Slashdot Mirror

http://www.pcgamer.com/directx...

An aspect that this report hasn't mentioned, perhaps as it's an unfortunate and unfair issue in some games, is sadly there can also be code issues at play as well. Many modern games have still suffered from damage dealt or game physics not being frame rate independent which can directly equate to player advantages, Quake 3 for example was well known for having the fastest movement and most useful jumping speed and height on 125 FPS, the issue was fixed many years ago in some mods and subsequently Quake Live by removing the physics system's dependency on frame rate.

A quick search on damage tied to fps brings up quite a few recent results, and I couldn't quickly find evidence that they had all been resolved -

Quake Champions : https://www.reddit.com/r/Quake... (Damage and movement FPS dependencies were fixed early in Early Access)
PUBG : https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fra... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
Fortnite : https://www.eurogamer.net/arti... (Epic acknowledge the issue and state that they’re working toward a fix.)
Destiny 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
Warframe: https://forums.warframe.com/to... (Staff posted at the time a fix was being looked into)

Even including such bugs high FPS is not the be all and end all in a multiplayer shooting game as positioning, better weapons, collecting more health and armour are all strategic elements that usually claim the victory beyond simple aim and damage output. Higher frame rates certainly can aid locating your opponents position quickly and accurately in a high speed fire fight though and are certainly a much more pleasant visual experience, https://www.testufo.com/ can give you a quick example of that without having to leave your browser.

May not be the same way they were, but they still exist. One of my motherboards for instance can do CrossFire but not SLI. That makes sense from AMDs perspective, but another chipset would allow for either.

It's also the chipset that enable Thunderbolt support.

Well I would recommend a much better value from an independent publisher, Foxhole by independent house Clapfoot Games, got it on discount for a whopping $11. It is based on Unreal Engine with recently overhauled graphics. http://www.foxholegame.com/ The wars go on for a few weeks like a multi-capture the flag, you can follow them at https://foxholestats.com/ . The current war has gone back and forth a few times, now Wardens are starting to womp the Colonials. The publishers have promised no microtransactions or other schemes.

Also the independently produced Rimworld turned out to be the most highly rated game on Steam last year. Understandable due to good game and character design and an extensive modding community (for example you can make a whole complex cannabis industry lol). Note how the fanciness of graphics is absolutely minimal, the characters are outlines with swappable clothes, but their behaviors are unique and relatable and they spontaneously react to stress. Some people have criticized character design decisions in the game, but also modders have made alternative models including for example the Kinsey scale.

https://www.techquila.co.in/ri...
https://www.pcgamer.com/rimwor...
https://www.pcgamesn.com/rimwo...

Disappointing that this post is overrun by snarly anonymous gamergate weirdos. Everyone knows EA is a scam machine, they drove Maxis and Simcity into the ground. If you don't like how a giant corporation tacks on pseudo social awareness then avoid the company.

I was referring to this
https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-...

I remember when Intel released its "Core 2" lineup some gamers eschewed getting the quad core ones because the dual core CPUs clocked higher, were less expensive, and most games only used one or two threads. Given how popular the slighter older i7s (4 cores, eight threads) and i5s (4 cores) have been, and how prominent they are in populating gaming PCs, it seems doubtful to me that any PC game will be incapable of running blisteringly fast on 8 physical cores. Games running on an i5 6600k/i7 7600k, with just four cores, generally go fast enough even for gamers running monitors at high refresh rates. https://www.pcgamesn.com/intel... https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-... These new CPUs will more than double their performance, and given the enormous number of customers for games with older i5s and i7s it's hard to imagine any game developer with an eye to sales who'll think that "Too bad, it's 16 threads or bust!". Non-gaming applications have been impressive in their improving on the ability to make use of more threads, but even there there are often diminishing returns, and it will be the pro's, and serious semi-pro's, who notice the savings in time by going to 16 threads (or more). But my point here goes to gamers/power users of the PC. For many of them, myself included, eight physical cores represents the opportunity for a solid upgrade. Though personally, I'd be a lot more excited if this was on 10 nanometer, it ran cooler when getting stressed, and it used less juice under all circumstances. At 10 nm it would be gold. As is, I think a lot of people will wait and see for what's on the horizon.

That's just not how it went. And in any case, physical limits are hardly preventing PS Now from finding success and getting good reviews-- though people still say you're way better off with ethernet than wifi presently. Even that isn't a fundamental physical limit.

Onlive scoring good (not perfect) reviews for game performance in 2010-2011, as demonstrated below, with much worse than current consumer internet connections... is evidence that we're not up against physical limits. But it was an awful deal, and that + the Microsoft litigation killed them. After the fire sale of assets the service was indeed awful, from what I understand.

Top 3 reviews of found googling the words onlive 2011:

https://www.engadget.com/2010/...
> With an up-to-18Mbps AT&T U-Verse connection in San Jose, California, we found OnLive games loaded as quickly as on console -- sometimes much quicker -- and were actually quite playable. The controller never felt quite as responsive as that of a dedicated console nor the images quite as crisp, but we'd say that most of the time the overall experience was only slightly behind what we expect, only bogged down by the occasional annoying stutter. Frantic first-person shooters and driving games weren't as accurate as we like, but over the course of a couple days we adjusted to the mild lag, racking up plenty of kills, scoring the occasional headshot and drifting around some fairly tight corners as well. In Prince of Persia, a game that can require fairly precise timing in combat, we were still able to parry foes' swords and execute tricky jumps with a little bit of forethought, and a multiplayer game of Unreal Tournament III was intriguingly balanced -- if slightly laggy -- thanks to the fact that all players had 0 ping to the (virtual) host server.

https://www.pcgamer.com/onlive...
> And yet streaming from the net via OnLive is remarkably playable. Obviously it feels a bit sluggish compared with playing on your own native hardware, but for many games, especially those designed with laggy console controllers in mind, including the likes of Arkham Asylum and Human Revolution, it's far from unpleasant.

http://www.businessinsider.com...
> The game had minimal loading times, and while the graphics weren't as crystal clear as on a video game console (because of OnLive's compression technology), the level of detail was pretty amazing. It looks just as good as watching Netflix streaming. Controls originally felt a little delayed, but after a few minutes I felt right at home. I wanted to notice latency and laggy controls (due to my input getting beamed to the over the web, then a response getting beamed back), but I didn't find any in this game.

" 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella"

Well, plans don't get any more concrete than that, do they?

Hey, remember all those Google hardware initiatives that were runaway smash hits?

Me neither...

Well... there was the Nexus 7.... It was small enough and portable enough that I could throw it in my cargo-shorts and large enough to browse the web (phones are too small for this), read books, etc. But that was built by ASUS and Google discontinued it... stupid Google!!

and Google Chromecast... I've never used it but it's been selling.....

But, I agree. I don't see the room for another gaming system. I figured that this had been proven by the lack of interest in the Steam gaming systems.
https://www.pcgamer.com/what-h...

Ah-ha. I found it. My google-fu must've have not been strong that day.
The example I was thinking of:
https://www.gamesradar.com/pc-...

A most recent example:
https://www.pcgamer.com/mouse-...

This is probably nVidia's response to the market heating up.

First, it looks like AMD Vega 20 is going to outperform Pascal. Based on remarks from nVidia's CEO, the next-gen Turing architecture is probably going to be released in 2019. Since Vega 20 will probably be out this year, for the first time in a while AMD will hold the GPU performance crown for about one year, maybe more if Turning doesn't deliver. On top of that, for the first time in a decade Intel is now a big wildcard. Current rumor is Intel will be releasing a discrete GPU in 2020. Intel hired the guy from AMD that lead the development of Vega, so chances are Intel actually means business this time.

To sum it all up, things are not looking very good for nVidia right now. So they are acting early to prevent journalists from reporting a possible fall from grace if it were to happen in the near future.

Second Life was doing micro-transactions for cosmetic items, some of which were/are actual makeup style cosmetics, years before Valve had their hats.

Avatar Appearance is such a big part of Second Life and has so many items available, that there are blogs dedicated to Second Life fashion.

Here's one of my favorites: http://www.strawberrysingh.com...

You may have seen that article on PC Gamer where they mentioned her:

https://www.pcgamer.com/second...

Valve saw the writing on the wall. People called Tim Sweeney paranoid. Who's laughing now?

at a price where it smoked by gaming pc's at more then half the price.

First of all, that is simply not true, building your own system saves a few hundred $.

But secondly - what about the iMac 5k? That is a pretty modern system, the CPU specs are almost as good, it just has a lower end video card. But you could also attach an eGPU via the Thunderbolt 3 ports, and it starts at $1799.00.

The cooling is not as good in the iMac 5k but if you are leaning on an eGPU card that doesn't matter as much as the GPU can have its own cooling.

Nobody cares. Turn your stupid website off. We'll go play video games. You're not that important.

Uh, dummy, here's what Net Neutrality means to people who "play video games".

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-ne...

False. Out of order execution alone isn't enough. Spectre was NAMED after "speculation" -- branch prediction. The ARM core in the Raspberry Pi DOES NOT USE THIS.

Read the section for Spectre here:
http://www.pcgamer.com/what-yo...

Meltdown affects ONLY Intel because they allowed a special type of branch prediction for illegal operations, Spectre affects many CPUs that use branch prediction, but is much more difficult to exploit as each exploit would have to target a specific cpu or cpu family -- not a generic exploit that would work on nearly every Intel CPU since the mid 90s.

Many CPUs use branch prediction in order to gain some performance when they guess correctly, but that's at the cost of using more power and the risk of wasting that power on bad guesses -- which is why some ARM chips (like the one Pi uses) avoid it completely.

Makes sense. Intel graphics are still a failure.

From a business perspective? I doubt it. They basically drained the bottom out of the market by force-bundling it with their CPUs, weakening AMD and nVidia considerably. Will a 15-45W CPU+GPU ever "catch up" to a dGPU that draws a few hundred watts alone? Obviously not. But they took almost the whole non-gamer market (71% by units) and according to this article 22% of Overwatch players use Intel integrated graphics. Consider then non-competitive games like Civilization etc. and you'll realize not everyone needs a monster card to run 4K @ ultra quality or 1080p @ 144+ Hz. Or they can't afford it at least. Of course now Intel is being undercut by mobile, gaming is one of the big reasons people buy PCs so it's the non-gamer segment that's shrinking.

If you've got a PS4 pro or even a cheaper base PS4 you really don't need a $700 PC. [...] Not everybody is interested in the Nintendo franchises.

Nor the Sony franchises for that matter. So if exclusives aren't the deciding factor, the fair comparison is between a desktop PC with a discrete GPU and the combination of a base PlayStation 4 and a desktop PC with integrated graphics. As of two weeks ago, a $160 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is cheaper than a $300 PS4.

Just a double whammy there. The new Intel CPUs aren't compatible with the old motherboards

http://www.pcgamer.com/intels-...

It looks like they are practically driving people AMD's way. Nice to see the shakeup though it's been far too long.

Basically this (except for the "ban Java" bit). Flash gets all the shit it gets not because it's exceptionally insecure compared to other things, but because some of its use cases make it a prime target for baddies to try and exploit. I'd feel safer downloading a hundred flash games or animations from (reputable) sites than letting any single webpage load without an adblocker.

When Flash is gone something else will replace it, and the replacement will most likely turn out to be every bit as exploitable as Flash was.

And unlike AAA games, it's not certain to include malware.

Dunno if I'd call SFV a "AAA" game.

How is it not a challenge? Sure its not

physically

challenging, but keeping yourself motivated to do the same thing over and over for two years straight with little or no reward sure as hell is mentally taxing.

And no, if he spent 2 years grinding the starting zone in an MMO he wouldn't have much of squat in terms of gear drops because starting zone gear isn't worth anything. At least not in any MMO I've ever seen (also, someone has indeed done that. And others have done similar things.)

Go onto any RPG forum on gamefaqs and you'll pretty much always find guides for doing some type of challenge play or other. Usually in the form of handicapping yourself but still completing the game (kind of the opposite of what TFA is talking about) but still.. people like to challenge themselves, in whatever way they can. Even if their version of challenge doesn't live up to your standards.

two reasons why they're doing this... neither one has anything to do with ms paint and how excruciatingly difficult it must be for microsoft to keep such a mundane application up-to-date with the new chrome-like rapid release schedule of windows versions.

"apps" in the store have more built-in telemetry and user tracking than even windows 10 itself does.

ads. how much you want to wager that the "new" paint app will have in-app ads like the solitaire collection does that replaced the previously-included windows games? and that just like those games, they'll remove the ads for a subscription fee?

Tim Sweeney (of Epic Games) stated (before the price reduction) Vive is outselling Rift 2:1. Since UE4 is used in many VR games he would have access various data like royalty figures to make a pretty educated guess.

Valve's hardware survey results also reflect similar trend.

There are independent firms also tracking sales that seem to agree with these figures. Palmer disputes them he doesn't really give any specific evidence.

There's a new gold rush in crypto currency that is causing video card prices to go up as everyone and their mother tries to mine the latest and greatest from the ether.

http://www.pcgamer.com/it-looks-like-cryptocurrency-mining-is-driving-up-nvidia-graphics-card-prices-too/

Until someone invents and perfects proper holodeck-style tactile feedback this shit just isn't happening for me (And no, bullshit like this or this doesn't fucking count)

As it is I think it could be good for movies, assuming it made economic sense - which it probably doesn't - but for gaming, just no. The last thing I want in my gaming experience is godawful controls and a dramatic increase in physical exertion. There's a reason video games are more popular than sports nowadays. I mean, the best selling VR game ever is called "Job Simulator" for fucks sake.

... all modern videogames have just been rebranded "mmo" or "online or always online" it's still drm, smite, league of legends, dota 2, all the f2p games where game devs want money with no ownership for gamers. The man is smoking something to believe drm will disappear it has gotten worse, every server locked game is a drm'd game. Hell the game industry has been experimenting with encryption and virtual machines like denuvo.

Windows 10 basically wants to re-engineer the whole application environment so that people don't have access to their own files via encrypted file systems, etc. What of Magicka: wizard wars?

http://www.pcgamer.com/magicka...

The whole game industry is basically destroying games willy nilly and steam has been slowly hiding the fact they encrypt game files and make it difficult for people to modifiy the games they paid for. Shit's out of control and it's because the average person is grade A tech illiterate moron.

Fair enough.

But let's also note that in January 2016 Microsoft announced the end of support of Win 7 / 8 on Skylake ... a processor that was available months earlier in 2015

Sure, they reversed that stance. But what the heck ?!?!

It's disturbing how that company oscillates between being friendly one minute (e.g. open sourcing stuff, etc) and being horribly monopolistic the next (crap moves like these, spying on users, etc).

Remember how we got to 64 bit CPUs?
AMD did AMD64 thing.
Microsoft said "no way I'd support to 64 bit versions" and Intel went with x86-64.

Now, x86-64 and AMD64 were nearly the same, but there still were differences in certain commands, of interest only to operating systems.

Another reason for OS to know exact version of CPU is scheduling tasks effectively. E.g. Ryzen 8 cores are internally 4+4 cores, each 4 with their own L3. Taking that into account can increase performance quite a bit.

At the end of the day, it's no big deal to add support for new CPUs, surely, but Microsoft has decided to use the opportunity and push Win 10 like that.
Neither Ryzen nor Kaby Lake CPU get official support from Microsoft.

But Windows 7 still boots, to my knowledge:
http://www.pcgamer.com/amd-con...

I believe he refers to the fact that it will not run Windows 7: http://www.pcgamer.com/amd-con...

Here's a source (and apparently there was a Google search): http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax...

Steam has a pretty fantastic return policy. If a game looks good try it. If you pass the 2 hours, you probably like it enough to keep it anyway.

Provided:

• The game isn't the gaming equivalent of a short film, which can be completed in less than two hours. (Source: "14 Steam games that prove Valve's refund policy is broken" by Ric Cowley) Eventually developers of such games will wise up to this and offer them only through channels other than Steam to avoid the risk of players completing it and then seeking a refund.
• The game doesn't open with two hours of something completely different from representative gameplay. In "Could Steam's refund policy have a weird effect on game design?", Tyler Wilde relays the concern of independent game developer Andrew Pellerano of that game design will change to encourage a 2-hour binge before the game becomes no longer refundable. It's suggested that games might even adopt player-hostile patterns currently prevalent in free-to-play mobile gaming, with games giving rapid progress in the first two hours but making the rest of the game an unreasonable grind-fest that can be skipped by buying in-game energy with real money. Or it could open with two hours of cut scenes, for instance, and its publisher may have put that fact under review embargo.
• The game doesn't open with 2 hours of trying and failing to get the game to work on your PC, particularly if it needs a driver update or if a necessary activation or matchmaking server is overloaded. If you want, I can dig up anecdotal reports of this causing problems for other users of the Steam service.

How much of a problem do these cases pose in practice?

And youtube gameplay videos come out very fast

I've read that some video game publishers take these videos down on copyright grounds just as fast, claiming that a playthrough violates the publisher's exclusive right to perform its audiovisual work publicly, particularly for rhythm games and for retail games sold by a retailer that broke street date. (Or is this practice limited to console-centric developers?) And I'm aware of some gaming platforms that include only an HDMI output with HDCP always on, which deters those who aren't willing to point a camera at a monitor from making gameplay videos. The technology to do this exists in Windows, under the name Protected Media Path, but I'll grant that I haven't see it in wide use because of legacy VGA and non-HDCP DVI monitors.

Indeed. Yet in others it wouldn't have stopped a thing. Remember this game is a quite colossal fuck-up. I wouldn't say reviews would have saved a person money as much as saying that even reviews couldn't save the producer of this game.

Reviewers let a lot of bullshit slide through. This is the exception not the norm.

I mean the game has tanked. It could quite possibly the worst tank since E.T. People are refunding where they can. Others are bending refund policies to prevent backlash...

3.5/5 stars TrustedReviews
64% PC Gamer
7/10 "good" Gamespot
4/5 stars Stuff.TV

To the credit of some review sites they've stopped publishing numbers or stars. Still these were the first 4 that came up in my google results which produced actual ratings or numbers for the review. Looks like a good game maybe I should go out and.... no *slap* *thud*.

Gaming is growing so big and complex, the next version of Solitaire will require government funding, just like Hoover Dam.

Well, since Microsoft is requiring a subscription for Solitaire now, I'd say that they're well on their way.

A California woman has been awarded $10,000 in a lawsuit over a botched Windows 10 installation that she said she didn't want, didn't authorize, and left her computer running at a âoecrawlâ and prone to crashing. Microsoft's customer support service was unable to solve the problem, so she sued for lost wages and the cost of a new PC, and came out on top.

Since you like FPS and the UT engine, you might consider checking out Insurgency. I just started playing it about a month ago and I really enjoy it. The game is fairly 'realistic' in that you cannot hit much of anything unless you aim down the sights, and it only takes a couple of bullets to kill someone. The learning curve is pretty steep until you figure out the maps, but once you get a handle on them it is a lot of fun.

I mention it because it is slower paced than UT and the other twitch based FPS games, and they are also in the process of converting over to the Unreal 4 engine.

http://www.pcgamer.com/insurge...

I think I peaked at Q3 and into CS1.1 / 1.2. I was very competitive at Q3, to the point where I beat Fatal1ty on pub DM servers from time to time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnathan_Wendel)

What I summarize form all of this is a) if you're running Win 8 go ahead and upgrade. b) If you're running something earlier than Win 8 you should hold off. BTW, did you know you have to pay for solitaire if you want a ad free version? http://www.pcgamer.com/windows...

as well as the fact that Microsoft has point-blank refused to clearly state that there will not be a subscription fee added at some point in the future

You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word fact, I would like to see where they "point-blank refused". It couldn't be clearer:

"There was some confusion, however, when Microsoft's Terry Myerson started talking about Windows 10 "as a service." Did that mean that after that first year of free availability, Windows 10 would cost an annual fee? I asked Myerson for clarification after the presentation, and he confirmed that there will be no additional fees attached to Windows 10, whenever you buy it."
http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/

And also here:

"This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost."
http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/

The above link also explains what they mean by Windows "as a service" - hint: it doesn't mean recurring subscription fees.

I'm fairly sure you will find some way to twist these words to mean something else, or come up with some question they have implicitly but not explicitly answered (and that you probably haven't asked). So maybe you should just forget Windows and move to Linux where you have all the control.

1. If you're constantly upgrading you're doing it wrong. You should only buy a new GPU that moves you up at least 3 tiers.

2. I guess you don't play any MMOs such as WoW, any RTSs such as Starcraft, or use any mods for Skyrim, Minecraft, etc. Consoles aren't always even viable in some cases. If all you care about is dumb button mashers such as Diablo 3, or Destiny then sure, knock yourself out. Meanwhile some of us will be checking out the free Path of Exile and other PC only games.

3. I've been building my custom gaming rigs since 1990. These days you can save a bundle by getting parts from NewEgg or MicroCenter. Order an i7, with a Hyper 212 EVO cooler, 16 GB RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and that $500 you spent on a GPU will give you a gaming rig that will last **years**.

4. I guess you don't care about framerate or resolution. Consoles can barely do 1080p @ 60 fps. Meanwhile over in PC land we're gaming at 120+ Hz with G-Sync / FreeSync Desktops resolutions are running at 2560x1440, the incorrectly labeled "2K" @ 3840x2160, or even higher such as Vanishing of Ethan Carter @ 8K.

Consoles are basically a 4 year old PC. Apples and Oranges. Different strokes for different folks.

Who knew, obviously all those people using 'nix are doing so by fairy dust.

They might be gaming, but Nethack, Tux Racer, some indies and a rare mainstream title aren't Mass Effect, Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, WoW, TESO, STO, etc etc.

Greenmangaming use the promo codes listed on the site or via their reddit page, anywhere between 20-30% off depending. You seem to be rather but hurt that PC gamers can already pre-order it.

You might want to hold off on that pre-order there. That offering isn't on the up and up. Bethesda has NOT authorized pre-orders in the US yet, check their site. So if greenmangaming (based in the UK by the way) is offering it, they shouldn't be. You might want to read about this:

http://www.pcgamer.com/witcher...

http://www.pcgamer.com/green-m...

CD Projekt told gamers to NOT buy keys from greenmangaming.

And we know that greenmangaming is rather shady because they admitted that they "act against the tryanny of region restrictions" by reselling keys from foreign sources. You might find that key won't actually work.outside the region it was intended for, say Russia perhaps?

Really? Better let Blizzard know.

I didn't say "all", I said most. I'm surprised you support F2P considering the average PC gamer on Slashdot calls it Pay-to-win and so forth.

Yeah, there is such a thing.

Right, like Mario Teaches Typing (nintendo), Sim City (Maxis) and DOOM II (iD) is Abandonware. I don't think so. That site is pure piracy with the usual fake Euro-gamer jibber jabber justification. Their host isn't on the up and up either, they do some spam hosting.

Yeah that's pretty funny, perhaps you mean I already spend less money on games

That's not an apples to apples comparison there. You're comparing the price of the Steam digital download to the PS3 retail box of the complete edition (which was a limited release). And I'm checking the price on Amazon myself and it's showing $29.99 for the price for both the Steam edition and the non steam download. So either that was a one day sale, or you're using a different Amazon location, or the screenshot is fake.

The cheapest way to get the game on the PS3 is to buy the retail disc version $9, and pick up the Rockstar Pass DLC via PSN. Or if you're lucky you might find the complete disc edition at a brick and mortar retailer for $20. Maximin (the retailer selling it's 4 copies of the complete edition for PS3) is price-gouging.

Who knew, obviously all those people using 'nix are doing so by fairy dust.

They might be gaming, but Nethack, Tux Racer, some indies and a rare mainstream title aren't Mass Effect, Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, WoW, TESO, STO, etc etc.

Greenmangaming use the promo codes listed on the site or via their reddit page, anywhere between 20-30% off depending. You seem to be rather but hurt that PC gamers can already pre-order it.

You might want to hold off on that pre-order there. That offering isn't on the up and up. Bethesda has NOT authorized pre-orders in the US yet, check their site. So if greenmangaming (based in the UK by the way) is offering it, they shouldn't be. You might want to read about this:

http://www.pcgamer.com/witcher...

http://www.pcgamer.com/green-m...

CD Projekt told gamers to NOT buy keys from greenmangaming.

And we know that greenmangaming is rather shady because they admitted that they "act against the tryanny of region restrictions" by reselling keys from foreign sources. You might find that key won't actually work.outside the region it was intended for, say Russia perhaps?

Really? Better let Blizzard know.

I didn't say "all", I said most. I'm surprised you support F2P considering the average PC gamer on Slashdot calls it Pay-to-win and so forth.

Yeah, there is such a thing.

Right, like Mario Teaches Typing (nintendo), Sim City (Maxis) and DOOM II (iD) is Abandonware. I don't think so. That site is pure piracy with the usual fake Euro-gamer jibber jabber justification. Their host isn't on the up and up either, they do some spam hosting.

Yeah that's pretty funny, perhaps you mean I already spend less money on games

That's not an apples to apples comparison there. You're comparing the price of the Steam digital download to the PS3 retail box of the complete edition (which was a limited release). And I'm checking the price on Amazon myself and it's showing $29.99 for the price for both the Steam edition and the non steam download. So either that was a one day sale, or you're using a different Amazon location, or the screenshot is fake.

The cheapest way to get the game on the PS3 is to buy the retail disc version $9, and pick up the Rockstar Pass DLC via PSN. Or if you're lucky you might find the complete disc edition at a brick and mortar retailer for $20. Maximin (the retailer selling it's 4 copies of the complete edition for PS3) is price-gouging.

This couldn't be a marketing ploy to increase pledges for the next stretch goal(s) at all...

There are no more (monetary) stretch goals.
http://www.pcgamer.com/star-ci...

Valve and Zenimax should have given at least the big-name modders some heads-up, so they could think and have time to rationally decide whether to start selling, and for how much, and to work out any licensing issues in multi-person teams.

I guess you missed it but they did exactly that.

Creator of removed paid Skyrim mod gives his side of the story

Basically Valve contacted him and several other high profile mod authors over a month and a half ago to participate in the rollout. In this particular case, the Art of the Catch mod (adds fishing to Skyrim, I think, I haven't tried it) needed some files from another mod to run, or it had a dependency, or both. Valve told him their legal team thought it would be OK but that the author should consult a lawyer on his own. He didn't, and many butts got hurt over the result.

But your assertion, that they did this with no notice to anyone, least of all the high profile modders, is wrong. They did exactly that.

The PC doesn't need AAA games, it's doing plenty fine with kickstarter and indie games completely dominating the platform. Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, RimWorld, Minecraft, Broken Age, Prison Architect, Cities: Skylines, Satellite Reign, Hyper Light Drifter, Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous... the list goes on and on.

Steam machines don't need to take over either, they're just an alternative to the ever growing platform of choice for gaming. Steam hit 9+ million concurrent users this month and there's no sign of it slowing. If I was Sony, Microsoft and especially Nintendo, I'd be really worried about this. The hardware is becoming irrelevant. What matters is the games and the platform you provide for gaming.

Seems gamers don't have a problem with it either. Currently at 32% and climbing. But how can that be?

MS makes damn sure that die hard gamers have no choice but to "upgrade" to windows 8. MS is not stupid, just incompetent. If a gamer gets a high end rig, they will have to have win8 on it to play tomorrows game-of-the-month fad using all their hardware can do, so they just put up with it, since it came with the rig anyway.

Microsoft charging a yearly subscription for Windows 10*

False.

http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/

From what I read here, there was a hack that could have been used at a live LAN event. But that's about as much detail as I could find. Could have been an aimbot that only triggers for an otherwise close miss, a triggerbot maybe - but here the cursor would overshoot, and not stop on the target to fire. You'd think a wall-hack would be obvious. I guess you could drop anti-aliasing around the opponents, say, something very subtle that could be overlooked. ESP could work if information is relayed via headphones, so only the cheater would hear it. But none of the articles I've read actually say!

They don't want to code. Deal with it.

Apparently they do, but find a massive sausagefest offputting!

http://www.pcgamer.com/how-gam...

So tell me, is an incredibly skilled female coder getting put off by a massive gender imbalance[*] "patronizing, paternalistic bullshit" or in fact evidence that being the odd one out is massiely unappealing to humans and hence putting women off programming?

[*]She only joined the project after it turned out it wasn't all men on board.

News flash: woman have brains and they do what they want.

News flash! Women are humans and humans are herding creatures. Pretending otherwise is not helpful.

The only thing responsible for a "lack of women coders" is that fewer women than men are interested in software development as a career path.

Blah blah glib answers blah fucking blah. This person is a better coder than 99.9% of people here:

http://www.pcgamer.com/how-gam...

and she wouldn't in fact have even joined the project if the gender imbalance had been any worse.

But don't let the fact that a much better coder than you[*] being put off by gender imbalance way your opinion.

So yeah "girls just don't want to code".

Given the way slashdot is going these days, I'm likely to get modded down for pointing out such obvious crap. Bring it, MRAs, I have karma to burn.

[*]It's at least more than likely. The number of people with that level of skill is really, really low and includes people like Fabrice Bellard.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/...
"ishanda --- Kerbal Space Program Apr 17, 2013 @ 2:29am; If you REALLY want Star Trek Style impulse engines why not mod them yourself? All you really need is to make copies of the relevant part files, change the name of the Xenon Tank to "Deuterium" and change the Ion Engine to "Impulse Engine" and then change a few values to make them super efficient. Done."

Still looking forward to seeing how the real device pans out though... Just like I'm still wondering about all the claimed cold fusion results which may also be exploring new areas of physics and chemistry with the behavior of hydrogen atoms at the edges of metal lattices or in cracks in them perhaps in interaction with electro-magnetic pulses ...
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

I'm still waiting on "Tom Swift and his Space Solartron" though: :-)
http://www.tomswift.info/homep...
"The main invention in this book is, of course, the Space Solartron. The Space Solartron was probably Tom Swift's most amazing -- and far-fetched -- invention. Its purpose was to make space travel practical by creating oxygen, water, and food from sunlight -- not a simple task, to be sure."

I've mused about even better tech that will extract energy and mass from zero point energy. Although we might then get a "tragedy of the commons" as so much mass and energy is created in nearby outer space as to collectively form a black hole? Now that might be another good mode for the multi-player version of Kerbal Space Program to see what happens politically as that "tragedy" plays out as the outer space equivalent of anthropogenic global warming? :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...

Perhaps that political problem might already be playing out at the core of out galaxy? :-)
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Back to the EmDrive device, it would not surprise me if the impulse provided by the microwave device is much less than the impulse imparted by photons and/or solar wind on any satellite's solar panels to capture needed electricity. But that might be a non-issue if you have a small "Mr. Fusion" fusion reactor or cold fusion LENR device onboard the satellite? :-)

Of course, station keeping is even easier if you have a "HyperEdit" debugger hook into the simulation. :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...
"If you still think MechJeb is cheating, take a look at HyperEdit. It is cheating. Install it, tap Alt+H, and you're given a menu full of options that let you tweak and edit the game. With a few clicks, you can teleport your craft to the orbit of any planet on the solar system, then use the landing options to gracefully touch down. Alternatively, you can instantly replenish your fuel, obliterate a selected craft, or readjust Kerbin's gravity to make escaping its atmosphere unnaturally difficult. HyperEdit is a flexible toolbox that, when used without restriction, completely destroys the difficulty. With a little imagination, though, you can use it to create your own custom scenarios. It's as simple as popping an abandoned craft on a distant planet, and suddenly you've got the basis for a tricky retrieval mission."

See also:
http://www.simulation-argument...
"This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct

http://steamcommunity.com/app/...
"ishanda --- Kerbal Space Program Apr 17, 2013 @ 2:29am; If you REALLY want Star Trek Style impulse engines why not mod them yourself? All you really need is to make copies of the relevant part files, change the name of the Xenon Tank to "Deuterium" and change the Ion Engine to "Impulse Engine" and then change a few values to make them super efficient. Done."

Still looking forward to seeing how the real device pans out though... Just like I'm still wondering about all the claimed cold fusion results which may also be exploring new areas of physics and chemistry with the behavior of hydrogen atoms at the edges of metal lattices or in cracks in them perhaps in interaction with electro-magnetic pulses ...
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

I'm still waiting on "Tom Swift and his Space Solartron" though: :-)
http://www.tomswift.info/homep...
"The main invention in this book is, of course, the Space Solartron. The Space Solartron was probably Tom Swift's most amazing -- and far-fetched -- invention. Its purpose was to make space travel practical by creating oxygen, water, and food from sunlight -- not a simple task, to be sure."

I've mused about even better tech that will extract energy and mass from zero point energy. Although we might then get a "tragedy of the commons" as so much mass and energy is created in nearby outer space as to collectively form a black hole? Now that might be another good mode for the multi-player version of Kerbal Space Program to see what happens politically as that "tragedy" plays out as the outer space equivalent of anthropogenic global warming? :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...

Perhaps that political problem might already be playing out at the core of out galaxy? :-)
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Back to the EmDrive device, it would not surprise me if the impulse provided by the microwave device is much less than the impulse imparted by photons and/or solar wind on any satellite's solar panels to capture needed electricity. But that might be a non-issue if you have a small "Mr. Fusion" fusion reactor or cold fusion LENR device onboard the satellite? :-)

Of course, station keeping is even easier if you have a "HyperEdit" debugger hook into the simulation. :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...
"If you still think MechJeb is cheating, take a look at HyperEdit. It is cheating. Install it, tap Alt+H, and you're given a menu full of options that let you tweak and edit the game. With a few clicks, you can teleport your craft to the orbit of any planet on the solar system, then use the landing options to gracefully touch down. Alternatively, you can instantly replenish your fuel, obliterate a selected craft, or readjust Kerbin's gravity to make escaping its atmosphere unnaturally difficult. HyperEdit is a flexible toolbox that, when used without restriction, completely destroys the difficulty. With a little imagination, though, you can use it to create your own custom scenarios. It's as simple as popping an abandoned craft on a distant planet, and suddenly you've got the basis for a tricky retrieval mission."

See also:
http://www.simulation-argument...
"This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct

"Double Fine's gonna do an HD remaster soon."

It's too bad you didn't add a (source/reference) link to your reply.
It would have been nice if people reading it, especially if your post gets upvoted (it's at Score:2 now), could verify your statement and read more about Double Fine's plans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango#Remastered_version
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/09/double-fine-confirms-grim-fandango-remaster-coming-to-pc/
Interesting Double Fine footage, including the announcement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNhE7zxJymE#t=597
It will be released simultaneously for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux platforms.