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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Maybe, though if you think about it, the idea is basically:
    Hey, we borrowed all this money to buy up lots of companies. But rather than pay it back ourselves, we are going to put all of that debt on this one company we also bought (probably with some of that debt), because thay actually make money.

    It’s a shell game to allow Embracer to walk away with all the profits and never have to pay their investors back. If Asmodee manages to pay off the debt, that’s nice for them. Other than the fact that they will be hamstrung by servicing that debt, rather than re-investing in the company. If Asmodee folds and gets auctioned off in Chapter 7, that ends up having no material effect on the leadership of Embracer who made the decision to take on all that debt. Either way, Embracer is jettisoning all responsibility for the choices the management of Embrace made.

    This sort of leveraged debt buyout, loot the company, then jettison the debt tactic has been used over and over to destroy otherwise profitable companies in the name of short term profit for vulture capitalists.



  • While Chism may be a worthless leech, he isn’t completely wrong. Valve’s ownership of Steam does put it in a privileged position, which could be abused in a lot of anti-competitive ways. The fact that it isn’t doing that is really only because GabeN isn’t the same type of leech which Chism is. He’s what a lot of people seem to want, a benevolent dictator. That said, when he finally kicks the bucket, or gets tired and sells the company, the future direction of Steam would be an open question. There may be a very good argument for Valve to be put under the microscope of the FTC for possible anti-trust breakup.





  • My experience has been pretty similar. With Windows turning the invasive crap up to 11, I decided to try and jump to Linux. The catch has always been gaming. But, I have a Steam Deck and so have seen first hand how well Proton has been bridging that gap and finally decided to dip my toes back in. I installed Arch on a USB 3 thumbdrive and have been running my primary system that way for about a month now. Most everything has worked well. Though, with the selection of Arch, I accepted some level of slamming my head against a wall to get things how I want them. That’s more on me than Linux. Games have been running well (except for the input bug in Enshrouded with recent major update, that’s fixed now). I’ve had no issues with software, I was already using mostly FOSS anyway. It’s really been a lot of “it just works” all around.




  • Not really. Fallout 76 is the same sort of bland grind-fest you can find in any MMO. The main storyline is ok, but the world, crafting and just everything else about the game is designed to push you towards the normal MMO “grind this quest 10,000 times to improve your gearscore” gameplay. It also leans heavily on punishing you for not subscribing to “Plus”; so, imagine the weight problems you have in a normal Bethesda game, except now you also have weight limits in your one container at home. It is manageable, but it’s a pretty obvious ploy to convince you to pay for Plus.

    If what you really want is “Fallout, except I get to bring a friend instead of a worthless companion”, Fallout 76 isn’t really it. It’s probably worth playing with a friend just long enough to complete most of the main quest line; but, the late game is crap. You will hit a point where all you are doing is daily quests to grind some faction’s reputation. When you hit that stage, it’s time to move on.






  • Title needs to be “AAA Gaming is getting worse every year”.
    I’m getting tons of fun out of smaller games.

    The problem with AAA games is that we are going through a period of consolidation and contraction. This is just a normal business cycle and we’ll be back to companies throwing money at games in a few years. I’m reminded of an old comic (I think Far Side in the 90’s, but I can’t find it at the moment) which has a class staring at a black board with the following:

    Business Strategy 101:

    1. Convince Microsoft you are a threat
    2. Accept their buyout offer

    This has all happened before and it will all happen again. I doubt we’re staring down another video game crash like the 80’s, but things may slow down for a bit and we may go through a period of the major studios putting out more shovelware. Eventually, the economic situation will rebound and so will AAA games.