Isn’t a cracked (old, I think?) Kindle the only way to pirate KU/DRM titles? At least, that’s what I recall from the last time I looked into it. There’s a book I really wanted to format shift from KU since Google TTS was fucking up all the proper nouns, but I gave up. (It was an obscure book that isn’t available anywhere pirated.)

Yeah, I agree. I’m not at all interested in what score they gave the game; I’m more interested in what they liked/didn’t like and, more importantly, why they felt that way. Then I can get a sense if the game will match my tastes/interests.

Weird to hear that. My only issue so far has been how hard it is to get movement speed on boots. Granted, I’m only just about to start Cruel, so my playtime is low compared to many, but I’m absolutely loving all the boss encounters, particularly with the dodge mechanics. And not needing to worry about socket numbers, colours, and links on gear.

Maybe I should read what others are saying, but I have nothing significant to complain about so far, aside from move speed being a bit too slow.

I think about the 5 games for $5 bundles with amazing indie games whenever this comes up.

You can still get deals like that from Humble, Fanatical, and a few others, but nothing like that on Steam anymore. I don’t really understand why people buy so many games on Steam, tbh. 90% of my game purchases are bundles.

Then again, I’m a very patient gamer who prefers short and targeted indie games to AAA games, so that’s probably most of the answer. I’m cool waiting 5 years for a game to be cheap. I have literally thousands of games I would be interested in playing sometime, so it’s only the very rare game that I’ll buy the year it’s released.

That sounds really cool. Thanks for sharing; I hadn’t heard about this one previously.

I was gaming exclusively on the Deck from January to the start of December…

…But Path of Exile 2 I’m streaming from my desktop to get acceptably clear visuals and smooth framerates. I’m back heating my house with my desktop.

I was wondering, lol. My numbers are very inflated, too.

What’s funny about mine is that almost all of my “Windows” playtime is actually from streaming to my Deck, too.

Regardless, they need to have it in their terms of service that they can host the file, encrypted or otherwise, on their servers and reserve the right to serve the files to other users.

But yes, that’s true that they can’t necessarily access the files they’re hosting/serving.

To be fair to Discord, it has to work that way. They serve the files to you anywhere in the world on any device you use, don’t they? That requires hosting the content.

But it could very well be used for other purposes, too, of course.

1080p would also be great for streaming from a desktop.

Loving it.

On the Steam Deck, it was playable, but I couldn’t find settings that looked good and were visually clear, so I finally got around to setting up Sunshine and Moonlight (in-house streaming) and it’s amaze balls.

I’m using a script that switches my desktop to a virtual monitor that’s the Steam Deck’s native resolution, and I recently upgraded my house to a WiFi 6 mesh network, so it’s working almost flawlessly. (I often get crashes on startup, but it’s never taken more than 3 tries, then no issues.)

I’m still only in act 1 (limited playtime) but I’m so excited to be playing PoE again, and PoE2 is perfect for playing with a controller.

I don’t want to simp for a corporation, but what is Valve doing that’s anticompetitive?

Like, don’t they need to be doing something to limit competitors’ access to the market to be anticompetitive?

Steam requires base price/same price parity for selling Steam keys, but they’re literally giving their services away to developers for free in those cases, so that’s pretty clearly not anticompetitive, right? And there’s no requirements that I’ve seen written anywhere that they require price parity for non-Steam-key sales.

And, based on the massive numbers of bundles of games I’ve bought with Steam keys with total historical-low game prices below best-ever Steam sale prices, they pretty clearly don’t even enforce this rule strictly (it seems like so long as the total bundle price is in line with individual title sale prices, they’re fine, even if consumers get other games as well.)

So I’m not sure what the basis for this suit is. Not saying it’s healthy for the market to have an effective monopoly in this space, but the reason Valve is maintaining its marketshare is because they’re consistently offering the best value to consumers compared to other storefronts, which isn’t illegal.

/Insert “prove me wrong” meme

It’s particularly nice for the Deck, since launchers often break things that otherwise work great with Proton.

Dragon Age: Origins came out 15 years ago. That’s a very long time to stay with the same company in the tech sector. It’s not at all unusual that there are so few people left who worked with the engine for the first game.

Project 2025 includes a detailed plan about how to dismantle the entire Federal government and replace thousands of government managers with alt-right extremists.

Project 2025 matches most of his campaign promises and is written largely by former Trump administration staffers.

I’m running Win 10 Ameliorated on mine. Manual driver installs were the only big hiccup. Works well otherwise, but it’s not my daily driver.

I can’t really use Linux since my work is deeply embedded in Microsoft everything; I need OneDrive to work dependably.

It was offered as a free upgrade for anyone with Wishes 7/8. And you could get free upgrades to those from earlier editions of Windows, too.

Some people haven’t paid for Windows in 2 decades-ish with a legit retail purchase.

Mood.

I’m not going to pay $45 for any game. If I’d known about the “never on sale, price only goes up” model they were using, I might have bought it back when it was $20, but I’ll just never play it now and I’m okay with that. There are literally hundreds of amazing games I already own to play, and if I had 100+ hours to sink into a game like this (I don’t, post-kiddos—for now, anyway), then I’d strike the earth for some Dwarf Fortress !!!FUN!!!, which I know I’ll enjoy.

Or maybe finally get around to beating Baldur’s Gate 1… (I never made it past the early game… BG3 I’ll get to in the 2040s at this rate, ha ha!)

Aside from people who just want to play football/CoD/D4/whatever multilayer game, I don’t understand why anyone pays full price for games. I’m glad they do, mind, since they’re subsidizing the development costs mean games get made, and I get amazing games for cheap.

As a recent example, I nabbed MH Rise for cheap recently, and bounced off it. I might try again later, but it didn’t grab me. So glad I didn’t pay more than $15 CAD for it!

The ultra-wealthy are terrified of reprisal from Trump. And they control the media (Bezos/WP) and social media (Zuck).

Democracy in America may fail next week. Terrifying to watch.