PCG Article Some great PC Gamer articles today (2/2/23)

[ZedClampet]

Dwarf Fortress releases sales figures since Steam release showing 46,000% increase in earnings
I love it when deserving people hit the grand slam. Sometimes I get emotional just thinking about it. What a great success story.

Nobody's selling classic games on Steam the right way
"What we do need is for the publishers responsible for these semi-secret releases to dare to imagine we're interested. Heck, we just need them to imagine an audience at all. "

Low effort marketing produces low sales, essentially.

An error in Samsung's 980 Pro firmware is causing SSDs to die. I'd check your drive right now tbh
"If you're rocking a Samsung 980 Pro in your gaming PC, it's time to update or it might die in front of your eyes. "

Personally, if I had a Samsung anything in my PC, I'd be worried about it. If Samsung made a roll of duct tape, it would probably catch fire just sitting in a drawer.

Meta lost more than 4 billion dollars on the metaverse in the last financial quarter
AKA Facebook, where you can only assume all these people you don't know who send you friend requests actually went to high school with you. I can't decide whether I got more pleasure from the Dwarf Fortress story or this one.

NASCAR bans real-life wall-riding: 'We will penalize for that act going forward'
As someone who plays Forza Horizon competitively, this produced an "Oh God, it's actually real, and it actually works" moment. Congrats to the Forza physics engine, I guess.

"Chastain's dash around Turns 3 and 4 at Martinsville Speedway last October made for an enthralling finish as the No. 1 Chevrolet gained five positions in one set of corners, earning enough points to advance to the Championship 4,"

Yep. That's it...

Dungeons & Dragons has walked back its huge OGL mistake, but the damage is already done
Where OGL stands for "Open Gaming License". This has been a bit of a disaster.

Amnesia: The Bunker delayed into May after a 'tough winter'
Hoping for good things for this game after Rebirth flopped. This one has guns in it, so they have a chance...

The February PC game releases and events you should know about
Hogwarts Legacy, Kerbal 2, and Sons of the Forest are the ones discerning gamers should care about (shut up), except that there's no way Son's of the Forest is actually going to launch on time. They haven't so much as tweeted about the game since August.

 

[Pifanjr]

Dwarf Fortress releases sales figures since Steam release showing 46,000% increase in earnings
I love it when deserving people hit the grand slam. Sometimes I get emotional just thinking about it. What a great success story.

Makes you wonder whether the addition of graphics made the game worth that much more or that it was too hard to find the donate button on the Dwarf Fortress site.

Nobody's selling classic games on Steam the right way
"What we do need is for the publishers responsible for these semi-secret releases to dare to imagine we're interested. Heck, we just need them to imagine an audience at all. "

Low effort marketing produces low sales, essentially.

I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think the writer makes a good point that talking about these games as if they only have value for nostalgia/historic reasons is really unnecessary.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

An error in Samsung's 980 Pro firmware is causing SSDs to die. I'd check your drive right now tbh
"If you're rocking a Samsung 980 Pro in your gaming PC, it's time to update or it might die in front of your eyes. "

Personally, if I had a Samsung anything in my PC, I'd be worried about it. If Samsung made a roll of duct tape, it would probably catch fire just sitting in a drawer.

For a lot of people Samsung is to SSDs as Seasonic is to PSU's. It's a name everyone knows is good and they've been the best in class for a long time.

Its not necessarily true, they are good but they are also overpriced because they know their own reputation and have been able to get away with it for a few years.

 

[Frag Maniac]

The February PC game releases and events you should know about
Hogwarts Legacy, Kerbal 2, and Sons of the Forest are the ones discerning gamers should care about (shut up), except that there's no way Son's of the Forest is actually going to launch on time. They haven't so much as tweeted about the game since August.

Atomic Heart and possibly Deliver Us Mars and Hogwarts Legacy are the only ones I might be interested in. I'm a bit disappointed they aren't using Russian accent voice overs for Atomic Heart, but the gameplay looks like it could be interesting.

 

[ZedClampet]

For a lot of people Samsung is to SSDs as Seasonic is to PSU's. It's a name everyone knows is good and they've been the best in class for a long time.

Its not necessarily true, they are good but they are also overpriced because they know their own reputation and have been able to get away with it for a few years.

I have a bad opinion of Samsung that is mostly unrelated to PC. My dad remodeled his kitchen and went with all Samsung appliances. Out of the 3 appliances, 2 of them didn't last 3 years before needing major repairs and the other one managed to make it to 4 years before breaking down. He continued to have problems with them after the repairs and ended up replacing all of them with another brand.

On PC I've had two Samsung external SSD's fail within the first year (the second one was a warranty replacement for the first.

So yeah, I'm not a fan.

I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think the writer makes a good point that talking about these games as if they only have value for nostalgia/historic reasons is really unnecessary.

Especially given that there have been a lot of retro games that went mainstream in the last few years.

Makes you wonder whether the addition of graphics made the game worth that much more or that it was too hard to find the donate button on the Dwarf Fortress site.

Most people find it hard to find the "donate" button no matter where you put it.

But the graphics make a huge difference for me. I haven't actually bought the game, but I plan to.

But back to the donate button, I suspect there are a lot of people who just don't donate for a variety of reasons, but they are used to using Steam and probably jumped at the chance to pay for the game.

I can't quite explain why, but I've used the free Paint(dot)net program for many years and never donated, but then I found it in the Windows store and paid for it even though I don't use the Windows store version because you can't mod it. I just paid for it as an unofficial donation.

 

[mainer]

Meta lost more than 4 billion dollars on the metaverse in the last financial quarter
AKA Facebook, where you can only assume all these people you don't know who send you friend requests actually went to high school with you. I can't decide whether I got more pleasure from the Dwarf Fortress story or this one.

Anything that helps destroy the Death Star, or better known as Metaverse is always good news.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I have a bad opinion of Samsung that is mostly unrelated to PC. My dad remodeled his kitchen and went with all Samsung appliances. Out of the 3 appliances, 2 of them didn't last 3 years before needing major repairs and the other one managed to make it to 4 years before breaking down. He continued to have problems with them after the repairs and ended up replacing all of them with another brand.

On PC I've had two Samsung external SSD's fail within the first year (the second one was a warranty replacement for the first.

So yeah, I'm not a fan.

That sucks. I've had the opposite experience, had more than 10 Samsung devices TV's, Tablets, SSD's hard drives, Monitors and phones over the last 15 years. The only ones that aren't working now are the TV my kid pulled off of the side onto the floor last year and a Galaxy S3 I dropped screen down on some gravel 7 or 8 years ago.

Have to put it down to my positive vibes. Stop negging on Sammy, man, and he'll see you right

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I have a bad opinion of Samsung that is mostly unrelated to PC. My dad remodeled his kitchen and went with all Samsung appliances. Out of the 3 appliances, 2 of them didn't last 3 years before needing major repairs and the other one managed to make it to 4 years before breaking down. He continued to have problems with them after the repairs and ended up replacing all of them with another brand.

On PC I've had two Samsung external SSD's fail within the first year (the second one was a warranty replacement for the first.

So yeah, I'm not a fan.

My only experience with Samsung is with their phones. Their phones are great. They're pretty much the industry standard for Android phones. But I don't think I've ever used any of their other products. Maybe phones are the only thing they're good at.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

To be fair i've never had any of their appliances, but anything with a screen worked ok, touch wood obvs.

 

[ZedClampet]

That sucks. I've had the opposite experience, had more than 10 Samsung devices TV's, Tablets, SSD's hard drives, Monitors and phones over the last 15 years. The only ones that aren't working now are the TV my kid pulled off of the side onto the floor last year and a Galaxy S3 I dropped screen down on some gravel 7 or 8 years ago.

Have to put it down to my positive vibes. Stop negging on Sammy, man, and he'll see you right

I don't know about my Dad, but I've had other Samsung components, appliances, etc that have been fine, but I don't buy them if I can avoid it. It's probably just been bad luck on those 2 SSD's. My dad's appliances, though. That's harder to explain.

 

[ZedClampet]

Anything that helps destroy the Death Star, or better known as Metaverse is always good news.

WTH is going on with his ears when he smiles? It's true. Aliens are among us.

 

[Brian Boru]

(shut up)

Who, us? Have you forgotten where you are?
Now… where did I put that Rude Awakening shortcut?

Nice list, thanks

Nobody's selling classic games on Steam the right way
"What we do need is for the publishers responsible for these semi-secret releases to dare to imagine we're interested. Heck, we just need them to imagine an audience at all. "

Low effort marketing produces low sales, essentially.

Good article re Steam experience. But is Steam the place for retro titles? I wouldn't have thought so, surely GOG would be first port of call if you want to max your chances of an old game working on current systems, and having the last patch already applied, the expansions bundled in, etc.

For the much bigger casual game market, Steam is an afterthought—sort of 'may as well stick it up there for chance of some extra sales'. For mobile games, Steam isn't a player as far as I know.

Retro would be best served by coalescing around a retailer which will cater to their unique needs.

PS Samsung fanboy here too, have had good experiences with various tech bits.

 

[Zloth]

Now… where did I put that Rude Awakening shortcut?

Right here:

View: https://youtu.be/IgvuS88FPD4?t=74

 

[ZedClampet]

@Kaamos_Llama and @Brian Boru

Just for the record, Samsung has a 1.05 out of 5 rating with the Better Business Bureau. For comparison purposes, Comcast, one of the most hated companies in the world, has a 3.12 out of 5 rating. That remarkable 1.05 rating comes from 1242 reviews. I don't think I've ever seen anything anywhere rated more poorly than Samsung.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

@Kaamos_Llama and @Brian Boru

Just for the record, Samsung has a 1.05 out of 5 rating with the Better Business Bureau. For comparison purposes, Comcast, one of the most hated companies in the world, has a 3.12 out of 5 rating. That remarkable 1.05 rating comes from 1242 reviews. I don't think I've ever seen anything anywhere rated more poorly than Samsung.

Yea but according to @Brian Boru they hate Steam as well. So what do they know ?

Seriously, didnt have any idea how much Samsung stuff I'd bought over the years until I counted them all up. Most of the time I'll read a lot of reviews and get whatever I can find that seems closest to what I want for the price I want to pay. Seems like a lot of the time thats been a Samsung thing.

 

[Brian Boru]

Better Business Bureau

BBB, hah! I had dealings with them over a decade ago re our biz—hugely unimpressed, 1 out of 5

I don't think I've ever seen anything anywhere rated more poorly than Samsung

Some BBB ratings:
1.04 Microsoft
1.14 Apple
1.18 Amazon
1.11 Meta [FB]
1.15 Alphabet [Google]

BBB ratings are a bad joke.

 

[ZedClampet]

BBB, hah! I had dealings with them over a decade ago re our biz—hugely unimpressed, 1 out of 5


Some BBB ratings:
1.04 Microsoft
1.14 Apple
1.18 Amazon
1.11 Meta [FB]
1.15 Alphabet [Google]

BBB ratings are a bad joke.

BS. BBB ratings are not a bad joke. Last night was the first time I'd looked at them and I only looked at two. I haven't looked at them enough to adjust them, but having worked in the survey/ratings industry for awhile, I can tell you that they are valid even if the scale is incredibly off. Certainly people rating companies at BBB are having problems with that company, so you expect very low scores. You could easily adjust the scores to account for that (but I would need a lot of scores and to brush up on the process in order to do that).

But without doing that, you can still make a fairly good judgement call about a company, and given that I looked up a handful of other companies and, combining with your list, Samsung has the second worst rating (and I suspect that on an adjusted scale that it would be far below most of the other ones).

Samsung is not a good company. Sorry.

 

[Brian Boru]

BBB ratings are not a bad joke

Are you aware ratings were bought and paid for? Maybe still are, I haven't checked as it's a waste of time. Companies I listed didn't pay the fees, because they know full well BBB is worthless. If BBB's turned 180 since I did my deep dive into them, then great. But with the top 5 US companies rated rubbish, it's very clear to me BBB is still the rubbish it's always been.

I'm not going to get into this any further, so parting shot—read this:

Slammed by the government, A-rated by the Better Business Bureau

A CNNMoney investigation finds that the Better Business Bureau's respected rating system is seriously flawed.

money.cnn.com

 

[mainer]

Relating to the Samsung issue, I've never used any of their products outside of SSDs and my Galaxy S5 (which is over 10 years old) and I've never had an issue with any of them. My current gaming PC (7/2019) has a Samsung 1TB 860-Pro for a "C" drive, and my backup PC (my previous gaming PC from 9/2016) has a 512 GB Samsung 850-Pro for its "C" drive, and I've never had any technical issues with either of them. So I can't complain about a company whose products I've used that have never failed. Maybe I was just lucky, but it seems like Samsung always has at least one SSD in any PCG article that lists the best of SSDs.

While on the topic of SSDs, would I see a noticeable increase in data transfer if I replaced my current SSD with a NVME SSD? I'm thinking strictly gaming benefits. Maybe I should post this over in the hardware section (?), but it seemed relevant to post here, as I've been thinking about possible upgrades to a nearly 4 year old gaming PC.

WTH is going on with his ears when he smiles? It's true. Aliens are among us.

Definitely not human. Possible alien infiltration, or maybe an early prototype android.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

While on the topic of SSDs, would I see a noticeable increase in data transfer if I replaced my current SSD with a NVME SSD? I'm thinking strictly gaming benefits. Maybe I should post this over in the hardware section (?), but it seemed relevant to post here, as I've been thinking about possible upgrades to a nearly 4 year old gaming PC.

You won't notice anything for gaming over SATA. Next time you need more storage space grab an NVME drive and you'll be set. Direct storage is coming to games and it will be closer to noticeable once a lot start using it, but a while yet I would think. Toms did some testing the other day and it looks like a gen 3 drive will do just fine for now, all depends on pricing and whats available when you do decide to buy.

Maybe just dont get a Samsung one

An error in Samsung's 980 Pro firmware is causing SSDs to die. I'd check your drive right now tbh

Update or say goodbye to your Samsung SSD. If only that was the only issue affecting its drives today, but...

www.pcgamer.com

Puget Abandons Samsung 990 Pro SSDs Over Reliability Concerns

Puget is switching primarily to Sabrent SSDs in its systems.

www.tomshardware.com

Seems like theyve dropped the ball on their latest drives. Theyve been great for years before this as you say.

 

[Brian Boru]

maybe an early prototype android

What? That hearing focused in part on FB's data, but you guys didn't recognize Data from TNG?

 

[ZedClampet]

Retro would be best served by coalescing around a retailer which will cater to their unique needs.

You would think that if you put a retro game on Steam today that it would be the same version as the one GoG, that it wouldn't need DOSbox, and that it would work. That's not always the case, I guess, but I've had problems with a game or two on GoG, as well, though that is still my go to store for old games that haven't been recently revived.

But I disagree about coalescing around a retailer. That's for buyers to decide. Sure, put them all on GoG, but put them anywhere games are sold. Put them on the Windows store, Steam, Epic, anywhere. If GoG is better at it, then people will go there. But if you had a new lawn chair, for instance, you wouldn't want to just put it in garden or pool shops if Walmart wanted to sell it also. You'd be severely restricting your earnings.

These games would sell great on Steam if they weren't stealth launched. Retro is very much in vogue these days.

 

[Brian Boru]

I disagree about coalescing around a retailer

You're right, bad choice of word. Sell everywhere for sure, but have one core specialist place which caters to the devs and the enthusiast customer. Like say Barnes & Noble for books, rather than Walmart—unless you only wanted the current best sellers.

It looks like GOG is going back to being GOG again, rather than trying to compete with the big guys, so hopefully the resources will refocus on making the GOGs the best they can be.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

While on the topic of SSDs, would I see a noticeable increase in data transfer if I replaced my current SSD with a NVME SSD? I'm thinking strictly gaming benefits. Maybe I should post this over in the hardware section (?), but it seemed relevant to post here, as I've been thinking about possible upgrades to a nearly 4 year old gaming PC.

Yeah, my experience is that NVME SSDs are noticeably way faster than SATA SSDs. Definitely a good upgrade. And if your OS is on there, too, your whole system will feel snappier.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Some testing on game load times between SATA HDD, SATA SSD and PCI-E 3.0/4.0 NVME.

View: https://youtu.be/COofLeqk_tM?t=458