Right, but if you try to follow a more strict definition that mostly follows 2D games developed by a single person, even their publishing framework ends up encompassing dozens if not hundreds of people. It’s become hard to make that definition strict. At the very least, very few notable games are made by the really big labels: Ubisoft, 2K, EA, etc.

I mean, when they work indie, they don’t need to unionize.

We probably won’t see unions; just a collapse of AAA. The Game Awards this year was a joke with only about 3 big contenders, and most were regarded as “indie”.

Introducing Microsoft Sepukku.

I’ve been writing a long work, using Office for web editing. Every so often in proofreading, I find spots where it looks like words were just missing. Now I feel like I may have some explanation…

Funny thing is, I’m offhand compiling some Pros/Cons to Windows/Linux, and this has caused the topic of “Support” to completely swing. Used to be, if Windows fucked up, I could complain to Microsoft and they might put someone on a support call intended to fix it. Now, if my OS fucks up, Microsoft will blow me off and send me to a useless AI, while the community for my Linux distro has pros that may genuinely be willing to take some time out to figure out what’s wrong. (Not always a guarantee, but better than nothing)

Code Violet looks so cool in concept and screenshots. I’m just sad I get a vague impression the studio is biting off more than they can chew, with things like floaty animations and descriptions of potential feature creep. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Huh. Never thought I’d see a path of consequences that punishes companies disloyal to their employees.

Granted, these people are dooming their chances of working in the game industry again, but maybe at this point they’re okay with that burn.

It might be an option that doesn’t come up much, but older/lower-spec consoles are an option: The Playstation 4 and Xbox Series S. They’re not available for recent big AAA games, but that’s less and less of the big trends. There have still been many games coming out this year for the PS4.

That’s, of course, if you’re really on a low budget for hardware. Otherwise, a PC is a great investment for games on Steam sales.

You’re getting downvoted, but what I’ve heard of the occasion is basically this. It’s upsetting because Trump absolutely did something horrendous - but this time to a horrendous person. It’s definitely a case of him trying to apply abuses to justify abuses.

Does Proton even work on Macs? It seems pretty clear at this point Linux is a far better gaming OS.

The last few days, I haven’t run into any players fighting each other. There may in fact be some matchmaking effects deciding this, based on my past behavior.

It helps in my case that I have a lot of upgrades and don’t feel bothered about losing really good gear anymore. Interestingly, I’ve often felt the good gear helps against ARC, but not much against committed players. A well executed blindside ambush can take down even a player with a heavy shield.

The main defense is the psychology. Fostering a sense of communal protection by shooting the wasps that are attacking someone else, bringing one defibrillator in case you find downed players, and in some very rare cases, acting as protector for someone who was wrongly downed. Eventually, some PVP-heavy players decide they have more to fear from attacking others than being passive.

A weird tip to try; when seeking some objective and worried for ambushes, play the Recorder. Some attackers are looking for the thrill of combat, not loot, and are dissuaded by an open musician. Other players are just fearful you’ll shoot first, which is less likely when you’re announcing yourself and taking your hand off your gun for the instrument.

I could be wrong, I think it’s a rare case of a game releasing with zero levels. The idea there was to let people take it and make their own levels for it (which, I’m sure, many did)

I remember back when I was more excited about getting into gamedev, learning C and C++ were some significant obstacles. Even understanding that I had to be responsible and direct about memory, the way they flub through so many template interfaces and spew out paragraph-sized errors made it impossible to contend with. I haven’t followed Rust, but I hope for a time that low-level code modernizes just a bit so we can stop abstracting our calculator apps with 4 GB of Electron framework.

Yes, but as it exists that distro is very dedicated to the task of supporting Valve hardware, and has done very little to generalize support to other generic hardware.

I imagine it would make a huge bump if Valve were to announce “Wait no longer, SteamOS is here!!”, even if their release is just an overnight reskin-fork of (Bazzite/CachyOS/PopOS).

I say this as someone who tries to tell people, stop waiting on Valve, and try out a few of the options. I’m glad I found a distro that works for me, but I didn’t enjoy the original search. I certainly got pressured into it as Microsoft really put as much effort as they could into making Windows as terrible as possible; and it was not “Everything works 100% out of box!” But the move was worthwhile.

It’s always “one little thing”, and often an OS-local feature that many wouldn’t be aware of.

eg, You go to your grandma’s to help with her computer. She mostly uses her web browser to check on news. BUT, she has one specific home-network file operation she performs regularly, using an old network drive that got set up decades ago by who-knows.

That’s one tiny example, but there’s hundreds of others around, and not from tech nuts. Someone has one specific VPN app they must use, on their personal device, infrequently, for work. Someone runs one app that still mentions Windows 95 compatibility. Someone with learning disabilities is very very used to the pattern of logging in, so much so that they’re confused and ready to call IT when they don’t get a Ctrl+Alt+Delete prompt.

Thankfully, those are often exaggerations, and it’s good that most people’s use cases for niche stuff has migrated to web apps. You’re right that a lot of people really do only rely on their web browser. These days, even Edge is “sorta” available on Linux if someone is that dedicated to their list of bookmarks. Just don’t expect it’s always as simple as people not finding the start-menu-equivalent.

Yup. I’m using my terminal every day, but I program for work and don’t mind a keyboard-friendly interface for a few forms of tinkering and program updates I’m doing. But even I wanted to prefer the GUI for common actions.

The stupidest reason I started going back to my terminal was, my GUI package manager didn’t have a “Select All / Select None” button for package updates, so if I only wanted to update one app at a time, I had to do it from the terminal. That’s not “terminal being awesome”, or “terminal being my preference”, that’s just lazy UI design.

YouTube has done a lot of malicious removal, but I’d be surprised if Windows 11 was one of those intentional targets. YT is run by Google, purveyors of Chromebooks; I’d think they’d generally benefit from a move off of MS/Windows.

It is extremely rare - I do it when I have some form of dedication to the developer, or their rare variety of ambitious game. I may not have even done it once this year.

So I think that matches the OP’s feelings of buying early in support. Largely, it doesn’t matter.

Aren’t the waiting rooms mainly for the non-paying customers? I thought as soon as you subscribe, you jump way ahead of most other users.

Surprisingly, if they have such waiting times, it seems to indicate they do have people using the service.