https://venturebeat.com/games/valves-gabe-newell-talks/

Some of what Gabe Newell said:

I think there’s a strong temptation to close the platform. If people look at what they can accomplish when they can limit competitors’ access to their platform, they say, “Wow, that’s really exciting.” Even some of the people who have open platforms, like Microsoft, get really excited by the idea that Netflix has to pay them rent in order to be on the Internet.

That’s not how we got here, and I don’t think that’s a very attractive future. So we’re looking at the platform, and up until now we’ve been a free rider. We’ve been able to benefit from everything that’s gone into the PC and the Internet. Now we have to start finding ways that we can continue to make sure there are open platforms. So that involves a couple of different things.

One, we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives. Our perception is that one of the big problems holding Linux back is the absence of games. I think that a lot of people — in their thinking about platforms — don’t realize how critical games are as a consumer driver of purchases and usage. So we’re going to continue working with the Linux distribution guys, shipping Steam, shipping our games, and making it as easy as possible for anybody who’s engaged with us — putting their games on Steam and getting those running on Linux, as well. It’s a hedging strategy.

I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space. I think that we’re going to lose some of the top-tier PC [original equipment manufacturers]. They’ll exit the market. I think margins are going to be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, it’s going to be a good idea to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality. But when you start thinking about a platform, you have to address it.

The title seems to be missing important context: this is specifically for NVK.

Anyway, pretty cool to see the progress on this!

Having globally routable IPv6 addresses for each device doesn’t prevent you from running firewalls.

I wrote a Matrix bot that can be used for my community to schedule gaming events. I just pick a time to play a particular game, and play with whoever shows up.

I am 90% certain it was never meant to refer to the generation that played it, but to the over the top action.

But they did mention that community servers would be able to pick which Anti Cheat they wanted to use?

As I understand, there are three tiers to this:

• Official servers will use FaceIt exclusively.
• Servers rented from official partners will have the choice of FaceIt or EAC.
• Community-run servers will only be able to use EAC, and won’t be hooked into the global progression system.

One of the many problems with FaceIt is that the server-side component is not allowed to be freely distributed, which is why community-run servers won’t have the option to use it.

Personally, there is no way I am buying this unless if they reverse their plans to use FaceIt.

Yeah, if you just want to use it personally, you should click Sign In in the menu, then Open Element Web, which brings you to https://app.element.io/.

Alternately Get Started then Download the app.

Either gets you to a client where you can easily create a Matrix account (on matrix.org).

On the tech side of things, the environmental impact of running traditional, centralized services is inherently lower than running any cryptocurrency off of a blockchain. To overcome the technical limitations would be to create another centralized service.

But yeah, there are almost certainly ways that traditional currency can reduce their environmental impact, too.

My only problem is being a misanthrope, and scared of the general multiplaying public, I’m always intimidated by public games, but I’d love to convince enough buddies to play a campaign through.

I have 183 hours in Barotrauma, split between multiplayer and the sub editor (and a little bit of testing my sub alone). I have never played a public game or single player, it has basically all been the campaign with friends.

Most recently, I’ve been hosting occasional Barotrauma events with my inclusive gaming community, each one continuing the campaign we started early this year. The last event was just over the weekend. I don’t know when the next Barotrauma event will be, yet, but anyone who can follow our Code of Conduct is welcome to join!

It isn’t just for menus, having good mouse input allows you to play significantly more games than with just joysticks.

The touchpads also can act as extra buttons or touch menus, giving you way more input options for games where you don’t need one to be a mouse.

It will always happen. Games are going to generally target the lowest common denominator: the weakest of the current generation mainstream consoles. Right now, that means Xbox Series S.

I’ve been playing through Mark of the Ninja Remastered. It works pretty well after you switch to Proton, as the native version has some bugs and crashes.

Before that, the previous game I played through on the Deck was A Short Hike, which is incredibly cute.

I agree with what many others are saying:

• Ground Branch gameplay is very reminiscent of old Ghost Recon. Probably the standout feature is the customization/loadouts.
• Ready Or Not is like SWAT, which has a lot of similarities to old Rainbow Six. The atmosphere is a lot more grim compared to the others. This also has decent AI teammates and commanding over them when playing single player.
• Arma 3. In a lot of ways, the Arma series can be compared to Ghost Recon, but with a ton of extra realism/depth/scale/gameplay possibilities. There is also a ton of single player content across the base game, DLCs, and community-made missions and mods. Or you can make your own missions. The official single player content has a surprising amount of lore, if you are into that. Compared to the rest of my suggestions, this is the only game that isn’t in early access (and it shows). There is so much more to say about Arma 3, if you have interest, but I don’t want to write too much here if you don’t need to hear more.
• Zero Hour has had a lot of its thunder stolen by Ready Or Not, but it might still be worth looking into if you want more options.

One problem: It is not easy to legally obtain Prey (2006) anymore. I wish more old games were still available on Steam :(

Perhaps Barotrauma would be interesting to you? Most of the game can be boiled down to navigating a submarine from point to point, with stops to gather resources and complete objectives along the way.

It also has fuel, maintenance, upgrades, etc.

I just bought Silica and Gunner, HEAT, PC!, which have both been pretty cool so far. Both are early access games that I wanted to support.

Silica has way more to it than I expected, and I’m excited to play more (hopefully with friends, at some point).

GHPC is sort of like single player (for now) War Thunder, with a pretty cool simulation of Cold War era tanks and ballistics while still being fairly accessible. One interesting thing it does: the tank commander will speak to you (which is where the title of the game comes from), and it will get increasingly more tense and eventually turn into panicked screams, depending on the situation.

I’m playing these on Linux, and I have a weird audio issue with GHPC. Nobody else seems to experience this, and it doesn’t happen on my Steam Deck.