That’s me, still haven’t bought it. I got other games to play anyway so oh well!

And you can also lookup which games are DRM free on Steam and copy those for a backup.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GOG and own many games and have backups of my own, but if you’re that paranoid(that steam will go belly up and everything deleted) then you might as well not buy any games and just pirate everything.

Yeah, every store everywhere has that same conundrum.

If you really wanted to “own” the game, then pirate it and keep a copy on a NAS somewhere.

But at that point we’re just arguing semantics.

All companies everywhere have old people. So don’t buy into any company!

Stupid comment

If SteamOS doesn’t work on your mini PC you can try the CachyOS “handheld” edition. It launches with the Steam game mode front end and looks exactly like SteamOS but has support for more hardware.

I put it on my Steam Deck and it’s been great, bit snappier. I would totally throw it on a HTPC type box and hook it up to a TV.

Or when you sign into a Microsoft game with your Microsoft account, like Halo or Gears and it’ll automatically link your “local” account to your Microsoft account.

Idk why, but this reminded me of the South Park episode where everyone is using photoshop to show off their girlfriends.

Had to make the meme

Beyond stupid. I get the game for free because I bought a AMD GPU. So I can’t exactly choose a different game…

I hope performance is fine, otherwise this is going to get neg review from me.

Oh let me clarify a bit more…

I do believe all of these digital unboxing of items, where you don’t know what you’re gonna get, is all gambling and should be banned, straight up.

I just think the way the NYAG is trying to attack this is completely asinine and might make them lose the case more than help it. And if what Valve is saying is true(NYAG wanting them to collect all kinds of data from everyone) then frankly I hope the NYAG loses this if that’s the “solution” NYAG wants.

I think the solution should be to just ban all this crap.

Well that is against the Steam TOS.

Buying a Steam Deck and reselling it, isn’t.

I think that’s what the NYAG was trying to get at here.

Again, far fetched.

The example NYAG was providing was:

1. Opened a crate
2. Sold the item from a crate
3. Used that money to buy a Steam Deck from the Steam store
4. Sold the Steam Deck at a pawn shop

Which I think is a bit far fetched to “launder” or somehow convert a digital item to physical cash.

This is one of my biggest gripes with Gen 3. The HMs are weirdly placed/acquired IMO and after gym 5/6 you’re doing a lot of back and forth across the map.

Still a great game, but terribly paced.

I grew up playing Gen 1-4 as they came out. But I think Gen 3/Emerald is my favorite and honestly I think it’s where Pokemon peaked. I loved Gen 4, but that and the later gens never “clicked” with me.

Anyways, if anyone is looking for a replay of Emerald I would highly recommend the ROM hack “Modern Emerald”. It’s Emerald with Gen 1-3 Pokemon all being available(with like 5 Pokemon from Gen8&9) and some QOL updates and other content stuff. It’s probably the best Gen 3 experience out there at the moment(well from a vanilla perspective).

Or if you want a twist, Pokemon Emerald Rogue is another great hack for Gen 3 that makes the game into a Rogue lite genre game.

And a shout-out to PokeMMO if anyone wants a MMO experience.

My kids are still a bit young…but my oldest is about to turn two years old and I bought them a Anbernic RG35XXSP and I’m going to put Pokemon Red or Blue or Yellow on it and have them play. I remember playing Pokemon Blue at 3 years old on my Gameboy Color and I genuinely believe it helped me with reading comprehension before I started school.

Personally I hope no one buys this “console”. There’s been way too many rumors and general discussions that this will be the “last Xbox” and Microsoft has already lost the “first party” game front.

There is zero reason to buy Xbox at this point. Game Pass is stupidly expensive(and you can’t even buy Gold separately anymore). This new “console” is supposed to be stupidly expensive as well.

I would hope this would force people to just switch to PC, but the hard heads will buy Xbox and the noobs will buy PlayStation.

I loved my original Xbox and the 360, but Microsoft has been on a steep decline since. The writing’s been on the wall for a long time.

I just don’t see how consoles can be “shielded” from the AI onslaught.

If Nvidia/AMD/Intel are going to abandon certain sectors and product types(discrete GPUs, desktop parts), I don’t see how they will be fine with custom SOCs. I don’t like “all or nothing” scenarios, but if these higher end chips are going away for desktop, I am assuming it will happen to all consumer sectors as well. So the next consoles would be cloud/streaming consoles only.

But, I don’t believe discrete GPUs and desktop parts are going away.

The niche that assembles higher end gaming PCs isn’t enough to amortize the massive cost of such gaming GPUs by themself (hence AMD and Intel already abanonded their highest end GPU variants).

I think you’re being quite a bit disingenuous here. AMD hasn’t made a “highest end GPU variant” in a literal decade. They’ve never had a competitor to the Titan cards nor the *90 variants, and with the *80 variant slowly taking over the top-end consumer spec(because the *90 took over the TItan classification), all of this isn’t because of AI. It’s just AMD lagging behind the entire time. And I love AMD, but they’ve never been known for highest end.

And Intel has NEVER made a highest end GPU variant. So not sure where that claim is coming from.

Also, I genuinely believe a lot of people’s perspectives are skewed on all of these aspects. Hardware has gotten more powerful and more efficient, we’ve gone through a hyper-inflation period, and AI is gobbling everything up, so yeah prices and hardware availability sucks. But a great mid-range build I just spec’d out(9600X, 9060 XT, 1TB nvme, 32GB of DDR5) is around $1400 USD. Just adjusting for inflation, in January 2016 that’d be a little over $1000 USD. Austin Evans has a video(i5-6500, R9 390, 250GB SSD/1TB spinner, 8GB DDR4) from Jan 2016 with a $1000 USD PC build.

Obviously, and hopefully, a build from 2026 beats a build from 2016. But looking at the pricing and adjusting for inflation and current market conditions, I’d say we aren’t doing bad at all in 2026. Yeah, shit’s expensive, but I don’t think we’re at a “doomsday level of high end desktop parts going extinct” situation.

And the same can’t be said for consoles? I mean, not to go all nihilistic or something, but if high end hardware is being threatened then why would Nvidia or AMD or Intel even bother with custom SOCs for consoles too? All of that manufacturing, R&D, and materials can go towards AI data center products.

Putting aside the current hardware apocalypse happening…

To play devil’s advocate a bit. If I was Sony and I saw my competitor, Microsoft, shoot themselves in the feet so much that they are no longer in the console space then…why wouldn’t I capitalize on that and take advantage of being the only home console available? I can release all of my first party stuff on my console only so people have to buy my console.

Sure some Xbox gamers are going to go PC, but the majority don’t want a PC. They want a console they can plug into a TV and press Play on whatever game and it just works. If Microsoft doesn’t produce Xbox’s anymore, where are they going to go? Nintendo? Lmao. It’ll be a PlayStation.

I think this move is just Sony doubling down on their platform and titles. I for one would advise against buying a console at this point because you are locked down to their ecosystem, their services. On PC I can at least play the games I bought 20 years ago on Steam. I can emulate tens of thousands of retro games. And I can use the controller or peripherals I want to use. I prefer the Xbox controller(well Steam soon enough), and if I went PlayStation then I’d be playing with a controller I simply don’t like. On PC I can choose whichever one I want.

LOL.

I mean, oh no! What will I do now? I only have a hundred thousand other games I can play now.

Guess I’ll just not play PlayStation games now and go spend my money on amazing indie titles that seem to blow everything else out of the water these days.

The Xbone is what made me go PC full time.

Been a Xbox gamer since the original Xbox with Halo CE. LAN parties galore. Halo 2 and the beginning of Xbox Live was amazing. Bought a X360 at launch, got Gears and Crackdown for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Halo 3 was peak.

And then Xbone announced. Always online. Kinect required. “Sports” “Live TV”. Yeah, not falling for that. “Can’t just flip a switch”.

Yeah I cancelled my Xbox Live sub and built a PC. 2500K with a 550ti. Haven’t looked back since. All of my friends in our group did the same, but some bought a PS4 as well for the SP games.

Microsoft just doesn’t care. They have enough money to not care. But the writing has been on the wall for a long time for Xbox and I’d be genuinely surprised if they release another console and I’d be even more surprised if anyone actually buys it. It’s a dead ecosystem.

So it’s all your fault then?

Guys, get him!

Meh, emulate it and get better frame rates and higher resolution.

Why would I buy a console that plays the game at an inferior state?

Nintendo is free at any time to release their games on Steam or even their own PC storefront and if I could play it with my hardware then I’d buy most games at full price.

Until then, nah I’m good.

Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.

For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:

• Broken at launch
• Unoptimized/framegen crutch
• Basic features missing
• Nickle and dimed to all hell

Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.

BUT, that doesn’t mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a “steal” or “bargain” either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.

If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.

Yes this is a more apt description, sorry, this whole thing has been stupid tbh.

They are being accused of price fixing with the whole “can’t sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing” thing

[email protected] explains it better below:

It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam’s services.

For the most part, I’d say a majority of decent systems nowadays can emulate gen 5 games and below.

There are probably hundreds of games that you can jump into that you’ve never played before, and then you have mods for the more popular ones as well.

I’ve probably dumped a thousand hours into Pokemon ROM hacks alone on my Steam Deck.

The majority of people probably can’t even get over the hump of imaging a USB drive.

I like to think of the average person as my mom. Can my mom plug in a flash drive in a computer? Yeah. Does she know what Linux is? Nope. Can she google about Linux? Yeah. Will she get confused and inundated with the hundreds of “linux” versions? Uh yeah.

And then if she does somehow download a .iso, she’d probably copy and paste the .iso onto the flash drive and have no idea what Rufus or Balena Etcher is.

And to be honest, most people don’t even need a computer nowadays. Their smart phones does everything. There is no need to have a computer anymore.

Yup, Steam Deck + EmuDeck and using the “Eden” switch emulator. I have the same or better performance than when I did with Yuzu.

I still have my 3770k but it’s in storage.

I bought a 1700X and was using that until upgrading to a 3700X, which I’m still using today in my main gaming desktop.

I think you’ll be fine!

I know we shouldn’t have brand loyalty, but after the near decade of quad core only CPUs from Intel, I can’t help but feel absolute hate towards them as a company.

I had a 3770k until AMD released their Ryzen 1000 series and I immediately jumped over, and within the next generation Intel started releasing 8 core desktop cpus with zero issues.

I haven’t bought anything Intel since my 3770k and I don’t think I ever will going forward.

I wonder where they got 100hr?

I wonder if there’s some metric they’re going off of where the majority of the subscriber base only plays less than 100hrs and the “abusers” or whales play over the 100hr mark.

100hr / 30 days is 3.3 hours a day. Which as a father of two… I’d be lucky to get that much in a day.

100hr / 20 days(5 days a week) is 5 hours a day.

100hr / 8 days (weekends only gaming) is 12.5 hours a day.

None of these are outrageous and probably are the “average” user of the service.

Now if you’re doing 8 or 12 hours a day for 30 days, that’s 240-360 hours a month. Which is pretty much gaming full time.

I think 100 hours is a weird number to land on. I think 120 hours makes more sense (4 hours a day over 30 days).

I do expect Nvidia to lower the hours over time. Expect to see 80 hours or 50 hours soon IMO.

Just a heads up that you can browse and set filters on steamdb to see new historical lows for games(obviously based on steam pricing only).

Some notable historical lows are Silksong, KCD2, Arc Raiders, Hades II, Megabonk…