Demo now available for Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter on Steam
@Katana314@lemmy.world
member since 9 Jun 2023 23:20
posts
What are some cool/decent PC games that are not on Steam?
preview
Ew, not like Fortnite, I mean like indie launchers
comments
- on Rockstar had a mole in the union worker Discord server "for over two and a half years", GTA 6 company reveals during legal battle in c/games@lemmy.world · 2d ago
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on Xbox planning to lay off hundreds of employees this week | via Wario64 in c/games@lemmy.world · 2d ago
Yes, we heard. Isn’t this article several months old?
Oh, wait, it’s not.
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on ‘We were bored of traditional fantasy cliches’: inside Playground Games’ 10-year effort to revive Fable in c/games@lemmy.world · 4d ago
I mean, it’s fair to say it’s a gamble. We just often remember the successes. Team Fortress was known as an intense Quake-style game, and there were some reactions at the time of the TF2 trailer that Valve had lost the sauce. Bioshock followed the future cybernetic style of System Shock. Prey went from native Americans and aliens to being a child predator. wait, might’ve misremembered the last one.
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on Insomniac's Wolverine hits 1.9 million sales despite controversy, becomes Sony's top first-party game of 2026 in c/games@lemmy.world · 4d ago
Could be an echo effect. 90% of people don’t really pay attention to gaming media or hate trains - they just see a cool new game in stores while most of their attention is elsewhere.
The “echo” element would be that if most of their knowledge of gaming is from playing things, not reading about them, they may decide “Wow, Sony usually makes great stuff, but last one I bought wasn’t great. I may sit this out.” I sort of saw that with Assassin’s Creed Unity / Syndicate. Unity was shitty and released with terrible bugs, but Syndicate was sort of okay - and Syndicate was the one that saw lots of lost sales.
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on DSP clears Wolverine's motorcycle section without player input in c/games@lemmy.world · 4d ago
Ok, to be fair, this is one way-too-easy game in a general release cycle of really good hard ones. Let’s not stretch one bad point out to a huge trend.
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on DSP clears Wolverine's motorcycle section without player input in c/games@lemmy.world · 4d ago
Something I realized pertains to the first car crash.
It’s likely a LOT easier to animate if the devs don’t need to account for exactly how fast the player is slashing up tires. Plus, they don’t need magic tricks to account for a 1…N long stretch of road that accounts for however long the player needs to chase them down (eg, Uncharted 2’s fantastic train level)
So you can definitely see that laziness and a rushed development timeline would just shove out something that looks okay but has no actual gameplay because it’s a cinematic moment playing itself.
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on Xbox One’s Catastrophic DRM Is The Reason It Can Now Offer Disc-To-Digital in c/games@lemmy.world · 6d ago
I’d love to see more commitment to actual digital products that enforce consumer-driven digital ownership. GOG would be a good example, but anything could be if legislation forces any web product marked “Buy” to follow a certain standard.
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on Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter now on Steam in c/games@lemmy.world · 6d ago
Funny enough, even after playing the original, I felt that point was a difficulty spike too - and it encouraged me to write a guide that helps people figure out their strategy.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=35…
Might be worth a look to cover some basics. In spite of Japanese trends, the game isn’t actually that grind-heavy, and the series has a lot of fans that play on max difficulty, Nightmare, for pure challenge.
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on Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51% in c/games@lemmy.world · 6d ago
No matter how much pirates try to push the point by repeating it, I have never agreed with the sentiment that intellectual property is bullshit. Has it been co-opted by large businesses to stifle forward movement? Yes. Does it still have a place that can protect genuine creators? Also yes.
But it’s very hard to convince people of this position if they’ve never had the experience of investing (equivalent of) thousands of personal dollars or man-hours into a work where they had some investment, monetary or emotional, in its success.
The universal anti-state-violence argument is also so circular. Do we believe state cops should murder black people? Obviously not. Who do we think should stop them? How about internal affairs peacekeepers and court-owned marshalls. Oh, so now we’re back to promoting state sponsored violence against preferred targets?
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on Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter now on Steam in c/games@lemmy.world · 6d ago
I’ve noticed it’s a good method for Japanese writing. They acclimate you to silly, bashful moments, so that when the writing flexes over to the serious side, it’s a big contrast. Yakuza does a lot of that too.
Comparatively, sometimes when I try series like The Last of Us, or even Nier Automata, I sometimes have a hard time buying into the emotions because it’s been solely despair for a lot of the runtime.
That said, as I’ve gotten used to my own creative writing, I see Sky as having tremendous up-moments that give characters some really star moments, but also quite a lot of narmy, amateurish teenage writing especially with the fights, so it gets to be hit and miss.
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on Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter now on Steam in c/games@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026
Me, I’m gonna skip, not because I expect they did a bad job; the cinematic direction of the first game’s ending was definitely well achieved. I just recognize there’s a lot to play right now, and the time investment for a large JRPG doesn’t fit in my busy world.
I may end up watching reaction videos of the remakes of key emotional scenes though. A part of me is always going to be nitpicking preferences of the original, perhaps unfairly.
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on Denuvo sues anonymous game cracker ‘voices38’ over alleged DRM circumvention — seeks damages after Anti-Tamper protections bypassed in 26 games in c/games@lemmy.world · 16 Sep 2026
I think I understand the approach.
Pro-consumer data/service companies have privacy policies where they don’t share someone’s info. The sole exception is when that person has used those services to break the law. The suit may have the intent of establishing that fact so said services consider providing the user’s info.
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on Diablo V Teaser in c/games@lemmy.world · 14 Sep 2026
You joke, but I’ll admit, some of those genre formulas appeal to me because they encourage continued looting without an infinite level scale.
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on Raiding the past: Lara Croft relives her first adventure in Legacy of Atlantis in c/games@lemmy.world · 14 Sep 2026
Part of me is so upset how many games we’ve now seen get multiple remakes. Tomb Raider 1 is up to like its fourth version. Starfox has 3-4, Ocarina of Time has 3, Resident Evil 1 is likely to get a 3rd.
I just wish we were pushing for new experiences, especially from major studios capable of it. Everyone who sighs in disappointment anytime a games show announcement isn’t a sequel to a franchise they know is part of the problem.
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on PlayStation Ditched Hideo Kojima’s ‘Physint’ on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines in c/games@lemmy.world · 14 Sep 2026
Given what a person can do with $8 million and an index fund targeting the Fortune 500 over 5-7 years, breaking even is probably not their goal. They don’t even want projects to fall even near that level.
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on Wiki Documents at Least 44 Instances in Which Sony Says You Own Your Games in c/games@lemmy.world · 13 Sep 2026
What you may be thinking of is a clause regarding free accounts, so a digital tracker can’t remember you forever just because you never specifically requested being deleted; if the account holds some form of monetized ownership, then I don’t think the same rules apply.
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on Post and user deleted after finding out Ai was used in c/games@lemmy.world · 12 Sep 2026
I don’t necessarily think them withdrawing and going offline is strong proof that accusations against them are true. Sometimes people do socially withdraw when they think they’re being witch-hunted.
That’s not necessarily saying the accusations of AI were false, either. I only saw them briefly and am not great at picking out AI indicators. Just warning that we sometimes self-select signs of resistance as “My hypothesis is correct!”
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on Ubisoft begin removing Ubisoft Connect from Steam with the new Ubisoft Connect Services in c/games@lemmy.world · 12 Sep 2026
I’m not making a specific defense to Ubisoft, but I do get ticked by the generalized claim “The artist already got paid”, which is what I started to reply to. In many cases, it’s a disingenuous and misleading way to excuse piracy.
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on Ubisoft begin removing Ubisoft Connect from Steam with the new Ubisoft Connect Services in c/games@lemmy.world · 11 Sep 2026
Are you prepared to assert and prove that every single company over a certain revenue is exactly the same?
I’ve come into conversations with preconceived “large company slop” feelings towards a large brand, only for a person there to remark “My brother works for that company. He says they get great benefits, and are generally treated very well.”
Sometimes the bullshit is only on the consumer side, in which case it only makes sense to avoid them because you’re getting a bad product. If you insist the product is bad, and that you’re stealing the bad product that you somehow want, in order to support the mistreated employees, who are actually being treated okay, then maybe it turns out there’s not much logic behind the protest action of pirating?
I’ve seen pirates use the same generic excuse for midsize indie publishers that have no such reason to be hated - so it’s disappointing to see people don’t actually think those things through.
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on Ubisoft begin removing Ubisoft Connect from Steam with the new Ubisoft Connect Services in c/games@lemmy.world · 11 Sep 2026
I find he’s dramatizing the dichotomy, but I always found this arranged argument lacking.
Imagine you have a budding farmhand, a hard-working local, in mind when you go to the local farmers’ market to “support local farms”. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? Because the farm owner pays that hand a static salary. Their exact success or revenue off one extra bag of apples isn’t going into that hand’s pocket.
But it’s also related; that farmhand has better job stability, more chance of a bonus, less pressure to advertise well, if the farm is making a comfortable salary.
Now, the one part I’ll admit is this logic doesn’t work as well in corporate atmospheres; where CEOs fire as many people as possible, reward no one for good performance, and would rather fudge numbers than sell a good product.
But I’d also wager a lot of commenters shortcutting their logic to “company bad, pirate games” aren’t always taking a critical investigative eye to how companies treat their people. After all, “I get free game” is a strong motivator to believe a certain way.
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on Hideo Kojima's PHYSINT Game Moves to Xbox From PlayStation in c/games@lemmy.world · 10 Sep 2026
In other news, Microsoft Japan sold its first Xbox.
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on You don't actually have to be 1337 to use arch(install)btw in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 9 Sep 2026
I’m not great at Linux, did programming for most of my life in Windows, but so far I’ve gotten by for about a year in CachyOS (uses Arch). Having it work so well in gaming has been a strong motivator.
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on You don't actually have to be 1337 to use arch(install)btw in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 9 Sep 2026
“Hey, I tried the recommended GUI package manager and everything got messed up. Is anyone looking into this?”
“lol just usepacman -Syuin terminal”
“…k, guess I will, but I’m not about to recommend this to anyone else” -
on DON'T NOD is running out of funding and may cease operations on January 31, 2027 - IG News in c/games@lemmy.world · 6 Sep 2026
Oh - They made Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, too?
I played that game on PS+, without even knowing the central conceit. It was interesting for a while, but it does feel strange that one protagonist is using a sword while the other is just punching.
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on Stealth Games Are Flawed (And Hard To Fix) in c/games@lemmy.world · 6 Sep 2026
One issue I’ve found with stealth games is that the concept of a lone commando outsmarting and sneaking past 30+ guards is pretty unbelievable to begin with, unless the player controlling the commando is actually a tactical genius. So, games tend to have to play pretty unrealistically in order to make the result playable by average players (idiot guards, x-ray vision, generous interpretations of darkness, super movement abilities, etc)
Something I think could be further explored is a game that explores a mechanic of “Plausibility”. Stealth long accepted that guards would react to footsteps. Breath of the Wild including a noise meter helped me think “Hey, why is that? This is a big compound with a lot of people that’s been quiet for the past week - wouldn’t they assume the footsteps are their friends?”
Another concept that I think was explored in a very janky way but could use a second look is the game Shadwen. It’s not a great experience, but it has the interesting idea of combining stealth with Superhot and Braid - you get full control over time, including time only moving when you do, and can rewind instantly from a failure. The game even shortcuts “spotted” phases by giving guards instakill crossbows, so the remedy to being spotted is just to rewind. The fun, then, is in creatively engineering the one-shot stealth circumvention you had in mind, even if a mispositioning messed it up the first 6 times (because it only took 15 seconds to get a successful effort).
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on Upcoming Changes to XBOX Cloud Gaming [time limits] in c/games@lemmy.world · 4 Sep 2026
Now I’m wondering if this might not have happened if the RAM crisis never happened.
They have a lot of upkeep on the backend hardware so people can use these services. As server costs go up, it’s likely they’re now strongly motivated to kill the appeal of their own service. In another future where hardware costs were still reasonable, maybe they would’ve let it go.
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on Capcom Spotlight Set for September 16 Ahead of TGS 2026 in c/games@lemmy.world · 1 Sep 2026
As awesome as all these games are…this show will likely only spur me on the absence of Ace Attorney 7.
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on So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe in c/technology@lemmy.world · 30 Aug 2026
I haven’t maintained my personal website in ages. That, of course, means it loads instantaneously, in comparison to all these Library of Congress websites.
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on Is Old or New Call of Duty better? in c/games@lemmy.world · 29 Aug 2026
I’m personally a big fan of movement penalties in shooters, that prevent people from breaking their momentum in a flash, jumping or dropping instantly, etc. They feel slightly frustrating to control, but it comes back in how easy it is to aim at someone.
It’s really frustrating when you’ve outflanked someone, and have a strong gun against them, but their A/D crouching game is on point.
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on Despite Steam's concerning domination over the market, one of the things that I love about it is the ability to continually comment on other people's Steam reviews. in c/games@lemmy.world · 27 Aug 2026
It’s unfortunately very possible harmful orgs like tankies, the Taliban, and far-right incel groups got some of their start by recruiting on less-moderated forums like Steam. People who dive the depths find some terrible stuff.
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on Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything in c/games@lemmy.world · 24 Aug 2026
I don’t think we should prescribe to the idea differences in skill are AS great as riches would imply.
Elon Musk is not MILLIONS of times better at making cars than the next manufacturer. Most would say he’s worse.
What will also be relevant is the degree to which companies now subvert each other. If one person got really good at baking, he could take out an ad in the paper, right? Except adspot prices have gone way up because of rich companies running the same promo 1000x into people’s eyeballs about their frozen imported bread, even though this one guy might have something people actually want.
Or, look at game companies that all have competent products but are carefully managing their release date to avoid GTAVI.
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on Physical Video Game Software Dollar Sales Plunged to an All-Time July Low of Just $85 Million in the US — the Worst Total Since Tracking Began in 1995 in c/games@lemmy.world · 24 Aug 2026
The industry isn’t just “collapsing” through a series of failures. It mostly feels like the industry is choosing to repeatedly shoot itself in the face, while refusing to shut off the IV of “painkiller” made of powdered drywall and snake oil.
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on What are some cool/decent PC games that are not on Steam? in c/games@lemmy.world · 22 Aug 2026
Just finished the fourth case (each of them are at least about as long as standard Ace Attorney cases), and it turns out the creator has plans to keep going.
I imagine a lot of AA fans getting put off with the first case being as simple as someone being served spicy bread, but things have gotten progressively more intense, with some very tricky writing to justify them not going to the police.
Case 4
Up until case 4, you get hints of cold Missing Persons cases. By this case, you’re dealing with a literal murder, and there’s a cold expectation that the police would be unable to stop this person.
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on Demo now available for Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter in c/games@lemmy.world · 22 Aug 2026
I got a taste of that interconnection when I played Zero and really hated it. Renne’s one big scene felt like it was planned in Sky (or at latest Sky 3) and didn’t get in; it seemed to have nothing to do with the SSS, and I could see it was trying to start other new “character bricks” to throw later into Cold Steel. I never played those games, and generally think it’s a poor way to set them up.
It seems cool to pull Estelle and Joshua into later games for Avengers style teamups, but poor planning to make other games a part of someone’s (even a villain’s) arc.
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on Demo now available for Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
See, I think there’s plenty to criticize in the game, but I’m always cautious anytime someone strings together adjectives “worst / terrible” without much description/quantitiy behind it. Not to accuse you directly, but it’s the pattern I see when the “anti-woke brigade” wants to attack a game.
I’d definitely say Sky’s main villain is mustache-twirlingly generic, but that’s part of why they have so many supporting villains, like Loewe. I also thought a lot better of the core character development of the heroes, and how a mustache-twirling generic villain compels the best out of them. But I’d say Zero’s villains were just as generic, and comparatively never got the feeling of hero development out of them. It also felt like a few arc patterns were just being reused from Sky.
So for any third parties reading, I guess you’d have to consider whether you care more about good heroes, or good villains.
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on Demo now available for Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
I saw a front page about Saudi ownership, multiple game shutdowns, gen AI, etc, and figured I’d post something seeming a bit more positive/interesting.
The Sky duology is very much built such that you shouldn’t even watch trailers for the second if you haven’t finished the first. To put it bluntly, it’s a JRPG with turn-based combat, and everyone I have seen watch its conclusion has been immediately on board for its sequel - but that is a very large qualifier given how many people drop out due to some honestly quite slow, “soft” dialog early on.
I wouldn’t consider myself a Trails nut; I tried the three games in the series following this one, and they felt progressively worse and worse in terms of teenage Japanese anime writing. But, while this part of the saga holds a few of those issues, I do hold these early installments in high memory, and the remake has been very faithful as well as making use of a newer age of visuals (on the plus side, it doesn’t rely on DLSS, but on the minus, the environments are often pretty basic). I’m also guessing a lot of people skipped the first after seeing it was a duology, so now the option of playing both interrupted is on the table. While there is a third game, there’s no confirmation it’ll be remade, and it’s more like a smaller series of enjoyable extras anyway.
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on Fired Rockstar devs don’t want you to boycott GTA 6 but ask for support - Dexerto in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
Nobody’s claiming they have “zero” singleplayer campaign, but it’s possible it’s very short. A movie makes its trailers off of an hour and a half of content, so the campaign doesn’t have to be long to generate enough for trailers, especially if they can mix in shots of online campaigns.
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on Fired Rockstar devs don’t want you to boycott GTA 6 but ask for support - Dexerto in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
I’ve noticed that 5’s big online content cycles have all come with their own detailed trailers and “story” moments. I don’t know when those come in between missions, but it’s plausible some of the 6 trailer content comes from missions like those.
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on Compulsion Games pulls off management buyout and separates from Xbox in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
I decided to get this when I heard this! Always thought the game looked unique but didn’t know how I felt about buying from a pro-genocide company.
EDIT: I’ll admit, I’m a little surprised by the downvotes. Did people believe Microsoft was ever anti-genocide?
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on 'Who’s Deciding The Fate Of This Game?' The Secretive Process Of Getting A Game With Sexual Content On Steam in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
Rather than put us against invented enemies, I like to think a lot of Christians actually don’t care much about these subjects, and that the push specifically comes from Christofascism (rich people without a soul in their body using religion as a weapon to restrict and control people)
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on 2XKO Active Development Will End in December 2026 in c/games@lemmy.world · 21 Aug 2026
I mean, the hope is for something new; to be that one that creates a genre boom. I’m sure Among Us wasn’t the first party deception game.
I’m guessing at least some of the planning just came from developers who are fighting game fans that want to see a success there, rather than business planners.
But you’re also right that a lot of the audience has zero patience for trying a game where two characters face off with a big life bar in three rounds. Hundreds of thousands have been promised “It’s good for beginners now!” and had that promise broken with motion inputs and skill gaps.
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on Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything in c/games@lemmy.world · 20 Aug 2026
It reminds me of the manufactured hate on Taylor Swift.
Yea, she’s rich; but being rich alone, and using a plane, is not the direct cause of everyone’s misery. It’s often a red flag, yes, and can point to other things. We can argue they should pay more taxes, but even more we argue that they shouldn’t have intense control over our politics. And from what I see, Gabe and Swift don’t.
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on "Please Do Not Let This Vanish Into The Night" - Konami Is Terminating Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls in c/games@lemmy.world · 19 Aug 2026
The game originally existed as monetized F2P, much like many mobile games. They gave up on the freemium model, and wanted to sell it.
But, the practice of “Good, packaged game for $10” doesn’t really work on phones. Everything must be free or it doesn’t even get a look. That’s what Apple Arcade tried to resolve, tying to Netflix subscription model.
Not a fun answer and speaks to the dumb mobile crowd; but I certainly wish they could at least find some motivation to repack it into a $0.99 game for preservation purposes.
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on Cracked version of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls on PC runs better than official release - Variable in c/games@lemmy.world · 19 Aug 2026
For its implementation, generally Denuvo asks devs to call their check function somewhere in the core gameplay loop. From what I gather, many times this has happened, it’s been because the devs picked a function that’s happening much more than the check really needs.
That said, perhaps I’m to be proven wrong; but that often depends on a close look at the source code.
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on What are some cool/decent PC games that are not on Steam? in c/games@lemmy.world · 17 Aug 2026
This was how I first got Factorio, but the post is really about things you can’t discover on Steam.
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on What are some cool/decent PC games that are not on Steam? in c/games@lemmy.world · 16 Aug 2026
Funny enough, moving to Linux meant I discovered a lot of cool tools and games that I wouldn’t have otherwise…and then eventually learned they had Windows releases anyway, so it wasn’t strictly necessary to ditch MS for them. But beneficial anyway.
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on What are some cool/decent PC games that are not on Steam? in c/games@lemmy.world · 16 Aug 2026
I’ve been playing a lot of Gyakuten Live. It likely can’t be officially monetized because it infringes upon “Love Live School Idols” as well as stealing a few assets from the Ace Attorney games. But, the game has quite an impressive amount of production value, with many emotive character faces, a full custom soundtrack, numerous cinematics between cases, and a lot of artwork to help visualize the scenarios. It centers around what seem like relatively innocuous cases, like a missing treasure, or fraudulent tickets, but (aside from the intro case) tends to dive into some complex character emotions as the motive behind each incident.
The other game that made me think of posting this is Hytale, which looks to basically be an indie, non-Microsoft, pro-modding version of Minecraft.
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on Epic Games Store will get a Linux version sometime "soon" in c/games@lemmy.world · 14 Aug 2026
Can’t wait to get 20 Fortnite ads. And then an error message that Fortnite doesn’t run on Linux.
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on Aussies Will Now Have To Age Verify To Play R18+ Games On Xbox Series X/PC in c/games@lemmy.world · 11 Aug 2026
Something sad but interesting I’ve found is, if you ever explore some adult game spaces, you can find some people who are certain that liberalism, “DEI”, and “wokeness” are to blame for the rise of censorship.
It seems intentional that the efforts of censorship are hidden behind many finger-pointing centers of blame, rather than being associated to common political parties. Most politicians don’t want to be associated to raunchy imagery at all, and so they don’t make any direct statements, and communities end up drawing their red strings themselves.
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on Aliens: Fireteam Elite Is No Longer Playable On Switch in c/games@lemmy.world · 11 Aug 2026
I don’t even know how you’d legislate on this one.
The Switch is a weak console. The only way it was ever going to run games like this was via a cloud stream system. There was no possible solution for ensuring Switch owners could permanently play this game to the end of time.
I’d be curious if any Switch gamers were at all grateful for getting the chance to play it, or if the game was mischaracterized to them in this case, and they’re upset to lose it. Either way, I don’t for this game I don’t see a great solution, laws or not.
I’ll still support SKG in general. I wonder if it means a future game like this would need to be frontally advertised as “5 year access to this game via streaming”.
I don’t see how it’s some advanced technical process. It all comes down to the quandary of who to trust. If you don’t trust enough people, you don’t grow the movement. In this case, all it took was one figure to whom they overextended how much trust he was worth.