Yup. Bought one of the first Steam Decks. Been having a great time with it so far, but I already had to repair it once (SSD overheated - thankfully a part that’s not proprietary). It will not last forever and the battery is likely going to be the next part that breaks. I am not looking forward to playing battery lottery on Aliexpress.

What do we learn from this? Valve isn’t our friend either. I never thought they were, I’m simply already caught in their ecosystem and bought the best PC handheld there was when it came out (and it still is, in my opinion, even though there are faster alternatives), but the company does enjoy a lot of leeway to the point of worship by some due to other firms in the gaming space being considerably worse.

It might very well be that the reasons for this are out of their hands, similar to the AI-bubble-fueled price hikes for RAM, but especially since they so gleefully advertised the repairiability of this device when it came out, silently ending the supply of spare parts is most certainly not a good look. It would have certainly softened the blow had they announced it and provided a reasonable explanation - and it would also cast a much smaller, if still considerable, shadow on the already troubled Steam Machine.

It’s quite a baffling mistake, to be honest, for two reasons:

First of all, did they not take into account that people would notice, which immediately turns it into a much bigger story due to the attempted secrecy? You get ahead of bad news as a company, always, instead of letting it happen. Secondly, the LCD Deck was sold worldwide until at least the end of the year and is still available from Steam in some regions. Did they seriously not stock enough parts, did they plan so poorly, were their contracts so terribly drafted that the supply of spares has already stopped? I get that they are a tiny player in the hardware space, which means they do not have the negotiating power of someone like Sony, but still, this is not a good look.

No idea why, but I kind of want a DOOM mod about liberating Stardew Valley from a demon infestation now.

There was also a background check involved, which I forgot to mention. But overall, it’s very much the former and not even close to something like the latter.

Not even that these days. The good jobs are for people with connections. Those who made it through based on merit are more likely to end up as office drones that can be let go if the CEO wants a higher quarterly bonus to spend on gold trim for his third yacht.

I was hired during the pandemic and it was quite an interesting experience to get there. They had an online assessment center, several hours (with breaks) of all sorts of quizzes, questions and tasks, mostly intelligence and memory-related, combined with math, general knowledge, language proficiency and a section on personality and personal preferences, with a relatively limited focus on IT questions at the end that felt tacked on for the job. There was no surveillance during it - no webcam requirements or anything. They just sent me a link and I could complete this timed test at a point in time of my choosing, in one go. Since it wasn’t very difficult at all and there was more than enough time, I had no issues with this one.

Before the interview, I was handed a 20 minute condensed version of largely the same type of questions to be completed in person (very small room, alone, under supervision, to eliminate any possibility of cheating), which I completed in no time, and finally an extensive interview (IIRC about 45 minutes) in front of what I can only describe as a tribunal of eight more or less relevant people sitting in a half-circle in front of a chair for the interviewee (at a distance due to COVID), most of which would just silently judge me with their eyes and take down notes as two to three of them switched between interrogating, I mean, interviewing me. They were actually very friendly, but it did feel quite intense. I was extremely nervous in the beginning, even stuttered a little, but as the interview went on, my nerves calmed down. None of the questions were surprising nor upsetting, but due to my initial nervousness, I still felt like I had failed.

Anyway, after they had hired me (I received a call about two weeks later), they later told me that they had done this twice with about 100 applicants each, just to hire a single person. In retrospect, I can’t believe I successfully made it through all of this. I was very well prepared for the interview and had previously spent a lot of effort (several weeks worth) on the application itself, tailoring it to the job and the organization, but still.

If you have the amount of resources this large org has, I think this is a very thorough way of doing things. The simple method of repeating a portion of the test in person (with different questions, but the same kind as online) eliminates cheaters and can be done by an org of virtually any size. The lengthy interview in front of a diverse group I’m not so sure about though. With shy and nervous applicants (as well as those on the spectrum), this can be very overwhelming, but since they all have to find a consensus in the end, discrimination and personal preferences influencing the hiring decision are less likely to happen.

There are multiple reports stating that id software has been hit the hardest, with almost all of their programmers (and many artists) having been laid off.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/07/legendary-dev-id-software-allegedly-hit-extremely-hard-by-xbox-layoffs

It looks like Xbox management doesn’t see the point in id having their own engine anymore, which certainly is a decision.

I’m not sure what to think of future id games being based on Unreal (like Halo and everything else), which is the logical conclusion to this. So much of the studio’s identity is tied to their proprietary engines, which have always been industry-leading.

Streaming has replaced the TV just running in the background in households where the TV was just running in the background in the past. Also, many people are using their phones while watching stuff, which is horrid.

Sucks for people who still remember when streaming services had to differentiate themselves from normal TV with more sophisticated content, of course.

You are making a good case for it.

One thing that bothers the Skooma out of me though is the monetization and the tiny inventory if you’re not a subscriber (I’m an unashamed loot goblin - I need a huge inventory!). Does one need to have ESO+ to have fun?

story yelling

That’s a typo for the ages! I’m gonna steal this one!

As for the game, I played the alpha or beta (been a while, so I’m not sure) and wasn’t really all that impressed, but maybe because it felt like a downgrade in every way from the singleplayer games. Should I try it again? How good is it for players leaning towards solo play?

It doesn’t really matter. It’s an oligopol and they can set the prices however they want. There’s no alternative, since everyone - businesses and consumers alike - needs their product.

China can’t and won’t be able to compete, since they are far too much behind in manufacturing, chasing a moving target.

This reminds me that Epic, unlike Steam, allows crypto games on their store. For a while, it was being absolutely flooded with crypto shovelware, drowning out more worthwhile titles. It was one of several reasons why I stopped using the store for anything but the weekly free games.

In other words: Sweeney is wrong once again and it’s not doing him and his money pit of a store any favors.

GTA VI is much larger. It’s the kind of game that, just like its predecessors, will appear prominently in mainstream news and general discourse, because it’s such a hugely influential and well-known thing, well beyond the gaming world. Ask non-gamers about Cyberpunk 2077 and most will never have heard of it - but I can assure you, with GTA, it’s different.

This isn’t unjustified in many ways. The series has never produced a dud, each 3D mainline game has been, on a technical and narrative level, as well as especially in terms of world building (no other studio in the AAA space comes even close here) far above most other contemporary titles, despite obviously not being perfect - and the enormous popularity combined with its player freedom, violent and (often) sexual content, as well as its usually quite biting satire of the current world is also a welcome target for grifters trying to stir up controversy by using moral outrage - or those at the receiving end of the satire being whiny about it.

Chinatown Wars was essentially this. Awesome little game - and easy to emulate using PPSSPP. The PSP version is the best in terms of visuals, the DS original has interesting touch controls for the minigames. The Android port on the other hand isn’t as refined.

Custom servers are where it’s at, based on what I’ve heard, but I’ve never tried those.

To be fair, without their sports games, they would have gone bankrupt over 30 years ago.

Sure, I don’t think the Xbox 5 will be a success, but it’s highly likely it’ll still ship far more units than the Gabecube, simply because Microsoft is able to shift more units as a larger organization with more presence everywhere (including in the retail space and online stores other than their own).

The difference is that for an organization the size and bloat of Microsoft, numbers that would make Gabe happy would be disastrous for them.

No consumer actually cares about minute differences in performance (or other aspects) between different operating systems and platforms. People buy the platform that has the games and meaningful features they seek, like for example portability, Nintendo’s second-strongest pull after their IPs. Microsoft is hastily trying to claw back their exclusives after a disastrous abandonment of this strategy, which sent margins down the drain. Yes, this will mean that they’ll continue serving the PC, so you can play most of their games on Valve’s devices or any other gaming PC as well, but once more: Normal people buy what’s on the front page on Amazon or on the most illuminated shelf at their local store.

The overwhelming majority don’t even configure their task bar, for crying out loud. Seeing an unmodified one with the big useless search box, spam widget, applications they are never using is one of the quickest reliable indicators that someone is not a tech person.

Look at sales of the Steam Deck compared to consoles and your prediction falls flat on its face. Sure, it would be nice in theory, but both the Deck and the Gabecube are very niche devices.

It was kind of neat in the beginning, at least in theory - and not just from a consumer perspective: Indies in particular benefited from it, since it raised awareness on their titles in addition to the big bucks from Microsoft coming in:

https://tech4gamers.com/game-pass-helping-indie-studios/

Based on everything I’ve read, Redfall was pretty much entirely on Arkane, just like, at EA, Anthem was on Bioware’s internal leadership, not publisher meddling. On the contrary, more publisher meddling would have likely made these disasters less likely.

Eh, both the Steam Deck and the Gabecube are far too niche and unknown for that. I’ve used the Steam Deck on public transportation and pretty much everyone assumed that it was a Nintendo Switch at first - and I had to go to great length to explain what it was.

One notable exception (out of a small handful) was a mother who recognized it as something different and asked me a ton of questions about it, because she wanted to reward her studious son (who sat next to us wide-eyed, with increasing levels of giddiness) for his great marks with it.