There’s some overlap in customers, sure but the vast majority of people who buy a Switch 2 aren’t the types who would buy a Deck. Switch 2 will sell tens of millions more units to a mainstream consumer. And that’s fine. Deck can still be a successful product in its own right as long as Valve is making a profit off of it through Steam software sales.
U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is calling for Valve to pull the controversial game Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which has players acting as a Palestinian resistance fighter, from gaming platform Steam.
The game, created by Brazilian developer Nidal Nijm, has already been removed from Steam in several countries, including the United Kingdom, following a request for removal from the U.K. Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit, 404 Media reported. Nijm also said that the game is blocked across the European Union due to EU violations flagged by the French government’s cybercrime unit. In an email from Valve that Nijm showed to Polygon, the violation is of Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2021/784, which addresses the “dissemination of terrorist content online.”
I think the funniest thing here is that this game was made by a Brazilian and it went relatively unknown until some skrub said it was anti semetic after Oct 7, despite having been published since 2022.
Good interview. They didn’t let them off the hook, but weren’t pushing an agenda either.
This is going to be a moving target that someone is going to pay big bucks to figure out in court. International laws are not up to speed on what is or isn’t ok here, and the ethical discussion is interesting to watch unfold.
Help, I can’t tell the difference between the different varieties. Between the “Ultimate 2 Bluetooth Controller” and the “Ultimate 2 Wireless Controller,” which one do I want for gaming on Linux (both Steam on my desktop and RetroPie on my Raspberry Pi)? Or which do I want between the “2C Bluetooth” and “2C Wireless,” for that matter?
(Damn it, 8bitdo, would it kill you to put a fucking comparison matrix on your website‽)
I can’t tell the difference between the different varieties. Between the “Ultimate 2 Bluetooth Controller” and the “Ultimate 2 Wireless Controller,”
The wireless controller uses a wireless USB dongle for connectivity, which supposedly has way less input delay than standard bluetooth. I couldn’t comment on that personally tho cause I have an older one which is Bluetooth and works fine for me
But both models say they have Bluetooth, wired, and 2.4Ghz connectivity. They both include a USB-C 2.4Ghz dongle, and both explicitly call out Bluetooth as a way to connect to certain devices, so must both have transmitters for that, too. The “Wireless” version calls its wireless protocol “8Speed” and lists its low latency as a feature, but the “Bluetooth” product page doesn’t say anything that would imply its non-bluetooth wireless is different. It merely doesn’t discuss it.
The only real hardware differences I’ve been able to discern so far are that:
the “Ultimate 2 Wireless” version shows colored labels on the ABXY buttons, while on the “Ultimate 2 Bluetooth” version the labels appear to be white.
the “Ultimate 2 Wireless” comes in black, white, and purple while the “Bluetooth” version only comes in black and white.
the “Ultimate 2C Wireless” comes in mint, peach, green, and purple while the “2C Wireless” version comes in blue, pink, and dark blue.
Sometimes they have hall effect sticks, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have back paddles, sometimes they have extra bumpers instead. Which is which? no clue
The only difference I could find is that the bluetooth one is officially switch compatible and the other one isn’t. I have the old wireless one with hall effect sticks and had no issues with it on pc, android or steamdeck.
A more “controlling” company could try to lock down the cartridge or even a disc with the logic that the license is tied to the purchaser. It doesn’t seem like much since that is the status quo, but last generation Microsoft was testing those waters and we’re just happy that these boundaries aren’t being pushed again right now.
You are older than me, I suppose. I was playing it at 11 years old or so. My first CRPG, although my dad had run a D&D game for the family a few years prior so I had a reference point.
I remember my cousin telling us about the Creeping Coins and my imagination went wild, assuming you could loot them and they’d attack you later from your inventory.
I think it’s gonna get there very soon. Steam on Xbox, and also Xbox on steam deck.
The only issue with the latter is Valve is using proton translation to bypass windows and make their own thing, it’s a tremendously grey area that Microsoft has said NOTHING about, only because Steam is legit and game sale money go to publishers.
Imagine if Yuzu was legit and game sales still went to nintendo or 3rd parties, the tech behind proton and yuzu nce aren’t dissimilar!
I’m guessing that they don’t mean a legally grey area. I think they probably mean it’s a grey area for Microsoft because Proton helps people get around needing Windows to play games made for Windows and Microsoft has an interest in keeping people on their OS.
Microsoft/Asobo is responding to the community asking for historical weather conditions instead of only now-current ones, they say it’s very hard to impossible to do it due to a lack of data and existing data being hard to get into the game.
“Lack of data” seems a very strange reason considering we have climate data going back over 100 years for most of the world and meteorological data going back at least a few decades.
For a flying sim, you probably want “weather” data, not “climate” data. Like on this particular date, time, and location, data for the wind direction, rain, cloud formation, temperature, etc. That data would be humongous.
The huge update that completely rebalances the game, improves UI, and changes the gear system is free. As for PL itself, I’ll happily continue BG3 until the hype dies down and I get a feel for whether it’s actually worthwhile.
The game runs the same or better on the hardware I have after the 2.0 patch. There are just more options to use, and thus the recommended has increased.
To be fair I think Polygon have misunderstood the email.
Calling it "second run Stadia PC RPG" implies Microsoft thought it was going to launch as a Stadia exclusive for it's first run. This was back in 2020 when Stadia was still a thing, and trying to sign up exclusives.
That doesn't mean Microsoft underestimated it, but that it thought it'd already have had a run on Stadia which would make it less likely to be an important title for Microsoft.
Their publisher also expected the game to have about one-tenth of the actual players. I don’t think anyone knew how big it would be.
Absolutely.
The $5M also refers to what they thought Larian would want for it to be included on Game Pass.
Yes and that’s precisely my point. Because they didn’t see how successful the game would be. Otherwise, they would have thought of a much bigger number.
scrolled past this a couple times thinking it was an opinion column about how the ideal dev behavior is approving of people pirating their games. finally remembered the game name.
polygon.com
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