It’s satire. The author is pointing out how morally reprehensible it is, using irony.

The text is only fucked the the way that The Onion sticks are fucked: this is only labeled satire because of the tone of the article. The content is as true as “real” news.

The actual “fucked” content is that the author was correct, and that the wealthy benefit from hunger and the threat of starvation to maintain access to abundant cheap labour.

Cheaters can load code before the kernel, so it supercedes kernel-level detection. There’s really no stopping client-side cheating, just ways to make it harder.

They also sold 5 million copies in 3 days, and who knows how many copies since then. They can afford to pay good IP lawyers for a long time, if needed.

Right, but Steam still let’s people who own delisted games download and play them forever. (Well, assuming they’re not live service games with no servers, but that’s not a Valve problem.)

I have a slightly different perspective as someone just starting Rise as my first ever experience with this series.

Holy shit, the tutorials are terrible. Massive info dump walls of text explaining too many systems at once, cryptic warning messages to confirm you want to dismiss the tutorials are extra confusing… And despite the massive info dumping, they don’t even tell you everything you need to know to complete the tutorial missions as you complete them. When you go to trap your first monster, there’s no tooltip to teach you how to use items in the “how to trap” explanation or NPC dialogue. I needed to google it.

And no ability to pause in a singleplayer game? I googled some explanation about pause being on one of the menus, but I couldn’t find it. Thankfully, suspending the game on a Steam Deck pauses it, so it’s playable.

Also, why was I given massively OP equipment and piles of loot just for logging in? The entire early game is now so easy that it’s not fun. I’m only 3 tutorials + 1 “real” mission into the game, so I’m going to try starting over without the EZ-mode loot and give it a second chance, but so far, I’m not impressed.

If I’d bought this through Steam, I’d have refunded it already before the 2-hour playtime window closed.

TL;DR: Terrible new-player onboarding has me questioning if I should push through.

Grow: Song of the Evertree has lots of crafting materials, but no money. I haven’t played it much, but it mostly seems to be about gathering daily to grow the Evertree, then using the resources to expand the town.

I haven’t been following PoE2 very closely, but I hope it plays well on Steam Deck. If it plays well, then I’m going to play the hell out of this…

I just looked it up and I already own it from the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine. I should play it sometime! Also on sale on GOG rn at a historical low price DRM-free.

I think that’s fine, tbh. Not as many customers will pay $80+ for a subscription. Then companies that sell games with more ethical business models will be more competitive, too.

I played Superhot first on the Deck. Since time only moves (much) when you’re moving, you have lots of time to practice aiming and getting used to track pads/stick + gyro controls. It requires precise aiming, and there are occasional times where speed helps, so it was a good “training” game for me.

It’s still not as natural as KB+mouse, but I’ve been enjoying Ziggurat 2 a lot (on normal difficulty). I won’t push into hard modes, like I would on PC, but it’s working well for me.

It’s missing filling the start bat with a massive Copilot box and weather/news widget. Or maybe missed an opportunity to make Clippy the AI assistant.

I love-hate it.

But then you need to know enough about the topic already to know what is stable and what changes with newer versions.

Like, the “web dev boot camp” course I got from UDemy a few years ago as a guide for building a web dev high school course: I recently went back to to look something up, and the whole thing has been completely redone start to finish. Makes sense, considering that it’s updated to the newest versions of Bootstrap and other libraries (and who knows what else).

I know nothing about Rust, but I would assume there are at least some libraries that have major new versions in the last couple of years which might change best practices somehow? idk. But the harder part is not knowing what you don’t know.

I already knew the broad strokes of most of what I’ve watched so far (about halfway), but it’s very entertaining. I’m watching at 2× speed, fwiw (which is typical for me).

Edit: Just finished it. Wow. I had no idea there was still new ground to cover in NES Tetris. Really cool ending with explaining the next Grail in NES Tetris.

I think you nailed the confusion in this meme.

To simplify: it’s confusing that ½ = 0.5, but 1/2 ≠ 1/0.5

To add to this:

Ain’t no way a brand new game studio is getting a loan at 6%. If they can even get a business loan at all (good luck!), it would be at a much higher interest rate due to the risk, and/or require assets to be held in collateral (only an option if you’re already wealthy to begin with…)

I was curious, so I looked it up: Earthbound has a fairly gentle XP curve. Double XP takes you from level 33 to 40, assuming you play the same.

I haven’t played Earthbound enough to remember if there’s grinding, so idk if it’s necessary. In general, I tend to find the existence of double XP romhacks is usually enough to indicate that I’d rather use them, based on my playstyle preferences. Someone thought it was beneficial enough to put hours of work into!

There’s a double XP romhack.

“Skip the grind” romhacks are the only way I play a lot of JRPGs. I don’t want to mindlessly battle to advance in the game. I have better things to do with my time, like playing a wider selection of games. I don’t need games’ length padded!

Not sure if it’s needed for Earthbound, but I’d probably just use it anyway. Most games set up a good leveling curve, so double XP shouldn’t break the game even if it’s unnecessary.

Earthbound and Super Mario RPG are the two best entry points to SNES-era JRPGs. I haven’t played many JRPGs since the OG PlayStation generation, though, so I’m out of the loop on newer games. But they’re both better entry points than any of the PS1 JRPGs that I know of/played.

I’m more partial to Super Mario RPG, personally. Timing attacks in battle made the grind more engaging, and the Mario world is well known by pretty much any gamer already, too.

I’m feeling the same way about Minion Masters. I just play it on my Steam Deck, but it got an Android release recently. They gave away a few of their “DLC” packs (which is how I found it about it), so maybe my experience is a bit atypical, but I’ve just been playing for a week or so and I already have more than half the available cards and enough currency that I can craft any cards I really want to finish a deck.

I haven’t paid a cent. It’s so generous with its freemium model that I’m probably going to buy an in-game currency pack if I’m still playing once my Google Rewards wallet ticks high enough to buy one.