FWIW, the game has some gorgeous volumetric lighting, fog and effects. I do think it looks more current-gen than many other games, and it doesn’t rely on heavy raytracing options to do it.

It’s still ridiculous though, especially considering the game doesn’t support any modern algorithms for upscaling, but defaults to upscaling anyways.

Though, I know it didn’t have the budget of many AAA games and the engine has been long-since unsupported, so props to Arrowhead for doing as much as they have!

Yep! The article title is a bit misleading, as the Steam Machine is still x86_64. Which is good imo: that’ll have better compatibility and the power draw/thermals matter less there than in a handheld or headset.

The Frame is the arm-based hardware Valve is going to be shipping.

But their work on FEX is taking ARM compatibility into the future, much like how their work on Wine/Proton has taken Linux compatibility to a new level.

Anyways, I agree with the article, that it’s going to extend to more than the Frame as support matures. ARM CPUs (or RISCs in general) are the future for non-desktop processors; I’d argue Apple has already been there with their M-series laptops, though not to nearly the same extent with gaming.

I feel like this is a good argument for drm-free games and stores like GOG. Not that you as a consumer can always choose that, as many games don’t offer that option, but for the ones that do, there’s less barriers towards playing it in the future or in environments where it’s not originally intended.

There is steamcmd, an official command-line tool— I’ve only used it for game servers, and I don’t know if it includes the Steam runtime/resources, but I know it lets you download games.

You could look at Goldberg Emulator too. I know it’s used often for piracy, but idk about its legality on its own.

Minecraft with 512 chunk render distance or 2048px resolution textures is gonna be fire tho

I think the touchpads lend themselves especially well to otherwise KBM titles, like simulation or RTS games— really any game that heavily relies on a cursor. I think they’re a good option for other titles too, especially with Steam’s powerful controller configurator. I don’t deny the learning curve, though!

But the gyro features alone are game changing! I more than anything want to see it become the standard for all controllers and games, with capacitive sticks or buttons for enabling it, the way the Steam Deck has integrated them.

The difference between Gen AI and Sony v. Universal feels pretty substantial to me: VCRs did not require manufacturers to use any copyrighted material to develop and manufacture them. They only could potentially infringe copyright if the user captured a copyrighted signal and used it for commercial purposes.

If you read the title and the description of the article, it admittedly does make it sound like the studios are taking issue with copyrighted IPs being able to be generated. But the first paragraph of the body states that the problem is actually the usage of copyrighted works as training inputs:

The Content Overseas Distribution Association […] has issued a formal notice to OpenAI demanding that it stop using its members content to train its Sora 2 video generation tool without permission.

You compare Gen AI to “magic boxes”… but they’re not magic. They have to get their “knowledge” from somewhere. These AI tools are using many patterns far more subtle and complex than humans can recognize, and they aren’t storing the training inputs using them— it’s just used to strengthen connections within the neural net (afaik, as I’m not an ML developer). I think that’s why it’s so unregulated: how to you prove they used your content? And even so, they aren’t storing or outputting it directly. Could it fall under fair use?

Still, using copyrighted information in the creation of an invention has historically been considered infringement (I may not be using the correct terminology in this comparison, since maybe it’s more relevant to patent law), even if it didn’t end up in the invention— in software, for example, reverse engineers can’t legally rely on leaked source code to guide their development.

Also, using a VCR for personal use wouldn’t be a problem, which I’d say was a prominent use-case. And using it commercially wouldn’t involve any copyrighted material, unless the owner inputs any. Those aren’t the case with Gen AI: regardless of what you generate, non-commercially or commercially, the neural network was built using a majority of unauthorized, copyrighted content.

That said, copyright law functions largely to protect corporations anyways— an individual infringing the copyright of a corporation for personal or non-commercial use causes very little harm, but can usually be challenged and stopped. A corporation infringing copyright of an individual often can’t be stopped. Most individuals can’t even afford the legal fees, anyways.

For that reason, I’m glad to see companies taking legal action against OpenAI and other megacorps which are (IMO) infringing the copyright of individuals and corporations at this kind of a massive scale. Individuals certainly can’t stop it, but corporations may be able to get some justice or encourage more to be done to safeguard the technology.

Much damage is already done, though. E-waste and energy usage from machine learning have skyrocketed. Websites struggle to fight crawlers and lock down their APIs, both harming legit users. Non-consensual AI pornography is widely accessible. Many apps encourage people, including youth, to forgo genuine connection, both platonic and romantic, in exchange for AI chatbots. Also LLMs are fantastic misinformation machines. And we have automated arts, arguably the most “human” thing we can do, and put many artists out of work in doing so.

Whether the lack of safety guards is because of government incompetence, corruption, or is inherent to free-market capitalism, I’m not sure. Probably all of those reasons.

In summary, I disagree with you. I think companies training AI with unauthorized material are at fault. And personally, I think the entire AI industry as it exists currently is unethical.

Nice! I have seen some people who make and sell content on Mastodon— I appreciate those who do that, imo they are able to help fill a hole or just benefit the lives of people who are seeking that content or services/interactions. I hope they’re able to do it safely, seeing as how they probably have to move off-platform for many things, including payment… and with how payment processors treat any adult related transactions…

Unfortunately, that also means that there’s probably not a direct fedi alternative for OF— in my experience (more info below) and from my research, it’s pretty much the default for large creators to rely on paid actors impersonating them for messaging and interacting. Also OF takes care of the payment details, which idk of any fedi platforms doing.

Anecdote: I got lured into an OF a while ago on a local meetup/dating/rp discord servers. I thought I was smarter than that, but weeks of talking and trusting someone, them slowly eroding boundaries and using emotional manipulation… it’s really powerful, unfortunately.

Anyways that OF page was 100% designed to milk people. A “$3 first month” followed by a recurring “$45” regular price if you don’t cancel should’ve been a red flag. And only softcore posts once you subscribe, but as you talk to the actor in messages, they send more intimate images, but with a paywall. They wouldn’t talk to me anymore if I didn’t pay. It starts at $10, but the next was $30. That’s when I refused. It hurt though, I felt like I knew the person. The whole time they’re pushing this “if you don’t buy it you don’t love me, you don’t want to support me, omg I need grocery money” idea.

I know not all creators use it for that. But the platform certainly enables it with its design and features. I just think a massive portion of the adult industry is founded on exploitation, unfortunately.

Fediverse priority #1: Be able to talk to a paid actor pretending to be a model* Priority #2: Spend money to see the nudes they send in DMs

*for major creators, I’m sure many minor/independent ones are genuine

Let’s ask the official antifa organization to make it an official term

I know I’m late to reply here, but I’m with you on your edit… I think Lemmy specifically has a demographic that overlaps very little with AAA FPS players, as compared to other platforms. I think the user base tends to be older and less into live-service games. But also, Lemmy/the threadiverse, being FOSS, has a big user base that’s passionate about FOSS software. And that often correlates with being critical of big corporations, products, etc.

Also many of those users use Linux, which this game notably won’t work on because of its invasive anticheat. So many of these replies may be fueled by that, too: Either jealousy of being able to play it, or “moral high ground” for choosing not to. (Note: I am in this situation and my preferred OS is a big reason I am not buying this title).

I don’t generally find it productive, though, to blame any individual consumer for funding a corporation. We live in a capitalist society, and we all have to participate to some extent to even live, often including to the benefit of mega corporations with poor morals and ties. I feel there exists better ways of fighting back against those practices, inequalities and abuses (though the government angle, at least in the US, has been falling real short there lately).

And, honestly, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anyone to forgo major goods and services from their life, including entertainment, for the sake of morals.

If you thought the game was worth the price, it’s fair to buy it. And tbh, there’s a lot of hype and (imo) good changes with this title, so I don’t blame you.

That doesn’t make the game immune from criticism either— if you couldn’t play it whatsoever at launch because of server capacity and always-online requirements, that’s worth criticizing! And I agree with your post, always-online requirements are such BS for games with singleplayer content. I understand the motivation for the company, but it’s incredibly anti-consumer nonetheless.

Lastly, your post absolutely belongs in a gaming community— FPS games are one of the biggest genres in gaming, and pretty synonymous with “gaming”. And this is a massive release! Sorry that the general response you got wasn’t very positive or kind, though.

Maybe OP knew all along that they wanted to use the previous package list to upgrade and fetch the new one after! Maybe we’re all actually inverting it…

(I’m just being silly, I recognize that an old package list would probably cause issues with installing or upgrading packages.)

Life is Strange, for me.

BL2 even had some PhysX simulations when using an Nvidia card for particles and effects, so between those and running at higher internal resolutions and framerates, it’s already better than the new one in some areas.

The final boss fight of Rust rewrites

As we already expected, NSFW games being a target was only ever going to be a first step. There’s always more to it.

Well said. This is a good part of why I took issue with the initial removals on Steam… tbh I wasn’t effected, as I don’t tend to play porn games, and if I was going to, I’d probably avoid some of the extreme themes those original removals had.

In my opinion, adults should be able to consensually interact with whatever media they so care to! Still, it’s in a platform’s rights to choose what they allow or deny… so I appreciate Steam being so open to mature content.

But payment processors should have no say in what is allowed on a platform. As long as it’s legal, they shouldn’t be policing transactions at all!

sanitising parts to be in accordance with console standards or censoring the game, depending on who you ask.

It’s censorship, I don’t really see how one could argue (well) that it’s not. Self-censorship is still censorship, and seeing as the rationale for this change was specific platform policies, I think it’s absolutely fair to view the change happening on PC critically.

Honestly, the story and gameplay is still very dark and gritty, so I don’t think these changes would’ve had much backlash had they been this way from the start. Sometimes explicit content isn’t strictly required to get a point across, and can make a game less accessible, so I can understand games having a warning with a toggle.

But I’m very against total censorship. This reminds me a lot of when Superhot VR removed multiple scenes 4 years after the game’s release, because they were related to self-harm or suicide. Note that the game had a warning on launch as well as a toggle for this content. The linked article does a great deep dive on it, but imo I think the change really does affect the game. I got done with it (post-censorship) and did not see the hype. The game wasn’t very long and didn’t have many “whoa” moments. But shooting yourself… that’s something that you can only really do in VR, assuming it’s not coded in to a flatscreen game. And it would’ve fit into the game’s plot and themes very well.

I think the concept of Game Pass works best for older or smaller games. Charging $60+ for a game makes people expect a certain level of quality and amount of content.

Putting games like that on it though? Especially day-one? Of course their sales are gonna take a hit!

Hi-fi Rush would be my example of a super polished game with a solid amount of content. It reviewed incredibly well; so much so that I bought the game on Steam because of the hype. But most people with game pass just played it there… and they ended up shutting down the studio.

I think for brand new releases, some kind of demo or limited access could work. Give players the Call of Duty campaign, give us the opening chapters of story-driven games, or give us a limited selection of levels for games formatted like that. Leave some incentive, though, for players to buy the game, especially if it’s a good game that players would be convinced to buy by playing a bit.

Did something similar to this with one of those “speed up silence” plugins. It was hard to notice cuz dialog was still 1x…

No worries, you can still have a marble if you want 😄

Yo if they got marbles in there for my collection I’ll gonna go all night if I need to 😤