You are allowed to watch the Overwatch porn without playing the game

Luckily the app is generally (but not always) backwards compatible. It’ll just nag you to upgrade the server.

The server doesn’t, except if you have watchtower or something similar.

The app auto updates on your phone though, unless turned off.

Like everyone is saying, Immich.

But keep an eye on updates because it is under active development so breaking changes tend to happen every once in a while.

Good game. I played during/after the beta, I felt like it needed a bit more variety in guns and maps. Have they been adding stuff since?

In this case the garbage is behind the pay wall then. Verge is all opinion pieces and cheap content nowadays anyway.

What systemic issue? If you as a player don’t like steam, you can just not use it. It’s not like apple where the hardware is locked to a single storefront. Even the steam deck is open for people to get games from anywhere.

Developers are allowed to do whatever they like too, including not putting their games on steam as a form of protest. No one will stop you. They can even sell their games on multiple platforms and reduce the price where the storefront cut is smaller. The only thing they are not allowed to do is sell steam keys on their own store below the price on steam, which is completely understandable. The fact that they are allowed to sell keys directly (AFAIK for no cost) is already a huge boon.

The one’s actually behaving in anticompetetive behaviour is Epic with paying devs for exclusivity to their store. This is forcing you to use the platform to play certain games without having any other options. Of course the devs taking the deal are also complicit but that is somewhat more understandable, being a gamedev is difficult these days.

The difference is obvious, you don’t have to be a genius to see it. Epic is the plague of modern capitalism and greed, where the product is kept afloat by an unsustainable inflow of investor money. The service is ready to enshittify the second the amount of users crosses a certain threshold. Then they will continue to fight with dirty tactics to keep users locked in for as long as they can. How long do you think giving away free games weekly to anyone can last. (Aswer: as long as the fortnite money is coming in)

Steam is an old type of corporation (for now anyway). They focus on making a good product for a “fair” price. Fair as in this is what makes the platform sustainable. If they were to charge exorbitant prices, there would be a huge developer exodus. But there isn’t. Most devs seem to have come to a conclusion that paying this optional fee is worth it for that value that steam provides. This money allows them to reinvest in the platform to make upgrades, and yes, make profit too. What other reason would they go through all this trouble for?
Steam is also a privately held company, meaning they are not beholden to the short term vision of investors’ pump and dump schemes. But to reiterate, literally no one is forcing you to use steam.

These days you have to capture a large user base with unsustainable prices/practices and then extract every cent for infinite growth. This is not just bad for users in the long term but also means setting up a “normal” company offering a good product at a “fair” price is impossible because everyone is buying the cheap unsustainable products essentially below cost.

I miss the times when a company would make a good product at a fair price and that would be enough.

Edit: that was unnecessarily harsh. I can see you want positive change but unless someone opens a FOSS storefront and pays for the work/distribution, steam is the best we have for now (as gamers). And reducing costs by ~10-20% is not going to make it better for us long term.

Then stop complaining and go buy the game directly off the developer’s website. Many large publishers have their own storefront. Or you can tell your favourite Indie dev that they can set up a virtual storefront (with diacoverability so users find their game), distribution service with CDNs, support forums, online user reviews, customer support, and who knows what else for their own game. If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Alternatively, they are allowed to pay someone in the form of profit sharing for all of this if they want to. But no one is forcing you to use Steam.

It just seams the majority of pc gamers find the service useful, so they tend to buy the games there.

Along what everyone else said, so it’s more broadly marketable. In theory a humanoid robot could do any job a real human is doing now, meaning you don’t need a high tech production line to go along with it. You don’t need to automate your entire production line to get started.

Also, it’s more of a commodity. A business could sell the robot once they don’t need it and anyone else could just buy it to use for a different purpose. Not many will have a use for highly customised robots ment for a specific task.

Not new but I like civ V. Glad they are removing the launcher.

Because the world isn’t “ending”. Yes climate change might bring famine, destructive weather events, or plague but in the meantime we are living in the safest, healthiest, and most technologically advanced era of humanity up until now, especially for those of us living in democracies. Most diseases that would have killed you a few hundred years ago have been solved, in general there are very few wars (compared to the constant on and off warfare in history anyway), and in most of the world slavery has been eradicated.

Yes, there is societal divide (mostly due to economic difficulties and how social media influences people), yes there is bigotry and a rise in nationalism but much of this is only noticeable because of the media and the 24 hour news cycle. There has to be a constant issue hanging over our heads to make sure we are glued to our screens 24/7 improving shareholder value of the companies supplying the news on the current crisis.

So in conclusion, there are some global issues, but there is no reason not to go on an adventure, pursue that girl/boy you like, build a shed, or do whatever “side quest” you are up to at the moment. It’s not like you’re gonna solve climate change alone but you’ll be completely miserable if that is all your life is about. The world is not ending for now, go do your side quests.

What’s your favourite mod pack recently?

Me neither

“Accidentally”

I’m gonna wait on this game for now.

However, bugs can be fixed, performance can get a bit better (or more powerful hardware will arrive at some pont), but bad writing and characters will stay bad forever. I think this game can be fixed where Starfield was a lost cause on launch.

I’ll be honest, I’m actually cautiously excited for this

For me I’m usually getting hungry by the time I’m cooking something new but I’m not cooking a new recipe because I was hungry. Let me explain.
I’m hungry -> I cook something like usual because I’m hungry now
Wheres: I have an idea/inspiration -> time passes -> go to the store for ingredients -> time passes until the next meal so I’m hungry again -> cook the new recipe

Yeah, sometimes it takes longer than expected and people get a bit too hungry, or sometimes you make a mistake and ruin the meal but oh well. The more you do it, the better you will be at anticipating errors and avoiding them. Especially if you also focus on the why not just the how when learning new techniques/recipes. Also, many recipes leave out some of the most important information, e.g.: mix the dough. It’ll probably say mix for X minutes. What is the expected consistency; does temperature matter - if so, why; am I trying to develop gluten here or avoid it? (baking is trickier for me, hence the example)
By understanding the why and not just blindly following the recipe you will achieve consistent results much faster than by trial and error.

I still try to avoid making something completely new to me when inviting guests, but otherwise all bets are off.

Imagine how bad the White Power rhetoric would be if America were 99.8% white, and that other 0.2% (not 2%. Two tenths of 1%) of non-white people included tourists, immigrants, and naturalized citizens. In a packed 20,000 person stadium, that would only be 40 non-white people in the crowd.

You Americans are so funny. It’s your country that has the media going on about identity politics and racism 24/7. If America were 99.8% white nobody would bat an eye about racism because there wouldn’t be a significant demografic group impacted by it.

White power is not really a thing when you can’t blame a large part of society for your shortcomings. Without the race issue there are still a select few in positions of power and many slaving avay every day just to get by.

I the case of Japan it is more difficult to fit in as any foreigner. There is a strong societal norm centered around culture and mannerisms and everyone not adhering to the etiquette stands out and is considered rude. This culture takes center stage during the upbringing of Japanese children so it is engrained in them by the time they become adults.

There are exaples of (even black) people successfully adopting a Japanese way of life but it is difficult, as you said they are hammered down until they fit in.

Anyway, racist? Yes, difinitely. White (yellow?) power rhetoric - not so much. That was probably more the case before WWII.

Surely WiFi 7 now, right?