dedicated websites.

Some of the biggest modding communities (GTA, Minecraft) don’t really use it at all. It’s very popular with TES and Fallout (not surprising considering the original name was TESNexus), but as someone who has spent a very large amount of time modding Bethesda RPGs, many good mods aren’t found on Nexus, even for those games.

I love Nexus. I uploaded 3 mods over the years, and with their donation point system (you get points each month based on unique downloads), I got like 15 free games from their store by this point.

Fuck the planet, next time I order shit online I want it delivered by ICBM

I used an LG G3 for around 5 years, and I was in a similar situation to yours when it started dying (but with a slightly different set of features I wanted).

I ended up buying a Xiaomi phone (Mi 9T Pro), but the community support for it wasn’t even close to the LG and I constantly tinkered with the system to keep some stuff working on custom ROMs (mostly MicroG issues, might be fine with Google Play Services).

Now I use a Pixel 7a. It fit all my requirements except for having a headphone jack, but after getting some AirPods Pro for free, which were much more convenient than using my IEMs (I fairly quickly stopped using them with my phone), I dropped that requirement. I’m assuming the community will support this phone for a while, but since you said you don’t mind spending more the Pixel 8 series has more than six years of official support left.

Nothing is stopping them.

I’m just saying his proposal to allow the community to maintain and develop the games further (which to me sounds like giving them the source code) probably won’t be put into law anytime soon.

I don’t think there’s any chance the outcome of this will be allowing the communities of orphaned games to maintain them.

However, I think a good middle ground would be requiring publishers to state ahead of time (and inform customers clearly before they make a purchase) how long they will support their game. They should then be able to extend this period, but also be required to refund customers if they drop support before the initial support period they announced ends. Also, there should be a mandatory minimal length to the support period (like some countries have a mandatory warranty period for some products).

It’s not DLC (though you can do it whenever you want).

Four prominent members left at once, including the lead designer and the game’s artist. They claimed the studio was acquired through a fraudulent purchase and went to court (and the suit was dismissed). There are many more details, look it up if you want to know more.

The studio has since laid off 25% and cancelled a standalone expansion to Disco Elysium and and its sequel.

It’s a good game, but you should know ZA/UM (the studio behind the game) was sold under suspicious cirucmstances; the lead designer and other major memebrs are no longer part of the studio (they sued, but it didn’t go anywhere). Personally I wouldn’t give them any money.

Might be more secure since it’s based on GrapheneOS.

If they didn’t mess anything up (security and privacy wise) in their deriviative OS, then I would feel comfortable recommending this to non-tech savvy people who care about their privacy.

Edit: Also with those specs and that battery without Google Play Services, this phone might last me a week on a single charge.

According to the article, it is installed in a “sandbox”. As their OS is based on GrapheneOS, I assume they’re using the same solution.

Anyone can sue for any reason + large corporations can force a settlement = large corporations can decide if unaffiliated devs earn money for any reason.