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Another problem is that physical is a red herring. You don't own modern physical games any more than you own digital ones, as the famous The Crew shitshow has demonstrated. It doesn't matter if you still have the fancy disc, if you can't even go past the main menu when the publisher decides to shut down the game. In the end DRM is the only deciding factor, not if the game is digital or physical.

I used the loose term "aggressive DRM" to mean any kind of DRM that can at some point in the future prevent you from playing the game.

In any case what I mean is that when you buy a digital game, if it is DRM free you own the game, and if it employs some of these DRMs you don't. And by "you don't own physical games any more than you own digital games" I mean that the same is true for physical games. If they have such DRM then you don't own them.

I bring the The Crew example because it is not so obvious to the casual person, once the servers were shut down you could not play the single player portions of the game either. And it's something I've even encountered IRL, when I chatted with friends about that fiasco, some were disappointed to learn that their disc was worthless. Of course none were expecting to be able to do multiplayer activities, but not even being able to play the single player campaign was unexpected to some.

I made the statement about DRM being the only deciding factor because I do think it is. And the examples you provided are examples of that, either straight up requiring a connection to play or requiring a download from the servers to get the content. That's what separates a game you own and a game that has been licensed to you.

In any case my initial comment was made because when these kinds of news are shared there is always the "that's why I buy physical" comment. Which IMHO is a false sense of security. Even while buying physical it is important to check what kinds of DRM are implemented in the game, because you might not actually own it either. And physical is not an airtight solution, specially since there is nothing stopping publishers from implementing such online only requirements in physical games (and some already do).

It doesn't apply to any situation with these kinds of aggressive DRM, like other games such as the latest Gran Turismo. Or games that don't come full on disc, the OG release of the Spyro trilogy comes to mind (thankfully that's been fixed).

In any case my point was for people to check each case before assuming physical is safe from publisher meddling. Since in many cases you don't own much more than a fancy installer in a pretty box.

The one just named "Half Life" is the definitive version now, the one that got the big update yesterday.

Source is the same messy version as it was before and they haven't touched it. Though it will still be in our libraries for legacy versions.

Valve themselves recommend you ignore Source exists now.

"Fixed screenshots not including Steam user interface elements." WTF? I thought that was a feature, not a bug. One of the things that really bugged me about screenshots on the Deck was Steam interface appearing on screenshots. I don't wanna have message notifications or whatnot appearing in my screenshots.

And here I thought they had finally fixed that.

Uh, not like I can think of any use case for having the UI show up, but if some people want it a toggle is perfect. I am happy and everyone is happy.

If anyone wants to play Doom with GZDoom and easy mod access, I've been doing that for a while via Luxtorpeda.

Add it to your compatibility layer list like you would ProtonGE, then choose the Luxtorpeda compatibility layer for DOOM. Once you launch it you can choose either straight up GZDoom or qZDL+GZDoom for easy mod management.

"Always on" and similar extreme DRM measurements I believe are more of an issue compared to physical vs digital media. DRM free digital copies for example can have way longer lifespans than a physical copy (potentially "infinite"). But as soon as you add the requirement for some company server to be up, the game has a hard expiration date. But that's an altogether different discussion.

I hadn't though much about your first point, it is true that specially the input devices can change the feel of the game drasticly. I suppose people with special interest will seek out some of the classic gamepad clones that are available nowadays, but most people will just play with the console default.

The biggest issue imho is digital-only games that have been delisted. I'm not to worried about people not being able to play them to relieve memories since pirating them will probably be easy enough. But pirating does defeat the whole point of collecting I assume. I guess people can still assemble a full collection of physical releases only. IDK how collectors of the 3DS are doing it right now after the closure of the digital store, for example.

I didn't think of that, TIL

Thanks for the heads up!

If you ask me, the Source version didn't include any QoL improvements or anything that might make the game more modern feeling.

The "upgrades" are mostly new textures and effects that bugged out half the time. Plus all the gameplay bugs that it introduced.

Even before the update most people were recommending the OG above the Source version, so it makes sense that they would update that one.

Thanks, that's a workaround for cheats at least. I'll try tinkering a bit more with the console when I get the chance, so we can mess around with the rest of the console features too.

Have you personally tried Boxtron or Roberta on the Deck? I briefly messed around with them a while back, but at least at that point it wasn't as simple as just installing them via protonUp-qt or WineCellar.

How does Legend play on the Deck? I've played the whole of the new trilogy and up to 3 of the old ones (all of them before I got the Deck). And I wanna get into that "middle trilogy" too, the Deck sounds like a nice fit for those games.

I've been able to trigger the on screen keyboard when naming a save game, but I've had no luck with the console. How did you manage to trigger the on screen keyboard in that case?