I’m so confused… There are so many valid reasons to hate on Nintendo, but you guys come up with two that aren’t valid? Nintendo is the only one of the big three that genuinely innovates when it comes to console design. Rent seeking? They’re the only one of the big three that doesn’t try to lock you into a subscription for your games. Every game that they make for their console is still sold as a physical cartridge with the full game on it. Even their online services are the cheapest of the three.

They don’t innovate when it comes to games, sure, but that’s not what you folks were saying. Their games never go on sale and are overpriced, sure, but that’s not rent seeking. Like I said, there’s so much to dislike about Nintendo and how they run things, but the two examples here that seem to clearly resonate with people are just wrong, and I’m not sure why people are upvoting them. Maybe I’m missing something

The Switch was innovative? So much so that, upon seeing it’s success, literally everyone copied them in one form or another?

Yeah, it’s really just a way to access streams. I think of it similar to torrents in that way. There are legitimate, legal streams, and there are piracy/illegal streams. I don’t actually use IPTV and have no idea if these guys have channels that people care about, but they provide IPTV streams and appear to have licenses from all content owners to do so: https://nomadiptv.com/

IPTV stations. There are basically URLs that host streams that are 24/7 content, like a normal TV channel. You need some interface to properly read the stream, hence the app. Most of the good stuff is behind pay walls, but there’s some decent free stuff out there as well. Here’s an example site that aggregates some providers: https://www.theiptvguide.com/

Mumble dialog is intentional, directors want movie and show dialog to sound natural, which often involves under-enunciation. I have a great home theater setup and while it fixes the vast majority of issues, I still don’t watch anything without subtitles

Debian is for my homelab, where things randomly breaking would ruin the day of multiple family members. Arch is for my personal machines, where things randomly breaking is an excuse to learn more about my hobby

+1 for grayjay, works really well for me

I’ve still got the snake in a can that my grandparents had when I was a child, it’s a fun prank

I do. A self-hosted password manager makes it only a second or two inconvenience for most sites. The worst ones are the ones that send you a code for 2FA, but still, with those it’s a 10-15 second inconvenience. One thing I’ve learned in my quest for proper digital privacy is that I had to give up my obsession of convenience. I used to be the guy that lost my mind when my internet was even a tiny bit slow, but I’ve had to get comfortable with not getting what I want immediately. I genuinely think it’s made me a better person in other areas as well, but that could just be cope lol

Pizza boxes are a bad example, they are compostable

I think you’ve misunderstood. I make games as a single person. I’ve made multiplayer games. So I’ve got a pretty good idea of what goes into this.

Let’s talk about the breakdown of indie games real quick. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any concrete numbers, but I’m pretty confident in the fact that the majority of indie games are single player experiences. Any game that is single player only doesn’t have to do anything to comply with Stop Killing Games.

Next, most multiplayer indie games are using P2P networking. This essentially turns one player’s game into a host, which acts as the server for that session. As long as game devs aren’t using purchased, proprietary networking solutions for this (which most indie devs aren’t, because they are expensive and free alternatives are easy to come by) they also don’t have to do a single thing to comply with Stop Killing Games. This is what Steam’s free built-in networking is. The biggest indie multiplayer games right now all use this (Peak, Meccha Chameleon, Pal World*, etc.)

The last big group of games, multiplayer games with a central server that the company owns, is the group that is getting affected here. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of indie games do not fit in this category. The reason behind this is simple. It costs a lot of money to host servers. Compared to P2P, it’s significantly more complicated to design and maintain these servers. What do the companies that run these games need to do to comply with Stop Killing Games? They need to release a version of the server that can be deployed on anyone’s computer, rather than just their servers. This isn’t a ton of work, since they’ve already done the hard part, mostly just changing a few endpoints, addresses, etc. to be configurable. This becomes a bit more of a headache if they are using a paid for proprietary networking solution, because they likely won’t have the distribution rights for it, but again, for most indies that’s those proprietary options are prohibitively expensive. Most companies that run games like this have the budgets and manpower to comply without any issues.

The last game type that barely gets a mention are “Online” single player games, which require an Internet connection to play a game by yourself. These in all honestly shouldn’t even exist, but it’s a simple patch to remove the internet requirement from these.

There are other nuances that exist, but none that make it harder for the indie developer, only easier.

*Pal world supports both P2P model and central server model. They also let users host their own servers, so they wouldn’t get affected at all.

Anytime I see anything related to beatboxing I feel compelled to bring up the most insane beatboxer I have ever seen, WING. All of his stuff is great, but check out his song “Dopamine” if you haven’t heard it, it’s what made him really blow up: https://youtu.be/qlrpeYdm9Ec

Steam has DRM. But there are 3rd party programs that can bypass that DRM. So if you have the game downloaded, then you will be able to play your games forever, even if valve goes under and the internet breaks. You’ll technically be pirating the game at that point, but I personally have no qualms with that.

I agree. I buy any game I can on GOG or physical media, but still use steam. The only reason I’m fine using steam is that I have backed up every game I own, and there are piracy tools that can break steam’s DRM. This way, if valve disappears, I can still play all my games without worry, except for the multiplayer parts of games that had multiplayer using steam servers exclusively.

However, there already exist emulators that let you play those multiplayer games on LAN without a connection to steam or the internet, so I’d imagine folks will figure out a hostable version for over-internet play if the need arises

I gave up on getting it at a discount lol. I waited 5 years

If you own your car (not paying off a loan or a lease) you can remove the sim card/ internet module from your car. It may cause some features to stop working (nothing that impares the vehicle) but it stops the car from actually sending the data it’s collecting

Just a heads up to you creative folks, the pieces of fiction that have changed my life probably weren’t produced by folks attempting to make life changing fiction. They are usually pretty small and simple stories that were a bit heavy handed with their themes. Or a small part of an overall series that resonates with me

I didn’t even know there was a 3rd one, I thought everyone was talking about the second one this whole time.

I’m not entirely familiar with the process, but I think Goldberg uses steam architecture, but replaces calls to steam servers with locally emulated ones. And I think Steamless emulates the DRM check locally, to spoof the call to steam servers. Neither tool requires internet or active steam servers to run. If the internet disappeared tomorrow, as long as I had my game library downloaded, and the latest version of those two tools installed, I could play all my games forever. Of course, I still prefer to buy my games as physical copies or offline installers from GoG, but you kinda have to go where the games are.

You aren’t wrong, that’s why I use Goldberg/steamless to keep my library of steam games safe, even if steam shits the bed