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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Manjaro vs. SteamOS, likely no benefit. My speculation is that the company probably wanted to develop their own software but didn’t have the technical expertise to develop for Linux. Hence, they partnered with Manjaro. As for why they went with Linux in the first place, it’s likely because Windows is a mess and they likely considered that Linux would be a more marketable (and cheaper) operating system.

    And yes, these products aren’t particularly expanding the market, but it seems that companies would still like to throw their hat into the ring, if only because getting in early means that they’ll have a more dedicated fanbase for their later handheld products


  • Many people have a misunderstanding of what the Stop Killing Games movement is about. It’s about trying to get governments to pass a law that requires game developers to have a plan in place for when they shut down the servers of online games. In the current gaming landscape, games can be taken offline at any moment for any reason. And when that happens, you’re shit out of luck. The Stop Killing Games movement believes that if/when this happens, the publisher needs to have a plan in place to ensure that those games can continue to be played. This can take on many forms: modifying the game to not require an online connection, or releasing the server binaries so that players can host their own custom servers, or something of that nature. Worst comes worst, if none of this is possible, then the movement demands that it’s made clear in the game’s advertisement that you could lose game functionality when the servers shut down. Essentially, the laws surrounding game licenses are vague, and the movement wants a clarification on what buyers are entitled to when they buy a game.

    The primary reason why many people have a misunderstanding of the movement is because a large YouTuber named PirateSoftware made 2 videos where he outright lied about what the movement was about and trashed it. He also made multiple statements on his streams where he purportedly “disproved” the movement, where he continued to lie about the movement and trashed it. His videos and statements were the most commonly viewed coverage on the movement, and this disinformation supposedly severely hampered the momentum of the movement, such that even now, many people still believe that the movement is about forcing publishers to keep their servers online indefinitely (it’s not).

    PirateSoftware was a former developer at Blizzard and was making an online game at the time, so some people speculate that the reason he lied about the movement was because he had a vested interest in keeping the current vagueness of the laws. As more and more people attempted to call him out on his disinformation, he doubled down and refused to admit that he gave any sort of incorrect information, even when the information is provably incorrect.

    Apparently, PirateSoftware has a history of this sort of behavior and has gotten himself into some previous scandals due to his seeming inability to admit that he was wrong at all. This has led otherwise minor, forgettable mistakes to balloon into giant controversies.

    Taken together with this recent controversy with Stop Killing Games, his reputation has taken a significant nosedive and many people now believe that he’s a narcissist who is willing to take down the movement for the sole purpose that he wants to be seen as the smartest guy in the room.



  • You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)

    If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs





  • Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.

    Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.

    At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.

    Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game

    Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting

    The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.

    There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence

    Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux

    Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead

    Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.



  • There’s not much to it. He’s distinctly unlikable, and he’s also really easy to meme about.

    Ongoing memes that I know:

    • Vance fucks couches - afaik this never happened but people like to say that it happened anyways because it’s funny
    • “Have you ever said thank you”/clown suit - taken from a meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy. Vance interjected and asked Zelenskyy if he had ever said thank you to the aid that the US has given to Ukraine. Vance also asked why Zelenskyy wasn’t wearing a suit. Apparently the Ukrainian word for suit is the same as a clown suit, so people like to say that Vance asked Zelenskyy to wear a clown suit
    • baby Vance - I honestly don’t really know where this originated from, but people just edited his face to make his face small.
    • killed the pope - the pope died the day after meeting with Vance. People like to say that his evil caused the pope to die. As an interesting side note, the pope supposedly wanted to teach Vance about compassion shortly before the meeting