November 2024 PCG Article Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

That time Vivendi tried to shut down Valve....

A summer intern once saved Valve from a near-fatal lawsuit after a publisher 'decided to go World War 3' on it, and it all hinged on one email

"The company was pretty close to going bankrupt, I was pretty close to going personally bankrupt⁠—we went all in, there was no money left"

www.pcgamer.com

TLDR: Vivendi decided to teach Valve a lesson, put them out of business and steal the Half-Life IP. As part of the lawsuit, Vivendi sent piles of Korean documents. Valve just happened to have a native Korean speaker as a summer intern who discovered an email where Vivendi was ordering the destruction of documents...

 

[ZedClampet]

Nvidia says its surprisingly high $3.3B gaming revenue is expected to drop but 'not to worry' because next year will be fine *wink* RTX 50-series *wink*

Not just an AI company, then.

www.pcgamer.com

What's really disappointing is that they intend to provide gamers with GPUs that can't run AI properly, for which you need at least 12 GB of VRAM to get the best results. But adding VRAM would cut into their huge margins if they didn't raise the prices, so they keep the tech crippled, despite calling themselves an AI company now.

I THINK the real reason is that they don't want people to be able to run AI on their own systems, instead having to rely on the data centers to process it. Data centers are their main customers now.

 

[DXCHASE]

Elon Musk might officially be the best Diablo 4 player in the world: 'So many life lessons to be learned from speedrunning video games on max difficulty'

This ranks as his greatest accomplishment as far as we're concerned.

www.pcgamer.com

First off, there is more than 1 leaderboard in Diablo. He tops 1 of those many leaderboards.

sigh.... i do hate to see it. First of all, the "record" he holds isnt hard at all to do and if you have lots of money you can buy the perfectly rolled gear for every armor/weapon slot to get this record.

Hes also using a build thats terribly OP and that the loadout is being used by the same 300 people before him on the leaderboards (but with slightly less good gear)

The game also has a PVP leaderboard (a very very very underused part of diablo 4) and something i havent stepped in since season 1 because theres really no point to it. Thats what this record he has feels to me.

"Teaches you to see the matrix, rather than simply exist in the matrix". Yea Musk, its easy to act like youre above the matrix because you can literally buy the matrix or, better yet, be the evil mastermind behind it.

I actually wanna play Diablo 4 less knowing this dude plays it like he does.

 

[ZedClampet]

Elon Musk might officially be the best Diablo 4 player in the world: 'So many life lessons to be learned from speedrunning video games on max difficulty'

This ranks as his greatest accomplishment as far as we're concerned.

www.pcgamer.com

First off, there is more than 1 leaderboard in Diablo. He tops 1 of those many leaderboards.

sigh.... i do hate to see it. First of all, the "record" he holds isnt hard at all to do and if you have lots of money you can buy the perfectly rolled gear for every armor/weapon slot to get this record.

Hes also using a build thats terribly OP and that the loadout is being used by the same 300 people before him on the leaderboards (but with slightly less good gear)

The game also has a PVP leaderboard (a very very very underused part of diablo 4) and something i havent stepped in since season 1 because theres really no point to it. Thats what this record he has feels to me.

"Teaches you to see the matrix, rather than simply exist in the matrix". Yea Musk, its easy to act like youre above the matrix because you can literally buy the matrix or, better yet, be the evil mastermind behind it.

I actually wanna play Diablo 4 less knowing this dude plays it like he does.

Elon's nuts, but he's a nut who's changing the world. Lot's of people talk about doing that, but he's actually doing it. I'll give him credit for that.

I'm not into politics, so he doesn't bother me the way he bothers a lot of people. All politicians and political parties are bad, so as long as we still have a democracy and the 1st Amendment, I'm fine with whatever. Get rid of either of those two, and I'll take up arms. But that seems highly unlikely, so I'm going to worry about other things...

 

[Pifanjr]

Steam has changed its policy on DLC content and season passes, so now players are entitled to proper compensation if future plans fall through: 'Customers will be offered a refund for the value of unreleased DLC'

The rules have changed.

www.pcgamer.com

This is nice. I've always considered Season Passes a bit shady because you often have little to no idea what you're actually paying for, even more so than with regular pre-orders.

I'm curious what prompted Valve to make these changes now. I've seen a general sentiment that Valve is doing this to protect their users, but I'm wondering if they're just trying to avoid getting sued or if they're responding to changes in legislation somewhere. Maybe I'm too cynical though.

 

[ZedClampet]

Steam has changed its policy on DLC content and season passes, so now players are entitled to proper compensation if future plans fall through: 'Customers will be offered a refund for the value of unreleased DLC'

The rules have changed.

www.pcgamer.com

This is nice. I've always considered Season Passes a bit shady because you often have little to no idea what you're actually paying for, even more so than with regular pre-orders.

I'm curious what prompted Valve to make these changes now. I've seen a general sentiment that Valve is doing this to protect their users, but I'm wondering if they're just trying to avoid getting sued or if they're responding to changes in legislation somewhere. Maybe I'm too cynical though.

I believe this is due to several indies setting up season passes. In this way they were able to presell content, which is typically not allowed except for very well established companies, but there was an exception made for season passes and games that release in chapters. This is removing that exception and also giving Valve the right to issue refunds on failed promises, which is something that could certainly end up some day in a law suit, but is also just good business practice.

I can't recall a time when Valve has screwed customers over, but sometimes it seems that way when publishers do it and Valve has no recourse. Now they can do something about it.

 

[Zloth]

You'll be even safer from this kind of thing if you wait for the DLC to show up before buying it.

 

[DXCHASE]

Elon's nuts, but he's a nut who's changing the world. Lot's of people talk about doing that, but he's actually doing it. I'll give him credit for that.

I'm not into politics, so he doesn't bother me the way he bothers a lot of people. All politicians and political parties are bad, so as long as we still have a democracy and the 1st Amendment, I'm fine with whatever. Get rid of either of those two, and I'll take up arms. But that seems highly unlikely, so I'm going to worry about other things...

Personally, hes not changing anything. Hes just another rich capitalist using his non-deserved money to buy his way into everything including politics on the back of others ideas, not his. Hes never invented anything. Everything he owns or is in charge of are other peoples ideas.

But i agree with the second parts sentiment 100% lol

 

[ZedClampet]

Personally, hes not changing anything. Hes just another rich capitalist using his non-deserved money to buy his way into everything including politics on the back of others ideas, not his. Hes never invented anything. Everything he owns or is in charge of are other peoples ideas.

But i agree with the second parts sentiment 100% lol

My last statement on this subject is that ideas and money count for something, and he's changed many things. Only yet another grumpy socialist can't admit to that.

 

[ZedClampet]

Mods, can we excise this conversation starting with the link to the Musk article? I don't need to hear the ramblings of hatred on this site. They (political whackos) do this all across the web. We don't need it here, too.

@Colif @Kaamos_Llama @Frindis

 

[Frindis]

It can stay, but this is not a site for deep political or religious discussions, so we need not dwell on such topics further. If it is gaming-related with a political or religious in-game figure (like with the debate around Ubisoft and "samurai" Yasuke), obviously it is different, but we need to tread cautiously even then.

 

[DXCHASE]

My last statement on this subject is that ideas and money count for something, and he's changed many things. Only yet another grumpy socialist can't admit to that.

I gotta come back with somethin if the insinuation of me being a grumpy socialist or a "political whacko" is gonna be said by an Elon fan . I dont like the guy and i can state that and it doesnt mean im spouting hatred. I didnt give any more info into how i feel about him until i saw the replys to my post.

It can stay, but this is not a site for deep political or religious discussions, so we need not dwell on such topics further. If it is gaming-related with a political or religious in-game figure (like with the debate around Ubisoft and "samurai" Yasuke), obviously it is different, but we need to tread cautiously even then.

Sorry if it went that way, it wasnt my intention and if anything needs removing, thats fine!

And, to bring it back to a gaming discussion, I know the game Elon is playing and how he got his character, within reason, and i feel as an avid D4 player i can speak on someone like him topping a derivative leaderboard in a game that is extremely dependent on having perfectly rolled gear that is (usually) only obtainable through buying it. Or he couldve put massive amounts of hours and have amazing RNG which would be kinda sad knowing the richest man in the world is spending most of his days grinding D4.

Hey, if he comes out with somethin proving he farmed all his gear like pics/vids of what hes wearing in his runs, i stand corrected and hes gotta know people are going to be suspect about how hes at the top of a games leaderboard being the richest man in the world. So more info on how he got to that spot is, imo, needed.

Im still going to play D4, at least until POE 2, having put in sometime today. Id like to see Elon get a rogue or any of the other 5 classes to that point because the current state of the game wont allow that. Theres literally no other class other than spiritborn that can clear the highest level of this very specific activity that Musk has the number 1 spot in.

 

[Frindis]

@DXCHASE I'm not sure what build he is running in D4, but I have watched a couple of the D4 top streamers playing super broken builds doing trillions of damage. Someone did the job of data mining and testing out, but it was not Elon Musk. I believe it was Rob2628 who made that ludicrous Spiritborne build doing the highest damage ever recorded in the game as far as I know.

As long as you follow a build on Maxroll, Icyveins, or Fextralife and as you pointed out have good gear, it is amazingly easy to do insane damage and fly past people who don't follow broken builds. Those builds were never intended, but Blizzard has a history of either having too low damage in builds *druid cough* or too much.

I remember playing a Blood Lance Necromancer build in Diablo 3 and that build would rip through most things in it's path. Not the most efficient at the higher tier grifts, but for grinding legendaries/mats, it was both fun and super fast. I just put a spell on the numlock key and could relax while teleporting around.

I also believe it was Rob2628 who found out how to use blue items for specific builds in D3 which made it possible to push some insane high grifts.

 

[Pifanjr]

Balatro's mobile release has managed the almost impossible task of knocking Minecraft from its long-maintained top spot on the charts

The power of Jimbo!

www.pcgamer.com

Maybe I should put Balatro on my Christmas wish list. So far I only had socks on there.

 

[DXCHASE]

Here's what to expect from the first patch for Stalker 2

Fixes for crashes, more coming in the next week.

www.pcgamer.com

Well, i wasnt wrong about the absurd respawning of people in the game. This article covers the notes of the whole patch, but one of the biggest issues is the games NPC software. Its respawning enemies when its not supposed to.

Some of these changes might make me want to start a new run but im glad to see they are tackling it in a timely manner.

 

[ZedClampet]

Half-Life 2 testers horsing around with physics props 'to make the 47th playthrough of the game more interesting' probably had no idea it would result in Gabe Newell launching a garden gnome into space 16 years later

Cratebaby lives.

www.pcgamer.com

I'll never forget Guido finding a solitary cinderblock that could be picked up in Dying Light 1 and carrying it everywhere. He was even killing zombies with it by throwing it at them. After at least an hour or so of this, tragedy struck when the cinderblock careened off of a zombie and landed in a river, and we weren't able to get it back

 

[Zloth]

We just beat a PC gaming villain: 2K removes its pointless, game-breaking launcher from its entire catalogue

Looking at you, Ubisoft and EA.

www.pcgamer.com

Let the joyous news be spread
the wicked old launcher at last is dead!

OK, now I need to go buy some Ding Dongs.

 

[Colif]

Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again'

Musk says he's going to launch an "AI game studio" at his xAI startup.

www.pcgamer.com

Unexpected entry into games industry... guess he can afford it.

 

[Colif]

The best gaming PC in 2021

Make one of the best gaming PCs the center of your universe.

www.pcgamer.com

Make your own, if you research every part before it goes in, you can make one cheaper than most of these

 

[BeardyHat]

The best gaming PC in 2021

Make one of the best gaming PCs the center of your universe.

www.pcgamer.com

Make your own, if you research every part before it goes in, you can make one cheaper than most of these

I can see the argument against building your own, for me, it's fun, for others, not so much.

In the past 5 years, I've had two friends buy prebuilts and then for my brother in law, I've built researched and built one specifically for photo editing. In either case, my friends didn't want to spend their time researching and didn't want to pay me to research, buy and build, so it was just easier to buy something off the shelf.

Not to mention, there's plenty of snags you can hit building your own. With the machine I built for my Brother in Law, after getting it assembled, I had no power issues that took me a bit of time to work out. Lucky I have the know-how to figure it out and not be scared or frustrated with those issues, but most people do not and would rather not have to face those issues and the time sink of figuring them out or paying someone else to do it.

 

[Zloth]

The best gaming PC in 2021

Make one of the best gaming PCs the center of your universe.

www.pcgamer.com

Make your own, if you research every part before it goes in, you can make one cheaper than most of these

Or go between. Stay on those sites, go to the custom PC configuration, check reviews of the parts they offer to see if they seem reasonable, put together what you want, and save it. Then do the same at another store. Then one other. Pick the one you want and have them build it. It's not the best of both worlds, but it's the kinda good of both worlds while only having to deal with the kinda bad of both.