Is there a big advantage to using Moonlight/Sunshine vs the built-in Steam remote play feature? I regularly stream from my desktop to my Steam Deck without too many issues, although sometimes I get weird minor problems (e.g. Banishers Ghosts of New Eden will be noticeably darker, Elden Ring will get random “flashes” where the screen kind of blinks for a split second from time to time). These issues are hardly a big deal for me, so I’m more curious than seeking a true alternative.

That’s such a good point I hadn’t considered. This stuff would’ve absolutely fucked up the plumbing in most places. Not to mention the sewage treatment facility’s filters having to deal with all that debris.

Twitter integration was incredibly ubiquitous in all social based tech for some reason. I’m assuming its API was originally very friendly and unintrusive and now it’s probably the exact opposite. I think X is now also charging money, which is likely the primary reason Sony and Nintendo are dropping it.

Our SSDs just have to be wiped but we still have to document and provide proof they were wiped and turned in. HDDs and tapes are a different story and a pain in the ass, though.

I’m super jealous. Whenever we decom servers at work, we’re required to fill out paperwork and provide proof that all HDDs and SSDs were properly destroyed (i.e. rendered completely unusable and wiped) and turned in to our disposal department. The servers themselves also have to be handed over to them. I’m not sure what they do with the servers, but I’m guessing they either repurpose them as emergency replacements for other sites that have hardware failures or they bulk sell them at auctions or something.

It has a secret city that’s super advanced, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily meant to be an alternate history where colonialism never occurred, but I could be wrong as well, haha

It’s no wonder some parts of Africa have had a hard time creating a modern, developed industrial societies post-colonialism. I would love to see an alternate history view of what Africa would look like without the centuries of Western exploitation.

I won’t deny that mods extend their longevity. I’m just saying that there are plenty of gamers who are content with the vanilla games. Hell, Skyrim was an immediate success at launch, long before much of its mods came into existence. Same with Fallout 3 and 4. I’d argue the open world sandbox-esque design of the games are the main thing that give them longevity for the majority of players, similar to how tons of people still casually play any of the GTA games (and not just their online mode). Hell, most of the time when I see random social media posts for FO4, it’s the vanilla game with people just showing off their crazy settlement builds.

Skyrim is one of the best selling games in history. A huge chunk of those sales took place on consoles, where mod availability is limited. This whole concept of modders being the only thing making Bethesda’s games successful is quite exaggerated, IMO.

Have you considered SD card(s) as your redundancy? They’re not great/ideal, but microSD are incredibly small. Or this may be a good use case for a local NAS placed somewhere else in your home that your PC backs up to nightly?

I think their goal is to minimize space since it’s a mini-pc, so they don’t have 2 slots to spare but still want 2 drives? That’s how I interpreted it, at least.

Correct, but we don’t know what all has taken place over the years regarding Discord chats, forum posts, etc. where one of the devs might have accidentally incriminated themselves/the project. That’s what I meant by it depends what kind of evidence Nintendo has gathered. I’m assuming there’s a reason Nintendo waited as long as they have to go after them, seeing as Yuzu has been quite famous for a long time and it seems as of they’re not also going after Ryujinx (or maybe they’re not just yet?).

You’re not wrong. Nintendo is a dirtbag, greedy as fuck company. They make some excellent games, but they’re the epitome of financial parasites.

Circumventing DRM for archiving is not totally legal in all circumstances: https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/9rfezi/us_copyright_office_gives_the_okay_to_circumvent/

I know, it’s a reddit link, but OP does a good job summarizing and providing sources.

Anyway, videogames are specifically called out. Essentially, if you’re circumventing DRM for emulation for games that are still current and actively supported by their publishers/devs, it is not legal. However, if you’re circumventing DRM to repair/troubleshoot/diagnose your console, that’s kosher (whole right-to-repair stance). So it isn’t completely black and white. Yuzu devs will have a tough case ahead of them depending on what all evidence Nintendo has gathered.

I wouldn’t say that’s a universal truth. Some games perform like shit on Yuzu and others that simply aren’t stable. Yuzu is pretty damn good, but I’ve run into plenty of situations where graphics have lots of glitches, I’m crashing every 20-30 minutes due to a memory leak, etc. E.g. SMTV is one I recently opted to just play on my Switch natively because I got tired of random freezes after battles.

I didn’t get around to it before the Wii U gen was over. I have been meaning to try emulating it, as I am curious to try it out. Although, I’ve read mixed reviews, it seems fans either really love it or find it quite boring without much middle ground. I love mechs and RPGs, so I’m definitely willing to give it a try with an open mind.

My order of preferred is 1 > 3 >>>> 2. 3 dumbed down character customization too much, IMO. For gear you only get 3 accessories (I think, haven’t played since it launched) for gear and your mech skill trees are fairly straightforward. The first one felt more like a traditional RPG where exploring rewards you with things to get better gear. Plus each character felt like they had different skills and couldn’t all be the same.

I couldn’t overcome the second one’s fan service and utterly confusing combat system. I’ve been meaning to try it again since it’s been ~6 years from when I tried it and it was the first of the series that I tried (besides original Xenogears on PS1). I did enjoy it 2’s story, but the gacha mechanics and big boobed weapon girls or whatever they were, were quite off-putting. Same with the annoying Furby looking creature.

Even buying a game digitally from most storefronts doesn’t mean you actually own it. You simply buy a license to play it. Look what happens if your Steam account gets permanently banned for violating their ToS, you’ll lose access to any game you paid for on that account. Same thing with Microsoft or Sony. I think GOG might be an exception to this, where they will never revoke access to the games you previously bought, but I am not 100% sure of their policies.

Regardless, all gamers will never fully embrace subscription purity. There are so many games that require a lot of time to complete, especially so if you’re an adult with lots of responsibilities who can only game here and there. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 is massive and I’ve owned it since launch. I’ve only gotten to Act 2 with like 60 hours clocked in and I still want to play it to finish. However, if it was on a subscription service, I’d be constantly stressed that it’d be leaving the subscription any day.

And what about classic games (includes new games that become instant classics) I’ll know I’ll always treasure and want to be able to play whenever I’m in the mood? To this day, my wife will randomly bust out Mario 64 or even a more niche game like Fable 2 and just have them be her comfort food for a lazy weekend. Hell, just a few months ago we got our our original Xbox to play some Fuzion Frenzy for nostalgia sake. Can’t do that with subscription models.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I just absolutely loathe this crushing pressure by corporations to force our entire economy into being rent based. Every expert economist has been warning us about the dangers of this for at least the last 10+ years, and yet consumers keep blindly marching towards it because it’s “convenient,” totally ignoring the long-term consequences.

All very good points, I fully agree with you. The amount of videos is a particularly valid point I’d like to see experimented with more.

Pretty impressive capability for only $20/mo, I gotta admit. I’m wondering how they even got their server rental that low, as it seems a lot cheaper than AWS/Azure for the same type of functionality.