Dragon Age: Origins came out 15 years ago. That’s a very long time to stay with the same company in the tech sector. It’s not at all unusual that there are so few people left who worked with the engine for the first game.

Project 2025 includes a detailed plan about how to dismantle the entire Federal government and replace thousands of government managers with alt-right extremists.

Project 2025 matches most of his campaign promises and is written largely by former Trump administration staffers.

I’m running Win 10 Ameliorated on mine. Manual driver installs were the only big hiccup. Works well otherwise, but it’s not my daily driver.

I can’t really use Linux since my work is deeply embedded in Microsoft everything; I need OneDrive to work dependably.

It was offered as a free upgrade for anyone with Wishes 7/8. And you could get free upgrades to those from earlier editions of Windows, too.

Some people haven’t paid for Windows in 2 decades-ish with a legit retail purchase.

Mood.

I’m not going to pay $45 for any game. If I’d known about the “never on sale, price only goes up” model they were using, I might have bought it back when it was $20, but I’ll just never play it now and I’m okay with that. There are literally hundreds of amazing games I already own to play, and if I had 100+ hours to sink into a game like this (I don’t, post-kiddos—for now, anyway), then I’d strike the earth for some Dwarf Fortress !!!FUN!!!, which I know I’ll enjoy.

Or maybe finally get around to beating Baldur’s Gate 1… (I never made it past the early game… BG3 I’ll get to in the 2040s at this rate, ha ha!)

Aside from people who just want to play football/CoD/D4/whatever multilayer game, I don’t understand why anyone pays full price for games. I’m glad they do, mind, since they’re subsidizing the development costs mean games get made, and I get amazing games for cheap.

As a recent example, I nabbed MH Rise for cheap recently, and bounced off it. I might try again later, but it didn’t grab me. So glad I didn’t pay more than $15 CAD for it!

The ultra-wealthy are terrified of reprisal from Trump. And they control the media (Bezos/WP) and social media (Zuck).

Democracy in America may fail next week. Terrifying to watch.

… he claims there is no point producing proof because they wouldn’t be believed.

He also dismisses any evidence created by others as untrustworthy.

What a load of shit. It’s up to the person making the claim to provide evidence. People have claimed the opposite, and backed it up with “low-quality” evidence. Refusing it would be pretty easy, if it were true; get someone independent to verify in a pre-funded, blind trial.

The only reason not to do this is because they know their product reduces framerate frequently enough to be a problem.

I worry that age verification will backfire spectacularly; users can just tunnel their traffic through a VPN and then once on a VPN, they would also miss all harmful content blocking. Middle schoolers can figure out how to get around school web filters, and they, and everyone else, will figure their way around age verification just as easily.

A friend of mine has (had?) most of the world records in Sayonara Wild Hearts; it’s not as relaxing if you’re going for high scores since you need to get close to collisions for bonus points, but if you just play to beat levels and chill, it’s great.

Brilliant. I should do that. I’m not great at skipping stuff to race faster, so the skull dungeon is really hard for me and I end up save scumming after most runs. I read about people getting to floor 200+, but I can barely get to 100 unless I waste a whole stack of staircases.

Pausing time would make it a lot more relaxing.

I just read the top review on Steam and it answered this question well: TL;DR it’s a shame this is a F2P game since the seasonal cosmetic FOMO is diametrically opposed to the message/spirit of the game, but if you can ignore the cosmetics, then it’s a fantastic experience that’s completely free.

Agreed; it’s funny reading articles like this about massive marketing budgets when I haven’t seen a single ad.

True, but I expect that wasn’t meant literally; it was expressed that way for rhetorical effect.

Most of the capitalist system we’re in has incentivized short-term cashflow over long-term revenue for most stakeholders (annual bonuses, for example), and AAA gaming is almost entirely following those trends, too.

Interesting seeing Hotline Miami make the list since I just watched a short video essay the other day explaining how OTXO is just a better game in basically every way.

I’m still in the 80s working my way down the list, but I searched and OTXO doesn’t appear to be on the page.

Edit: Conversely, I’m pleased to see Portal included instead of Portal 2. The Portal 2 goo was unnecessary and led to more boring puzzle solutions. Portal is a more pure, timeless game. And it has a lot of amazing mods… I should probably look into how to install Portal mods on the Deck…

For visual novels, it depends how you play them. If you’re happy with getting a single story/ending, then yeah. But if you want to 100% them, then there’s a lot of backtracking.

Portal Pro I remember being great. So good that Portal 2 was a disappointment for me when it landed.

I needed to cheat (watch the YouTube solution video) on a few solutions, iirc, too; not because they’re badly designed, just because I couldn’t wrap my head around the solution.

It should be noted that a couple of the portal solutions need reasonably quick portal placement, so I don’t think it would be as good without KB+mouse. It took me a few tries to nail one of the techniques.

Exactly. Group policies give lots of control to mass enable/disable features.

It’s one of the reasons to pirate Enterprise Windows instead of Home/Pro, so you can write your own group policies for your own device.

… Or pay them for it!

There’s a prolific open-source dev that makes many plugins and themes for a widely-used OSS platform. He’s quite open when asked for new features if it’s something he’s already planning on doing anyway (with no guaranteed timeline) or if it’s not. But if it’s a reasonable ask, he’ll always mention that he can prioritise its development if they fund it. He even posts his current contractor rate; it’s quite transparent.

I think more OSS devs should be more open like that. “Yes, I can do that feature request. Sounds like about 2-3 hours work. My hourly is $120 for contract work. Email me here if you’re interested and I’ll send a contract.”

Canada uses gc.ca for federal government sites, and I think every province gets their own, too, like .bc.ca (but I don’t know if they all use them.)