Yes! It’s the Demon Turf devs, so it’s in competent hands. The demo is quite fun. Also filled with self-aware references to Bubsy’s… colorful past.

I’ve found some good stuff (Bus Bound, Bubsy 4D), but none of it through the actual Steam Next Fest store page. That indeed seems to be overloaded with low-effort crap.

For me, trying to read a book on any display that isn’t e-ink is a horrible experience that hurts my eyes pretty quickly. Even more so on a tiny phone screen.

I haven’t seen any meltdowns, no. Beyond being “Space Games”, they are very different games anyway. Yes, No Man’s Sky has had a very impressive development at an impressive speed, while Star Citizen… hasn’t, but Star Citizen is aiming for a completely different scale of simulation and detail.

Did you try spelling it with phonetics?

Also on GOG. DRM-free and presumably without the server issues.

Yes, I played it for 12 hours and quite liked it, but eventually got stuck at some bossfight and moved on to other games.

That’s a great price. I’m not even on the Silksong hypetrain and fully intended to wait for a discount a few years down the line, but I might just get it for that a few days after release if the reviews are good.

I started and finished Herdling all in one go. Nice, relaxed game with a beautiful atmosphere. The mechanics are relatively simple but with the game being so short, they don’t overstay their welcome. There was also a link at the end of the credits sequence which lead to a promotion where you can send the publisher a self-addressed envelope and they send you… something back. I did that, so I’m curious what it will be. Expecting stickers though.

I’ve also been playing some Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. 24 hours in and only scratching the surface, so classic CRPG I guess. The game strikes quite a good balance between story/reading, combat and space exploration.

Slay the Spire. Never really got into it until I installed it on my Steam Deck.

4chan (Moot?)

Moot has stepped down more than a decade ago. It’s now owned by the Japanese founder of 2channel.

I guess we’ll see how that goes, but with similar age verification laws currently being introduced across the US, it seems like it soon won’t make much of a difference.

But why do Visa/Mastercard give in to them? If it were governments, or even a very large popular movement I’d get it, as there might be consequences to ignoring those. But Collective Shout is really quite small, there would be no backlash to just ignoring them. I guess maybe they have powerful connections.

I really don’t get it. What makes this one radical organization from Australia seemingly have so much influence and power? Frustrating as hell seeing how people’s livelihood can just be taken away from one day to the next due to one organization’s puritan values.

I hope nobody will trust them with their data after this. Just leaving their databases open to the public is horrendous. Though I fully expect this kind of stuff to happen way more often over the next few years, with the rise of “vibe coding”.

You can see some examples on SteamDB’s Bluesky.

The games removed from Steam were removed globally. They didn’t remove all adult content games (yet?) though, just ones related to certain topics like incest.

The problem with that is that all of these platforms also use the same big payment providers, meaning they’re just as likely to be forced to remove these sorts of games.

They’d never do that, as it would severely limit their userbase. Throwing out a couple games, especially when it’s ultra-niche stuff like “futanari incest” games, is the much easier and more sensible move for Valve.

Wonder if we’re already starting to see the impact of AI being trained on AI-generated content.