There’s audio to go along with it.

Epic just recently announced that they’re never releasing it outside of their store. They’re the exclusive publisher, so they have distribution rights, and their CEO Tim Sweeney is determined to snub his nose at Steam, even though Alan Wake 2 still hasn’t earned back its production costs. It’s a complete flop, but they won’t extend to the Steam market to help sales.

Unlike other games, where publishers sign exclusivity contracts with Epic Games for a certain time period, Alan Wake 2 was actually published by Epic Games, meaning that Epic Games gets to decide what systems the game releases on. So it’s not coming to Steam. Which means I’ll never get to play it, because I’m never giving a penny to that awful store of theirs.

The plots of Portal 2 singleplayer, co-op, and PTI are very “distant” from anything happening with Half-Life.

From what I understand (it’s been a while since I read up on the lore), Portal 1 and 2 take place after the Combine invasion of Earth, shortly after the first Half-Life game. That’s why Aperture Science is almost completely devoid of life, minus the personality cores that are attempting to continue running things. It’s because of the resonance cascade incident at Black Mesa that Aperture Science is now mostly defunct, and Chell is trapped as a lab rat at GLaDOS’ mercy.

So the Portal series is pretty reliant on Half-Life’s story to justify their plot, even if it’s never directly addressed in the game itself.

This is actually my second Steam Deck. I bought the original LCD-screen one back when they were first announced, but they had a nasty habit of the bumper buttons (L1 and R1) breaking. Sure enough my L1 button broke and I just never sent it back to get it fixed. I’ve just been re-mapping that button to the L2 (trigger) button instead.

Recently, my wife expressed interest in having a Steam Deck (she almost bought her own when they first came out), and she claimed she was perfectly content taking my old one, since she doesn’t game as much as me anyway. So I bought a fancy new HDR OLED-screen Steam Deck. It’s much more responsive than my first one. And the bumper buttons work! I forgot how nice it is to just play a game without re-mapping buttons first.

I’m just an enthusiastic gamer, raving about some of the games I’ve enjoyed. But I’m sure the developers of this game will be glad to hear that you’re interested.

I have not; although I have been warned that it’s not at all what it appears to be and that I should go into it blind for the best experience. So I’m assuming it’s going to be something like MiSide. It’s definitely on my list of games to play!

Oh wow, this was actually a thing.

I have absolutely no idea what it’s about, but it’s only $2 (90% off) and I’m a sucker for steep deals, so I couldn’t pass it up.

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
• Expeditions: A MudRunner Game
• Fear Effect Sedna
• Grim Dawn
• Keep Taking and Nobody Explodes
• RIDE 5
• REKA
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
• Old World
• Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand
• Crime Boss: Rockay City
• Moonstone Island
• Inkulinati
• Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip
• Venba

And I gifted Freedom Planet 2 to a friend.

The Winter Sale isn’t over until January 2nd, so I might buy some more games before it ends. Problem is, I own most of the games on the Steam front page, so finding new and interesting games is getting difficult.

My numbers seem low compared to a lot of people here, but I also own almost 4,000 games on Steam, so I don’t spend tons of time on a single game.

Also, here are my stats for 2024:

According to that first link, it costs $6.1 billion to $11.7 billion annually to run YouTube. Even if you segment that into niche video communities, it’ll still cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually to host it, if you get a decent amount of traffic.

This is why YouTube is a monopoly. Because they have the ridiculous amount of money to throw at a “free” video hosting site. Any other video host would crumble under the weight of YouTube’s level of traffic. That’s also why some others, like Nebula, require a subscription model to function. Or any movie/TV show streaming service. They can’t afford to host that stuff for free.

This is also why Google is so obsessed with cracking down on anti-ad software. That’s how they make the money that pays for YouTube.

I used to be big on Deep Rock’s Galactic, but I’ve hardly played it at all this year. The other dwarf game I played was The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.

Is it just me or does this not exist on Steam anymore? This SteamDB page just redirects me to the Steam homepage when I click on the game’s store page.

Yes, I was curious enough to click for more information. 😒

You guys don’t share your Steam Relay publicly and put it in a showcase on your profile?

/s… but I totally do that. I’m not ashamed of my gameplay.

EDIT: I just read the article and saw the mention of the “Dwarf” category. It’s maxed out on my spider graph, and I’ve only played 2 games with dwarves this year, out of 180 individual games I’ve played.

Considering Ubisoft is struggling to stay relevant after saying players should feel comfortable with not owning games anymore, poor sales with Star Wars: Outlaws, and the controversy over their upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows game, I’m sure they’re doing everything they can to draw people back to their games right now. Achievements bring some replayability to their old titles.

I didn’t even know Netflix had a games department, and I have a Netflix account. I’m assuming this is just another effort on their part for further enshittification of that service. Perhaps it’s finally time I unsubscribed from Netflix.

Ugh… I’m in that first category. I have no idea who Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are.

This doesn’t seem like it would work. Debris falling off the trains, dusty buildup, vibrations, rocks bouncing around the tracks; heck, even just wildlife crossing the tracks. So many things are gonna damage those panels if they’re just lying on the ground between tracks, and solar panels are extremely fragile.

I hope they have some sort of bullet proof glass or something over those panels. Probably going to need a special train to spray water over them to clean regularly, too.

I dunno about Swiss trains, but the tracks behind my house in America leave a thick black film on everything, and it’s very hard to clean by hand. I think they transport coal.

I inherited my childhood home and I’m still over 1,600 miles away from my mother. But she preferred her own childhood home on the other side of the country and moved there as soon as she divorced my dad. I’m still very close with my mother. Just not… physically.

I think it’s great for a ground-floor investment in a YouTube competitor. It draws more people to the platform, gets a chunk of money flowing up front to help boost the service, and they can always sunset the lifetime option if the site gets popular and revenue starts to get tight. As long as they continue to honor it for everyone who paid initially.

Like I said in my original comment, a Nebula subscription is only $6/mo. A lifetime access payment is over 4 years of subscriptions up front. That’s a nice chunk of change to help get them established.

I saw someone’s video about how Nebula works (I think Legal Eagle? He was advertising it hardcore on YouTube for a while) and the subscription service is how they pay content creators. He said it’s a more stable income than YouTube, where your videos earn advertising money based on trends and visibility. If you’re not YouTube famous (and the algorithm doesn’t make you visible), you’re not going to make any money on the platform. But Nebula gives you a more solid income, plus the freedom to make the content you want. No AI moderators flagging videos because it thought it detected the word “suicide” or something. No forcing you to include key words or pushing regular videos on a tight schedule to ensure the algorithm keeps recommending your channel.