A very good point. Thank you.

Buying isn’t owning from literally any game company. When you buy digital you own a license to play that game. The license can be revoked at any time.

When you buy a physical game you still only buy a license to play that game, and the license can be revoked at any time. The only difference here is you own the physical disk that media is on, and it’s harder (not impossible) for the owner of that media (the one who sells the license) to revoke the license to that media.

I appreciate that people are pissed about this but it was a thing before digital media took off and the only difference between a steam game and a game from Epic is the inclusion (on Epic) of an offline installer store that allows you to install the game without connecting to the internet.

It’s the same license.

I’m also going to add the PlayStation, Xbox, and even Nintendo have removed titles from people’s libraries when their agreement to license the media to the users lapsed or were removed. So it’s not just Valve.

Yeah and there’s the rub. If other handhelds only come in the steam OS variant people who come in looking for or expecting a Windows variant are still less likely to pick up the steam OS variant. On the other hand, I don’t know that this is true going the other way. People who want to steam OS variant will more be more likely to buy the Windows variant and flash it to what they want because that’s sort of the nature of a lot of Linux users in general.

I feel like the fact that steam OS wasn’t ready for prime time played a significant part but, still, it doesn’t speak to wanting one or the other OS and not having it readily available. Amazon and other online only retailers would be able to carry stock in both. But brick and mortar stores (even with their online component) don’t always have that option. Converting people to proton/steam is from windows is an ongoing struggle.

Do you remember back in the early 2000’s/2010’s when steam machines for gaming tried to break into the market and there were laptops and gaming rigs you could get with steam os?

I’m asking because I wonder how that’s going to go. It wasn’t particularly successful back then, and given MS’s hold on the gaming market and people buying into that OS, it seems like offering a skew of handhelds like the steam deck in both Windows and Steam OS will cause sales to drop. If I walk into Best buy or Microcenter and want to purchase the steam OS version of the ROG Ally but they only have the Windows one, I’m going to be disappointed. Same would happen in reverse.

That’s what happenee back in the early aughts too. People didn’t buy the steam version because they wanted the Windows version and so both versions did poorly (probably more poorly than they might have done otherwise).

They do understand to a point. The people who were fans of the original Prince of Persia games have carried what has until very recently been something of a lackluster franchise. That they remained fans is important and speaks to the world they came from which wasn’t subscription based.

Either Ubisoft was hoping that they’d win those fans back with this game (and get new players invested as well), or they were hoping an entire new cohort of gamers from the newer generations would pick this game up (and the newer generations are into micro transactions but also find them to be divisive). That older cohort of gamers really really don’t like micro transactions.

Just because something bad has arrived doesn’t mean that people will continue to put up with it.

I don’t play many FPS games full stop. The ones I did play added a bunch of elements I didn’t like (Destiny, Overwatch, etc). Since they don’t make up the predominant portion of games I play, I can’t say it’s surprising to me.

Others have complained about the number of “mouth breathing kids” and I can’t really fault them for that. The number of people in online games with no filters, who play loud music, or have family drama going on around them on hot mic is too high. The number of people who are rude or worse is also too high.

There’s something, though, to be said for the kinds of games that are just more popular because they encourage a story and or exploration or both.

I think I’ve backed 4 Kickstarter games. 3 made it to release. I’m not surprised that a lot fail. The one that didn’t make it to release got removed from Kickstarter for not making its goal and being a “sequel” I believe. That game looks like it’s still getting made. It happens. Studios make mistakes or don’t get the timing right or what have you.

It’s important to remember that this is an investment. Investments have inherent risk. It’s not going to stop me from investing in new games or projects I’m interested in. But I recommend not investing anything you can’t bear to lose.

This isn’t up to the stores. It’s up to the gaming developers who own the right to license the games. I have been making this argument for years, and explaining digital (and physical) content licensing to people on the internet for years and almost always get downvoted because they don’t like facts that interfere with their sense of righteousness.

I don’t disagree that is scummy practice to randomly end a license and take something someone paid for out of their library or otherwise deny them access to it. but I cannot stress enough that this is the fault of both parties or the licensing agreement (the license seller and the entity that agrees to allow the license seller to sell licenses to the content). People will always blame Sony or Amazon or Apple. But never Universal, or Disney, or Paramount or whoever. It’s both. They’re both assholes in this scenario. One of them is limited by the law. The other one can offer that content by other means to people who have already purchased it once but won’t because capitalism and greed.

True. At this point people should probably not give the company any more free data.

I left during the protests when it became clear that they weren’t going to change their mind about shutting down third party apps. I still miss some of the communities there, and I’m a little bitter myself over the whole thing. But to me it’s better to continue to protest by not going back.

The problem is that they’re likely to get new users from their sale of data to Google. That’s constantly pushing new people to reddit. And if those people didn’t leave during the protest or because of the influx of bots, they’re not likely to leave en masse over this.

My guess is that reddits death will be very slow.

Edge is chromium based.

Good to know that at least in Germany there’s something.

I have questions about how an age rating system would even necessarily be enforced even with rated games with a non-family account. It’s not like steam knows the difference between a teenager and an adult who makes any account. You can literally just buy steam gift cards and pay for games without even needing a credit card or PayPal account.

The age rating doesn’t do anything but assuage a groups fears and make the legislators look like they’ve achieved something for the public.

The long answer is there are steam deck alternatives that can dual boot something like Bazzite (Steam OS), and windows, and they will work for desktop use if you don’t want to buy a nuc or build a regular desktop. You’ll have all the usefulness of the steam deck with the option to use windows.

But dual boot is still clunky, and the devices you would buy for this purpose are still generally more expensive than a steam deck (Legion Go or ROG Ally etc). When you add in the price of a dock, and other accessories (mouse and keyboard etc) I don’t know if it’s worth it except in niche use cases like my own. I use the Bazzite OS on my Legion Go 90% of the time. But for the 6-7 games I own that aren’t compatible or optimized for steam os, I use windows. I had to debloat and change a lot of privacy settings and upgrade the windows 11 OS to Pro to get policy editor etc. That’s a lot of time investment. I also bought a 2 TB drive and cloned it. All told I probably spent around the same amount as you would for a regular desktop (even with buying the Legion Go and other parts for my setup on Labor Day sale).

Losing the windows 11 secure boot and encryption means you won’t be able to play certain games that require anti-cheat that relies on secure boot.

I think ROG may be coming out with the next iteration of the Ally soon and that might drop the price of the current models but nobody can make any promises on that.

Forever so far!

Get around a permanent ban? Depends on who banned you, why, and if they deep sixed your account. Why not just make a new account if you want to go back so bad. Or buy one.

At the point where you are offered some other form of compensation, I believe that would be considered a bribe, which is also illegal.

I don’t disagree with that in the grand scheme of things. But a presidential pardon can only be accepted under the understanding that the person who receives it is admitting by accepting it that they committed the crime. As such a service member with a dishonorable discharge would not have their benefits re-instated, for instance.