Not to mention Valve's effort with Proton, allowing non-Windows gamers enjoy what they pay for on multiple platforms with great ease; their efforts have been massive for gaming on Linux, and without it, I wouldn't have paid for a lot of games, earning their developers a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

Also the community hub, the workshop, the review system, the cloud saving, the functional wishlist, the gifting system, the shopping cart, the anti-cheat (you're better of with it than without it), the discovery queue, the sales dedicated to specific types of games that actually help people discover games and drive the revenue up for the developers, the (I think) complete transaction history, the refunds system, the friends and the chat and profiles - and probably many more things that I'm either not aware of or couldn't list off the tip of my tongue, combined with internal works that, again, do help the devs in the end.

Steam is much more than a place where one pays for a game to then simply download and play it. It's much greater and more functional than that. None of the developers have to put their games on Steam - nobody forces Epic Games Store or GOG to be this subpar in comparison. Same way nobody forces gamers to use Steam. People use Steam because they love it - or because there's no good-enough alternative, but that's hardly Valve's fault.

Steam charging 30% is not just worth it, but also surprising, given what putting your game on Steam gets you as the developer, and what it gets us, the players.

Might be a Linux thing, though.

She's also definitely Russian, and we, Russians, believe that it's a guy.

There's no women on the Internet.

It's very ducking complicated, but I'll do my best to give you a sensible answer. I live in Russia and while I'm no journalist or expert, maybe I have something worthwhile to say for an insight.

We do have the numbers, period - there's money in killing our neighbors, there's some sort of twisted fate or purpose that always emerges during this kind of times, and there's people willing to do this kind of stuff for the kind of money or purpose offered. There's also, well, just people of various backgrounds, skills, and capabilites to forcefully throw into the war effort, but the most important thing is that it's not just a number game - like, it's not a dead-simple RTS game where you select some units and magically convert them into equally capable combatants over a set period of time to go and win with some tactics.

Despite the somewhat prevalent opinion, this is not a popular war, it's not supported or sacred or anything - Russia wouldn't see so many people fleeing and imprisoned otherwise. Wouldn't have to forcefully mobilise anyone either.

There's enough people in the country that the government can try and throw at the wall of this war and see if they stick and magically do something, but that doesn't guarantee any success of its own and has massive risks that even the current old men aren't willing to take.

As a bonus, any good dictator loves a war, especially a war that's prolonged, that's convenient excuse for anything - establish the right kind of info, punish anyone who disagrees, make people praise you for the very little they may get because things could always be worse, make the war the excuse, tell people it's good and creates work places and gives them purposes, and so and so forth. I don't belive Putin wants an end to this war - he'd much rather let it help him sit tighter on his blood-drenched throne, and make Ukraine suffer for not playing along with his egomaniac ambitions; under Putin, the war dies with him, not a minute earlier.

Kein Frankfurter order Deutscher war gefragt

Often a courtesy of mobile keyboards.

M E D I O C R E

The tons of exploration you're talking about are copy-pasted identical POIs, too, with the same enemies and objects in the same locations.

I honestly don't understand what they expected us to be doing for the hundreds of hours and years they they hoped we'd be playing the game for. It's certainly the most "ocean wide, inch deep" game for what it was marketed to be.

Not to mention a lot of them are still crappy at best: Fallout 4 is ridiculous, Fallout 76 is even more ridiculous, Assassin's Creed turned into a conveyor joke, Cyberpunk 2077 was just insultingly bad at launch and remained that for a long time (haven't played 2.0 yet, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt), Starfield is another sandwich full of lies, Redfall is not even worth talking about akin to Deathloop, Diablo 4 is a machine to vacuum money on a schedule, online FPS has been nothing but battle royale for what feels like almost a dozen years and now they're testing the waters with "extraction shooters" looking at Escape From Tarkov (the extraction aspect alone won't bring them the same fame), and all of that is coupled with ever-increasing system requirements and prices, making gaming the most expensive it's ever been for really no good benefit.

The only AAA game that left me satisfied on launch in the recent years, like in the days of buying boxes, was DOOM: Eternal; to a lesser extent, Hogwarts Legacy was good, but the story felt lacking and really took away from the fun.

I personally blame the managers in the AAA gaming for not managing the scope creeps that obviously happen in many of these games, stretching the development resources, yet resulting in another "mile wide, inch deep" discourse time after time. Again, DOOM: Eternal is a great example: no crafting, no open world shenanigans, no multiple choices all leading to the same outcome (while not being a conceptual story-telling instrument) - just a focused game with multiple elements that make up the linear progression and gradually increase the possible complexity of one's experience, finally culminating in a complete FPS sitting atop impressive optimization and great visuals.

AAA is just not worth it these days and hasn't been for several years, neither in terms of hardware, nor software.

Fucking hell the "Steam Deck killers" is a stupid trend.

They really do hit you with all the specs that are supposed to put the deck to shame, but the reveal their ludicrous price, completely ignoring the major advance the things has.

That's a simple trick, but cheap and dirty, so it's pretty garbo anyway. No respect for handhelds themselves or anyone reviewing them or taking any sponsorship that do anything like that.

Take it with a grain of salt, people, none of the trustworthy sources confirmed any of that - just a couple of Ukrainian outlets (understandable as psyop) and, well, yahoo news and the like.

As a Russian living in Russia and, obviously, closely following all the shit show, it does not seem like Wagner is going to do anything.

Then again, I'm not sure about shit after 24 Feb 2022.

Brudi, ich bin echt Russisch, da geboren und lebend. Ich lerne deutsch nur noch, also Verzeihung für die Fehler.

Im Kurz, ja, die RF will Information entfernen, dass sie nicht mögen.

Im Langen, sie stören nicht, um nur eigener Post zu kämpfen, vielleicht weil es zu viel Anstrengung ist. Sie "bieten" gewöhnlich Leute, um die unerwünschte Information zu entfernen, und wenn man nicht folgt, blockieren sie einfach die ganze Plattform, wenn sie können.

Wikipedia/YouTube und Twitter/Instagram/Meta sind großartige Beispiele:

• Wikipedia/YouTube haben zahllose Menge der Information, die für Putin unerwünscht ist, und die RF hat mehrmals versucht, sie zum Gehorsam zu zwingen, doch sie blockieren sie nicht, weil diese Plattformen einfach zu groß sind; blockierten sie die, wäre viele Leute noch mehr unzufrieden mit Putin und alles, was er bringt
• Twitter/Instagram/Meta scheinen ähnlich zu sein, aber sie waren eine große Bedrohung für Putin, weil die Leute da die Meinungen und Nachrichten schneller teilen könnte, sie könnte sie verwenden, um Protesten oder was zu organisieren, und dadurch hindern Putins Propaganda- und Kontrolversuche; ihre Demographie (die Jugend) ist viel besser vorbereitet für die Blockierung, weil sie die einfacher überbrücken können, also fühlen sie die Blockierung nahezu nicht

Vielleicht, die Russische Regierung versucht feddit.de auch blockieren, weil sie nicht anderes tun können, aber dringend brauchen, um etwas zu demonstrieren ("Fürchten uns! Wir sind stark! Wir haben noch Macht!") inmitten über 20 Jahren der Korruption, Stehlen und Fehler.

Persönlich, ich glaube, dass sie werden nicht stören mit Plattform so klein. Aber ja, sie wollen mindestens etwa Macht demonstrieren, um die Kontrolillusion zu behalten.