I do everything important like banking etc on a separate device that isn't my gaming PC. This has been quite liberating since I worry less about invasive anti-cheat, drm etc. I realize not everyone wants to do this but it's been a nice compromise.
There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.
Scalpers can only make money by scalping something when it is being sold below what the market is willing to pay for it in the quantity in which it is available.
On a non-economic note, I’d add that I don’t think I’d want to buy an easily-modified Linux computer system from some random person unless I planned to wipe it. How do you know that the thing hasn’t been rootkitted?
There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.
That alone might be effective at reducing scalping, but would also put the item beyond the reach of entire income classes.
I've worked in camera retail and the local shops do just that, actually, and it's effective. The FOMO people get their stuff first at a higher price, the shop gets a boost in margins, and everyone else gets to enjoy cheaper prices three months later (and have the early adopters sit through the bugs and first-run issues).
Can’t really do that with such a hot product. Would cause too much PR damage and outrage. Companies don’t do it because this way they basically outsource the PR problem to the scalpers while allowing them to play innocent.
The level of outrage over supply issues for a video game console is disproportionate a lot of the time. Outrage that would be better directed elsewhere, but I digress.
A supposed insider on Reddit mentioned that this will be their new hardware ecosystem which will allow combining multiple devices for improved performance. The example they gave was having a desktop, a Steam Deck, and a new Deckard VR headset then using 2 or all 3 of these devices in tandem for better gaming performance.
They also mentioned the new Half-Life game is likely to be announced in the first half of September for release in November, however in could be delayed until next year if they aren’t perfectly happy with the state of the game.
This person said this is all part of the “Steam Next” era which will be introduced to the world with an Orange Box kind of release.
Given the problems SLI and crossfire had with more than one gpu, but in the same system, I doubt even valve would be able to combine different devices in a very meaningful way. The best I can imagine would be a pc rendering a game which is streamed to a steam deck, which in turn throws all its resources on FSR-like upscaling. Or, in case of a VR device that it handles interframe generation and reprojection locally on a stream rendered by a different device.
Perhaps it’s actually an eGPU dock for the Steam deck? Like you can connect you steam deck to it via USB4 and have better graphics performance? And it would cost less than a separate gaming PC.
It’s been mostly abandoned for some time now. It was my main entrance into game dev in middle school, and I used to be really active in the blender artists forums, so it is kinda sad.
Valve applying a bit of regulation (the right way) and still making piles of money, weird how that works.
I’ve been saying for years that if we want healthy economies, compare to human health. When the factors keeping growth at a controlled rate are disrupted, you end up with cancer.
Rant is related although covering hardware manufacturing rather than software:
Commodore manufactured in the USA and Europe some of the best-selling personal computers ever under lack of regulation. When the market became dominated by IBM-compatibles and Macintoshes, Commodore folded and left Superfund sites all over. (Superfund is basically EPA disaster declaration allowing for taxpayer funds release for large-scale cleanup operations.) Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. (lack of regulation led to the wrong way)
I strongly recommend going to this government website and checking out the superfund sites located in your area. If you live anywhere east of the Mississippi, your chances of living near or not far from an illegal dumping site are really high.
I almost wish I hadn’t looked; knew my area had paper mills and wood processing, they’ve been dredging the waterways for PCBs (chlorinated organics) for decades.
I work with electronics and have heard from multiple older gentleman that when they were young, they saw old high-voltage transformers from power poles being replaced which would be leaking off the backs of the trucks until empty or even purposely tipped into the storm drains. Why is healthcare so expensive? 🤔
No apologies for being politics-adjacent in the Gaming community, billionaires aren’t keeping their hands out of anything either. Keep rewarding Valve and the good companies and shitting on the bad ones!
That’s pretty cool and I am actually a little excited to try and learn it just for fun. I did very little unity before and godot sounds very interesting
I have 4 computers, only gaming one is still running Windows, other 3 were moved to Linux few years ago when Microsoft started with forced online accounts bs because I couldn’t be bothered dealing with stupid bypasses. Two are running Ubuntu, one is running Fedora. Those are never going back to Windows.
gamingonlinux.com
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