You are allowed to watch the Overwatch porn without playing the game

Luckily the app is generally (but not always) backwards compatible. It’ll just nag you to upgrade the server.

The server doesn’t, except if you have watchtower or something similar.

The app auto updates on your phone though, unless turned off.

Like everyone is saying, Immich.

But keep an eye on updates because it is under active development so breaking changes tend to happen every once in a while.

One of the things I like about DDG is that you can turn localised results on/off whenever you like and even chose the location. Also localised search is pretty good for me too.

In this case the garbage is behind the pay wall then. Verge is all opinion pieces and cheap content nowadays anyway.

What systemic issue? If you as a player don’t like steam, you can just not use it. It’s not like apple where the hardware is locked to a single storefront. Even the steam deck is open for people to get games from anywhere.

Developers are allowed to do whatever they like too, including not putting their games on steam as a form of protest. No one will stop you. They can even sell their games on multiple platforms and reduce the price where the storefront cut is smaller. The only thing they are not allowed to do is sell steam keys on their own store below the price on steam, which is completely understandable. The fact that they are allowed to sell keys directly (AFAIK for no cost) is already a huge boon.

The one’s actually behaving in anticompetetive behaviour is Epic with paying devs for exclusivity to their store. This is forcing you to use the platform to play certain games without having any other options. Of course the devs taking the deal are also complicit but that is somewhat more understandable, being a gamedev is difficult these days.

The difference is obvious, you don’t have to be a genius to see it. Epic is the plague of modern capitalism and greed, where the product is kept afloat by an unsustainable inflow of investor money. The service is ready to enshittify the second the amount of users crosses a certain threshold. Then they will continue to fight with dirty tactics to keep users locked in for as long as they can. How long do you think giving away free games weekly to anyone can last. (Aswer: as long as the fortnite money is coming in)

Steam is an old type of corporation (for now anyway). They focus on making a good product for a “fair” price. Fair as in this is what makes the platform sustainable. If they were to charge exorbitant prices, there would be a huge developer exodus. But there isn’t. Most devs seem to have come to a conclusion that paying this optional fee is worth it for that value that steam provides. This money allows them to reinvest in the platform to make upgrades, and yes, make profit too. What other reason would they go through all this trouble for?
Steam is also a privately held company, meaning they are not beholden to the short term vision of investors’ pump and dump schemes. But to reiterate, literally no one is forcing you to use steam.

These days you have to capture a large user base with unsustainable prices/practices and then extract every cent for infinite growth. This is not just bad for users in the long term but also means setting up a “normal” company offering a good product at a “fair” price is impossible because everyone is buying the cheap unsustainable products essentially below cost.

I miss the times when a company would make a good product at a fair price and that would be enough.

Edit: that was unnecessarily harsh. I can see you want positive change but unless someone opens a FOSS storefront and pays for the work/distribution, steam is the best we have for now (as gamers). And reducing costs by ~10-20% is not going to make it better for us long term.

Then stop complaining and go buy the game directly off the developer’s website. Many large publishers have their own storefront. Or you can tell your favourite Indie dev that they can set up a virtual storefront (with diacoverability so users find their game), distribution service with CDNs, support forums, online user reviews, customer support, and who knows what else for their own game. If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Alternatively, they are allowed to pay someone in the form of profit sharing for all of this if they want to. But no one is forcing you to use Steam.

It just seams the majority of pc gamers find the service useful, so they tend to buy the games there.

Along what everyone else said, so it’s more broadly marketable. In theory a humanoid robot could do any job a real human is doing now, meaning you don’t need a high tech production line to go along with it. You don’t need to automate your entire production line to get started.

Also, it’s more of a commodity. A business could sell the robot once they don’t need it and anyone else could just buy it to use for a different purpose. Not many will have a use for highly customised robots ment for a specific task.

Not new but I like civ V. Glad they are removing the launcher.

What’s your favourite mod pack recently?

“Accidentally”

I’m gonna wait on this game for now.

However, bugs can be fixed, performance can get a bit better (or more powerful hardware will arrive at some pont), but bad writing and characters will stay bad forever. I think this game can be fixed where Starfield was a lost cause on launch.

I’ll be honest, I’m actually cautiously excited for this

Surely WiFi 7 now, right?

He’s usually on point but I don’t always agree with him personally. Still, it’s easy to decide because he usually makes a point of telling why he likes/dislikes something. People have differing opinions on the same things and that’s okay. Great review, as usual.

There is a very clear spoiler section in the review, easy to skip. It’s not looking too good so far though sadly.

I ended up un mapping my Netflix button on my shield TV remote because it was super annoying for accidental presses.

Do the manufacturers even get a cut for promoting these services, or is this just what people want?

I just ment you’d have to cut so much that at that point it would basically be a new game. I’m thinking a bit more from the dev point of view. Like an old rusted-to-hell car, everything is fixable. The question is cost: if you have to replace or re-fabricate every piece than you’re better off starting from scratch.

I’m the case of Starfield, changing the core story, characters, missions, and theme is basically the same as replacing the entire car body.