'keep fighting on until there's an ultimate victory'*

• (asterisk). "their ultimate victory"... the day Apple and Google gives the little shit they want for themselves, Epic return to be a good servant: exactly as they are for both Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo today. We get the stuff we want, then screw everybody else.

You didn't see Tim Sweeney that much active in the campaign for StopKillingGames: let's make sure only publishers, and the publisher we're happy with, to have political weight.

Microsoft business was never meant to convince: it's either forcing their way in by bully OEMs in doing what they want, and make sure Linux isn't an option, like in the ACPI case, or buy successful companies that elude their direct control (or simply buy companies that already won the battle they are fighting, like their desperate attempt to make a success "Microsoft Game Studio" and instead resort to buy Bethesda, Activision etc.)

I don't think the poll question was well made... "would you like part away from your money for..." vaguely shakes hand in air "...ai?"

People is already paying for "ai" even before chatGPT came out to popularize things: DLSS

If your political stance on this is to just shut up... well, honor your political stance and...just shut up.

This is people who don't fall into this crap telling people that did fall into this crap simply: "you don't deserve this: let's fight your, and our, way out".

People who fall for this crap, is giving resource to the crappiest companies: and with money, the crappiest companies can buy their way back also on you.

... he feel safe for about the next ~48 hours.

I think the "Microsoft dilemma" is between Making Some Money vs. Take All The Money.

If they publish a bunch of successful games on Steam or on Playstation, they will make Some Money, compared to games published exclusive to Xbox, where they can make All The Money.

By acquiring studios they are making sure that good franchises "don't make all the money... yet" (on competing platform like Steam, Playstation or Switch, but also Android/iOS)

They could make good games exclusive for Xbox, but given how relatively unsuccessful is the Xbox platform, compared to Switch and Playstation, it would mean that very expensive (to make) games will bleed money

Publisher employ a sort of bribe/blackmail trick. Preview copies of the videogame are provided to reviewer on the "white list". If, as reviewer, make criticism that the publisher (Ubisoft in this case), don't like... you may end on the black list.

If you're on the black list, no pre-review copies for you... this mean that reviewer on the " nice" side of Ubisoft can publish review even before the day one, quite before you, as "honest reviewer on the naughty side of Ubisoft", can even go to buy and try the game to review by yourself.

You can download games using steamcmd (command line) and pick only games that are DRM free on Steam. Valve doesn't force DRM (even it's own one) so, if you see a game that require DRM (Steam or whatever) it's solely because the publisher put the DRM into it.

Once you've downloaded your drm-free game through steamcmd, you can basically zip the folder and store your game wherever you want... even on the cloud (your own personal space, if you share it publicly it's piracy).

Also, you're not even forced to use Steam: itch.io and GoG are preferable ways to buy games and improve your drm-free wallet-vote situation.

is the reason why you don't see "bandicam" watermark on modern videgame footage.

It would be interesting to see an overall data, considered many part of the world (like China) consoles like Playstation and Xbox aren't even a thing.

sorry for posting a trashy article, but title was so trashy-click bait that got its own merit.

How much of that do we think is down to the steamdeck? (and I guess similar form factor alternatives)

GPU VanGogh (the name Steam gives to SteamDeck GPU) is currently ~40% of the whole Linux userbase on Steam; so, yeah. pretty much everything.

I guess Intel dropping the ball on being competitive for a couple of generations probably hasn’t helped either

Intel has never been competitive in terms of GPUs. PCs running Intel iGPUs are machines waiting for a 'real' GPU and the like. Intel Arcs are relatively too young to have a significant weight in the totality of the userbase: naturally, for the sake of Linux, one hopes that Intel can gain more weight... specifically against Nvidia which is currently the only company to have exclusively closed source drivers