I saw there’s both a Windows and Flatpak release there. I’m curious which works better. If they’re Linux enthusiasts, they may have parity, but there’s also occasions where the Windows build gets more public attention and it’s better to just run that through Proton.

I’m not knowledgeable of a lot of them, but had a lot of fun with Quake Brutalist Jam 3, a full conversion quake mod; and the streamer I saw playing them showcased a lot of other Doom / Quake mods spanning many genres.

One that seems very fun is called Dr Robotnik’s Ring Racers. Having little monitoring, it appeared to allow for racers like Senator Armstrong (Nanomachines, Jack!)

This was, in some ways, the life lesson from FFXIV: Endwalker.

Man, I wish I could have a Lemmy community that bans pirates from all discussion.

Either a game is shit, made by abusive managers forcing crunch time, in which case there’s no moral issue with pirating it but also: Why would you want to for a shit game? Or, a game looks great, is fairly made by inspired artists looking for a return on their risk, in which case: Why are you not paying them for their work?

And I also have no patience for anyone claiming the latter type of game doesn’t exist. Stop gluing your eyeballs to AAA ads while constantly whining about them, and find some recommendation lists. My GOTY list for 2026 is already packed.

I’ll apologize for the overreach on the subject of legality. But I do think treating it as an imminent danger, like it’s locking off options, is an overreach.

We DO see more game passes currently. There’s EA+, Ubisoft+ (often bundled in other services), PlayStation Plus, Nintendo Online, and even some other niches like Indie Pass.

Right now, a variety of consumers see the ads for these, and accept or reject the offer/pricing based on their circumstances. There doesn’t appear to be a direct “danger” of these models swallowing all digital consumption. The most common outcry I’ve seen is “Don’t rent these things! When the rental period is up, you have to give it back!” To me, that just insults the intelligence of people who are agreeing to these terms, which is definitely not everyone since not everyone likes renting. I will volunteer that I pay for PS+, knowing I don’t own its games.

I similarly don’t see an advantage to the supposed “making the switch” in which a publisher announces “Our next suite of games will be rental only and disallow purchase”. That would just be poor PR for that publisher and lose them customers to competitors.

To be clear, we have NEVER seen that and the fear written out by you and others suggests it will ALWAYS be the case. You are suggesting the potential for a 100% industry shift-over. The closest thing we’ve seen is live service games, and the clear preference there is through voluntary spending like Fallout 76’s vault pass; not lockout systems that kick people out of play wholesale for missing a payment. Even acknowledging how greedy corporations are, they don’t really have a strong reason to consider such lockouts.

All of these points only apply to cases where a game has completely closed off full-purchase options, in favor of rental-only models. As of yet, I have not seen that model exist; only constant cries of “but someday…!” in regards to Game Pass.

I used to subscribe to it, and left for other criticisms I had of it and Microsoft. But to make clear to GP’s all-time critics: It is very clear to me that Game Pass is a rental model. I am not upset at losing access to said games when the time ends. I believe the same could be said about GP’s other users. I think most of us would view any attempt to actually reach a “rental-only system” as a negative. Heck, even Xbox themselves would likely view it negatively, since the success of game pass came conjoined with a rise in spending on permanent licenses to games. They’d be throwing away free money.

The moment such a “rent-only” measure occurs, even if it’s just for one major game, many people would likely move away to services where we can choose how long we keep our games. If such a service didn’t exist due to some massive market hand, an indie developer would make it, and people would go there.

While it’s reasonable to see an option like “Rent your games!” and reply “No thanks, I don’t like renting my games”, the conclusion of “This needs to be outlawed because someday all game developers worldwide will make us rent all our games and ownership will be banned which is anticonsumer” is asinine overreach that undermines your credibility.

I assumed all of this was known, but seeing how simply you view the issue, perhaps not.

It is impossible to do that currently, though, isn’t it? You set 8 prices for 8 countries individually, based on how reasonably each country’s residents can pay through their cost of living. Then, residents of 7 of those countries use VPNs to just pay the price of the country with the lowest pricing.

Then, the publisher sees this is happening, and stops selling to the lowest-income country, or feels forced to inflate price there to account for price chasing. Everyone loses.

This is largely why publishers decide to ignore outcries from international customers pointing out ridiculousness of international prices.

I’m not going to speak towards a world that attempts to enforce digital ID verification, as I’d be a starch opponent to that my whole life, and I’ll only stop when ordinary citizens become pro-ID, which I have never seen one of. I still believe it’s possible to suggest technologies that provide partial forms of identity as needed without denying freedom of digital anonymity.

(For direct answer, see other replies)

In terms of fixing issues like this, I had an idea for a technology but wanted to see if others view it as privacy-violating.

So, you have an encrypted data packet. Optionally, that packet could contain an unencrypted signal outside of the encrypted portion, eg a header or similar, that signals it as: X-Domestic-Origin=true.

The idea would be: When a client device sends this header, it gets forwarded along lots of interchange points, but the legal rule would be that an interchange cannot include that header if the message is crossing national boundaries. So, the receiver of the signal can partially infer that the sender is likely a human within the same country.

Realistically, it would be easy to attach anyway - but since it’s unencrypted, it might become easy to trace back at least to the spot where it crossed the border, even if it would be difficult to fully track its origin. Law enforcement could fine the interchange spots choosing to forward the header, even if they can’t track down bad actors.

VPNs, similarly, would be asked not to include the header when forwarding traffic, but it would come down to their business preference and enforcement.

This could also, for instance, help structure social media in a way that prevents people being fooled by international astroturfers. A while back Twitter accidentally exposed how many MAGA accounts originated in Russia, and this could expose them without requiring detailed identity information on individuals.

It would need extra attention on misuse, as many would prefer not to send this signal even when they are in the same country; it would just be one way of a site asking for the least-necessary information for things like buying a game key.

Onirism. GOD, that is an enormous game. There are JRPGs I’ve finished with less playtime, even being a completionist.

For reference, it’s an adventure shooter with dozens of weapons, boss fights, giant levels across numerous locales, vehicles, etc.

It is also very glitchy and basically still an early access title, but I still found it worth the asking price for being so ambitious as an indie.

I refuse to buy into the lie that EVERY minor inconvenience is an assault on social justice. That kind of absolutism is designed to waste social energy in a world where far more visible and important harms are frequent. Ending the feeding of gambling addictions, addressing memory hoarding, and encouraging fresh IPs are all to me far more important issues.

You need to accept there’s a large population of people in this community that have not, and will not, be convinced by the Denuvo arguments. I even tried to engage others on the subject to dissect their views and potentially further the discussion, and all it got was multiple paragraphs about what they were NOT going to say, and refused to talk about. The debate is over, and not by my choice. It is literally just annoying now.

Might be a time to plug my own writing.

Possessing a gem and training with it for a decade lets you use intense elemental magic of a certain attunement. BUT…those gems are so rare and take such vast resources of an empire to formulate, that their use is controlled to just three people. Anyone else who steals one won’t even be able to use it until they’ve practiced for an extraordinary amount of time. So, they’re like nukes; and no one can just nip in and steal them.

The story is about using non-magical means to solve societal problems.

EDIT: Actually, since this has 7 upvotes, maybe it’s time to plug it more directly.

I mean, I’ll oppose any Xbox Game Pass because Microsoft has proven itself untrustworthy.

But I’ll bite; I don’t necessarily oppose the structure of a monthly fee for game rentals. Still, it really should be closer to the $10-$15 range, at max. Many people will claim the USA has suffered inflation, but I think a lot of that has just been price collusion on essentials. The minimum wage is the same.

The only problem with your piecemeal approach is that some features like cloud streaming sound unappealing from a distance (many people would comment “It can’t possibly technologically work! Anyone saying they’ve tried it is lying!111”) So having some way in which it becomes an extra element can get people to value it more. The base layer could even allow for about 1-2 hours of the “Streaming X” layer as a trial.

As a reminder, for anyone kinda interested in this but hating Microsoft, the lite Indie Pass exists.

The price surge put some more nails in the coffin for me, but my breaking point was firing the team that made Hi-Fi Rush, their ONLY GOTY contender.

Other nails in the coffin came from learning just how much the Azure team does to lick Israel’s boots in their genocide.

I’ve been playing Arknights Endfield and what makes it feel silly is that the story is all about saving this precious, pristine grassy environment from blight and destruction…and you do it by making giant resource-mining factories.

But if he’s entirely right, how can he tell which of his hands is not the right one?

This is a very good reminder to me. The rich pay comparatively little on things like gas taxes, retail tax, etc.

That was also the only factual assertion I made. I posited a guess afterwards, and drew potential conclusions afterwards.

You’re free to analyze my assumptions, which I label as assumptions, as incorrect, and give a further explanation of why one thing is true and another is not. But if you’re entering an argument refusing to make statements, OR supporting/negating suggested statements, that’s pretty much the definition of arguing in bad faith. Your arguments don’t “stand on their own” if you’re not open to discussion of their potential flaws.

If you don’t want to comment, just keep your hand off the Post button. No one hates you for that.

Can you get Hoopla? It could be that mine is a bit too lightweight to run it, but so far I’ve only had Overdrive access through direct OS integration.

It says a lot that Bioshock’s hacking minigame was derided though. I can’t fully explain why, but the implementation in Pragmata feels much more engaging. It manages to build it less as an obstacle out-of-combat, and more of a reward in-combat, while also not needing that much thought process to apply it decently.

Hell, I’ll admit, I don’t care much for Nintendo now but I’m also not going to invade topics about Tomodachi Life to insist every Nintendo fan boycott it because of what they did to Garry’s Mod.