… I’m not blind, right? She has her panties on display? That absolutely falls under “suggestive” imo.
Comparing being asked to tone down your marketing materials for an all ages game to censorship of explicitly nsfw games is also kinda scummy. You aren’t having your livelihood threatened by this.
I’ve seen this a lot, and there are problems with it. People are not going to want to go through setting up a crypto wallet just to buy a game. People are not going to be happy with Itch.io doing it transparently behind the scenes (who knows where they are sending it to). Creators are not going to be happy with having to pay higher transaction fees. And all this would apply to all games sold on Itch, not just the spicy ones, since Mastercard and Visa would absolutely block them if they tried it.
Why not just use something like Wero (or a hypothetical global equivalent) and use direct bank to bank transfers with no payment processor acting as an intermediary?
Title is tongue in cheek, of course—they probably are gamers. I get that making a game is complex and full of trade-offs, and you can’t please everyone. Still, there are certain design decisions that just feel like they weren’t made by people who play games regularly.
When going from point a to point b takes ages or is otherwise a pain. I get you worked hard on your world, but it losses its charm the 10th time running across it.
And don’t force me to hold/tap a button to sprint. Or worse, make me click in the left stick.
Riot Games are going to let their top League Of Legends and Valorant esports teams receive sponsorship from gambling companies, in a bid to snaffle up some of the billion dollar unofficial sports betting scene that surrounds both games....
I can’t really explain that much without spoiling stuff about the game that really should not be spoiled. It’s honestly a very, very unique game which if nothing else does makes it worth a look if you’re okay with horror-type games. All I will say is:...
Game spoilers and subjective opinions below, be careful.
spoilerI enjoyed all parts of Inscryption, but I think Act 1 was the best part of the game. The gameplay of act 2 wasn’t great and had too many mechanics flying around. Act 3 just felt too sterile and devoid of charm. I get that that was what they were going for, but I think I would have preferred multiple rooms in the shack over multiple chapters. There needs to be more games like Pokemon TCG for the gameboy (which is what Act 2 was referencing) though. With a card game that fits it.
I’ve watched two people online play the game and both pretty much slammed it. It should absolutely have been free with the console. Is $10 really disposable enough income to spend on what is essentially an ad for the console you’ve already bought and a handful of minigames? 7/10 is a wild score to give it, but I guess reviewers get these games for free anyway so price doesn’t matter.
Maybe this is me just being jaded after Nintendo’s fall from grace, but this is the first time I’ve seen a feature and wondered “why”?
If mouse control is important then just let people connect a bluetooth mouse. They’re easy to get ahold of and most people can probably chuck one in their bag if they don’t already have one.
Hell, if you feel the need, just make a “Switch Mouse” with a control stick on the side if you need to. No need to have one controller to rule them all.
This enables unique gameplay experiences not usually possible on a standard PC mouse setup, such as the ability to use two mice to play games.
I mean, this isn’t illegal or anything. It’s just so situational I’ve only seen it done once (World of Goo for multiplayer). Most people can’t effectively use mice with their non-dominant hand anyway.
An example of this is in Drag X Drive, where the player uses a mouse in each hand and moves them forwards or back to mimic moving around in a wheelchair.
Isn’t this just motion controls? The same concept could have been done with the Wii and two wiimotes. Only this time you just wear out the rubber pads on your joycon.
The addition of HD Rumble in the controllers also means players can experience force feedback while using a mouse.
… How does this even work given that a mouse is a precision instrument? Surely the rumble would just cause the mouse to shift around or become less accurate. I think there’s a reason nobody has tried to put rumble in a mouse.
Overall I can see it being a nice emergency feature for if you need a mouse but don’t have one on you. But the fact that they seem to be pitching it as a flagship feature feels odd to me.
Or maybe I’m just being grumpy and this ends up working well.
The mobile and PC gaming markets are very different, both in terms of monetisation and what games people expect to play.
If Valve wanted to get into the mobile games industry they’d basically be starting from scratch, and I don’t think it’s a market they’re particularly interested in.
You’re also assuming that buying a game on PC steam will also give you a license to play that game on android, which isn’t a given. I think many games have completely different monetisation models on mobile vs pc, so sharing between platforms like that wouldn’t make sense.
Compared to other platforms, they have a lot of good features and generally act in the public interest.
In regards to their DRM system, honestly some people are going to add DRM to their games no matter what. I’d much rather they use Valve’s system than some insecure third party spyware.
People have also mentioned their 30% cut which honestly seems pretty normal for an online storefront. It’s especially fair when you consider the fact that they provide marketing, hosting and payment processing for you. Not to mention things like achievements, matchmaking and workshop support if you want it.
There’s also the fact that a lot of the anti-monopoly folks tend to be Linux and/or foss advocates, and Valve has been pumping a lot of resources into open source projects.
Honestly, in the Linux space, the only reason Valve has a monopoly is because the other players just aren’t making any effort to compete.
Tl;dr Valve uses their market position for good (in general) and Steam is a good product.
Even disregarding the native Linux port… The Steam client is actually pretty decent. Any client would have to implement things like library navigation, storage management, Steam input support, the overlay, cloud sync and so on. And honestly, I don’t think anyone can reach the amount of features that Steam has.
Its probably why most people don’t actually use things like Lutris or Gnome Games to launch Steam games.
If only steam had a way to mark games as “hey, this game is in beta, expect issues”. I don’t know, making it clear that we were accessing it early or something…
I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I’d be willing to tolerate games being a bit buggy if they up front said “we know this game has issues. You can try it now or you can wait until we fix them”.
A new report says Unity is cutting around 1,800 jobs, or about 25 percent of the its employees, according to a regulatory filing and internal company memo obtained by Reuters on Monday....
Okay, so there’s two lines I could go down for this.
The first is to joke about the recent controversy, and say that they’re only doing this so they can sue other alarm clock manufacturers for patent infringement.
The second is a wordplay by calling it “the s-watch”. But that doesn’t really translate well to text.
I think it’s petty to not play a game just because of the engine it’s written in…
I think I may have to make an exception to that rule for this. :P
(Trans rights are human rights, btw)
Edit: … Wait, hang on. Isn’t the notion of using a game engine at all “woke” in itself? Like, isn’t that the entire thing that started this whole thing?
I recently played through a demo for a game called Pinball Spire on steam, and it put me in the mood for playing pinball games. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is just due to me having bad google-foo, there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest....
I played Braid ages ago, and it was okay. I can see it being influential when it first came out when there wasn’t many indie games.
Don’t think I really want to play it again though - it told it’s story and that was that. Unless it adds tons more levels or something, I’m not sure what value the remaster adds.
It’s sadly one of many “platformers with interesting mechanics but slow and clunky controls” that the industry has moved away from.
I have never wanted to play a game so hard in my life. It seems to have the atmosphere of Inscryption, the gameplay of Papers Please and a lot of buttons and knobs to mess around with.
One small thing but I’m surprised nobody points it out - the charging port location. I like using my switch/steam deck in bed or otherwise laying down, and the fact that the charging lead is at the bottom of the console rather than the top sucks. It just gets in the way and stops you resting the console on you. Whereas the Steam Deck just has it on top where you can just plug it in while playing.
I know the technical reasons behind it because of the dock and all that, but it’s annoying.
In general, I think the steam deck is better than the switch in almost every way - The switch is just an expensive ticket for the right to play Nintendo games nowadays.
Played it a while ago and had fun with it - would recommend if you like city/base building games.
Did fall off late game with the “factorio problem” of having huge bases that you need to micromanage and build manually (so called because Factorio is the only game which I think fixes this problem; a lot of games I keep wanting to blueprint things).
Also, it took me the longest time to realise that you were allowed to run paths underwater…
I’ve played Ace Attorney and the writers put a lot of love and personality into the characters. I’d be sceptical if an AI could get close enough to any kind of writing style to “kill” writing in games like that.
Honestly getting fed up of AI doing a mediocre job of creating art and then people claiming it kills whole industries because it’s the “in” technology.
I actually bought it, tried it for a bit, and then refunded it.
It just felt kinda bland? Not sure if this is just because I wasn’t in in the right headspace, but the game got to the point where I started collecting resources in a base and I just put the game down.
It’s like they got a generic survival game and added not-pokemon and guns to it for shock factors, without really considering gameplay cohesion.
The real reason I refunded it though is because, according to someone on Bluesky, the devs have a history of being NFT and genAI shills. I’d rather not get emotionally invested in mons that could just become NFTs or AI puppets.
Very interested in a future game where someone else takes the idea and actually has the passion to create a good 3D mon catching game. Clearly it’s something the market wants.
I’m reminded of old video games where they had the developers help out with the voice acting. Like, couldn’t you do this here? Just have someone who happens to have a high quality microphone do the lines? Maybe even pay a starving artist on one of those “voice acting for hire” sites?
I get that deadlines are usually way too tight on games, but this is just poor quality control. I guess that is the AAA games industry noways though.
Probably Celeste to anyone that has anxiety. I know it’s probably not the most profound representation of anxiety, but it’s a nice little game, it’s nice to feel seen and there’s a chance that some of the stuff in it will help.
See gameplay and more in this trailer for Trash Goblin, an upcoming shopkeeping game where you take on the role of a Goblin, and it's up to you to uncover and clean trinkets.
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
All you really need is where the character is looking, their location and the terrain map, all of which are things the server has authority over or can check easily.
Distinguishing between a good player and a bot probably won’t be that hard. A simple aimbot would probably fire exactly at a target’s (0, 0) coordinate, while a good player may be a frame or two early or late. Someone with wallhacks will behave differently if they know someone is around a corner. There’s almost certainly going to be small “tricks” like that that an AI can pick up on.
People with wallhacks will deliberately move their crosshairs over people that they see through walls. Or, if they know the server is watching for that, they’ll make a subconscious effort to never have their crosshairs over someone through walls.
Unless the aimbot is using its own AI learning system, it’ll not behave as a human would. For example, it might fire at a random point in a circle, where a human might have better aim along the horizontal axis or something.
Inexhaustive of things that kernel mode code can do that unprivileged (without “root”) user mode cannot:
Update and install drivers.
Run programs (like cryptominers) without them appearing in the task list.
Make network requests ignoring all firewalls and monitoring tools, even when seemingly in airplane mode.
Monitor your webcam and microphone, possibly without turning on that little light next to it.
Escape any sandbox you put it in.
Replace the OS with one containing malicious code.
Replace the efi firmware with one that replaces any future OS install with the aforementioned malicious OS.
Permanently brick your graphics card.
Take advantage of buggy hardware to burn your house down.
And so on. The question you should be asking isn’t “are they going to do this?” but instead “why are they even asking for this permission in the first place?”.
A game where you run around pretending to be a space marine doesn’t need low level access to your hardware.
I’m a Linux gamer, every few weeks there’s a story in the news about how some random update to anti-cheat ending up banning Linux/Steam Deck users, it’s not a problem unique to AI. AI finding false positives will happen, but that’s where the “human in the loop” appeals process happens.
Some games do employ new tactics. For example, when the game suspects you’re cheating, it’ll spawn fake opponents only you can see and check if you try to interact with them. This will defeat most wallhacks and maybe even a few aimbots.
This is the kind of cool things that they should be doing! Try new and interesting things instead of trying to brute force anti-cheat by putting restrictions on what people can do with their computers and forcing a narrative where cheaters only exist because you weren’t strict enough.
I don’t. Anything on the client can be tampered with. It’s the server’s job to make sure anything they receive is both valid and consistent with how a human would act.
Steam Doesn't Think This Image Is ‘Suitable for All Ages’ (www.404media.co)
Steam Doesn't Think This Image Is ‘Suitable for All Ages’...
Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material | RPS (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
What are signs that the game devs aren't gamers themselves?
Title is tongue in cheek, of course—they probably are gamers. I get that making a game is complex and full of trade-offs, and you can’t please everyone. Still, there are certain design decisions that just feel like they weren’t made by people who play games regularly.
Microsoft is closing down Xbox studio The Initiative, with Perfect Dark killed as well (www.windowscentral.com)
Riot will let gambling companies sponsor League Of Legends and Valorant esports teams (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Riot Games are going to let their top League Of Legends and Valorant esports teams receive sponsorship from gambling companies, in a bid to snaffle up some of the billion dollar unofficial sports betting scene that surrounds both games....
Here's why Inscryption is a good game
I can’t really explain that much without spoiling stuff about the game that really should not be spoiled. It’s honestly a very, very unique game which if nothing else does makes it worth a look if you’re okay with horror-type games. All I will say is:...
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour || Review Thread
Game Information...
Nintendo posts video showing Switch 2 mouse controls working on the Home screen [VGC] (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Why doesn't Steam support Android?
Steam revenue estimated 2024: $10.8B...
What topics would you like to see in a research paper on queer gaming?
cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23565790...
GameStop selling 500+ stores because of "woke". (htxt.co.za)
GameStop is hoping somebody will buy its Canadian and French operations....
Why no open source Steam clients? (fedia.io)
There are open source clients for Epic Games Store and GOG.COM, why not for Steam too?
To appease a Steam user's demands for straight representation, Webfishing added a 'Straight' title that costs 9,999 fish bucks (www.pcgamer.com)
Players are now less "accepting" that games will be fixed, say Paradox, after "underestimating" the reaction to Cities: Skylines 2's performance woes (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Unity Cutting About 1,800 People In Company's Largest Layoff (kotaku.com)
A new report says Unity is cutting around 1,800 jobs, or about 25 percent of the its employees, according to a regulatory filing and internal company memo obtained by Reuters on Monday....
Nintendo's latest product, "alarmo" (www.nintendo.com)
Which unplayed game in your library are you most looking forward to playing eventually?
Godot fork- Redot emerges after recent events within the Godot project. (github.com)
EDIT context from know your meme of all places Apologies :D :...
Nintendo and Pokémon are suing Palworld maker Pocketpair (www.theverge.com)
Well that took a while but its finally here....
Balatro passes 2m sales, with free major update due in 2025 (www.eurogamer.net)
Know any good pinball video games?
I recently played through a demo for a game called Pinball Spire on steam, and it put me in the mood for playing pinball games. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is just due to me having bad google-foo, there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest....
Braid Anniversary Edition has ‘sold like dog sh*t’, creator Jonathan Blow says (www.videogameschronicle.com)
New Nintendo Switch accessory might confirm some leaked details about Switch 2 (www.polygon.com)
PVKK from the Dome Keeper devs is Papers Please but you get a huge planetary defence cannon (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Maybe hot take: as a handheld, the regular switch is an awful handheld
Have you ever held a switch? Its long, flat and the controllers suck. Awful dpad and bad sticks....
Need fighting game advice
So, j want to get into fighting games, mainly the der street fighter games, and advice on how to get good....
Thoughts on the game Timberborn (store.steampowered.com)
Has anybody given this game a try? I’ve been considering it for a while, but money is tight. Curious if it was worth it....
A Small Steam Game Shows How LLMs Could Kill the Dialogue Tree (re: Verbal Verdict demo) (www.404media.co)
Excerpts:...
GeForce Now adding ads for free users. (feddit.nl)
Are you enjoying Palworld?
Sorry if this is redundant, I didn’t see another thread focused on reactions to the game itself (just the Pokemon-ripoff news cycle)....
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Will Have a Character Voiced by Text-to-Speech at Launch - IGN (www.ign.com)
Valve: Most games made with AI tools are now welcome on Steam (arstechnica.com)
Well shit…
Get Humble Choice and other package titles for cheaper
tl;dr: key shops… use https://gg.deals as a finder...
Has anyone tried to mark a game private in Steam? Does it work as intended?
asking for a close friend
If you could gift a videogame to anyone, what would you give to whom? And why?
Imagine you could give a Christmas gift to anyone, famous or not, what you would give and to whom? And why?...
Trash Goblin - Official Kickstarter Trailer (youtu.be)
See gameplay and more in this trailer for Trash Goblin, an upcoming shopkeeping game where you take on the role of a Goblin, and it's up to you to uncover and clean trinkets.
😐... (feddit.uk)
Valve needs to step up on Anti-Cheat
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...