They’re only doing this because of the class action being brought against them. It’s cheaper to let this go to court than to try and settle tens of thousands of individual arbitrations. In fact, there are plenty of companies now reversing course and realizing how badly forcing arbitration can backfire.
Edit: For those unaware: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/video-game-giant-valve-hit-with-consumer-class-action-over-pricing-2024-08-12/
Is there a big advantage to using Moonlight/Sunshine vs the built-in Steam remote play feature? I regularly stream from my desktop to my Steam Deck without too many issues, although sometimes I get weird minor problems (e.g. Banishers Ghosts of New Eden will be noticeably darker, Elden Ring will get random “flashes” where the screen kind of blinks for a split second from time to time). These issues are hardly a big deal for me, so I’m more curious than seeking a true alternative.
Our SSDs just have to be wiped but we still have to document and provide proof they were wiped and turned in. HDDs and tapes are a different story and a pain in the ass, though.
I’m super jealous. Whenever we decom servers at work, we’re required to fill out paperwork and provide proof that all HDDs and SSDs were properly destroyed (i.e. rendered completely unusable and wiped) and turned in to our disposal department. The servers themselves also have to be handed over to them. I’m not sure what they do with the servers, but I’m guessing they either repurpose them as emergency replacements for other sites that have hardware failures or they bulk sell them at auctions or something.
Have you considered SD card(s) as your redundancy? They’re not great/ideal, but microSD are incredibly small. Or this may be a good use case for a local NAS placed somewhere else in your home that your PC backs up to nightly?
I think their goal is to minimize space since it’s a mini-pc, so they don’t have 2 slots to spare but still want 2 drives? That’s how I interpreted it, at least.
Correct, but we don’t know what all has taken place over the years regarding Discord chats, forum posts, etc. where one of the devs might have accidentally incriminated themselves/the project. That’s what I meant by it depends what kind of evidence Nintendo has gathered. I’m assuming there’s a reason Nintendo waited as long as they have to go after them, seeing as Yuzu has been quite famous for a long time and it seems as of they’re not also going after Ryujinx (or maybe they’re not just yet?).
You’re not wrong. Nintendo is a dirtbag, greedy as fuck company. They make some excellent games, but they’re the epitome of financial parasites.
Circumventing DRM for archiving is not totally legal in all circumstances: https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/9rfezi/us_copyright_office_gives_the_okay_to_circumvent/
I know, it’s a reddit link, but OP does a good job summarizing and providing sources.
Anyway, videogames are specifically called out. Essentially, if you’re circumventing DRM for emulation for games that are still current and actively supported by their publishers/devs, it is not legal. However, if you’re circumventing DRM to repair/troubleshoot/diagnose your console, that’s kosher (whole right-to-repair stance). So it isn’t completely black and white. Yuzu devs will have a tough case ahead of them depending on what all evidence Nintendo has gathered.
I wouldn’t say that’s a universal truth. Some games perform like shit on Yuzu and others that simply aren’t stable. Yuzu is pretty damn good, but I’ve run into plenty of situations where graphics have lots of glitches, I’m crashing every 20-30 minutes due to a memory leak, etc. E.g. SMTV is one I recently opted to just play on my Switch natively because I got tired of random freezes after battles.
Even buying a game digitally from most storefronts doesn’t mean you actually own it. You simply buy a license to play it. Look what happens if your Steam account gets permanently banned for violating their ToS, you’ll lose access to any game you paid for on that account. Same thing with Microsoft or Sony. I think GOG might be an exception to this, where they will never revoke access to the games you previously bought, but I am not 100% sure of their policies.
Regardless, all gamers will never fully embrace subscription purity. There are so many games that require a lot of time to complete, especially so if you’re an adult with lots of responsibilities who can only game here and there. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 is massive and I’ve owned it since launch. I’ve only gotten to Act 2 with like 60 hours clocked in and I still want to play it to finish. However, if it was on a subscription service, I’d be constantly stressed that it’d be leaving the subscription any day.
And what about classic games (includes new games that become instant classics) I’ll know I’ll always treasure and want to be able to play whenever I’m in the mood? To this day, my wife will randomly bust out Mario 64 or even a more niche game like Fable 2 and just have them be her comfort food for a lazy weekend. Hell, just a few months ago we got our our original Xbox to play some Fuzion Frenzy for nostalgia sake. Can’t do that with subscription models.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I just absolutely loathe this crushing pressure by corporations to force our entire economy into being rent based. Every expert economist has been warning us about the dangers of this for at least the last 10+ years, and yet consumers keep blindly marching towards it because it’s “convenient,” totally ignoring the long-term consequences.
Obligatory PSA: ProtonMail isn’t any more secure than Gmail and is likely a honeypot scheme crafted by government agencies: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/
I know the title of that sounds clickbaity, but they cite their sources. It’s worth the read for those curious about ProtonMail’s history and their CEOs.
This is the correct interpretation and the crux of the matter in Valve’s view. Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want, effectively taking money out of Valve’s pockets, when it’s Steam providing all of the actual services for said key to function?
This should not be confused with gray market key resellers, by the way (e.g. G2A, Kinguin, etc) . Those aren’t the same as retailers like Fanatical or GreenManGaming.
There was another case in 2021 that originated this complaint and some of these plaintiffs in the 2024 case actually broke off from that one to start this one. We’ll see what evidence they actually end up bringing to court to argue their case and how legitimate it is. All I know, is this will likely end up with Valve stopping third-parties from selling steam keys entirely.