On one side of the ring, greedy corps which want to profile you better than the NSA does. On the other, drama-hungry and social networks-fueled outrage culture.

That’s how an old game giveaway backfires and becomes the scandal of the day.

Agreed. As long as their corporate overlords do not fuck up Ars, there is no reason to avoid them.

If (when ?) it becomes an AI slop-filled shell of its former self, then it will be past time to go elsewhere.

I’m going to go against the general consensus here and say you would probably be better served buying a Switch 2. The Steam Deck is awesome but it is bulkier, has less battery life, and is overall less suited for a “pick up, play 10mins and toss is back” usage.

However if you are up for some occasional tinkering, the SD is far more versatile than the Switch and could even replace your laptop depending on your use-cases.

On some trackers you can straight up pay to raise to raise your ratio, or even temporarily “freeleech”. This is all kinds of iffy, flirting with the scummy.

You’d think he’d be better media trained by now. But no, here goes the foot in the mouth.

I don’t see the pattern of a review bombing in Steam reviews… Looks like a game getting released very soon in early access and failing to gain traction.

It’s sitting on my wishlist and I’m waiting for it to get to 1.0, but their update cadence has been very slow. Now they are saying their studio does not have the funds to complete the game.

I do hope they turn this around, but as a consumer I am very wary when it comes to titles in early access, and even more when the studio goes radio silent for months.

What a roller coaster of a ride ! At least they have a fighting chance, and (hopefully for them) did not take too big a financial risk.

Giant Bomb deserves more than a thread hanging off the Polygon story post.

Agreed. Giant Bomb pioneered so much in games media, and for it to end like that is such a shame.

As far as I am concerned, the GB I loved was already struggling after Alex, Brad and Vinny left ; and it ended for good when Jeff Gerstmann was fired abruptly (again !). This news still saddens me however, and I wonder what will be the legacy of GB down the road.

I did the fix today, with a small strip of electric tape folded in 2. Hopefully it holds long enough to get to the Steam Deck 2 🤞

I am aware, thanks. I did the whole noisy fan replacement a year ago 😁 https://sh.itjust.works/post/20372232 That worked really well and I am glad I did it.

Thanks for giving me hope for a “light” fix. How long did that hold until your unrelated RMA ?

Maybe if I could find an adequate one, but it’s likely to be expensive and they could as well break it for good.

Do you mean this part [https://www.ifixit.com/en-eu/products/steam-deck-power-button] ? I do not see how this would fix my issue since this does not include the switch, only the plastic button.

In the early days of this generation of VR, there used to be a Dolphin emulator VR-enabled version that could run the Metroid Prime games in VR. It was both great and pretty barf-y, and was discontinued afer some scene drama.

Not sure where VR for emulators is at right now.

Exactly ! Steam families are now dead simple, whereas this new oh-so-Nintendo method seems as janky as it gets.

It does have one standout feature that Steam families do not though: ability to play shared games even when offline.

Enshittification ahoy !

I tried it out. The current lack of BLE support excludes a fair number of controllers (Steam Controller, Xbox Series Controller amongst them). Waking with a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller works but getting the controller to properly connect after that is finnicky, oddly enough.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown looks like a banger, but I am unwilling to spend any amount money on it until Ubi gets the memo and strips Denuvo from it (at least outside of the launch window).

The genre is ASS games. Can’t go wrong with that.