What if I told you I find Valheim to be just fine, so I am surprised it is on this list? The subjectiveness of enjoying a game is a very large spectrum
Honestly, there were a TON of games I was surprised to find on this list, but Valheim was not one of them.
Multiplayer games are especially vulnerable to the subjectiveness of enjoyment because not everybody has the same set of friends or experiences with their friends in the game, assuming they played with friends at all.
That said, I’ve been playing games for decades and I would put forth that even single player Valheim with no access to multiplayer would deserve to be much higher than the 100 placement on this terrible list.
I would say that it’s offensive to put Early Access games on those lists. It clouds people’s judgment as they are valued with different standards and are expected to get better (especially if more people support the game). Any game that’s not fully released is a 0/10 in my book even if they were my favorite games.
Valheim was a better game in it’s first version than a lot of the games that are “complete” on this list.
I get where you’re coming from, and certainly some games don’t deserve to even be sold in their “early access” state. However, I think saying none of them should count at all is a bit ridiculous.
Valheim offered hundreds of hours worth of entertainment even in the early versions and has only improved since then. It only takes up 1gb of data through some miracle, and runs fairly well even on the steam deck.
Honestly it puts many of the other titles on the list to shame. Ignoring it because the dev wants to continue providing MORE free updates instead of calling the game finished and then charging for “DLC” is not a reason to punish the studio, if anything they should be looked to as an example of what other devs should do.
I prefer 2 to 1, primarily because the choices are not as blatantly good/evil and it feels like they have more impact. I also think the character creation and items are more fleshed out. Just a shame it didn’t get the polish it deserved at launch. 1 definitely feels more “Star Wars”-y, though.
Prey kinda kicked off the immersive genre. I think the thing folks are not getting is that this is not a best game of all time list, even though they say “100 best.” It is a “100 Favorite Games of the PC Gamer Staff” list. It is going to be different than anyone’s exact taste. There are a ton of games on there that I think would not be in my top 100, but I am not mad or confused about it. It’s just something someone else is into.
Yes they have. They've just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
And you can bet that if they could, Nintendo would go out of their way to sue any other emulator developer that emulates their games. The only things saving some of those emulators is technicalities like open-source.
They've just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
Because it was being used for piracy. As in, had support in the emulator's code for unreleased games. Nintendo rarely goes after emulator devs that don't use their code.
I'm not defending Nintendo, dude. I'm explaining how they're able to shut down emulators. It's possible to make legal emulators, and Nintendo won't touch them.
Supporting unreleased games does not mean they used Nintendo code. The whole point of an emulator is to perfectly reproduce the original system. That means working on any switch game, regardless of whether said game has been released or even thought of. In practice it isn’t that simple because they are attempting to replicate a very complex system, so there will usually be patches whenever giant games come out that use the system in different ways. However, that doesn’t mean Nintendo code is being used at all.
Right, but Yuzu did, tho. That's how Nintendo shut them down. Yuzu overstepped and handed Nintendo their own noose. They probably would've been just fine if they hadn't given out builds with those tools built-in.
AFAIK the Yuzu accusations of containing code from the Nintendo SDK haven’t been proven and also didn’t come out until well after Yuzu had already shut down (it was drama surrounding the Suyu “devs” that tried to succeed them). The whole case was about them profiting off of their patreon and optimizing their emulator for a game that hadn’t been released yet.
It’s not that Yuzu used stolen code, it’s that they released updates that optimized for the leaked copies of Tears of the Kingdom, and charged money for it. If they waited to release builds until after the release, or if they had been doing it for free, they probably wouldn’t have been shut down. You might think this is a small difference, but it really isn’t because having the binary file of a game is not the same as having the code that made the binary. Realistically, if you are good enough at reverse engineering binaries that you can figure out the code well enough to make optimizations for it in the 2 weeks that the game was leaked for before it came out, you are probably getting paid enough that steaking your income on a community-driven emulator would be unthinkable.
Either way, Ryujinx, which didn’t profit like Yuzu did (and is written in a completely different programming language from Yuzu, with a completely different set of developers) still got shut down. Nintendo isn’t doing it because of stolen code, they’re doing it because it’s an emulator that exists.
They didn’t use any code. Any keys were dumped from an existing Switch. Yuzu got taken down not as a result of a lawsuit, but because of the threat of one. Famously Bleem won their emulator lawsuit from PlayStation, but still went bankrupt anyway, so most emulator projects don’t even try to fight any legal battles.
Here's some more quotes from the same page where Nintendo is viciously anti-emulation:
The introduction of video game emulators represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.
Distribution of a Nintendo emulator trades off of Nintendo's goodwill and the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.
Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Nintendo's been openly emulating their own games since about that time. IIRC, the SNES Virtual Console on the Wii had code from SNES9X in it.
The distinction (which seems nobody cares about) is that Nintendo's going after copyright infringers. If your emulator doesn't use any of Nintendo's code, they ain't doing shit about it; they're just gonna steal it, if anything.
Somebody has fed you or you have invented bad information. Neither Yuzu nor Ryujinx, the two Switch emulators which recently ceased development due to intervention from Nintendo, included Nintendo's code. The Yuzu settlement required those developers to acknowledge that
because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.
There was never any mention of them stealing Nintendo code.
Ryujinx, we know even less about, because the agreement went down privately, but there's literally zero indication of any stolen code. We know that Nintendo contacted the developer proposing that they cease offering Ryujinx and they did.
Obviously, Nintendo was bothered in both of these cases because the emulators do facilitate piracy, but that's not the same as them having infringed on Nintendo's copyright by using their code which you are claiming. Both of these emulators were developed open-source; if they were built using stolen Nintendo code there would be receipts all over the place. That was never the problem.
Yuzu supported unreleased games. To do that required using Nintendo's code, and getting that code through unauthorized channels. Nintendo's code may not have been distributed through Yuzu, but it was used in a way that was not permitted in order to engineer a way to circumvent the copy protection of those games. That was how Nintendo was able to go after them.
Dude why are you digging this hole even deeper. They are going after emulators. That’s a proven fact. You can try to handwave it however you wish, but that won’t change reality. Nintendo goes after emulators, after modders, after content creators playing those mods. An emulator can play games, that’s what it’s there for. I don’t see how an emulator would work otherwise.
Because Yuzu emulated the Switch, while PJ64 emulates a long gone platform they don’t care about anymore. They’ll release a sloppy emulated game on switch for games from that era and call it a day, and get barely any sales. For switch they think that removing an emulator cuts their sale numbers in half which is insane. Nintendo hates community projects in all aspects. They don’t want emulators. They don’t want mods. They want people to buy their console, go to their store, buy a game from them and end it there. Buying a game from the store and playing on PC is unacceptable for them.
PJ64 emulates a long gone platform they don't care about anymore.
No. PJ64 was around when Nintendo was still actively making money on N64 titles.
PJ64 never got shut down because they made sure to always keep their project legal. Nintendo could never do shit to them, and it's been over 20 years now.
Nintendo couldn’t do shit to Ryu either, except overwhelm them with lawsuits.
How much are they paying you to blatantly lie? Just because a corporation has billions to throw at frivolous cases doesn’t mean that they’re right, it simply means our court systems are fucked beyond repair.
Neither Ryu or any switch emulator has used Nintendo code. One of then simply boasted about a leak which got them in a lot of trouble.
You sure do seen to love a company that hates you. I mean, go try and post a video of you enjoying Mario kart on a switch, see how long it takes for it to be removed. Any game company that cared about its customers would let you have fun.
To be clear, fuck Nintendo, but I wouldn’t be surprised in the least bit to find out that Yuzu was using proprietary information to make so much progress so quickly. In fact, I’ve long assumed that they did. Many details of these suits will never come to light, but it would easily explain how Nintendo was able to take down forks like Suyu so quickly as well, if they can prove that it wasn’t clean room reverse engineered.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling and available on the shelves though. Not that there aren’t legitimate cases for it (homebrew software and games), but that’s not what Nintendo is concerned about.
But screw that for legacy consoles, game preservation is important too.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling
If I hadn’t downloaded Yuzu and BOTW, Nintendo would’ve probably missed out on several hundreds euros my brother spent on buying a Switch, several games, controllers and supplies, albeit some of the supplies are 3rd party so Nintendo probably didn’t make profit off them.
Piracy definitely increases sales. I would have never bought a Switch in the situation I was in some years back, but having downloaded it and gotten very into it, my brother wanted to as well and he didn’t care to pirate, and had actual uses for Switch’s properties that you don’t get on emulators, like online play and the portability of the console itself.
It’s just that it’s hard to actually quantify, so the shareholders will prefer to go with enforcement that forces people to buy the games and console than taking a risk on hypotheticals.
Personally, I never bought a Wii U/Switch and played my fair share of games through emulation only.
They also shut down Yuzu forks using the DMCA. If they paid Ryujinx’s dev it was the equivalent of the Mafia bribing a judge while waving a picture of his family.
That, and when Nintendo's code is used in some way to develop the project. Japan has very strict laws on reverse engineering any software, which Nintendo is always set to capitalize on.
I don’t disagree they are their games, but is it their emulator, or did they just download one of the many online? Really doesn’t matter, just love to see companies bitch about something, then turn around and do it themselves.
I understand needing to protect your IP, in some sense, but what I’m getting at is that when a fan game is made, it is a homage to a beloved franchise that fosters love for the IP. If you were a smart company, you would foster this love for your franchise, to entrench the fans you already have, and to gather more fans because you are seen as the company that “does no wrong”, which in turn also increases your profits. Imagine if instead of taking these love letters to your franchise down (which makes you look like an absolute fucking ass to most), you made a feature of it on an official channel. Look at Scott Cawthon and his Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. He encourages people to make fan games using his original ideas and that encourages people to not only love his own games, but to go out and start developing their own little games that include ideas that Scott may not have even thought about including before. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a good way of protecting your IP by taking down blatant rip offs of your game that want to steal money from your fans, and cause confusion to new fans. Then there is the bad way, which is taking down these passionate love letters to your franchise that encourage others to look at the original source and see why they even decided to take the time to create the fan game in the first place. IF the fan game is trying to monetize, then by all means, send a warning. Tell them to not monetize it, and they are free to continue. If they continue, Cease and Desist. Hopefully that makes sense.
If they would carte blanche allow fan games of their IPs then that would weaken the IPs, which could lead to them loosing the IPs completly. For that it is irrelevant if the games are monetized or not.
Nintendo would need to implement some kind of process for developers of fan games to get them officially licensed. But for that to be effective as a tool to protect the IP they could not just give such a limited fan game license to everyone who request it, so a complex request process with multiple steps would be needed, and they would need to deny lots if not even most of the requests.
And this gets even more complicated when the very complex japan software patent system is added to the mix.
Could Nintendo be less shitty? Oh yes they could, but they decided to go the Cobra Kai way and strike first, strike hard, no merci!
Yes, like many things in the space of copyright and patents, this should be changed and defanged.
But the only changes we will ever see is making it more and more into a weapon against consumers. Nintendo, Disney and all the other big IP holders will never allow for anything else, they will use their money and power to prevent it.
Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what’s okay. They’re just following the rules as they’ve been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.
But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it’s better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say “They don’t have the right!” before we’ve done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we’ll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.
I completely agree with that take, I was just making a joke about how the first sentence reads like the start of a comment that’s about to defend Nintendo
Would you want to enter a legal battle with Nintendo? This system is broken in a lot of different ways, one of which is the incredible expense of legal fees even if you’re in such an open-and-shut case as someone clearly using your intellectual property without your consent. The one with deeper pockets wins regardless of what the law says.
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who bought it?
FTFY. The problem is not with Nintendo being against emulators because of piracy, they’re against emulators even if you own the game and the hardware but want to preserve the hardware (just like they do in the museum).
And if the counter-argument is that you don’t own the game when you buy it, then by that same logic you don’t steal it when you pirate it.
A) Yes, if you buy a game you don’t own the game. Only a license to use the software (in this case the game) was bought. This was, in general, even the case back then when games were sold on cartridges or discs. And it is for sure the case now with digital distribution.
B) Also yes, pirating a game is most of the time not theft but it is still against the law to use a unlicensed copy of any software.
If Nintendo were only showcasing games developed AND published by Nintendo, that might be the argument.
They’re not though, some of the games they’re showing they didn’t develop or publish.
Nintendo says emulation is transformative, that due to the recompiler, it’s a new work. Do they have permission from all the rightsholders for third party games to make a transformative work?
Do they even have the permissions from artists who might have licensed their work to Nintendo for X game, but not for the newly emulated ‘Y’
Interesting seeing Hotline Miami make the list since I just watched a short video essay the other day explaining how OTXO is just a better game in basically every way.
I’m still in the 80s working my way down the list, but I searched and OTXO doesn’t appear to be on the page.
Edit: Conversely, I’m pleased to see Portal included instead of Portal 2. The Portal 2 goo was unnecessary and led to more boring puzzle solutions. Portal is a more pure, timeless game. And it has a lot of amazing mods… I should probably look into how to install Portal mods on the Deck…
OTXO just might have been better than Hotline Miami if it was actually released in 2012. My personal gripe with it is how using a mouse at 60fps in [current year] just feels awful.
What, where do you get that? Any publicly conveyed copies of gpl-licensed software must make their source code available, and be published under the same license. This is true regardless of modifications.
I could be wrong and I’m more then welcome to being proven that. But wouldn’t this be like asking me to redistribute the whole process of running ZSNES on linux? Seems pretty infeasible.
I fully understand someone thinking x game deserves to be there instead of y but I think this is a great list that spans most genres and serves as a wonderful stepping stone for exploration within gaming.
If I give this list to someone who doesn’t know yet, what kind of games they like, this list will show them great games from all major “eras” and all kinds of dev studio sizes/budgets. And once they have played, say, KotoR 2 (since it’s in the same list that recommends new and good games like Baldur’s Gate 3, they are more likely to check out other old but great games like Gothic 1 and 2 (and, of course, KotoR 1).
The thing for me wasn’t so much the game choice but the placement. It feels like they took a big bag of 100 of the best games and randomly picked them out one at a time. If you start to ask is Y really better than X on this list then it starts to make less and less sense.
Nintendo: Emulation is illegal, criminal, and you should never ever do it. If you do, we will sue your ass, send the Pinks, and then shit fury on you!!!
Also Nintendo:
Needless to say, I will not be buying an alarm clock today.
They literally included emulation starting with the wii
So it is more of a rules for thee but not for me situation. Not you should never ever do it but you should only do it on our hardware with our emulators
I mean, their position is that they as the rights holders can republish how they please, but that buying a cartridge does not give you license to play on other devices. You can disagree with them on legal or philosophical grounds but their position isn’t really inconsistent.
You arent wrong and they have every right to use emulation themselves as the legal owners of their products.
The hypocrisy, as i see it, is that they have in the past painted emulation as bad. Fullstop. So for them to have had that opinion, then use it themselves is where they come into being called out for it. Hence the rules for thee but not for me phrase.
And its not a perfect fit which is why i said “more of a” if that helps explain how i intended to mean it
The inconsitency is in their past words vs actions especially where going after emulators is concerned.
It’s tough if not impossible to find now, so I don’t blame anyone for not knowing or believing this to be the case whole google results are dominated by more recent events involving more recent emulation cases. But they have literally in the past made the false claim that emulation itself was an illegal practice. Then later they pretend they never said that and most people never see it. I’ve seen emails from the big N’s legal team making the claim, but it was over 20 years ago. I just have a long memory…
Totally wrong my guy. I do see what you mean, but im claiming to be an exception to the case you have laid out.
Their actions are more important than their words which is why i made my point. Im well aware of nintendos history with going after emulation. They almost rival the mouse
For the record im not defending Nintendo here, i just apprciate honesty and accuracy. Otherwise its just slander and misinformation which we have way too much of.
Anyway their “philosophy” seemingly changes whenever convenient. No slander or misinformation there just sucky reality. You replied to someone mocking actual junk they at least pretended to believe at one point so I wanted to point out they actually have said things like this, coz I legit thought you didn’t know. At that time your other reply calling out their hypocrisy didn’t exist yet.
I won’t be buying a Switch 2 and if I can’t pirate Nintendos games I won’t play them. I refuse to reward them for their bad behavior. Like a little child who throws tantrums they belong in the time out area.
I really love those doofy detachable Joycons. However I have instead gone with the Steam Deck as it is open to the point of allowing custom OS and they advertise capability for DIY repairs.
The Overwatch 2 update was pretty widely hated, so that might be clouding things. I supposed they did put Destiny 2 on there though. It is for sure weird to not see FFVII or an Arkham game. Or hell, Dishonored.
@thingsiplay@DdCno1 this list is actually wild. Random flash in the pan games high up but also a bunch of evergreen classics and old games that were revolutionary but largely unplayed today while also missing some of the most popular games on PC. Not sure what this list is supposed to be except maybe engagement bait.
All lists like this are incredibly subjective and by definition about engagement. I wouldn’t call it bait, but it was definitely created for engagement. That is not necessarily a bad thing since it can generate some fun discussions.
I’m not AI and I really dislike Factorio. I would say it is a bit of a niche game, but Rimworld also seems niche. Probably just not to anyone at PC Gamer’s taste.
Factorio is not for everyone, but it’s also one of the all stars of its genre. With the upcoming expansion in a couple weeks, it’ll probably eat another few hundred of my free hours over the next few months, and I know I’m not alone on this one.
True, OK everyone has its own preferences but indeed ff7 missing looks surprising, didn’t see lot of city builders (not mentioning wolfenstein, fable, populous, Dk…)
Regarding the FF games, I think it’s actually fine considering some of the more notable omissions. Most FF games didn’t get released anywhere near when they were relevant.
Sure, but how do you explain then Persona 5 Royal then on place 5 then? Final Fantasy 7 Remake got higher ratings, I think sold more and was surely more popular on PC, right? Red Dead Redemption 2 was also released on PC when it anywhere near its initial relevance. Metal Gear Solid 3 or Mass Effect Legendary Edition is even worse, because those games are much much older.
Also Portal behind Slay the Spire? Team Fortress 2 34 places behind Hunt: Showdown 1896? So strange! These Valve games were revolutionary and defined their genre with huge number of players and fanbase.
My point is just, that the given argumentation here doesn’t hold up to me. But that is what you get if you ask people for their opinion. It’s just that and it will always surprise you.
The list is honestly bizarre and the rank placements are all over the place. Most of your later examples of that I completely agree with. I just think that the mainline FF games not being on the top 100 list of PC games is fairly understandable, and I say that as a huge fan of the series. Ironically, FF14 is quite literally the only game in the series that I haven’t played.
CS2 being ranked higher than Siege and Fortnite is really misguided. It’s been almost the same game since before the internet. Siege was a welcome improvement on the same formula. Fortnite continues to innovate with new games and new modes, all appealing to a wide range of people and skill groups. Even its main mode sees drastic changes with each season. It keeps things fresh, which is vital for a live service game like those three.
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Aktywne