While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.

Not if the admins of an instance want to maintain their echo chamber by shepherding discussions towards extremist viewpoints.

Wanted to put Proton VPN on my Steam Deck, so it’s quite frustrating that even a distribution with millions of users doesn’t have a version of the program released for it, given that the alternative methods of using it don’t allow for easy server switching.

Also have to make sure that the public WiFi network one’s device is connected to doesn’t block VPN connections, as was the case at at least one Walmart I tried using the WiFi at.

I’d hardly count something like a simple Solitaire clone app that could be otherwise played for free as a full game release… In terms of actual games, I’d much rather support mobile ports that can be bought for a one time price tag than those that are locked behind a subscription in perpetuity.

Legislation like that might happen in places like the EU, but in the US at least, unless lobbying rules are amended, consumers stand next to no chance against the commercial interests of advertisers.

If you’re the one paying for internet access, you should also have the right to determine the content that you’re paying to have access to. While something like pi hole could be used to metaphorically take down most of the billboards without impacting the ground below it, even everyday users should be informed about the data advertisers are getting from them, whether it is anonymized or not. Hiding an important setting about data sharing near the bottom of a page in settings doesn’t help anyone but the advertisers.

Note that the sources on the list are there due to the frequent publication of misinformation, rather than their bias alone.

As others have noted, the list can essentially be broken down into three categories: state-sponsored media outlets, clickbait-style tabloids, and extremist media outlets.

The categories themselves are just a means of summarizing what’s on the list though, as outlets in those categories that maintain editorial standards that disallow misinformation wouldn’t qualify for inclusion on the list.

Note that the sources on the list are there due to the frequent publication of misinformation, rather than their bias alone. As others have noted, the list can essentially be broken down into three categories: state-sponsored media outlets, clickbait-style tabloids, and extremist media outlets. The categories themselves are just a means of summarizing what’s on the list though, as outlets in those categories that maintain editorial standards that disallow misinformation wouldn’t qualify for inclusion on the list.

Admittedly I did need a guide at times for Quern too; I think the best compromise is what Cyan did for Firmament and just include an optional hint system in the game itself. By avoiding the need to consult walkthroughs, not only would excessive spoilers be avoided, but the experience would remain self-contained, something especially important for a VR game.

Something they didn’t fix for the Myst remake that the Myst-like Quern is much better at is not making puzzles so obscure as to essentially require a guide to complete the game. Was anything done about that problem for the Riven remake?

It’s $3 a month and called RealDebrid + Stremio

If a homebrew game is popular enough, such as Micro Mages, you can sometimes find them in romsets. Unfortunately some cartridge-only and less popular ROMs take a while to get uploaded; took me a year to find a specific Genesis ROM that was cartridge-only.

Good on the EU for supporting consumer rights over corporate profits.

Just because it’s the norm doesn’t mean it’s not excessive. In contrast, Apple’s implementation of a 30% cut is even worse, since with an iPhone you can’t just install an app from another source (and even when you can in the case of the EU, there are recurring costs for doing so). Since Steam accounts for the majority of PC video game sales, with AAA titles only not releasing on it when they have a clear financial motive not to, Valve’s use of a price parity clause effectively makes it the arbiter of what the industry standard markup on PC should be.

Valve could still operate as it currently does, including having sufficient profits to account for R&D and long-term costs, at a lower cut of platform sales (as another commenter mentioned, Gabe Newell’s billion dollar yacht collection is demonstrative of the platform’s profitability, especially when one considers how much it costs to maintain ships). Products such as the Steam Deck make money for Valve too, as Steam Deck users (myself included) statistically buy more games on Steam as a result. I don’t support profiteering efforts by game publishers either, such as the Factorio price increase attributed to inflation, $70 game releases attributed to inflation when digital releases have reduced their costs, and micro transactions in general. In any case, however, given that cost increases are always the consumer’s responsibility, cost decreases should not simply be a means for companies to bolster their profit margins.

Just because there’s an outdated industry standard doesn’t mean it should be perpetuated, let alone supported, for eternity. Valve’s server hosting costs on a per-installation basis have fallen substantially since they first launched Steam, so there’s no reason why the 30% cut is still necessary; even 20% would leave them a sizable profit margin. I’m not a fan of the Epic Game Store for bribing companies to not release their games on Steam for a set amount of time, and choose not to use it as a result, but it’s time that the 30% industry standard be dropped. In purchasing a game I want to support continued development of that franchise, and $15 of a $50 purchase going to the storefront is not only excessive and inflationary, but harms developers as well.

Perhaps more like what fridge companies do via incessant water filter replacement reminders: Enjoying your Super Deluxe CoolPlus™ Fridge? Don’t forget to check out the CoolPlus™ Fridge Magnetic Spice Rack and CoolPlus™ Fridge Juice Dispenser Add-on!

Doesn’t this essentially integrate similar functionality to what one of the Decky plugins had been used for? Great that it’s an official feature now, in any case.

There isn’t a free alternative that works as well, unfortunately. Bing not only has many of the same issues, but has worse results. Since DuckDuckGo makes use of Bing’s API for its results, in addition to lacking features such as date range searches, it is still a step down in terms of the quality of one’s search results. Having switched to Firefox due to Google’s efforts to make unilateral, self-serving changes to Chromium, I’d be only too glad to switch search providers if an alternative provider had a similar number of accurate results.