Han has died.

I was on the fence of asking for one for my birthday late last year for exactly this reason.

What tipped me over was that I took a look at my Steam library and realized I literally have hundreds of indie and AA games that I’ve never played or have less than 4 hours in that I always meant to go back to. And that was it, I decided the Steam Deck was going to be my indie gaming experince platform. It has been amazing at doing this, and I’ve been chewing through my indie game library like crazy, and have picked up so many more that I’m loving gaming again! I can see myself keeping the current steam deck around and will be used regularly for at least the next 5 years.

If you’re looking for a portable machine that’ll tackle most modern & higher end games, either look at the alternative SteamOS portables or wait for the next Steam Deck (the touch screen, D-Pad, Sticks, and dual touch pad make it the best choice for best I out options for game compatibility).

However, if you want a great machine for indies, AA, older AAA titles, and console EMU, the current hardware is amazing and worth the price

Guess I won’t play Diablo 5 either. POE is better anyways.

Windows: Let me show you an Ad, endeuntured beta tester.

My I7 7700k is a good processor. It serves my needs from office work, to software dev, to gaming, to video production. I’ll eventually retire this machine, but that’s at least a year off, and even then, it’ll be repurposed since it’s an extremely capable machine.

I shouldn’t have to upgrade because MS made an arbitrary decision to not support capable hardware after telling me Win10 was the last Windows OS. Nah, I’m switching everything over to Linux and using the hardware I have now instead of creating e-waste.

If you want to see a good modern take on an RTS, check out Mechabellum.

4k assets aren’t exactly small, and the game will still have lower res assets to support older rendering resolutions. There might be some trimming that can be done to remove unused assets and download vs install size with asset packing/unpacking.

I fully expect to see more games have these sizes as worlds become more involved, in depth character design, and enemy design.

Elden Ring is probabaly the easiest game that From Software (FS) has made.

I however don’t like the default multi-player design of FS games and waited for the Seamless Co-op mod to be released and then picked it up to play with friends as a tough open world MP adventure.

RE: Default MP Design -

I think it’s poor design to offer incentives for players to be anonymous assholes to other players. Game Studios have spent millions of dollars investing in research and technologies to reduce game community toxicity. And if you attempt to play a FS game outside the first month of release in MP mode, prepare to have your fun ruined.

I just wish it was an either/or situation.

I don’t always need my lawn mower/blower/weed trimmer on batteries. I wish I could easily plug them in when doing light dut work close to the house. But then they couldn’t tie me into their battery ecosystem as easily.

I could agree on the /s being sardonic over sarcasm. With how irony has been slowly redefined over the years I can see how people could preceieve why that would be a sarcastic statement and accepted as such, cus language changes over to time and whatnot.

But it’s not sarcasm.

Those are things the Blizzard employees have had happen to them. The boys club that was going on there was horrific and the women that worked there went through a ton of shit.

For those unaware: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003556/california-activision-blizzard-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-settlement

https://www.dexerto.com/business/nursing-activision-blizzard-employees-say-their-breast-milk-kept-getting-stolen-1717345/

Memories of pixel sniping just came flooding in.

How did Gabe Newell offend you?

The dude has been a bastion of how to run a company that delights its end-users and doing their best to run a company ethically. A staunch group of people that believe in right-to-repair as well as believing in modding and community growth of games.

Yes there’s issues on the publisher/developmer side of things, however Valve constantly works with studios to help mitigate these pain points and on-board to their platform.

This has more to do with Embracer Group’s June announcement for upcoming large scale restructuring, layoffs, game cancelations, and studio closures than anything else. Embracer has even hit hard at studios that were profitable or had games in the pipeline that were expected to be a huge sales success.

As much as I love games, the industry is a tough place to work, and the layoff cycles are striking once again.