Yakuake. Nothing major but a nice quality of life upgrade for terminal work.

Easy block.

The only real excuse for digital only is DRM free

And cheapness. Steam has always gotten away with this because it’s just plain cheap. Their distribution costs are way, way less per game and it’s easier for them to pass on savings, which I think is a big part of how they can push games for so cheap compared to most phyical media sources.

Using faschist terminology like this waters it down

Or takes the piss out of it. Just depends on your point of view.

No, it’s worse. Currently, if anything were to happen to my data, I could redownload it freely. If anything happens to your data with physical media, like the disc getting scratched and damaged, lost, or stolen, you’re just SOL.

Sure, if GOG goes belly up that goes away, but that’s what you’re stuck with in physical media the second you walk out the door with the disc.

GOG has managed to put out DRM free games though on a digital distribution platform. I can have my entire library backed up and it isn’t possible for them to nuke it in any way, as far as I know. It really isn’t a problem inherent to digital downloads, only the way some are trying to do it.

Valve gets away with it because you can get games for dirt cheap there.

I suspect if we were looking at the same image as above except buying Dead Space for $6 like you can on Steam, we’d be seeing a lot less pushback. Part of the excuse they had was physical media having a way bigger distribution cost compared to digital. They’re kind of trying to have their cake and eat it too, here.

And yeah, GOG is DRM free so that’s a pretty big difference.

I’m still a couch and controller gamer primarily, I just use a PC to do it lol. Honestly, with Steam, it’s really easy to just change Steam Big Picture mode as the default shell for Windows, so even if you don’t want to install SteamOS, you can still have the console experience of just turning the machine on and booting right into your games menu.

Text based CLI browsers also seem to get around it often. I’ve used w3m to good effect, but there’s still a few that just won’t even talk to you without js enabled…

There would need to be major structural changes in how investment works in Europe IMO. With markets so fractured, you just can’t muster the kind of capital you can in the US, so companies that get successful in Europe often end up bailing to the US to get traded for the greater availability of investment capital.

I’d love to see the EU really put up serious competition to American tech services, but I just can’t see it happening without that getting addressed first.