Alright, I was probably going to play it anyway even with dips down to the low 20s. But if we’re not even at the full release yet and the modding scene is already squeezing more out of that bottom 1%, I’m just biting the bullet and buying the damned game.
For anyone in the same boat, Fanatical is selling the pre-release versions of the game for 17% off, packaged with a random “highly rated” Steam game. My freebie was Reventure, which is regularly $8.99 CAD.
Hard to argue with that logic.
~~I read an article just this morning that said it’s expected to release with version number 1.6.35 or something, meaning they been patching and updating it ahead of release. That’s likely what the delays have been about — to polish it up in advance to avoid the kind of negative press that surrounded Cyberpunk 2077 at release, which came from a studio that had a great deal more goodwill from the community than Bethesda.
Edit: https://tech4gamers.com/starfield-build-update-version/~~
Edit 2: Man I’m dumb. Didn’t check which thread this reply was for and replied with unrelated gibberish.
Sure, if Valve ever releases it.
The physical device itself is pretty stock, but I’ve been having a grand old time using Decky, specifically the CSS Loader plugin, to tweak the interface. Nothing extreme, but I have a little over a dozen CSS plugins installed that really make it shine now.
I’ve bought maybe 40 new games since I got my Steam Deck a year ago. I’ve played maybe a dozen of those, and only played two of them to completion.
I had to start with the Witcher 3, which is finished the main story for but never got around to the DLCs (because my parenting instincts are apparently so bad I got the worst ending possible on my first playthrough, which kind of soured playing any further).
Then I had to play the Mass Effect trilogy, because the Legendary Edition had just dropped and it had been so long.
Then I discovered Horizon Zero Dawn, and couldn’t put it down.
Ever since then I’ve been bouncing back and forth between games and franchises I simply never got around to in my teens and 20s — Assassin’s Creed, the Arkham series, Bioshock, Dishonored, Halo (God bless the Master Chief Collection) Kingdoms of Amalur, Portal (duh), Prince of Persia…
I’m slowly getting caught up on not just my Steam backlog, but 15 years worth of gaming I missed out on because I didn’t have the money.
Steam recommended a game called Inside Jennifer based on the fact that I played the Witcher 3. I understand they want to push the whole visual novel thing they’ve got going this week, but damn.
I think suggesting that Valve need any given game (CoD) or even genre (“games like CoD”) to remain successful is silly at best. Of course Steam, the Steam Deck, and as a result Valve are only successful or even exist at all because of video game studios and publishers. But Call of Duty specifically? Nah man, it’s a blip on the radar for Steam.
While I disagree with your core argument about the success of the Steam Deck, I absolutely agree that I’d love to see a desktop variant of SteamOS become available for general use. To the point that I’d likely even finally make the leap from Windows.
The article you’ve linked seems to say the opposite of what you’re suggesting — that a second iteration of the Steam Deck is coming soon. That’s not the impression I get from the linked article at all.
But even that aside, I would argue that the Steam Deck has been uniquely successful. Sure, the Deck may or may not end up being a “one and done”, flash in the pan piece of hardware that fades into relative obscurity in the face of competing hardware… but it proved that the idea of portable PC gaming was possible and affordable, and inspired plenty of manufacturers to dip their toe in the same arena. And almost every single one of those devices, whether it’s sold by Valve or Lenovo or whoever, will be running — and selling games on — the Steam marketplace.
That was the goal of the Deck, and in that regard it’s been a great success.
Better GOG than EGS, IMO. Hashtag acronyms.
Yeah, I’m gonna have to wait for a good sale before I can justify buying yet another game to add to my backlog. I still have entire franchises I want to finally get to.
Best wishes to you and your dog, dear stranger.
Nah, I think the article and the image are both AI generated, so the “author” of the article really has no idea what the image actually looks like.
“On mobile, apologies for bad formatting.”
As if posting from a mobile device somehow prevents you from using paragraphs and punctuation? Give me a break. You either can’t be bothered, which means you’re not worth interacting with; or you had to repeat at least a high school English class or two growing up. Either way you need to stop blaming your fucking phone.
My 512GB Steam Deck, easily. I’ve used it almost every day for going on a year now, and the novelty of playing things like Witcher 3, or Mass Effect, or a fully modded Skyrim anywhere I want still hasn’t worn off.
It’s very likely to become my most recent “doesn’t need all my attention” game, as I always need one of those on deck (if you’ll pardon the expression).