Sounds like the problem is just trying to chase infinite growth, expecting every game to sell more than the last.

How do they deal with CSAM and other illegal material? (I’m guessing the answer is that they don’t)

Get whichever platform has the games she wants to play.

Announced in 1997, released in 2000. Might’ve seemed like a lot at the time, but barely a footnote by today’s standards.

Rockstar has repeatedly reminded us that GTA6 is in active development. Valve hasn’t even mentioned HL3 in a very long time, I think it’s safe to conclude it’s dead and has been dead for a while now.

It’s not about whether you or I are going to sit down and read through them all. It’s for the sake of those workers, that they have documentation of what they worked on that they can cite and say “I’m in there, you can check the credits and confirm.”

Don’t forget Splatoon 2.

The only Switch 2 game I even have right now is Deltarune. But I know I’m buying Kirby Air Riders, and I figured it’d be best to make sure I get the console right away in case tariffs fuck anything up by then.

I hate that Discord has taken over most communities and put them in a place unindexed by search engines. I hate it so much.

But this is where users all go in Current Year, and I don’t blame game developers for following the crowd. Especially for smaller multiplayer games, if you want to sustain an active community you’ve gotta have that #matchmaking channel for players to organize.

Also, tbh, Steam Forums ain’t great either. At least they’re searchable, but that’s all that can be said about them. In my experience they’ve often devolved into the most toxic hellholes due to Valve’s lack of moderation. Also not ideal for anything multiplatform, that only covers Steam users.

The other alternative is reddit, but, well, I’m here because I refuse to ever go back to reddit, so, y’know.

I haven’t gotten all the way down to 2 yet, but at the rate I’m going, I could see it. I’ve settled into mostly grinding the same few forever games while the mainstream industry moves further and further away from my tastes.

What kind of games are you looking to play, and what form factor do you want?

I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus on sale two years ago and ended up liking it so much I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. There are quite a lot of devices like it on the market, if you want something small for retro emulation look into all the different options.

Meanwhile, my Steam Deck largely gathers dust because it’s just too bulky to feel like a replacement for the handheld-sized handhelds I grew up on. Switch (2) is good for running Switch games, and it’s at least a bit smaller and lighter than the Deck, but mine rarely leaves the dock.

• Dr. Mario 64
• Kirby Air Ride (w/ Hack Pack mod)
• Land Maker
• Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (and Wii)
• Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary
• Panel de Pon (Gamecube and GBC)
• Rhythm Heaven series
• Twinkle Star Sprites
• any JRPG, just pick something you haven’t played yet

The market is so saturated that lots of good games have a hard time even getting noticed. Just making a good game doesn’t automatically mean success.

There are definitely a lot of consumers who will gladly pay $20 for Silksong because of the hype and pedigree surrounding it, but would never take a chance spending that much on a game that hasn’t had that kind of hype train surrounding it. Which does make sense, without the hype train you don’t know if a more obscure indie may or may not be worth the $20. But then that tells us that it’s the hype train that matters here, not just whether or not the game is good.

They’re never gonna run demanding AAA titles, but Steam is full of simpler 2D and classic games they could handle. You could play Balatro or Stardew Valley on a Chromebook.

Looks cute.

I’m choosing to interpret this as a sign that they are aware of the controversy and are open to considering alternatives. If they’re asking for feedback, that means there’s a chance they’ll act on it.

The part I find strange about all this is that apparently Switch 2 titles just can’t use smaller ROM sizes, and that’s why certain third parties don’t want to pay increased manufacturing costs to put smaller titles on larger cartridges. But… why are they apparently not able to use smaller carts?

We’re seeing cross-gen releases where the Switch 1 version is on the cart and the Switch 2 version is not. They’ve even got dual-mode carts for games that contain the Switch 1 base game and Switch 2 upgrade DLC. These smaller carts exist and the Switch 2 can read them. So I’m puzzled as to why they can’t use these same carts for Switch 2 games.

maybe the real friendslop was the friends we made along the way

It would not be onerous for them to continue supporting a couple of old versions of Windows, they would just have to hire a few more people to do it.

You literally did say support.

I am aware that some corporate infrastructure is hopelessly tangled up in legacy systems. But we are talking about consumer support here, which I know you know is very different.

That’s not what I asked. You said you wanted Valve to hire people to support Windows 98. What company still supports Windows 98 like that?