Sorry for being pedantic, but the only confirmed information in that article is “payment processors”. The author seems to just assume that this means credit card companies (what is a reasonable assumption, as said), but it does not sound like that part is confirmed…
Are there trustworthy sources that it’s VISA/MasterCard, or is this speculation?
I mean, I would not be surprised at all, since they have a history of misusing their power (iirc they were the reason OnlyFans nearly went SFW), but before calling names, I’d like to be certain.
This article has a screenshot listing some removed titles (and I think also a link to the original source): https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/07/valve-gets-pressured-by-payment-processors-with-a-new-rule-for-game-devs-and-various-adult-games-removed/
If you count DOSBox as emulation (what it definitely is - unlike WINE it actually emulates an x86 PC and peripherals):
I’ve played both on the Deck, and they both work great. (Btw: I did not use Settlers 2 as an example for my DOSBox setup guide by chance. I picked it because it is an amazing game and still fun nowadays.)
Signed Kernels are problematic for some users. While the distribution-supplied kernel binaries are fine for most users, there are always those who want to (or need to, due to hardware quirks or bugs) tinker with the kernel compile-time configuration, or the kernel source code itself…
In Physics we mostly used right-hand, but X-right, Y-up, and Z pointing towards the viewer.
But that’s details. The only important choice is between left- and right-handed, as that affects the signs in the cross product (and some other formulas - generally everything that cares about which rotation is considered positive).
Near-Mage. It’s a point-and-click adventure from the same studio that also made Gibbous, and set in the same world. However, the theme is much lighter. Gibbous was (while still a comedy) about cosmic horror. Near-Mage is fantasy.
While I definitely recommend the game, it is lacking a bit when it comes to riddles. Most point-and-click adventure games have lots of them, where you need to think, give up, and then just try random stuff until something happens. This is almost completely missing in Near-Mage… There is almost always a quest goal that directly tells you what to do - up to the point that situations that give you a choice are explicitly marked as such.
On the other hand, just like Gibbous, the game is beautifully drawn and animated, and all dialogues are fully voiced. The characters are likeable and - call me a furry if you want - really cute. What keeps me playing is mostly the world - there is always new stuff to discover, even in late-game, and the mix of fantasy and (what I assume to be) Romanian folklore is great.
Yep. One reason why those situations become less frequent over time is that one learns to avoid such designs. Thought process: “Sharing data across threads is annoying. So I’d rather avoid it. Maybe message passing can solve the same problem as well?”
I have to both agree and disagree here.
Disagree because it doesn’t look that bad.
Agree because there is a reason I haven’t used the Deck with a big screen in months.
Two things to add regarding question 1:
The Steam Deck GPU is optimized for the built-in screen, which has 1280x800 pixels. FullHD is more than twice the number of pixels. The GPUs fragment fill rate will therefore not be sufficient to play many games at FullHD native. The Steam Deck has built-in FSR upscaling though, so if you are not sitting directly in front of the screen, it will look OK-ish…
The second thing is refresh rate. On the deck itself you can set the screen refresh rate to 40 Hz. For many, many games the built-in GPU will not manage 60 FPS even at 1280x800, but it quite often manages to do 40, which still feels OK-ish.
Most external screens don’t support 40Hz though, so you will be stuck with either limiting your framerate to 30 FPS, or you will have to live with either tearing or unsteady framerate.
I now have run into the issue that I myself cannot play Minecraft on my Linux laptop, which is an ARM machine and the ARM Mali GPU does not support the OpenGL version that Minecraft requires. (It also needs some hackery, as the Java-written Minecraft uses some native code libraries.)
I’m now playing VoxeLibre instead, which runs mostly fine on my laptop.
This. So much this.
The “backlog” is not something to work through, it is a lesson to learn: Do not buy a game unless you have time and are motivated to play it that very moment. If you buy it to play it “later”, or “next week”, you very likely are not going to play it, and it is just wasted money.
(The same is true for books, by the way. And when it comes to books, I refuse to learn this lesson.)
As dumb as this sounds: Playing Ring Fit Adventure on the Nintendo Switch.
I play a custom training routine (or however that’s called in the English version of the game) four days a week that has active time of 17 minutes, and another custom routine that takes about 27 minutes active time plus at least two levels in adventure mode on the other 3 days of the week (what brings the active time on those days up to something around 40 minutes).
The 27 minutes routine is mostly for stamina, so it has relatively light exercises. The other routine is much more demanding, and meant to get my heart rate up and my muscles burning (I won’t go into details, that would be bragging…).
I have lost about 10 kg by doing this, and by no longer eating after 8pm.
However, this weight loss happened in the first couple of months after I started this. My weight has now been constant again for about a year.
What is stopping you from playing Minecraft itself on Linux?
I haven’t played it in a while, but it did work perfectly fine last time I tried it. It is written in Java, after all.
This is so fucking stupid, I can’t even.
For your mental health, have some reasonable arguments about Rust: https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Entwicklung-Warum-Rust-die-Antwort-auf-miese-Software-und-Programmierfehler-ist-4879795.html
Since it’s in German, here are the key points of the article (written from memory - the article is quite old, so I might misremember - best read the article yourself):
While I am not aware of any way to run custom software on the Steam Deck while it is on standby, you can drastically reduce the power drain if you shut it down fully instead of leaving it on standby. You can either use the “Power” menu after pressing the steam key, or long-press the power button to get the option to do so.
I would not say “lazy”.
There are a lot of bold promises in Unreal Engine 5 advertisements, that get taken up by publishers and producers - and then end up in the game budgets…
And then, near the end of the project, when it turns out that performance isn’t good because the advertisement promises have been a bit too bold, there is no money for optimization left…
Also, if I am allowed to do some absolutely shameless self promotion: Bus Simulator 21 is verified, and 18 is playable.
They only mention “payment processors”, not Visa, MasterCard, PayPal,… So, this does not answer which payment processor(s) are behind the push.