Nibodhika
@Nibodhika@lemmy.world
- Comment on Paradox Takes the Blame for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Sales Flop, Announces $37 Million Write-Down 2 hours ago:
Not replying to you but to that statement, they’re absolutely wrong. I’ve never finished Bloodlines, life keeps getting in my way and I keep losing my save file (this is not unique to Bloodlines, there are several other games that are in the same bag). My point is every few years I start a new save on the OG bloodlines, and that game still holds out great, sure graphics are outdated, but other than that it’s a great game even by today standards, and while I haven’t played bloodlines 2, I’m fairly confident from everything I’ve seen it’s a worse game by every metric that matters. These people think that graphics can overcome anything, but that’s one of the least important parts of the game.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 9 hours ago:
Sorry, I won’t go through your post history to reply to a comment, be clearer on the stuff you write.
I’m a software engineer, and if that’s how you code you’re either wasting time or producing garbage code, which might be acceptable wherever you work, but I guarantee you that you would not pass code reviews where I do. I do use copilot, and it’s good at suggesting small snippets, maybe an if, maybe a function header, but even then 60% of the time I need to change what it suggested. Reviewing code is harder than writing it yourself, even if I could trust that the LLM would do exactly what I asked (which I can’t, not by a long shot) it would maybe be opened to bugs or special cases that I would have to read the code, understand what it tried to do, figure out edge cases on that solution and see if it handled them. In short, it would take me much longer to do stuff via LLMs than writing them myself, because writing code is the easy part of programming, thinking on the solution and it’s limitations and edge cases is the hard part, and LLMs can’t understand that. The moment you describe your solution in sufficient detail that an LLM can possibly generate the right code, you’ve essentially written the code yourself just in a more complicated and ambiguous format, this is what most non technical managers fail to understand, code is just structured English, we’re already writing something better than prompts to an LLM.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 20 hours ago:
This is what you said:
Tbf AI tag should be about AI-generated assets. Cause there is no problem in keeping code quality while using AI, and that’s what the whole dev industry do now.
At no point did you mention someone approving it.
Also, you should read what I said, I said most large stuff generated by AI needs to be completely redone. You can generate a small function or maybe a small piece of an image, if you have a professional validating that small chunk, but if you think you can generate an entire program or image with LLMs you’re delusional.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 1 day ago:
No, the issue with “AI” is thinking that it’s able to make anything production ready, be it art, code or dialog.
I do believe that LLMs have lots of great applications in a game pipeline, things like placeholders and copilot for small snippets work great, but if you think that anything that an LLM produces is production ready and you don’t need a professional to look at it and redo it (because that’s usually easier than fixing the mistakes) you’re simply out of touch with reality.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
Again, I agree with the majority of what you’re saying, and yes, I think most of us might suffer from xkcd.com/2501/ but in this particular instance Linus only needed the terminal because of the bug, otherwise he should have been able to install it via the GUI, so the bug was even more disastrous to the UX.
I think that nanny features are okay on the GUI, which is exactly what happened here, but I should be allowed to do what I want on my system if I have the know how, and I’m okay with danger style messages to let me know I’m about to do something potentially dangerous, but I’m against being forbidden from uninstalling X (which is the short version of what Linus did).
Flatpacks/snaps/etc are great, and I agree that there should be a push for user space to be mostly there. Also I know it’s not for most users, but you might be interested in checking out NixOS which allows you to rollback almost anything, so while not a solution for the majority of people if this is something you have problems with and have the time and energy to learn Nix language it’s a great distro for having a system that’s almost impossible to break.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
I agree with lots of what you’re saying, this was a serious bug, it wasn’t the user’s fault, and users can’t be expected to learn bash.
My point is that the message tried to be as scary as possible, because if that message shows then something is about to uninstall critical components from the system, the bug here was that trying to install steam triggered that. I agree that it wasn’t Linus fault, but I think that most users would stop at that message, he didn’t because he thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t, he’s in that middle ground where he knows enough to be confidently wrong.
Let me ask you, how would you have given that message in a way that would make people stop?, remember that the message is valid, the bug was installing steam doing that.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
You’re completely missing the point. People can buy steam machines and use them as a PC without ever opening steam, or worse, use them as servers or parts of a cluster. If Steam Machines were sold at a loss they would , by definition, be cheaper than equivalent hardware, so companies would buy 10k of them to put into a warehouse to run stuff because it would be cheaper than buying the same thing from other places. This is what happened to the PS3, non-blocked systems can’t be sold at a loss because you can’t guarantee that whoever is buying it will use them for your intended purpose.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
Nope, the PS3 was just an example of why you can’t sell at a loss with an open platform. Selling at a loss was the central point of the discussion, if that flew over your head it’s fine, but don’t try to make it my fault that you jumped in the middle of a discussion about why Valve can’t sell at a loss and said:
The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can’t match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
Which implies that even with the Steam Machines being sold at a loss a ThinkCenter would have a best price/performance which is just impossible.
This is going in circles and bringing nothing constructive.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
It wasn’t a standard accept/continue/yes prompt, it wasn’t something that he could just press enter or something easy and continue without noticing, he had to have read the message to know what to do, it was something akin to:
WARNING The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you’re doing! … You’re about to do something harmful, if you’re sure of what you’re doing type the phrase “Yes, do as I say!”
The message couldn’t have been more clear about it. Plus most users wouldn’t need to use the terminal, he just happened to use the distro during the brief window that that bug existed.
As a Linux enthusiast I can definitely tell you I never encourage people to just type words in the magic box and get it over with, and always tell them to understand what they’re typing.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
Regardless, this is a thread about whether Valve could still make money selling at a loss, you stepped into it claiming they couldn’t compete in price/performance, which implies that they couldn’t compete even selling at a loss (since that was the central point of the discussion)
You’re the one that brought up Valve selling at a loss
I wasn’t, it was the person I’m replying to, the one I mixed out with you. Sorry for that, thought it was the same person.
you think anything under $800 would be selling at a loss
I never claimed that.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
I never said $800 would be selling at a loss, in fact I said that there’s a good possibility that they can sell it cheaper than 800 and still make a profit because they buy things in bulk. You were the first one who even mentioned it being profitable for them selling at a loss:
They could totally make money selling it at a loss.
Which is completely false, if they sold at a loss by definition they would lose money on each sale, and because it’s an open platform people would just buy the cheap hardware to be used for any project which would make Valve bleed money like Sony did with their PS3 until they closed the system.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
And then we could make money having people riding her. If you’re going to start a hypothetical scenario of Valve still being able to make money selling at a loss you can’t be angry that people are replying on the basis your premise is true.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
If they’re sold at a loss, by definition they have to be cheaper than anything sold at a gain with the same performance.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I don’t think so, I think a normal user would pause when the system asks him to type “Yes, do as I say” as that is clearly a sign that you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
If it’s sold at a loss like a console it would beat the price/performance of any other x86 chip on the market, which is why they can’t sell it at a loss, ergo my point.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that? Here’s a link on the same thread of someone building a similarly speck machine for 800 lemmy.world/comment/20649777 and that is without the controller. In case you haven’t noticed, RAM prices are a bit crazy at the moment.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k periphio.com/…/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming…
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Yes, that was my point, the top of what this should cost is the same as a prebuilt with similar specs since Valve buys stuff in bulk it should be cheaper than that.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
And the other one is 700, your point is?
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
This is the thing I’m replying to, emphasis on the prebuilt.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
But yeah, I don’t think the machine will cost the same as a prebuilt, but that’s the high end of the price range.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
It’s a lot more than that, it’s:
- Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
- Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
- Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
Now that you bought the components:
- Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
- Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
- Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
- Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
- Installing OS
- Installing drivers
- Installing Steam
- Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
- Comment on 4 days ago:
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Let’s talk wages.
Absolutely agreed, if every company had wages at the level Valve does it would be very good.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Facts people forget:
- Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
- Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
- There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
- Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
- Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
- Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
- The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
- Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 2 weeks ago:
Still, my point was about the price guess that the other guy made. Valve was very clear that it would be priced as a PC and not a console, consoles are around the 500 mark, so it would be at least 700 otherwise they would have mentioned aggressive pricing or something.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 2 weeks ago:
I think that was the right approach for the first controller. It is one of the worst controllers for traditional controller games, but it’s the best by a long shot for mouse driven games. So when you plug it somewhere that doesn’t have the correct drivers it’s more likely that you want to use it as a mouse than as a controller. There’s an open source driver for Linux (or at least there used to be), but I don’t think it ever got ported to Android since I guess it would require a rooted phone.