You might have seen that I've been posting my interviews, or Q&A's rather, with developers of Steam Deck/Linux projects you might know and love (with many more to come!):

• RetroDECK
• Heroic Games Launcher
• Lutris

Well now I've had the chance to sit down with independent media creator Gardiner Bryant, known for his focus on Linux and gaming.

Possibly most well known for:

• His PeerTube channel

• His YouTube

• ...and his blog!

Gardiner is Linux, and Steam Deck, and gaming. While most might gravitate to his video content (YouTube, I'd hazard, would be what he might be most known for), I prefer his written posts. I miss blogs, and having his to read makes me so very happy.

So, if you've an interest in what might be behind the curtain of an independent content creator, particularly one focused on gaming - then read on!

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Origins:

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Can you tell us a bit about your background? Who is Gardiner Bryant!

I'm a Mainer first and foremost. I was born and raised here. I grew up as a gamer. I played games on my SNES, N64, and PC as a youngin. My favorite game series were Super Mario (3, World, 64), Command & Conquer (Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, RA2, Generals), SimCity (2k, 3k Unlimited, 4), The Sims, and DOOM, Unreal Tournament, and so many others.

What was your first real exposure to both Linux and to gaming? What 'clicked' for you?

My first experience with video games was Super Mario Bros 3. I remember sitting on the floor at my friend Caleb’s house watching a cartoon that he called Mario. But there was no talking. And then he handed me the controller and I realized I was in control of the cartoon. Mind blowing stuff. I was very young. I was in preschool.

My first experience was probably in 2003 or 2004. One of my girlfriends’ friends was in the “computer careers” vocational class and he gave me a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It was way outside my comfort zone. I had no idea what to do with it and I rolled back to Windows XP quite quickly.

After that, I installed Ubuntu Jaunty on the family PC which pissed my dad off. Then I put Fedora Core 6 on my PC and it was awesome (except I couldn’t figure out how to play my extensive collection of MP3s).

As far as Linux and gaming? I tried WINE to play the classics. But it never clicked for me until the Humble Indie Bundle 4. It included some of the games I’d been playing on my Wii and 360: Bit.Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, and Cave Story+ to name a few.

This was well before Valve announced Steam was coming to Linux! Humble was Linux gaming at the time.

Was there a specific moment or project, with video creation, gaming or writing which made you realize, “This is what I want to do”?

As a kid, my dad published comic books as a hobby. He created “Lobsterman: Maine’s First Superhero” and it demonstrated that I could do something creative and be successful at it. He also was a radio DJ and had pretty decent taste in music.

Even more importantly, my mom’s parents were creatives. Joe, my grandfather, created awesome mechanical things set to music (think backwoods Maine Disney World) and Bea, my grandmother, was a collector, a seamstress, and more. They were self-employed and made their passion their livelihood.

I’ve always been fascinated by tech. Video games, animation, audio & video production. As a teen I created several home movies with my friends. My church even put on “Oscar Nights” that encouraged local youths to create videos based on scriptural themes. I taught myself programming and animation as an homeschooler using Macromedia Flash.

It’s just kinda been my thing, I guess!

How did gaming intersect with your interest in open-source? Were they always linked for you?

No, they weren’t. When I was first starting out as a Linux user most of my gaming happened on my Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried games through WINE. But they were always classic PC games I had physical copies of. I didn’t get into Steam until the Steam for Linux beta.

What drew you toward independent journalism over more traditional tech career paths?

The example of my grandparents loomed large in my life. I wasn’t super close with them (nor my father for that matter) but entrepreneurship has always been in my blood and working a standard nine to five has never suited me. Despite the risks of being independent, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

However, I cannot stress this enough: I’m not journalist. Liam from GamingOnLinux is a journalist. He checks his facts and reports on the news. I’m a writer and enthusiast and (if I’m anything journalism-adjacent) I’d be a Linux pundit. I’m also using that term in the most derogatory sense of the word. 🤣

I do have a commitment to truth and I strict ethics statement on my company’s website that I adhere to. But I just don’t think of myself as a journalist.

You've cultivated a strong personal voice online—how much of that is intentional vs. just being yourself?

I have intentionally put myself in everything I do. I’ve also avoided doing things that would compromise my beliefs/ethics.

That sounds all high and mighty but really all it means is I’m incapable of inauthenticity. (Spell check is telling me that’s not a word. But I swear I googled it.)

I can’t make myself do things that I’m not interested in. This is a double-edged sword, though, as it means my focus is fickle and the only thing consistent with my content is myself. If I had been able to sell out, I could be in a different position in terms of subscribers/income. But YouTube punishes channels that don’t specialize in exploiting their audience’s attention and they’re doing that to me right now.

As far as writing goes, writing is also in my blood. I’m a descendant of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow through my maternal grandmother and both my maternal grandparents were both writers. Joe in particular was a poet, lyricist, and a composer of limericks.

If you weren’t doing this—creating, writing, advocating—what do you think you’d be doing instead?

If I was still working for myself, I’d be doing more of what I do now as my day job: web development and backend programming. If I weren’t working for myself, I’d probably still be doing IT for the furniture store I used to work for.

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Linux & Gaming:

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How would you describe the current state of Linux as a gaming platform? What’s still missing?

I’d characterize Linux gaming as “strong, mature, and capable.” The biggest thing we’re missing is real anticheat support. But that will come, naturally, as adoption grows and, crucially, the kernel-level anticheat fad falls by the wayside.

Do you see Proton and tools like Lutris as long-term solutions, or are they transitional?

I think compatibility layers are truly the only long-term solution for Linux gaming. Even after the Windows platform is long dead, Proton provides a stable layer gives Valve (or whoever) the capability to triage apps into a stable state.

How do you balance enjoying games as a player vs. analyzing them as a Linux advocate?

I mentioned that I’m not able to force myself to do things I’m uninterested in. That extends to my gaming habits. I don’t play games I’ve got no interest in and if a title doesn’t hold my attention then I’m not going to talk about/cover it.

It’s one of the reasons that I’ve got such an extensive collection of retro consoles and games. There’s something about the classics that the modern titles can’t seem to achieve!

What’s one misconception you think people still have about gaming on Linux?

It is too technical or requires the use of the terminal. I had a friend tell me the other day that he doesn’t use Linux because he’d “rather use a GUI.”

He was holding his Android phone and I replied, “your phone is basically Linux and it’s exclusively a GUI.” That baffled him.

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Steam Deck & Handheld Gaming:

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What do you think the Steam Deck meant for the Linux gaming scene as a whole?

It’s a symbol that serves to legitimize Linux gaming. It’s a clarion call for people who know it runs Linux.

And to anyone who doesn’t know it runs Linux, it’s an affordable gaming PC.

Have you found yourself using the Steam Deck more for gaming or experimentation/tinkering?

The only PC games I play are on my Steam Deck (except for VR, of course). I’ve got a $4,000 desktop PC and I tried DOOM: The Dark Ages for the sake of completeness, but I only played for like 10 minutes.

I actually am not much of a tinkerer anymore. I’m really busy with work so just want things to work. Honestly, that’s probably my favorite thing about Linux. More often than not It Just Works.

Do you think Valve has lived up to the open-source ethos with the Steam Deck ecosystem?

Valve’s contributions to open source are massive. I don’t think they can be overstated how important what they’re doing is. Their work doesn’t get enough recognition.

But they could stand to make more of their in-house code more open, for sure. 😉

What’s a feature or evolution you’d like to see in the next iteration of the Steam Deck?

A second USB port. The ability to dock a desktop GPU using a standard like USB 4. And I’d also like to see haptic trigger feedback similar to what Sony has on the PS5 controller. VRR might also be nice but that can have battery implications and the Deck 2 needs to improve on the current hardware’s battery life.

I think Valve has nailed pretty much everything else.

I don’t want to see a 1080p+ screen. It’s unnecessary and adds performance and power constraints that are not worth the upgrade.

Is the Steam Deck’s success creating pressure for other handhelds to follow suit with Linux-based OSes?

I think they serve different markets.

Many of the folks who are not satisfied with the Steam Deck’s hardware are also going to be conscious of the fact that many online games aren’t compatible with Linux.

I’m keen to see how the Lenovo Legion Go with SteamOS is going to perform in terms of sales. Plus, however the next SteamOS device performs will be telling.

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Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Philosophy:

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What originally drew you to the FOSS movement? From all we’ve ever talked, you bleed FOSS, what makes the scene mean so much to you?

I believe in freedom and independence. I’ve experienced first hand how for-profit tech is built on exploitation and harming their users.

I’ve come to the understanding that the proprietary software industry is impossible to sustain without fundamentally violating the rights and autonomy of their users. It will always trend towards authoritarian levels of control and that is fundamentally at odds with my core beliefs.

I believe the software industry (we’re talking the proprietary software industry) would be completely unsustainable if it weren’t for the four pillars of proprietary software. They are: patent trolling, violations of privacy, licensing rather than ownership, and downright criminal behavior. These four pillars are mechanical, they’re cold, and they’re misanthropic.

The free software movement stands in stark relief against the machinations of proprietary software. Instead, FOSS offers its own four freedoms. At their core the four freedoms are anthropocentric, they put the rights of the user ahead of the any other interest.

Do you feel the broader tech culture is moving closer to or further from open-source principles? Or is that just those of us who adore it just ‘dreaming out loud’ (e.g. this is the year of Linux!)

Like I said, I think the tech industry is impossible without the problematic “four pillars.” Sure, there are some standouts (anomalies) like Valve who are interested in FOSS and contribute back to the community. But that’s a rarity.

I’d like to hope that Valve can be an example of how other companies should engage with FOSS, and they sure are. But I’m skeptical (cynical?) enough to see the industry moving further from an ethical foundation rather than closer to one.

Where do you personally draw the line between open-source purism and practicality?

I don’t think purism of any ideology is helpful. And that’s true when it comes to FOSS as well. If there’s a task that you need to complete, use whatever you know and what you have on hand to complete that task.

But where I draw the line is pretty simple. I won’t use proprietary software from any vendors who have a history of paid subscriptions or “software as a service.” I generally won’t use any software that assaults my mental autonomy with ads, especially if it’s software I’ve paid for. And I also try to steer clear of any software that relies on the cloud or injects useless AI garbage.

That being said, I use proprietary stuff like DaVinci Resolve for video editing and Affinity Photo 2/Designer/Publisher for much of my client work. And I obviously play tons of video games through Steam.

What’s one underappreciated FOSS project you wish more people supported or used?

Honestly, Linux. OEMs need to ship more Linux on their retail hardware. Valve, Fedora, Manjaro, and Bazzite are both doing great work on that front.

How do you handle community friction or dogmatism in the FOSS world?

If they’re in my comments section, I troll them. I try to call out dogmatism and unhelpful attitudes as I encounter it.

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Gaming Journalism & Content Creation:

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You've called out traditional games media before—what do you think they consistently miss?

In many instances, the games media fundamentally lacks integrity. They create sponsored content masked as reviews. They toe the publisher’s line in order to secure early access, etc. They view the world through the post-capitalist lens of corporatism and cronyism. They’re also complicit in the hype cycles and unsustainable “bigger number better” bullshit.

Do you see yourself more as a journalist, commentator, educator, or something else entirely?

I’m a commentator and educator… sometimes a loud and joyless pundit. 😂

What responsibility do independent creators have in a space full of sponsored content and hype cycles?

Authenticity. Just be yourself and do what you love. Report your thoughts and feelings honestly and do not heed the critics or try to make yourself more appealing to a general audience.

How do you choose what to cover, especially when there's pressure to chase trends or clicks?

I talk about whatever piques my interest. It can be a new game launching, a news story that pop up on my meticulously curated RSS feed reader, or something shared by the folks in my Revolt server.

Have you ever been tempted to take brand sponsorships or pivot toward commercial content?

I’ve done many sponsorships in the past. I’ve stopped doing them over the last few years because (again) it’s really hard to force myself to do stuff I’m not interested in. And I don’t really give two hoots about money beyond what I need to survive.

I know some companies have sent you some fun products for review, with no strings attached. Notable the new Legion Go S recently. Can you share any more? Or...perhaps a favorite of the bunch?

I get hundreds of emails per week offering me free review samples. It always goes the same way: I inform them I’ll only talk about their product if I’m free to review their product by the criteria of a review laid out in my ethics statement.

MinisForum always tends to send me really interesting devices. I truly love the most recent one they sent me. I also get GuliKit and 8BitDo controllers quite frequently.

The Legion Go S is also really cool!

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Community, Motivation & Identity:

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In a creator landscape dominated by monetization, why do you keep doing what you do?

I sometimes joke that I’m a sheep dog. I’m only relaxed when I’ve got a task to accomplish. At this point, my job is to be passionate, honest, authentic, and I have fun doing so. I don’t care about much else.

How has your audience shaped your content direction over the years?

Honestly, I don’t give a lot of thought to the audience beyond “am I getting my message across to Joe/Jane Viewer?”

I make content that’s designed to be welcoming to and digestible by beginners. I can’t tell you how many times I see some kind of criticism in the comments of my video that boils down to “I don’t like the way you said X. Next time, say Y instead” and I just laugh. It’s like, if you know enough about the subject to have an opinion on this, then you’re not the person I’m making it for.

It goes back to your question on what I consider myself and, yeah… “educator” is the right word.

What part of the Linux or open-source community energizes you the most?

Situation: you buy some kind of smart appliance.

The first-party app to control the product is limited, designed poorly, and requires some kind cloud connection/subscription. Now you have new account credentials you must manage, you have another random device connected to your WiFi, and potentially anther subscription fee to pay.

Meanwhile there’s some random GitHub repo started by a first time programmer who has reverse engineered the app/product and created a Home Assistant integration that not only is feature complete but has unlocked some dormant/inaccessible features.

Passion will always surpass profit. That’s why I’m a dyed-in-the-wool true FOSS believer.

Have you had moments where you considered stepping back or quitting—and what kept you going?

Yeah. Many times. Most of it has to do with YouTube screwing me over so frequently. But deploying/running a PeerTube instance reinvigorated me.

Recently, my blog has become my happy place

Perhaps most common when I write these for creators, devs and the like - is a sense that while working on gaming all day long (developing, writing, creating) there’s no time to enjoy it for yourself. Do you find this, too? Or are you able to create that divide and still game?

I started my channel because I felt I didn’t have enough time for gaming. Oh, sweet, sweet naivety.

Honestly, I still play games for myself, though. Particularly through my retro gaming collection. I am just so busy that I don’t get back to it as I’d like.

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Looking Ahead:

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What excites you most about the future of Linux gaming in the next 3–5 years?

Obviously the roll out of the third party SteamOS machines is shaping up to be a big deal. I’m excited to see what that’s going to do for the community. One of the biggest hurdles of Linux growth is that it’s not generally preinstalled on PCs available at retail. I’d like to see more of that going forward.

As for what excites me? I’ve always been someone who looks forward to the new, the novel, and the unknown. Maybe that’s the Star Trek nerd in me. I’m excited to see how Linux gaming continues to be appreciated by mainstream gamers. And it will continue to grow.

Do you have any personal goals or creative projects you haven’t yet explored?

I’m really excited about my blog and I’m hoping to get to a point where I’m posting at least one article a day over there. Last week I did three posts in a week.

I’d also like to really deep dive stuff and produce more original content outside of Linux gaming. I’ve got ideas for projects. For example: seamlessly retrofitting bluetooth connectivity (possibly more) into a bedside clock radio that I’ve had since I was twelve.

How do you see your role evolving as the tech and content ecosystem continues to shift?

I’ve consistently been one of the louder voices in the space evangelizing FOSS philosophy. As the profit-driven forces of enshittification continue to erode their destructive path through society, I’m still going to be raising my voice against it and demonstrating that their corruption doesn’t have to be tolerated.

If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about the Linux or FOSS community, what would it be?

Well, one of the biggest issues we face are the grifters and charlatans who are profiting from spreading lies, driving wedges, and sewing dissent among FOSS projects. Granted, that’s a cultural-wide sickness that we’re facing right now and I don’t know a) if your magic wand is powerful enough to fix that or b) what it would take to actually fix those issues. But that’s what I’d like to attempt.

Is there a dream collaboration—either with a person or a company—that you’ve always wanted to pursue?

I’ve never been good at collaboration. Historically, I’ve actually been terrible at it! Heck, the only reason I’ve got a podcast is because my co-hosts James and Hi-Tech Lo-Life were persistent in asking me to join them!

With that said, it’d be good to talk with more FOSS developers, bring them on my show, extoll more FOSS apps/games, and shine a light on the best that the free software movement can produce!

Any last words, of any kind for everyone?

If you believe in my work, you can help support what I do by subscribing to my blog or by becoming a member.

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And that's the end! Once again, I'd love to thank my friend Gardiner for taking the time to answer these, and for even doing this to begin with!

I love to do these, because I feel like while the community on Lemmy might be smaller than on other platforms, to me its quality over quantity.

I hope you've enjoyed this, and if you want to find more of Gardiner, you can use the links down below:

• Podcast

• Mastodon

• PeerTube channel

• YouTube

• Blog!

I have more of these coming in the future, too! I'm waiting for the answers from the team from The RomM Project which will be next, and am planning one for a member from Decky Loader which will be after that one. I also have far more planned, but too soon to say :)

And as ever, I really appreciate anyone who reads through these and enjoys them!

Starting today, new support threads that are created on discord will be indexed and be easily findable with search engines thanks to Answer Overflow. Right now, existing threads are being indexed.

The dedicated community link is here: https://www.answeroverflow.com/c/812703221789097985

I think this is crazily important. My biggest issue with Discord is that they have become the default hubs for issues and fixes. Over days, weeks, months and years those fixes get buried and harder to find, but the worst offender is that they are unindexable by default.

Its lovely to see someone doing this. I wish everyone would do this.

As ever, if you don't know Heroic, you can find their website with this link here

Starting today, new support threads that are created on discord will be indexed and be easily findable with search engines thanks to Answer Overflow. Right now, existing threads are being indexed.

The dedicated community link is here: https://www.answeroverflow.com/c/812703221789097985

I think this is crazily important. My biggest issue with Discord is that they have become the default hubs for issues and fixes. Over days, weeks, months and years those fixes get buried and harder to find, but the worst offender is that they are unindexable by default.

Its lovely to see someone doing this. I wish everyone would do this.

As ever, if you don't know Heroic, you can find their website with this link here

It’s been 5 days since I shared the last of these - where I share a roundup of all the interesting things I have spotted in gaming news. There’s a lot of different topics this week, but as always it remains Steam Deck, Linux, GOG, emulation, Switch and gaming in general!

My aim is to format these posts in a more personal manner than most gaming sites do now. Cozier? My ever-lasting inspo is the old, old video game sites, blogs and magazines that I never had the privilege of being alive for:

• image/gif/link heavy (I’m a big GIF fan – and I pronounce it with a hard ‘g’)
• personal voice (I can’t write professionally with hard-news style to save me)
• mostly news or articles or points you won’t find on normal gaming sites, these are the smaller, lesser things that I’m drawn to. I know you’ll have spotted the big news articles, so I’m hoping some of these smaller ones might have been missed by you.

So grab a coffee? Or a tea? Or a fresh juice? And enjoy <3

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Black Mesa – Resonance Decade Update:

You’ll no doubt know that Black Mesa itself is is a fan-made, far-higher-graphic’d-than-the-original remake of the classic 1998 first-person shooter Half-Life, developed by Valve. Originally created as a free mod by Crowbar Collective, it was later officially approved and released as a standalone commercial title in 2020.

These days it goes on steep discount quite often, plays really well on Steam Deck, and has just announced a huge update:

In celebration of our ten year anniversary on Steam, we’ve pushed our longstanding public beta to mainline. This update includes substantial improvements including:

• Fixes to startup related crashes
• Fixes to physics engine related crashes
• Steam Deck Improvements
• Linux Improvements

You can read the full (and extensive) patch notes on Steam with this link right here

And you can find the game for -90% off right now on Steam too, with this link to their page

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GTA IV Remaster?

I know, I know, there’s announcements regarding Rockstar games every two weeks or so predicting the fans great dreams...which end up as tears in the rain because they’re just that – rumors and nothing more.

Well, I’ll add another to the unending procession and let you know that the rumor mill (with great sources...as always) is saying that GTA IV is on its way “says Rockstar insider”.

And here’s an article detailing what’s going on, which refuses to embed as a link in my post for some reason, so you have to look at the long, ugly link instead: https://rockstarintel.com/gta-4-remaster-could-release-this-year-says-rockstar-insider/ https://rockstarintel.com/gta-4-remaster-could-release-this-year-says-rockstar-insider/)

IF it does come to fruition, I hope it gets the same treatment as say...the recent Tomb Raider remasters, or Crash Bandicoot/Spyro...not like the weird A.I. nonsense Rockstar got a phone game company to whip up for them with the trilogy semi-recently.

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Space Marine 2 – Modded:

The game takes on a new life. Honestly, not that it slowed down much, this game has had a lot of support and reviewed so nicely!

Last update that came out was about a month ago and added prestige for each class including 5-6 unlockable new perks each, unlockable free cosmetics, a new weapon, a new operation and the paid content included even more cosmetics for customisation.

And now, Saber releases the entire toolset to make modding the game easier for fan:

"As of today, we're releasing the official Integration Studio for public use," Space Marine 2 director Dmitry Grigorenko says. "This is the exact same editor we use internally for all gameplay development. No more editing files in Notepad and praying you didn't miss a bracket. Integration Studio makes editing anything… ten times faster, safer, and more intuitive."

Integration Studio gives Space Marine 2 modders access to the game's A.I. behavior trees; its level scenario editor; the tools for creating game modes and adjusting melee combat; and the means to tweak the AI director, UI and HUD elements, and visual effects. Saber says more functionality is still to come.

"This is only the beginning," Grigorenko continues. "Not long ago, I promised we would support the modding scene, and we meant it. Watching this community grow, push boundaries, and create incredible experiences has been both inspiring and humbling. We're excited to see what you build next, whether it's a cinematic campaign, wild new game mode, or something we never saw coming."

You can find the modding kit right here if you want it – sadly it’s a Discord link, but...its still here for you if you want it!

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Gothic 1 Remake:

It’s a long road for this game, and the game itself is quite niche to most (funnily enough the game is so well known and regarded in Poland – like a mini cultural phenomenon there, basically national treasures), but Alkima Interactive is taking the process of remaking the first Gothic game quite seriously.

The fans who have been following along with the project and updates have had the rare events of devs taking their feedback and changing direction or making changes because of their feedback and criticisms.

Anyway, the latest of their update videos showing progress with their Gothic 1 Remake demo is here

And you can also find the changelog to Nyras’ Prologue (the demo) here with this link to THQNordic’s site

And finally,

The Steam page for it is here, if you want to check it out

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A Webbing Journey:

I found a cute game from FireTotemGames called, you guessed it, A Webbing Journey. I’ve not got much to say on this one besides the fact it is ADORABLE, and has full Linux + Steam Deck support.

Sadly their GIFs are quite large in size, so I’m writing this while I save them, then I’ll try resize them – hope they don’t end up looking like low-res playdough blobs being animated, then hope I remember to take this paragraph out when I post this on Lemmy.

It releases soon (into my nemesis – Early Access) on May 19th – so let’s hope it is as good and cute as it looks?

Adorable spider chaos! Swing around the house, weave crazy structures, play with physics-based objects, and pull off chores with nothing but your webs and your wits in this madcap sandbox adventure.

Swing from place to place, crawl over every surface (even upside down!) and weave crazy webs in this adorable spider sandbox. 

Silky is a tiny hero on a big mission - to help their favourite humans! Baking cookies? Doing dishes? Watering plants? No task is too big if you’ve got the imagination (and the spiderwebs!) to pull it off!

The link to their Steam store page is right here, if you want to look!

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Junk Store Teaser:

The developer of Junk Store (who happens to be a good friend of mine!) has shared a ‘next gen sneak peek’ for what’s coming next for Junk Store on Steam Deck. I’ll just copy what he wrote, then I’ll link the video!

While things might appear calm on the surface, I’ve been working intensely behind the scenes to get Junk Store ready for launch. Right now, there’s only one known bug left to fix on my end. The rest is mostly polish—help screens, UI touch-ups, and general quality-of-life improvements.

The core systems seem stable, but of course, we’ll see what happens when the software makes contact with actual users. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the new systems I’ve added. When testing the extension generator, I realized it was just too complicated for most users—so I built this instead. The video’s rough, but it should give you something to speculate about while I finish up the last bits. Hope you enjoy it—can’t wait for you all to try it out.

You can find the video here, if you’d like to see what features he teased will be available and able-to-be-generated for the next iteration of Junk Store

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Unity Still Quite Awful:

RocketWerkz, an independent game studio founded by Dean Hall (creator of DayZ), is facing a serious licensing dispute with Unity Technologies. On May 9th, Unity sent a vague compliance warning threatening to revoke the studio’s license access by May 16th, citing improper use of Unity Personal licenses instead of Pro licenses. When RocketWerkz requested clarification, Unity responded with a list of alleged violations—including names and emails of individuals who either don't work on Unity projects, already have Pro licenses, or are entirely unaffiliated with RocketWerkz. Two names belonged to employees at a different local company, raising serious concerns about how Unity collects and applies its data.

Dean Hall has criticized Unity's enforcement tactics as flawed, opaque, and aggressive, warning it reflects a worrying trend in the company's direction. Although RocketWerkz has moved away from Unity for future projects—favoring Unreal Engine and their own BRUTAL engine—the issue still affects two active games: Stationeers and the unreleased Torpedia. Despite having spent over $300,000 on Unity since 2014, including a recent $43,000 payment in December 2024, RocketWerkz now faces a potential halt to ongoing development based on what appears to be faulty or misattributed data.

I’d encourage you to read through the entirety of it. Sadly it is on Reddit, but you can find it here in the r/gamedev sub-reddit with this link

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Black Salt Games:

The developers to one of my favorite games ever (DREDGE) shared a post detailing the fact that:

Last year, we donated $100,000 to the NZ Whale and Dolphin Trust for a new boat, truck and other costs. They have sent us some photos of their boat "Pahu" in action which will help to aid their important conservation work, researching and protecting marine species all around Aotearoa.

They further detailed their beliefs in another post:

We are proud to support The Whale and Dolphin Trust in their mission and encourage fans of DREDGE to learn more about our oceans and conservation efforts. In the wise words of the great David Attenborough " the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea."

I love them, and this is why I support independent developers.

Here are just a few images they shared of the Pahu!

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GEX:

The GEX Trilogy releases on June 16th. From what I can gather (aside from the fact that I learned Glen Schofield of Dead Space fame directed the third game) the wise-cracking one liners might have aged poorly, but then again I don’t expect this trilogy is aimed at my generation, but from a few before me:

In addition to revealing the game's release date, we've also announced that GEX 2 and GEX 3 will be playable in native widescreen with all-new analog control, letting you experience GEX like never before! Now that's what I call getting some tail!

We also revealed some new artwork by famed Japanese artist, Yoshitaka Amano! You might know him from his work on a lesser known Square Enix franchise, so it made sense to finally give him the opportunity to illustrate their best one – GEX!

The link to that announcement is here if you want to see it!

---

Palworld Disappointed:

Nintendo is, as ever, a shitty company for the community. I understand that they hold the nostalgia carrot over everyone’s head (or at least those over a cetain old age), but their practices lately have been a little more than shitty.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has confirmed significant game changes which were forced by the ongoing lawsuit from Nintendo. [Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair last year, seeking an injuction and damages, and all Hell broke loose when we all saw that Nintendo was trademarking nonsense to inflict damage

I’m going to copy the statement that Pocketpair made, and just paste it here, because I think this one should be read in full. So what follows isn’t my words, but theirs:

We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the continued support of our fans over the past few months. We apologize for not being able to share as much information as we would like, but we trust our fans understand how difficult it is to be fully transparent while litigation is ongoing.

Currently, we remain involved in prolonged legal proceedings regarding alleged patent infringement. We continue to dispute these claims and assert the invalidity of the patents in question. However, we have had to make certain compromises in order to avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld.

On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld. This patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player. Several other game mechanics were also changed with this patch. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration. Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary.

Furthermore, we regret to inform our players that with the implementation of Patch v0.5.5, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player's team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide. We understand that this will be disappointing for many, just as it is for us, but we hope our fans understand that these changes are necessary in order to prevent further disruptions to the development of Palworld.

We also want to extend our apologies to our fans for the discomfort and concern this ongoing litigation has caused. We remain committed to developing Palworld and delivering exciting new content to our fans.

On behalf of everyone at Pocketpair and Team Palworld, thank you again for your continued support.

---

Expedition 33 #1:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s soundtrack has hit number one on Billboard’s classical album charts!

After selling over two million copies in under two weeks, Emmanuel Macron hailed it as “a shining example of French audacity and creativity”, and with 48,502 reviews on Steam holding a Very Positive rating, the achievements clearly haven’t stopped.

The soundtrack for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has achieved over 18 million track streams since its release on April 24. With the soundtrack being made up 154 tracks, making for 8 hours of music.

If you’d like to get a taste, then follow this YouTube link and see the full orchestra session for Session 33’s music!

---

Crow Country:

If you know me well enough, you’ll know I hate the old before-my-time ‘tank controls’, I’ve experienced the excitement on seeing the original Resident Evil games on GOG – then the subsequent hatred of tank controls. The same with Dino Crisis (can they PLEASE remake that in modern style for me?!) and...now Crow Country.

But for some reason, Crow Country has charmed me enough to look past the bane of my existence and love it anyway. Go figure.

Crow Country

The year is 1990. It’s been two years since the mysterious disappearance of Edward Crow and the abrupt closure of his theme park, Crow Country. But your arrival has broken the silence, Mara Forest. If you want answers, you’ll have to venture deep into the darkness of Crow Country to find them…

It is pure nostalgia for the old survival horror games on the PS1 (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis), and it’s beautiful. So very, very atmospheric and also so reasonably priced for what it is!

What I do not like is seeing fucking stupid reviews like this one I found on GOG upon release:

You should check it out, you can find the GOG page link here, if you’re up to being kinda scared and love theme parks, but also if you’re wondering whether you should dye your hair purple and cut it shoulder-length like the adorable protagonist...or maybe that’s just me?

---

GOG’s Dynamic Pricing:

No one can explain this better than GOG themselves (I feel like I’m doing very little of my own writing for this News Post!), so I’ll paste their announcement here for you:

"Hello everyone!

We’ve just launched the first batch of bundles with fully functioning dynamic pricing. It’s a feature many of you might recognize from other platforms, but for those who don’t, here’s how it works:

When purchasing a bundle, you only pay for the items you don’t already own, making it easy to complete your collection without spending more than necessary.

We know this has been a long-requested feature, and that the lack of it has been frustrating for many of you. That’s why we’re super excited to finally start introducing it to the store, and we hope you’re just as happy to see it live.

Now, what do we mean by “start introducing” and “first batch of bundles”?

Well, right now this dynamic pricing system is available for 24 bundles in the store (you’ll find the full list in my comment below). We'll continue expanding this feature to more and more bundles – new and old – with the goal of eventually covering the vast majority (if not all) of them. You’ll know a bundle has dynamic pricing from the information displayed under its price on the game page.

Note: If you already own all components of a dynamically priced bundle, you’ll be able to “claim” that bundle in the store so it shows as owned.

You might also be wondering: What about various game editions that include base games + DLCs?

We completely agree that bringing dynamic pricing to those would be a huge improvement, for both you and us. It’s something we’re actively looking into, and we hope to expand the system in that direction. We can’t promise an ETA just yet, but we’re optimistic it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

That’s all for now! Give this new system a try, see how it works for you, and let us know what you think.

Thank you all for your support! :)"

I can say that there’s been some issues, but it’s a big task, so they are working so hard on ironing these out. You can read it best in this post they made on their GOG forum – with users chiming in with the issues they might have encountered

Irrespective, I’m so happy to see this has arrived on GOG!

---

Silent Hill 2 (Remake) on GOG:

More GOG news (with one more to follow this one!) in that in a surprise announcement without preamble, Silent Hill 2 released on GOG! There’s nothing I can say here that you don’t already know I’m sure, but it was nice seeing a bit of a ‘shadow drop’ for a game, especially one of such calibre.

It’s also great seeing Konami being more and more open to DRM-free gaming in recent times. If you want to support this (it sounds crass, but only by buying the games on GOG can we show the companies that it is a viable idea), then you can find the link:

Here! On GOG’s page

---

Old Skies:

I can't be the only one who thinks the character design from Old Skies is totally copying Remedy's Control with Jesse Faden, right?

---

Quick Fire News:

---

• Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition is on Steam – this is the VR game which has been stripped of VR requirements, so let’s face it will probably play weirdly

• RailGods of Hysterra – Early Access releases on Steam: Lovecraftian...living...train(?) management game?

• Mafia: The Old Country contains Denuvo DRM (boo, hiss)

• Slitterhead however has removed Denuvo DRM (yay!)

• Valve issues a cease and desist to Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive mod team – after 8 years of development

• Dinosaur Planet: Recompiled (the N64 title) has a static recompilation of the prototype here on GitHub

• The Nintendo Switch has now sold 152.12 million units worldwide! 8 million behind the PS2’s numbers

• Split Fiction has sold nearly 4 million copies since launch!

---

Emulation/Retro Gaming-ish News:

---

Sega Saturn turns 30:

Two days ago the Sega Saturn officially turned 30 years old, in North America anyway. Ironically, the beginning of the end of Sega’s hardware efforts, not that anyone knew it at the time. Seen as a fair misfit, it’s a pretty impressive library of games when you look back on it now – but it was the release of this, the Sega CD and the 32X all within a year that threw things into a spin.

Still, happy birthday, Saturn.

---

Eden Emulator:

Another (yes, I know) Nintendo Switch emulator for Android phones has hit the scene. Still in pre-alpha (though they released another version a number of hours ago with a fair changelog for their short time as testament to their efforts.

It’s yet another Yuzu fork, so I won’t hold my breath, but it has the Android emulation scene in a bit of a buzz, so it has to be doing some things right.

• Much of the team come from Citron

• The team has already reached out to Sudachi developer Jarrod Norwell to collaborate.

• It has a new UI

The GitHub is here

---

Nintendo’s Account Agreement:

This one has people in a bit of a panic, but Nintendo has updated its Account Agreement to crack down on piracy and emulation. Basically, unauthorised use of digital products may now render them—or even your device—unusable. This however has been done before in the past by Nintendo (most notably and similarly with their 3DS line-up), and really means little. It is scare tactics only, and quite impossible to enforce.

To reiterate: Nintendo's new terms warn that violating usage rules could let them 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵, 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘦 - effectively bricking it. Or, again, that’s what they’re saying can happen (as someone with extensive Switch modding experience, I say ‘good luck’)

But if you’d like more on this – you can read it here on this link to eurogamer’s article on it

---

Mario Party 4 Decompiled:

Mario Party 4 becomes the first decompiled Mario Party and Game Cube game – and there is a PC port in the works!

You can watch a video on YouTube about this here, made by MattKC Bytes

---

LACED:

I found this lovely statement recently, retro enthusiast Lorentio Brodesco developed what they call ‘LACED’, a low-cost method to delayer and reverse-engineer vintage console PCBs using tools like a 5W laser engraver and common chemicals — all for under €200. This technique, accurate to 3–10 microns, helps preserve the inner workings of classic hardware that are often undocumented or deteriorating. The full method is open-source and available on GitHub to support restoration, cloning, and historical preservation in the retro gaming community.

The statement made has a few lovely quotes, but I’ll just share my fav:

A little over a year ago, I started a journey to understand and preserve the inner workings of retro consoles — beginning with a PlayStation 1 motherboard I literally sanded by hand to expose its inner copper layers.

No microscope. No budget. Just curiosity, paper, and a dream.

That project evolved. I wanted something more precise, more replicable, and open to anyone with passion and patience.

You can find the GitHub here with this link!

---

Calibre:

This comment just made my day. If you have an e-reader, and don’t use Calibre, then you need to follow this link and change that fact. I utterly swear by it

Anyway, I just wanted to leave this here because they’re using RSS to read what I post on their Kobo, and that’s amazing to me!

---

What have you been playing?:

I like to ask this off and on, because my fav thing is matching game choices to usernames. Some of your names I recognize from commenting on posts I make here (which is rather lovely), and some are new...one thing remains – I love hearing what you’ve been playing!

I recently picked up a Japanese OLED Switch on my travels (in Thailand!), and took it along with me when I then skipped to Malaysia, and in Plaza Low Yat I found someone who had the equipment and let me use it (for a fee) to mod my OLED. Happily, I’m well and truly back into Switch gaming (and those sweet, sweet custom firmware themes I can use).

I’ve been playing modded Breath of The Wild for the 70928753753457th time on there. But its still such fun.

On my Steam Deck I’ve started BioShock: Infinite (my fav of the three), but might leave that for later and go replay Control.

But that’s unimportant, because what is important is you sharing what you’ve been enjoying! AAA? AA? (UbiSoft’s short-lived AAAA?). Emulation? Indies? Let us all know!!!

---

What I have been up to:

---

I recently shared on Lemmy an interview I did with Mathieu Comandon, whom you might know as the one responsible for Lutris!

You can find the link to that interview here, if you haven’t read through and would like to!

I’ve had a developer friend help me contact the team behind The RomM Project and I’m hoping to soon do the same style and kind of interview with them, and share it with you all here! Very much looking forward to this, since RomM is so utterly unique in this gaming space.

I also shared an interview recently with the entire team who are behind Heroic Games Launcher, again if you haven’t read through – you can find it right here with this link to it on Lemmy

---

Further:

---

If you’d like to reach me, I wrote a handy little post on Mastodon recently with my contact details. Just the (very few) FOSS spaces I occupy these days

---

Lastly:

---

I have been asked quite often here, and on Mastodon, and on Matrix (which surprises me to no end, each and every time that this even gets asked!) how can I support you?

I’m making a back-up of my posts, and I will host them somewhere else. But as I say each time, I like to think of this as my way of contributing to Lemmy, FOSS and open-source social spaces. I love that my words and posts are in one place – that it has a slight chance of making someone stick around.

I’ve no interest in making a Patreon (I loathe news and review sites who offer this, but that’s my own personal view), or a Ko-Fi. I do these because I love to.

That said, as someone whose Steam library is 40-ish games big, and you’ve got to send me something?

Send a worldwide (since I am not in the ‘States!) Steam key to me!

My Steam Deck has existed almost entirely as a GOG Deck, and I’ve recently been looking at Steam games again (I have to say, the cloud saves and shader cache is worth its weight in gold sometimes)

BUT - remember, I do this because I love writing them, not for some Machiavellian plot to pivot and benefit. I’m just glad you’re all here, and reading these :)

---

My Previous News Posts:

• Steam Deck / Gaming News #2
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #3
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #4
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #5
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #6
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #7
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #8
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #9
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #10
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #11
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #12
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #13
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #14

---

My Mastodon:

A while ago I had the good fortune of organizing a fair-sized interview with one member of the team behind Lutris.

Lutris itself is an open gaming platform for Linux (obviously, including the Steam Deck!). Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface to launch all your games. The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.

You can find more information about Lutris before you read this little interview (or after, that’s up to you!) by visiting these links:

• Lutris official website
• Their Discord link
• Their own forum on their site
• The GitHub page

One last thing to note before posting this is that I did this interview some months ago, back when I was a stalwart Reddit user and contributing a lot to the Steam Deck / Linux scene on there.

Nothing here is out-of-date, and it’s still a damn fine interview (if I may say so myself!), I just wanted it shared here on Lemmy.

I hope you enjoy it :)

This interview is held with Mathieu Comandon.

---

Introduction and Background:

---

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, Lutris and how it got started? I see that you initially made Oblivion Launcher, so this has clearly been your passion for a long time. What sparked you to jump from that to Lutris?

Mathieu Comandon: "I had recently switched to Linux as my main OS, after using it on secondary machines for a while. I still wanted to play my games but at the time, it meant reading tutorials that would get outdated really fast or only worked on one distro. Getting games to run on Linux could become a very frustrating experience at times but it seemed that this could be considerably improved."

In a more broad sense, what was the inspiration behind creating Lutris?

"Around that time I was using Cedega, a proprietary fork of Wine with a nice GUI. I wanted something similar but open source but I didn't want to limit myself to Wine games like Cedega or PlayOnLinux did. I wanted support for all games that could run on Linux, which included native games and emulators."

Can you give us a brief overview of your team's background and how you came together to develop it?

"These days, the team is mostly Daniel Johnson, who does an enormous amount of user support on Github and GloriousEggroll who provides builds for Proton-GE. Then there's the Open Wine Components project that encompasses other gaming projects and regular contributors on Github.

There's also a very active moderation team on the Discord server.

There's no fixed team structure, anyone can just come and go, do their own thing."

How has Lutris itself evolved since its initial release?

"15 years ago, gaming on Linux was very experimental. With the evolution that happened in the past years, it's now something we have integrated in our lives. Games running on Linux is now the norm. So instead of tinkering, we can shift our focus on making sure games keep running in the years to come, particularly games that are no longer being sold."

Please tell me about your logo for Lutris!

"The initial logo (the version with the Atari joystick) was designed by a friend of mine at the time and later received some updates to make it more readable at small sizes. It was always meant to take inspiration from Mozilla's logos. A lot of projects have an animal as their logo: PHP, Postgres, Firefox... so I wanted my own animal mascot. I picked the otter because it's an animal that likes to play!"

---

Features and Functionality:

---

What are the key features that set Lutris apart from other game launchers? There is a few now who offer similar capabilities, what makes Lutris so unique?

"Lutris is the only launcher on Linux to support such a wide array of games from all platforms. Most launchers focus on Wine but Wine is only one of the 54 runners we currently support. The idea is to be able to build a collection of all the games you have played during your lifetime, easily accessible and playable."

How does Lutris integrate with Steam, especially on the Steam Deck?

"The Steam integration is much more basic now than it once was when we used to run Steam in Wine. Running Steam games from Lutris only calls Steam with the correct Steam ID, the options in Lutris don't apply to the Steam game. For the Steam Deck, it's the opposite: Running Lutris games in Steam. We have a feature for creating shortcuts for Lutris games in the Steam UI. In the next release of Lutris, we'll also have better support for running games with umu on the Steam Deck (it makes it possible to use Proton instead of Wine)."

Could you explain how Lutris handles the management and optimization of non-native games?

"We call runner any program that can launch games, native games being the only games that don't require one. We provide binaries for those runners, which get updated on a more or less regular basis. The important is not using the latest version but having a version that can run games really well. For example, we ship DOSBox Staging to provide a better experience for DOS games. Wine / Proton is the only runner that receives some patching."

What features do you think are the most underappreciated by users?

"Certainly the collection management and non Wine games aspects. I often see people with less than 10 games on Lutris and all mostly Wine based. On my end, I have over 1300 installed games for a variety of platforms. Sadly, the fact that people have switched from HDDs to SSDs doesn't help building a large video game collection."

---

Development and Community:

---

How do you prioritize and manage feature requests and bug reports from the community? I see you have such a sizable community built up around you (which speaks volumes to your skills as a programmer), can you describe what goes into prioritizing bugs or features?

"If something is broken and impacts significantly the usage of Lutris then that gets the highest priority. Then comes the pull requests submitted by contributors. Bugs that can't be reproduced or features that would only interest a small portion of users get the lowest priority."

Can you share any interesting stories or challenges you faced during the development of Lutris?

"Between 2011 and 2012, the development of Lutris had crawled almost to a halt because of a game called Minecraft.

At numerous times, maintaining the project felt very overwhelming and it was often difficult to deal with that. I often resorted to measures that were more or less clumsy but however gave me some breathing space (for a few months, reporting issues was only allowed to previous contributors, for example). Nowadays, managing the project is much easier. I put less pressure on myself to try and micro-manage everything and I get some precious help from the community to help me with Github."

How important has community feedback been in shaping Lutris? Can you give an example of a community-driven feature that you ended up implementing?

"The community has a tendency to push for the adoption of newer technologies while I have a tendency to hold back a bit before we adopt anything new. Some people use lutris on quite outdated systems and we try not breaking anything until a distribution gets really old. Finding the right balance is quite an art but the community helps in knowing what is needed and which systems can be dropped.

Also, a few runners we have were entirely written by community members. Translations are another aspect that is heavily driven by the community."

How do you foster a positive and engaged community around Lutris? Your discord in particular are so positive about your product, how do you encourage your users to participate and contribute

"I don't have the time to do much on Discord but there is an amazing moderation team. Troublemakers are kicked out really fast which keeps the vibe on the server positive. Personally, I tend to engage more with the community on Github and Mastodon."

---

Technical Aspects:

---

What technologies and programming languages is Lutris built on?

"The desktop client is using Gtk 3, the website uses Django. Both are written in Python. We also have a moderation dashboard written in VueJS."

Can you discuss the challenges and solutions in ensuring compatibility across various Linux distributions?

"We've been shipping a set of libraries with Lutris trying to increase compatibility across distros. This isn't a perfect solution but works for the most part. This is the approach Steam used to have. Now, similarly to Steam, we are transitioning to a container based approach, whether it's pressure vessel with umu or Flatpak."

How do you approach optimizing performance for different hardware configurations, especially for the Steam Deck?

"We don't really have anything in place that target specific devices. We do however provide many option to let users find the best possible setting for their games."

How do you handle the rapid changes and updates, do the Steam Deck's updates ever affect what you do?

"There are some breakages once in a while but so far the Steam Deck with its immutable OS has been pretty stable. We're still working on providing support for using Proton on the Deck's game mode but it's coming soon."

---

Future Plans:

---

What are your short-term and long-term goals for Lutris?

"Short term is the release of Lutris 0.5.18. It will contain all the fixes and improvements made during the past few months, but nothing really groundbreaking. In the longer term, we're going to start working on a "Big picture mode" (integration with OpenGamepadUI) and cloud saves."

Are there any upcoming features or improvements you’re particularly excited about?

"The 2 I mentioned earlier, cloud saves and fullscreen UI are very important. We also need a better rating system and better support for Flatpak (by making the Lutris Flatpak very thin and using other Flatpaks to run games)"

How do you see Lutris evolving with the advancements in gaming technology and hardware?

"That mostly depends on upstream projects like Gamescope, VKD3D, Mesa or Plasma. We used to lack a lot of features of newer hardware like HDR or ray tracing. Now, we have pretty much every feature used in games like DLSS, FSR3, HDR, etc... Now, we're only lacking in anti-cheat support."

What is your vision for the future of gaming on Linux?

"Projects like the Steam Deck and Playtron are going to help push gaming on Linux outside of the Linux community and make it available to a wider audience. Maybe we'll finally see game consoles for the TV using Linux. The new trend of handhelds is nice but it's not the best way to experience games with graphics pushed to their highest settings."

---

Community and Support:

---

What are the best ways for users to get involved with the Lutris community?

"Easiest way is to join the Discord server. That's where most of the non-development stuff happens. We might get a bridged Matrix room at some point too."

How can users contribute to the development or support of Lutris?

"For development, we have a list of open tickets on Github, and if someone wants to implement something new, I recommend creating a ticket if one doesn't exist. Sometimes, some contributors send a patch which doesn't fit the project and we don't merge it. We want to avoid that kind of situation, especially for substantial patches. Supporting the project financially is very much appreciated. There are Patreon, Paypal and Liberapay Lutris accounts that can be used for donations. We don't accept cryptocurrency though."

What resources do you offer for new users to get started with Lutris?

"The goal for Lutris is to not require any ressources to get started so if anything is missing or unclear, report it as a bug."

How do you address user support and ensure issues are resolved efficiently?

"In a lot of user support for Lutris means troubleshooting generic Linux issues. That's we have both a Lutris Support and Linux Support channels in our Discord server. Usually, when something is broken in Lutris, we'll start getting multiple reports for it and we prioritize those issues first."

---

Closing Thoughts:

---

What advice would you give to aspiring developers who want to create their own game launchers or similar tools?

"Build a very small project that solves a real and specific issue you have and try to make it work. If it solves your problem, it may continue evolving into something bigger."

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about Lutris or your team?

"When I started working on Lutris, I had no idea it would reach this size. I initially imagined it would mostly be picked up by the community and I would focus on other project. But then Linux gaming got really big (Vulkan happened) and with it Lutris got bigger too and at this point it was clear no one was going to take over. Lutris was becoming a recognized open source project and I was invited to events like WineConf and Ubuntu Summit. After a lot of perceverance, it really paid off!"

What has been the most rewarding aspect of developing Lutris for you personally?

"It has been an excellent learning experience in plenty of fields. And it has certainly helped me get jobs more easily. But the best reward is Lutris itself. Being able to manage a large library of games spreading over decades and multiple systems."

---

I hope you enjoyed this, and coming up (once I write the questions up and get them all done) I have:

• AA of Decky Loader
• Eben of Junk Store
• Gardiner Bryant of YouTube

...and some more I won't name just yet! Thanks again for giving me a space I can share these :)

A little while ago I had the good fortune of organizing a fair-sized interview with the team behind Heroic Games Launcher.

Being very good friends with one member of the team meant I was lucky enough to send them all some questions and get some very detailed replies about all kinds of things. About Heroic, Linux, open-source, gaming and so much more.

Heroic itself is a Free and Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. It obviously also works a dream on the Steam Deck (and I can’t recommend it enough!).

One thing to note before posting this interview is that I did this interview some months ago, back when I was a stalwart Reddit user and contributing a lot to the Steam Deck / Linux scene on there.

Nothing here is out-of-date, and it’s still a damn fine interview (if I may say so myself!), I just wanted it shared here on Lemmy.

I hope you enjoy it :)

You can find all the information you could possibly want on Heroic by using this link to their website

---

Introduction and Background

---

Can you tell us a bit about yourselves and what inspired you to start working on Heroic Launcher? Was it everyone's love of gaming or programming that made you all take the leap?

---

Mathis: "I believe it was a good mix of both. For me, I wanted to play the games I own on the Epic Games Store. Their launcher is... not the best, it's even worse on Linux (at least it was at the time). A friend pointed me towards Legendary, a command-line cross-platform replacement for the launcher. Heroic then emerged from that as the logical next step (a graphical user interface). After about a year of waiting for it to mature, I moved my games over from Legendary to Heroic, found something I could improve, submitted that change, and the rest is history."

Paweł: "Definitely both, but with more emphasis on programming. I was getting started with Linux and open source in general. Even though I started contributing with translations, I wanted to eventually contribute with code. I believe my first code change was about the new UI for login. After some smaller changes, I eventually picked up a highly requested feature - GOG support."

Ariel: "I was more into the programming side. I don’t play much and I wasn’t even an Epic Games user, but I wanted to contribute to a project that would help users and learn new skills at the same time. It felt like a good fit for me. I started with just some really small things like fixing a shortcut bug or basic stuff, but eventually, things started to make sense. After some time, it feels really nice to know that you are doing something that is helping a lot of people."

Etaash: "I was tired of using Lutris at the time. It had a lot of bugs (most of them fixed now), and it is written in Python, so that turned me away from contributing to fix those issues (Python is unreadable for me, who primarily programs in C/C++). I looked for alternatives and eventually found Heroic, which suited my needs since all I needed was to launch Epic games. Heroic was a bit more stable, but it also wasn’t stable enough, so I decided to dig into the code a bit. Since it was TypeScript, I was able to follow it. If I remember correctly, most of the issues were caused by how Heroic interacted with Wine. Fixing those issues allowed games to launch more consistently out of the box. Since then, I have kept my focus on that one area: maximizing game compatibility."

Flavio: "I was kind of bored on a pretty cold and snowy black winter day in Sweden during the holidays. Didn’t have plans and was off from work for two weeks, so I decided to learn something new. I was already using Legendary on Linux to play a few games. I started using it to play Control when it was released, and it was Epic exclusive. It was a pain at the time since gaming on Linux was not exactly easy 4 years ago; things have improved a lot since then. So, since I wanted to learn something new, I started researching how to build a GUI for Legendary just for fun. In two days, I was able to come up with a simple GUI that already dealt with login, listing games, selecting different wine versions and prefixes, etc. The basis of what became Heroic today."

---

What was the initial goal you had in mind when you first started developing Heroic Launcher?

"Heroic started as Flavio’s side project. He was using Legendary for accessing Epic and decided to make a GUI application for it. It was also a way to gain more experience with Electron and web technologies. This is what the project was mostly about: just a simple way to browse and launch games. If you want some more history lessons, make sure to check out old releases"

---

How has the project evolved since its inception?

Flavio: "The first year was kind of slow, and I honestly thought of giving up several times. There was a lot of criticism from the community since it was using Electron and it was for Epic games, and people love to hate Epic and Electron. I worked basically alone the first year, with just a few contributions here and there.

The second year was when things started to grow far beyond my control and got a lot of traction and media coverage. Releasing it for macOS and Windows was also a big leap, and nowadays we have around 10% of users on macOS and 25% on Windows, for people that hate how bad Epic Games launcher is there. Adding other stores was always a goal, but finding the time to dedicate to it was pretty harsh. But luckily, we had Paweł joining and working with other members of the community to crack GOG and then Amazon.

After adding GOG, the community and even the sceptical people started embracing Heroic more and more."

---

Were there any significant challenges you faced during the initial development process? Before your first release?

Flavio: "Before the first release, I cannot think of big challenges. Most of the work was being done by Legendary and Wine on the backend. Heroic was basically just sending the commands to it; it was pretty simple at first. I think the hardest part was dealing with the community that had a few folks that were basically just trying to criticize the project on every change, even though it was free, open-source, and not using their time and effort."

What keeps you motivated to continue developing and improving Heroic Launcher? It's been some time now since its inception, and I know motivation can ebb with time. What keeps all of you having the fire to keep this improving?

Mathis: "The fact that there is still so much to improve is my primary source of motivation. I know that for everything I implement, someone out there will be happy that it was done (even if that someone is just myself; we all personally use Heroic as well, after all)."

Ariel: "I have a looooong TODO list of things I want to try. Some items are to fix something I encounter and bugs me, other things are just ideas I have, and Heroic is a great app for me to experiment and learn. Also, the feeling of fixing something that was bothering other people and knowing I helped feels good."

Flavio: "The biggest motivation is to keep bringing fun to this huge community that embraced our project and are always eager to have new features and things that will make play more fun than frustration, especially on Linux and macOS where we need to deal with compatibility layers like Wine, Proton, GPTK, etc. Especially when you are new to those and have no idea how it works. Heroic tries to make everything as click-and-play as possible.

Also, Heroic made me connect with so many nice people from the FOSS community, and even to get my current job, and I think other contributors also found nice jobs because of it. This is something that makes me very happy as well."

Paweł: "Game stores other than Steam usually treat Linux as second-class citizens if they even support it as a platform. What keeps me going is the fact that we get to make a difference on what game stores become approachable to less tech-savvy users."

---

I see at least one dev here is an outspoken Linux-user (seeing someone on Mastodon is rare enough to make me take notice!) Was there an element of that love of FOSS which led you to look into the Steam Deck itself (being the 'one' Linux handheld which has become mainstream)?

Ariel: "I’ve been a Windows-less user for many many years now, and I remember like 15-20 years ago how I struggled with gaming on Linux. In the last few years, things are SO much better, and when the Steam Deck was announced, it was a no-brainer for me. The only problem was that it’s not available in my country, so I had to get some family members to travel and get one for me. I don’t use it that much now, but I use it also as a way to tell people “see? You don’t need Windows for this”."

Flavio: "Yeah, like Ariel, I am also a primary Linux user since around 2007 when I got my first PC. Always tried to play games on Linux somehow, and it was always a pain. When Steam launched a Linux version, I think around 2012, it was a huge thing for me, and I was basically just buying games with the Linux version at the time. With the launch of Proton around 2018-2019, I guess the game changed totally, and since I play mostly single-player games, I can play 99% of my library on Linux and on the Steam Deck."

---

Is everyone a Steam Deck user?

Ariel: "I am. I don’t use it much lately, but I sometimes go back for a while."

Flavio: "Yes, actually my first Steam Deck I was able to buy only with donations from Heroic Patreon and Ko-fi. I finished a lot of games on it, especially Metroidvanias, which is my passion."

Etaash: "Unfortunately, I don’t have a Steam Deck."

Paweł: "Yes, I am. The Deck is a great travel companion."

---

Development and Features

---

What were some of the more unique features you were excited to add to Heroic Launcher?

Mathis: "Well, anything store-specific definitely was unique, but it wouldn't necessarily get me excited (Epic has added... 5? different features into their API exclusively used by Fortnite, each one becoming more cryptic). I've recently added a new system information gathering tool into Heroic to help with support requests; getting into the weeds of PCI databases and WMI classes was fun (and we now detect GPUs more accurately than NVIDIA & AMD's own tools!)."

Paweł: "I’m very, very proud of what we’ve done with GOG support. Most solutions that are really similar to Heroic rely on offline installers for game downloads. While this isn’t a big deal for the most part, the system is slow to provide updates and requires manual input to apply them. Heroic is closer to what GOG Galaxy is; it’s able to download an update instantly after it’s been released. We can also access password-protected Beta releases of games. This is especially useful for game developers who want to test things before making them public."

Ariel: "I was really into accessibility at some point. I think Heroic is really user-friendly, and we were lacking some things. Also, the feature to control the interface with a gamepad is something I’m really happy with how it worked (and we wanted that before the Steam Deck release). It still has some problems and rough edges, but the experience is good enough, I think. I’m also really happy with the “known fixes” feature to automatically apply fixes we know for specific games (kinda like proton-fixes, so not that unique, but specific to Heroic). It helped a lot to make more games work out of the box."

Flavio: "When I think of new features, I think of things that add more value to the end users and myself since I also use Heroic a lot. So things that I am always excited about are to add either more stores to it or to improve the compatibility layer to be able to play games easily without having to tinker a lot with settings, etc."​

---

Can you share an interesting story from the development phase? With each dev in a different country, I can imagine your time-zones are a battle in and of itself!

Mathis: "Communication is inherently asynchronous, that's true. I hope I've not woken the others up in the middle of the night too many times while bugging them to help me with something. I can't point to one interesting story in particular, but I believe the whole journey was (and still is!) interesting. Being able to hack on software in a small team while never having seen one another in person is a cool feeling."

Ariel: "I think we actually only met once in a call in the last 3/4 years? And we were not even all there, but it’s weird, you kinda end up knowing the rest a bit even if you don’t really share much time. I don’t think the time zones were ever a problem, to be honest. We are all really good at doing things async, and we know that whenever you ask something, there’s a good chance nobody is there and you’ll have to wait (I’m in South America, so if I do something at 12-1am my time, the rest of the team is most likely sleeping in Europe)."

Flavio: "I think that for most FOSS projects, async communication is the default rule, and dealing with time zones is fine. There were some times where I was not available, and we had some major bugs to fix, and the other devs were waiting for me to make the release. But besides that, things work pretty well for us. We have pretty good communication, and we know each other very well as well."

---

​# How do you decide which new features or improvements to prioritize?

Mathis: "Other than "thing is on fire and needs fixing right now" type of issues, it is mostly just gut feeling. Of course, I can only work on things I know need working on (so either it's something I personally want to do or it's suggested by someone in the community)."

Ariel: "I try to think, “of all these ideas I have, what will benefit the project the most? And what can I realistically achieve in X time?” Because sometimes I have a crazy idea, but then I realize it’s not really that important, or it will take me weeks, and maybe a simpler thing that I can do in a few hours or days is better. I like to ship things, so I like to do small things that add value. I also think each of us has a different set of skills and preferences for what to work on."

Flavio: "A lot of stuff comes from the community. Some others we realize when we are using the app as well. For me, those are the two main factors when thinking about new features or bug fixing."

---

Have there been any user-suggested features that you found particularly intriguing or surprising? Has any 'one' feature of Heroic been implemented because of such a suggestion? Be it Discord, Reddit, or similar?

Mathis: "Anything Windows-exclusive is most likely coming from a user suggestion. For example, the Fortnite-only features of the Epic API I've mentioned above: I have no interest in the game, but enough people were asking for them & they weren't too hard to implement. Whipped up a Pull Request (for the non-nerds out here: a list of changes to Heroic), people reported it was working, and in it went."

Ariel: "There’s a lot of ideas that come from users’ suggestions. Sometimes the suggestion may not fully fit into Heroic’s scope, but that may trigger other ideas too. I can’t remember one specifically, but one I want to implement that was suggested long ago (and I never find the time to do it) is to have the option to remap the gamepad buttons to other actions."

Flavio: "I can think of several that came from user suggestions. One thing was the ability to control Heroic with a joystick. It was a feature that people asked since the beginning, and then Ariel implemented it later on. The Windows and macOS versions also were suggested by users. GOG integration was asked like day one as well."

---

What was the most challenging feature to implement and how did you overcome it?

Ariel: "I think the most challenging stuff I find are bugs that are really hard to solve… like… race conditions (we have a lot of things happening at the same time) or things the users don’t really see (like performance problems, dev-experience changes, and refactors, etc.). A lot of features sometimes look really challenging or complicated, but I usually end up feeling it was just my lack of knowledge of the topic. In the end, some things I struggled with ended up looking really simple."

Flavio: "I think making Proton work properly took time. At first, we did not have proper access to the docs, so we were just guessing and testing a lot. Today, Heroic has a pretty solid implementation, but it took a lot of time to reach that level of stability."​

---

Personally, my favorite store-front is GOG. I love what they stand for and what they do for the gaming community. Have you had direct contact with GOG? Any insights? Have they given you any feedback? Even a throwaway comment?

Flavio: "The guys from GOG are great, and they contacted me directly once to talk about Heroic, and they totally support the project and what we are doing, especially on Linux. I would say we have a really good relationship with them."

Paweł: "Adding to what Flavio said, we currently have the affiliate deal with GOG, so any purchases made using our link support the project financially."

---

Community and Feedback

---

How has the community feedback shaped the development of Heroic Launcher? You guys have an ARDENT fan-base, and there's no better sign of a good product than a community who rally around what you built. Are your respective communities involved in some way in what comes with each release?

Ariel: "I think the best thing we get from the community for Heroic is a way to understand what’s important. Because we can have ideas and think of a random feature, but you never know if people will actually care about it… but having Discord and GitHub (those are the 2 places I check regularly) lets you see what’s going on, what’s bothering most people (latest example would be the GTAV problems, and that led us into doing more research around that problem). We can’t do everything that looks important, but it certainly helps a lot."

Flavio: "Just when I created the first POC of Heroic, I published about it on Reddit, and the comments were mostly favorable, but there were a lot of people that criticized at first because of being for Epic and using Electron like I said above. But nowadays, we have an amazing community. People don’t complain about that anymore. We have several friends in other communities as well, like Bottles, Vanilla OS, Lutris, Gaming on Linux, etc. People help each other, others refer to the project everywhere. There are tons of videos about it on Youtube and tutorials on several websites for gaming or not."

---

How do you stay connected with the users and incorporate their feedback into the project?

Flavio: "I think having an active Discord and GitHub is good for those. We use a bit of Mastodon and X as well, but I think most of the ideas come from the first two."

---

How important is the community to the success and growth of Heroic Launcher?

Paweł: "It’s safe to say Heroic wouldn’t exist, or at least it wouldn’t be in its current form, without community feedback. It is invaluable to the growth of the project."

---

​# Discord and Reddit...are there any other places you have a community? Anywhere else people can follow along with Heroic?

Ariel: "I would consider GitHub also part of the community. A lot of suggestions/requests go directly there. I personally only read Discord and GitHub issues."

---

Future Plans

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What exciting new features or updates can users look forward to in the near future? I know a new release is coming up; have you anything you can share on that here with me?

Ariel: "It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen in the near future because we don’t have a predefined roadmap. Also, there’s always new contributors that show up and add something we were not expecting (for example, the feature to add categories and assign games was a contribution and nobody on the core team was working on that). Personally, my main goals are: redesign, improving UX, and improving DX."

---

Are there any long-term goals or visions you have for Heroic Launcher?

Flavio: "I think adding more stores, making playing games even easier to play without much tinkering. These are the main Heroic goals and mission."

---

How do you see Heroic Launcher evolving in the next few years?

Flavio: "Be an alternative for EA and Ubisoft launchers on Linux and macOS would be pretty nice. But even if we have all the money and time, maybe not all of those are possible because of technical restrictions."

---

How do you envision the future of game launchers in general? Handhelds in general?

Flavio: "I feel that people don't like to have too many launchers, so in the future I think companies like EA and others might kill their launcher and only publish on Steam, Epic, and GOG."

---

I know EA is in your plans for the future, any inkling on how close you might be to making that happen?

Paweł: "The project is being developed together with the team behind Battlefront II manager - Kyber. There are still a lot of features and challenges we need to tackle before we make it public. Give us a few more months; you won’t be disappointed."

---

As a fan of AMA's with developers, can people look forward to something similar to that with Heroic at any stage? With any release? If you'd give us even a 'maybe' I know people would love to see that. Or I would anyway.

​​Flavio: "I honestly think it would be fun to do something like this."

---

Technical Aspects

---

Can you describe the tech stack behind Heroic Launcher?

Mathis: "Heroic is, in its core, a website with superpowers. We're using Electron, which gives us access to the frankly huge Web ecosystem, a fine (to not start another language war) language to work in (TypeScript), and low-level control where we need it. Store backends are usually implemented with another binary coming with Heroic (Legendary for Epic Games, gogdl and Comet for GOG, Nile for Amazon) to make it easy for other game launchers to build upon our work."​

---

What was the most technically challenging part of developing Heroic Launcher?

Mathis: "Definitely publishing to all 3 major operating systems at once. Finding out that your cool new feature isn't working right because macOS uses an ancient version of some command-line utility is not for the faint of heart. Other than that, the (unsurprising) amount of variance between users always has to be dealt with. "Where do people mount their drives?" "What shell are they using?" and even "What language are they speaking?" all seem like obvious questions now, but they're sure to come back to bite you when you least expect it."

Flavio: "Making everything works as seamlessly as possible is the biggest challenge, in my opinion. Even though the heavy lifting is made on the wine/proton side, it still requires us to understand and test a lot of stuff. A few releases ago we added the automatic fixes with winetricks, and then we now have this repository on GitHub where we can use it to automate those. This is the biggest challenge: to make that one-click play work just fine on all Linux distros and macOS."​

---

How do you handle compatibility issues across different operating systems? (which OS was the hardest?!)

Mathis: "We do have automated tests in place, but nothing beats the old "boot up Heroic on OS, test it". Because of that, as a Linux user, I'd say Linux is the easiest, followed by Windows (at least you can test in a VM), with macOS being the hardest (the only viable solution to testing on there being "Buy a Macbook"). Outside of Heroic itself, we heavily rely on Wine and its derivatives to run Windows programs. Its support is, of course, always improving, and I hope it'll take another big leap once UMU is supported."

Ariel: "I feel Linux is the easiest to work with, but I’m probably too biased. Windows would be second; at least when there’s a problem, you can find something on the internet. On Mac, it’s harder; the system is more closed."

Flavio: "I disagree with Ariel and Mathis. Windows is the easiest platform to deal with, simply because all games are native to it. So we don’t need to deal with a lot of settings and variables and commands like we do for Linux and Mac. Linux is second because the Wine and Proton are pretty mature there. macOS is improving now with Apple's Gaming Porting Toolkit, but it's still at least 2 years away from what Linux has achieved for gaming."

---

Are there any third-party tools or libraries that have been particularly helpful?

Ariel: "Weblate to solve the management of translation is great. Legendary/gogdl/nile are, of course, crucial."

Flavio: "I would say all those binaries like Legendary, GOGDL, and Nile, but also Proton, Wine-GE, Wine-Crossover, and GPTK from GCENX, UMU. I mean, even Electron is really important to make it so easy to distribute the package to all the platforms we support."

---

How do you ensure the security and privacy of users' data within Heroic Launcher?

Paweł: "No data is being shared anywhere by Heroic. The application only manages what is required for it to work, everything operates locally on the user's machine."

---

Personal Insights

---

What’s everyone's favourite game to play using Heroic Launcher?

Paweł: "I absolutely love the world of Horizon Zero Dawn. Currently, I aim to unlock all of its achievements. Even though there is a whole New Game+ ahead of me, I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel."

Ariel: "I don’t have a favorite game (I raaarelly would play a game twice), and I don’t play online games."

Flavio: "I finished several games using Heroic already in these almost 4 years of development. My favourites were Blasphemous 2, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, and A Plague Tale: Innocence."

---

How do you balance development work with your personal life? A lot of devs who build for gaming can find it hard to find the love or time for gaming sometimes. Do you guys struggle here?

Ariel: "I’m single and live alone, so I have a lot of time after work. But I don’t play games that much. I have weeks where I’d play some hours, but then that goes away, and I don’t touch a game for weeks or even months. But on the other hand, coding is my favorite hobby, and it requires less commitment (you can code a feature in a few hours, but some games require 50/60 hours once you start them), so I find it way easier to find time to code."

Flavio: "I had some struggles and still have because I always needed to reconcile Heroic, a full-time job, and family, since I am married and have two kids. Good thing I don’t need to sleep much 😂"

---

Are there any developers or projects in particular that inspire you?

*Flavio: "Well, Heroic was inspired a lot by the Lutris project. I used Lutris for several years, and I still admire the project a lot. But the Wine Project, Linux itself, Steam. All those things, open source or not, had inspired me somehow as a gamer, developer, and Heroic dev."

---

What advice would you give to aspiring developers who want to create their own software?

Ariel: "Just… start something, the simplest prototype you can build. And if you don’t know where to start to create something new, start by contributing to something you use; you’ll learn a lot, and eventually, you’ll understand."

Flavio: "Yeah, starting the first thing might be harder, but once you start it and publish it somewhere, you feel nice, and then you want to improve or even start something new. Before Heroic, I published a couple of Android Apps, tried to build a Bitcoin Exchange on my own as well. All of those gave me experience, and I learned a lot from architecture until publishing, through the dev ops, sustainability, scalability, etc."

---

What do you do to unwind and recharge after a long day of coding?

Ariel: "I watch some series or play sudoku or go play soccer. But since it’s my hobby, sometimes coding for Heroic feels like a way to recharge after my full-time work too."

Flavio: "Watch some TV shows and horror movies with my wife, play with my kids, or get the Steam Deck and play something there as well."

---

Finally? Any closing words? Anything you'd like to say to the community-at-large?

Flavio: "A big thanks to everyone that supports us, all developers that contributed to the project, our friends on Discord, other friends' projects like Weblate, Bottles, Lutris, Gaming on Linux, The Linux Experiment, Vanilla OS, Garuda OS, SignPath, and many others. Everyone is part of the Heroic journey and is important in many different ways."

---

Another big thanks to the whole team for making this happen and answering my questions! I hope you all here on Lemmy have enjoyed it too!

You can find Heroic:

• Here, this is their official website

• This is their Discord server, which is very populated

• Here is their GitHub page

• And lastly, their Mastodon link is here for you!

• thanks all <3

Well, it’s that time of the week where I share a roundup of all the interesting things I have spotted in gaming news. There’s a big variety this week, with a fair section of Nintendo Switch news, some GOG, some Steam Deck, Linux and just gaming in general.

My aim is to format these posts in a more personal manner than most gaming sites do now. My ever-lasting inspo is the old, old video game sites, blogs and magazines that I never had the privilege of being alive for:

• image/gif/link heavy (I’m a big GIF fan – and I pronounce it with a hard ‘g’)
• personal voice (no 1930’s nasal radio presenter voice here!)
• mostly news or articles or points you won’t find on normal gaming sites, these are the smaller, lesser things that I’m drawn to. I know you’ll have spotted the big news articles, so I’m hoping some of these smaller ones might have been missed by you.

So grab a coffee? Or a tea? Or a glass of wine? And enjoy <3

---

Steam Deck / Gaming News:

---

GOG Galaxy Alternative:

I found this extremely detailed post on someone who has created (or is creating rather – it is a work in progress) their own alt to GOG’s Galaxy.

There’s been a few of these projects lately, which are bringing more options to the GOG scene. I’ve covered them in previous News Posts here on Lemmy, but briefly set out, they are:

• vangogh/theo
• Gamesieve - (whose dev is here on Lemmy!)
• Gogg Downloader

Anyway, since the post itself has so many images and has everything explained so well, I’ll just shut up and paste the entirety of it here so you can read below:

6 months ago I wanted to play a GOG game I have hosted on my server, but as an expert in sophisticated procrastination I started building my own game launcher instead.

Before doing so, I tried the options out there; Playnite (amazing software), Launchbox, GOG Galaxy 2 etc. I soon realized that none of the options had the features I wanted, namely:

• A clean, customizable UI without tinkering with code or juggling multiple addons
• The option to check whether your games are offloaded to the cloud or not. I have a NAS and often offload my DRM-free games to the cloud. I wanted this cloud "installed state" to be visible in the app.
• Portable mode and a simple database structure that allows syncing between devices. In my case, a PC and a handheld device.
• A clean overview page showing which games you're currently playing and statistics
• Own-cloud hosted save backups out of the gate
• A screenshot viewer for all your games
• The ability to add Emulators to the app and launch games using them
• How long to beat data out of the box ... list goes on.

I first built my app using Powershell script, but I quickly realized how ugly that was. It was so fun coding so I continued and instead switched to a Electron / React stack, which my app is built on.

I can talk about this for hours, but I just wanted to get this out there. I'm a guy with many ideas, and this is the first thing I ever release to the public. I'm my worst critic so it's been tough to actually settle on something.

It's not out yet, but will be very soon. I'll be releasing an 1.0 version with most functionality for free, and an optional paid download with all functionality (custom themes etc). It'll be for a very fair price, a one time cost without any darn DRM!

(and that’s the post)

They have a Discord link here (since I am not on Discord, I have no idea the quality of discussions) if you’d like to see what the dev is saying

---

Smelling Glue:

I can't believe I have to remind users again, but sniffing the fumes from your Steam Deck vent is literally inhaling burning adhesives. That’s how it works! Fresh adhesives applied in the factory, and when the hardware is ‘spun up’, the heat will burn off the excess – giving that strong scent. I've seen these images shared around this week, and its just...only causing you harm. I can hope that this is just a joke
Don't do this – and for fucks’ sake, please don’t 3D print something to direct the smell of excess burning glue into your nose.

Anyway, images as follows:

---

Kingdom Come

As Warhorse Studios have put it, they have reached a huge milestone!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has officially surpassed 3 million copies sold, with a 93% user score on Steam. Combined with over 10 million lifetime sales of the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the franchise has cemented Warhorse Studios' position as one of Europe’s leading AAA studios and a rising force in the RPG genre.

10 million and 3 million respectively, for a independent studio and the level of quality those games have (both available on GOG I might add!) is just breathtaking.

Further, I just love that devs from other studios have chimed in on the LinkedIn post they made to announce this:

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South of Midnight:

The rather crazy (amazing in atmosphere and setting, not to mention such a beautiful and unique art-style...not so amazing with the basic combat – imo anyway) game has reached over 1 million players, since launching almost one month ago on April 8th.

They took inspiration from Louisiana, Tennesee, Mississippi and Georgia, and of this, Compulsion Games CEO and Studio Head Guillaume Provost said

Obviously, when making a game that's so heavily tied to a specific region and culture, you’re going to have a lot of sales that are proportionately based on that region.

And

When we had the discussion originally, I thought that that specific region was pretty underserved in the video game market. Kentucky Route Zero is a good example, and you've seen it portrayed in Red Dead Redemption. But no one had really kind of dived in and mined the mythology of the area and looked at what made it iconic.

...which I thought was interesting! Anyway, one million players is an amazing feat! And a game well worth trying (I’d recommend Game Pass, if you have that option)

---

The Gaming Emporium:

I did cover this a few weeks back (or a few News Posts ago, at least) when they relaunched their site with a fancy new overhaul. But they’ve made another chance!

What is this Gaming Emporium?

Well, its a site put together to give easy access to:

• PC ports
• Decompilations/recompilations
• Texture packs
• Remakes/females
• Fan games

It makes searching, finding, installing and checking over these games and projects as easy as it can be, and puts them all in one place, which is the biggest benefit. I’ve played countless games which are shown on this site on my Steam Deck, and some on my desktops also.

This is a great resource.

This latest change to the site is a 'recent additions' section, making the newer projects easy to find!

The site itself is here with this link :)

---

Zelda64 Recomp:

One such example of this kind of thing is the newly update Zelda64 Recomp:

Version 1.2.0 brings:

• Mod & texture pack support—drag & drop or use the mod menu!
• MacOS now supported
• Linux Flatpak added
• Performance boosts for weaker GPUs

A link to the GitHub for the project is here

And a handy link to mods you can install with it are here, too

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EmuDeck:

The most recognizable of the emulation options for the Steam Deck, EmuDeck has had a new guide and overview posted by Russ of Retro Game Corps on YouTube.

You can find the video here, but it takes you through everything you might need, and also mentions the other options available for emulating on the Steam Deck, like RetroDECK and Batocera.

---

33:

Twelve days since launch, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has crossed two million copies sold!!!

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Leisure Suit Larry:

Honestly, these games seem aesthetically horrifying, and rather niche (perhaps suited to an older audience?), but games being de-listed is never a good thing for gaming. From their announcement made on Steam which you can find here, their statement is:

Dear Larry Fans,

After decades of questionable pickup lines and unforgettable adventures, it’s finally time for Larry to hang up his leisure suit—at least the retro version of it!

The following classic titles will soon be leaving the Steam store and will no longer be available for purchase:

• Leisure Suit Larry - Magna Cum Laude Uncut and Uncensored
• Leisure Suit Larry 1 - In the Land of the Lounge Lizards
• Leisure Suit Larry 2 - Looking For Love (In Several Wrong Places)
• Leisure Suit Larry 3 - Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals
• Leisure Suit Larry 5 - Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
• Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Shape Up Or Slip Out
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - Modded:

Modders for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have achieved a major breakthrough by enabling 12-player co-op, far beyond the game’s original three-player limit—with full support from developer Saber Interactive.

The mod, currently in testing, allows for battles against Tyranid bosses, with plans to expand into raid-style missions featuring tough bosses requiring teamwork. The modding community, including Tom of Astartes Overhaul, were pretty thrilled with Saber’s openness, which has enabled ambitious projects like this.

In the meantime, Space Marine 2 continues to grow with upcoming updates, including a horde mode, new class, and maps. Alongside a pretty extensive modding scene gives us a good look at the usual PC gaming method – a game that can have endless life after the initial offerings from the studios!

There’s an article on IGN here with this link, if you want to read more about it, and get the links too!

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Ocean Keeper:

An early access game I picked up on a whim a fairly long time ago (and I never get early access games, this might be the single one I ever did? And only then because it was about the ocean which I love?!) has their full release now!

What was called Codename Ocean Keeper is now titles Ocean Keeper Dome Survival:

Explore dungeons, fight hordes of monsters and survive on a huge map. This is Ocean Keeper - an action roguelike with tower defense elements. Mine resources in caves, customize your Mech Spider, upgrade different weapons and face dangerous bosses that won't leave you a chance!

They’ve made announcement on Steam:

Today, we’re proud to officially release version 1.0 on Steam. Thank you for being part of this journey — whether you’ve been with us from the start or just joined now. Welcome to the full Ocean Keeper experience!

The link to which is here!

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An Article and a Video:

There’s two recent things that caught my attention, which I found super helpful, informative and fun – they both make what is ‘under the hood’ easier for users.

The first of which is here, this is just a link to a link – but I posted here on Lemmy: The Definitive Guide to Steam Play Tools. Check it out, because this blog post is so good, written by Gardiner Bryant.

The second is a technical video made by MonroeWorld on YouTube, called Shader Caches 201 – Learn More About This Helpful Steam Deck Feature. It’s just 10:02 long, and really helpful for people wanting to learn what is behind what they’re playing, and how it makes things work so well

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Zarya:

I just found this on YouTube as well a few days back, a fun gameplay teaser (running at 2:02 long), it looks really fun, and unique! But it looks ironically very, very, very slow.

I really love off-the-track (pun?) car games, like #Drive Rally, Art of Rally, and Old School Rally (can you tell I am a rally girl?), and this one fits in nicely with that:

Welcome to Zarya - a captivating narrative simulator that takes you through the picturesque landscapes of a post-Soviet rural setting. In this immersive experience, you'll:

• Navigate the tranquil country roads as a dedicated rural driver
• Deliver crucial packages and aid the friendly villagers
• Earn your livelihood in a meaningful way
• Collect an array of classic cars, each with its own story
• Immerse yourself in the rich, nostalgic atmosphere of your homeland

Anyway, the trailer link is here on YouTube if you’re interested!

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A 10th Anniversary:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has now been around for 10 years, or to be precise...a little over 10 years!

It’s very much in my top 3 games of all time, and one I won’t ever uninstall!

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LegionGo

On the Polish Lenovo forum they officially announced that SteamOS will appear on May 15th. Nice to have an update on SteamOS working with a full official build on other handhelds!

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Xbox Showcase Possibilities:

This one’s a fun comprehensive list put together by mo-par, and details everything that Xbox is working on. The original set was was too extensive, so I’m going to pick and choose the least subjective (and hopeful) and post these ones here.

There were so many sections, which I’m going to have such fun formatting for Lemmy (lies):

There’s games we’ve gotten updates on recently:

• Doom Dark Ages (out May 15th)
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 & 4 Remake (out July 11th)
• Gears of War Reloaded (out August 26th)
• Ninja Gaiden 4 (out 2025)
• Outer Worlds 2 (out 2025)
• Fable (out 2026)
• Clockwork Revolution (gameplay reveal 2023)
• Perfect Dark (gameplay reveal 2024)
• State of Decay 3 (gameplay reveal 2024)
• Blade (revealed 2023)
• OD (revealed 2023)
• Gears of War E Day (revealed 2024)

There are games we haven’t seen for awhile:

• Everwild (revealed 2019, rebooted 2021)
• Elder Scrolls 6 (revealed 2018)
• Contraband (revealed 2021)

Upcoming DLC:

• Starfield
• Indiana Jones
• Avowed

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Tariffs (or ‘are you tired of all that winning yet?’)

One of the big names in the SBC (single-board-gaming, but that term is now quite loosely reserved for all retro handheld gaming devices) gaming scene is Retroid. Recently released, the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 (you can watch a review on it here, if you’re interested was retailing for around $220 USD.

Since the tariffs have kicked in making America so great, it now costs over $600 to buy it in the ‘States.

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Custom PS2:

A user by the name of PaleRestaurant shared their custom PS2. There isn’t much that can be said, except I adore how hardware hackers take their time, and make their consoles the best they can possibly be. There’s a couple images of their efforts, and I know I’m impressed:

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Limited Run:

...Limited Run Games GBA cart for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution has been found to have used recycled chips for the internals that are scratched, damaged and dirty....on a NEW product! Three different buyers have received carts with obviously used and in one instanced physically damaged chips. Note: Three instances makes a pattern. Everyone needs to see more carts opened to see how many are affected

A nicely detailed video covering this is here, if you want to check it out!

(And I LOVE Shantae, I loved playing those games)

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Losing Preservation:

The Japanese Game Preservation Society (GPS), a non-profit dedicated to saving Japan's gaming history, is on the verge of collapse due to severe financial struggles. With just £2,100 left—not even enough for a month's rent—the organization, supported by legendary developers like Space Invaders creator Tomohiro Nishikado, risks shutting down by September without more monthly donors. Despite preserving thousands of rare games and documents, strict Japanese laws prevent sharing ROMs, limiting fundraising options and public engagement.

Efforts like crowdfunding, auctions, and high-quality documentaries have failed to attract enough support, compounded by language barriers and lack of global outreach. GPS head Joseph Redon stresses they don’t need massive funding—just 400 more supporters donating £2/month—but also volunteers to help communicate their work. Without urgent action, a vital piece of gaming history could disappear forever.

Utterly devastating news, and there is a lengthy article covering this via timeextension, I urge you to read up on it since it’s important to us all who love gaming

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Party Cannon

Party Cannon, a Scottish band have released a single on a Mega Drive/Genesis cart!

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Epic Games:

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As ever, there is precious little to share on the Epic Games front. While they’re still a significant factor in gaming (love or hate them, they are a big part of things), progress on things like their newly launched mobile app, their own launcher etc come at a glacial pace. But what I have found, I’ll leave here:

All The Games:

Easily the one thing they’re most well known for is their weekly free giveaways of games. While it’s clearly in place to make a user spend time (and obv money) on their platform, there’s workarounds to play all those free games far, far away from Epic.

Junk Store Heroic Games Launcher

These are both my recommendations if you want to play the games on desktop or Steam Deck and play their games.

Anyway, want a handy reference of every free game has ever given away? (476 of them!) Here's an image a user put together of every single game they've given away. I uploaded the very high-res image onto Catbox, via this link, because its too big for Lemmy to want to upload!

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Sweeney’s Big News:

Tim Sweeney (Epic’s CEO) announced that there would be some ‘big news’ coming a few days back.

While there was some speculation on what it’d be (Epic Games’ own Game Pass, GTA V being free again – the typical nonsense), it ended up being more news for developers publishing their games on Epic. I’ll link this post, but all you’ll see is the short quotes here anyway, so...don’t bother:

We’re making some exciting updates to the Epic Games Store to provide an even better deal for developers, starting in June. 

0% Store Fee For First $1,000,000 in Revenue Per App Per Year Starting in June 2025, for any Epic Games Store payments we process, developers will pay a 0% revenue share on their first $1,000,000 in revenue per app per year, and then our regular 88%/12% revenue share when they earn more than that.

Epic Games Store Webshops In June 2025, we are releasing a new feature enabling developers to launch their own webshops hosted by the Epic Games Store. These webshops can offer players out-of-app purchases, as a more cost-effective alternative to in-app purchases, where Apple, Google, and others charge exorbitant fees. With new legal rulings in place, developers will be able to send players from games to make digital purchases from webshops on any platform that allows it, including iOS in the European Union and United States.

As an extra bonus, players spending in Epic Webshops will also accrue 5% Epic Rewards on all their purchases.

Here’s the link on their site if you’d like it looking prettier than I can possible make it!

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4 Free Games:

As a part of Prime Gaming’s monthly giveaways, there is 4 games from Epic being given away this month.

I wrote a post giving the entire list of games – be they Xbox, GOG (my fav), Epic or otherwise the other day, which you can find here if you’d like. It certainly made people a bit cross, I even got some quite abusive messages about it away from Lemmy. But...here’s the link

And the four games from Epic are:

• Amnesia: Rebirth
• Doors – Paradox
• Chessarama
• Liberté

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Next Weeks Free Games:

• We’ve got two games this week (tomorrow-ish depending on where you are in the world!):

• Deadtime Defenders (initially blacklisted to be unavailable to claim in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia and South Korea, but now all blacklists have been dropped – available to claim everywhere!) for PC

• Touch Type Tale

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Nintendo Switch News:

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Just a few things that might be of interest in the Switch scene.

We’re really on the cusp of a changing Nintendo landscape right now. I picked up a Japanese OLED the other day (and am going to chip it if I can find a space here in Thailand where I’m travelling that has the proper equipment for me to shoulder them out of the way and do it myself!), rather than investing in their iterative Switch 2 – I’ll just customize my OLED to be the best it can be! I’ve seen equal numbers clamoring for the sequel, and those getting an OLED instead.

I’m curious, what are your thoughts on the new model?

Anyway, on to Switch news:

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Litigious:

Nintendo is suing gaming accessory manufacturer Genki (probably known best for the Shadowcast) over Switch2 mock-ups it showed at CES, claiming trademark infringement.

Genki allegedly implied it had insider access to the unannounced console’s design — which it later admitted was false.

Nintendo also criticized Genki’s ‘infiltration’ jokes and a misleading ‘Direct’ video.

Here's a link to the case

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Switch performance:

A user by the name of Septive13 shared the site they have been working on, called handheld-performance (the link to which is here if you want to check it out yourself!):

For the past couple of months, I’ve been building a website to collect and organize performance data from Nintendo Switch games (resolution, frame rate, and overall stability).

The site is called Handheld Performance. It’s meant to be a quick and simple way to check how well a game runs, without having to dig through videos or forum threads. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m updating it regularly and plan to include the upcoming Switch 2 once it’s out.

It’s a nice idea! It might be somewhat subjective, but if you’re not using a modded Switch (something called sys-clk is able to be used on a Switch running Custom Firmware, Sys-clk is a system module for the the Switch that allows users to overclock or underclock the CPU, GPU, and RAM for better performance or battery life), if you’re using it stock and want to know exactly how games are running? This is a great resource for you. Check it out!

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Super5 OLED touch update:

What is this Super5?

SUPER5 OLED is a DIY OLED screen upgrade kit for the Nintendo Switch Lite. It boasts significantly higher brightness, contrast ratio, and color gamut when compared to the standard Switch Lite™ IPS screen. This kit contains everything you need to upgrade a standard Switch Lite™. It also includes the SUPER5 HDMI mod to allow the Switch Lite™ to output 1080p HDMI video. This kit does not require shell modifications or soldering. 

You can find a link for it here, if you want to see the site

What’s been happening?

There’s been a delay. This project is that of Taki Udon (of YouTube ‘fame’) – (here is the link to a video where he is showing it off installed in a Switch Lite), which itself is a massive undertaking. He sent an email out to those who have ordered, and I’m just sharing it here because in the Switch scene this is beyond interesting to me. Hardware hacking the console en masse because they want it to be the best it can possible be:

Delays and Shifting Production

Our original intention was to ship out your order in or around February, but we ran into cascading issues that we have only recently managed to fix. To fill Mega Kit preorders, we planned to use SUPER5 OLED Touch Batch 1 buffer stock. This wasn’t possible due to production issues.

While producing the first batch of SUPER5 OLED Touch, our screen factory caused a 40% failure rate in the displays they sent us due to issues in their factory. Making matters worse, the factory finished production one month behind schedule without delivering our entire order.

Based on these issues, we started exploring shifting production to a separate screen factory at the end of February. The biggest challenge in doing this is that our first screen factory was the only one capable of making a working glass touch panel. It took us many months to create a working one with them, and it is not a guarantee that we would have success doing it again with another factory. This is why you may have seen me say that we would discontinue the Touch version of this product.

In February, we spent several weeks trying to get a working glass touchscreen from another factory, but the progress was too slow. At that point, I placed an order for glass touchscreens with our original SUPER5 OLED factory. The idea being that those parts could be used by another factory for the final OCA assembly. That order arrived almost two weeks ago. 

While this was happening, we were auditing a second factory to complete this order. This is a time-consuming process that culminated in an acceptable retail prototype last week. Yesterday, I placed a production order with them, which means a shipping date is almost here.

Shipping Schedule This section will give you an overview of our shipping timeline based on the information that I have right now. It will take around 7 business days to make the FPC used in SUPER5 OLED. After that, it will take an extra 5 business days to assemble the number of screens in our order. We have a Labor Day holiday from 5/1-5/4, so the FPC order won’t start until May 5th. Based on this, we should receive shipments from the screen factory on or around May 16th, with the entire shipment done by May 25th. 

Assuming there are no issues, we should finish all customer shipments by the end of May based on the time it takes to do internal QC.

Sorry this was lengthy – but again, the whole topic is so interesting to me I had to share it!

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Firmware Update:

The latest Nintendo Switch firmware update arrived 5 days or so ago; 20.0.0 and promptly bricked some consoles.

Nintendo released an announcement themselves that they’d fix this, but some users are reporting on a range of places (here is one example on Reddit where a user has had issues) that things have gone wrong.

So since this, 20.0.1 has been released on the 2nd of May, promising fixes – you can read the release notes from Nintendo themselves on the Nintendo America site here if you’re so inclined

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Switch 2 Software Screens:

This is really a bit of nothing, but still interesting regardless. There's been a supposed 'leak' of a couple photos of the internal software.

Nothing particularly exciting or earth-shattering, but with all eyes waiting to see what vulnerabilities might come out from the launch models, any info is good info.

I do so love hardware hacking (which is why season one of Halt and Catch Fire is my true love!)

There is only two photos, and they’re here:

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And to wrap things up:

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What I Have Posted:

2 days ago I posted an interview I did (well, again, a ‘Q&A’ is a far more appropriate term for what it was!) with two of the team behind RetroDECK.

I’ve got a few of these set up, but they’re going to be done and posted on a slower scale than perhaps you’d like. All with devs of Steam Deck and Linux programs you might know or use, and also with some creators like YouTubers. Its just my way of giving the devs behind the projects we love a bit of the spotlight, since I feel we rarely hear from the people themselves.

I made it its own post here on Lemmy:

Which you can find here with this link if you missed it!

But they will be posted on SteamDeckHQ also, this one will be there some time this week (if you want it to be readable in a prettier way than Lemmy lets me format things!

Again, I want to thank my friends Lazorne and Xargon for doing this, I do so love RetroDECK <3

---

That's that!

I think that's all I'll include here. There's more I've spotted, but I'm sure if you made it even this far you're built of stern materials (is this the English saying?)

As ever, I'd just love to hear from you about what games you've been playing. The words Steam Deck are in the title, but this is (clearly) not limited to that. If you've been playing on a Tiger handheld I'd still love to hear it!

What game have you been having fun playing recently?

Previous News Posts:

To make it slightly easier, if you want to find my previous news posts, just follow these links!

• Steam Deck / Gaming News #2
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #3
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #4
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #5
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #6
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #7
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #8
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #9
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #10
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #11
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #12
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #13

And If you'd like to have me spout gaming nonsense every day, you can also follow me on Mastodon:

This blog post is by Gardiner Bryant, who you might know from YouTube (he covers Linux and Steam Deck in great depth)

I thought this one might be interesting for Linux and Steam Deck users here, if you missed it.

The link to the blog post is here!

...or just as interesting for those who like tinkering, and seeing what is 'under the hood' doing what!

The blog is is pretty beginner-friendly with how to run Windows games on Linux using Steam Play compatibility tools like Proton and WINE. It explains:

• Why compatibility layers are needed – Different operating systems handle system functions differently, so tools like Proton translate Windows game commands into something Linux understands.

• Performance impact – Unlike emulation, these tools don’t slow things down much, and some games may even run better thanks to optimizations like Vulkan support.

• Different tools available – It compares WINE (general Windows app support), Proton (optimized for gaming), and community versions like GE-Proton (extra features).

• How to use them – Simple steps for enabling them in Steam and recommendations for checking game compatibility on sites like ProtonDB.

• Bonus tools – Mentions alternatives like Luxtorpeda (native Linux game ports) and SteamTinkerLaunch (modding support).

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Why I think this blog might help beginners - or curious folk!

If you're new to Linux gaming, I thought this this post really demystifies how Windows games can work on Linux, what tools to use, and where to find help.

Annnnd that link again (pointless, since its the same as at the start of the post here) is here - to Gardiner's blog!

And finally, Gardiner's YouTube account is here, if you want to see the face behind the name

Hope it helps someone, anyway <3

In case you missed it from my last gaming news round-up post, I’m conducting interviews (perhaps Q&A’s is a more apt term though) with my friends.

These will be with the individuals and teams behind the programs you might use on the Steam Deck, but also in the Linux, gaming, YouTube and other similar ‘scenes’.

Coming up I'll be chatting to AA from Decky Loader, imLinguin from Heroic Games Launcher, Eben who makes Junk Store, some YouTubers whose content is Linux and Steam Deck-based, and far more.

But, one warning: I’m not a professional, nor are these meant to be very hard hitting.

I just like the idea of people getting to know those who are behind the programs they’re used to using. They rarely get any spotlight – they’re sometimes just a faceless username behind a project, and I feel like they deserve attention for what they give to us.

I was lucky that my friends behind RetroDECK were more than happy to agree to this first one, so – let’s go!

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What is RetroDECK?

RetroDECK is my choice for retro gaming on the Steam Deck. It's an all-in-one retro gaming platform designed specifically for the Steam Deck and Linux desktops. It integrates so many emulators, systems, and game engines into a single application, providing a seamless retro gaming experience without the need for extensive configuration. Their design philosophy is that everything must be included inside the application itself. Key Features:

• Flathub Distribution:

As a Flatpak application on Flathub, RetroDECK is sandboxed: Ensuring system stability, that all the files are contained, and it updates easy through standard Linux package managers. It is easy to install and also easy to remove if you want to.

• Pre-configured Emulators:

RetroDECK comes with emulators for systems like NES, SNES, Game Boy, PlayStation, PS2, Wii and many more.

• Pre-configured Game Engines:

RetroDECK comes with support for game engines like Solarus, GZDoom, IkemanGO / M.U.G.E.N, and Pico-8. Its GZDoom integration also has a custom .doom format for easy mod loading and management. Simply populate the mod load order, save it as a .doom file, and go kill some demons (there is a guide on the wiki).

• Pre-configured Systems:

RetroDECK's front-end is ES-DE, and they have collaborated since the beginning of both projects. ES-DE can automatically download game artwork, descriptions, and metadata, enhancing the visual appeal of your game library. RetroDECK has recently added built-in SRM, allowing you to have games as separate entities with artwork by simply favoriting your games in ES-DE and enabling SRM via the Configurator. RetroDECK also worked together with the PortMaster Team to integrate PortMaster (a system to handle various game ports) into RetroDECK.

• RetroDECK Configurator:

The RetroDECK Configurator, accessible from the ES-DE main menu, allows you to change and configure settings across many systems from one interface. It’s a ”multi-tool” that offers several ”tools” for:
Compressing games, File management, BIOS Checker, Multi-File Structure Checker, Partial or full reset of functions, RetroAchievements Multi Login, Borders, Widescreen Mode, Swaping A/B X/Y and much more.

• Steam Input Controller Layouts:

It includes tailored controller configurations for the Steam Deck and Linux Desktop via Steam Input, ensuring an intuitive gaming experience. Their radial dial is a literal game changer for me (turning your left-side trackpad into a hub of options while you game).

• All the standard stuff:

Standard features like save states, fast-forwarding, shaders, mods, and cheat support are built-in for a customizable gaming experience. Finding these folders on a regular setup can sometimes be difficult, but RetroDECK exposes them all under the main retrodeck folder. RetroDECK offers a user-friendly alternative to other emulation solutions like EmuDeck and Batocera, focusing on simplicity and integration within the SteamOS environment, while still giving ‘power users’ all the options they could ever want to tweak everything. You can also find the entire run-down of what it is, and what it can do on their website (I’ll also include some other links at the very end of this post)

So without any more nonsense from me, let’s get to this Q&A!

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The Team Behind RetroDECK

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1. So who is the team behind RetroDECK? Introduce yourselves!

The Team consists of five people and a build-bot / Mascot called Rekku. Not everyone is a part of this interview.

Xargon:

Pleased to meet you, I am Xargon, founder of the project. I am a father, a gamer, and a FOSS and Linux lover. I am actively maintaining the project, the code, and the automation alongside the rest of the team and our internal mascot, Rekku the Genie (the build-bot).

Lazorne:

Hello, I’m Lazorne. I’m also an ageing father, FOSS enthusiast, passionate gamer, and collector of technical doodads and game consoles. I handle various aspects of the project, including community management, project and issue management, outreach, Steam Input, system configurations, user feedback, and the entire wiki.

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2. What inspired you to create RetroDECK, and how did the project come together initially?

Xargon:

Back then, I was contributing to 351ELEC, now AmberELEC, after the founding member Fewt moved on to his new project. Me and Cebion did our best to keep it alive, and eventually, the project flourished again.

Everything started when the Steam Deck was announced. I preordered it, but due to server overload, I could only enter the second batch, so my Steam Deck would be shipped around March. I closely followed the Steam Deck news and subreddits. I thought the Steam Deck would be a GREAT retro gaming device. I did some research, and there was nothing that could make emulation easy on the Steam Deck back then. As a fully featured PC, I believed that configuring multiple emulators, game engines and systems would be difficult in the handheld format unless docked with a mouse and keyboard. Unlike the tiny retro handhelds I where used to work on. My new vision was that I wanted to contain all the “custom firmware” (emulators, engines and systems) inside one application. As I thought this would be a better approach than rebooting every time to access the “Emulation OS”. I first reached out to the Batocera Team to understand if they were interested in making something with this device, but at that time, they had no plans for it, nor to repack Batocera “application” of sorts. I decided to use a spin-off of 351ELEC to do the job. I proposed my idea to the AmberELEC Team. Did a POC of “RetroDECK”, initially called “351EDECK”, but the team's reply was that they thought it was off scope. So, I started to work on it as an independent project. Cebion also later started to help out with PortMaster (where he still is ❤️).

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3. Is there one particular aspect of the RetroDECK project you are most proud of or that resonates with you the most personally?

Xargon: I would say the automation and the framework, but this might not be very understandable to most users out there. Another thing that I am proud of is when you open RetroDECK: after a brief loading, everything is inside there. I feel like I am in this pocket dimension with all my old or non-PC games that just work. No tweaking is needed; it is just as it is.

Lazorne:

In addition to the technical aspects of the application itself, I’m personally very proud of the community and philosophy we built around this little project. That we adhered to certain moral guidelines and design principles. The team has a very humane approach to the project and the community at large. We strive to be as transparent as possible, although sometimes we hold things back to create a big surprise later. There are no premium subscription tiers to access developers or other money-gathering schemes. Everyone can join Discord, Revolt, or Matrix and talk to us. It’s a very flat and open organization by design, and we want it to remain that way.

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4. How can the community help? I like to think of it as ‘honorary team members’ – for example, do you ever take a suggestion from the community of users and then implement it into RetroDECK? Do you require testers?

Xargon: The scope of the project is so vast that we are always in need of more contributors and testers. We actively engage with the community, listen, and work together. We implement what we believe are good ideas or contributions. I appreciate the community that has formed around RetroDECK.

Lazorne:

As I mentioned earlier, our organization is very flat. Sometimes a new person drops in suggests a minor change, and we evaluate it. If we think it is a good idea, we create an issue to implement it later. We have community tester roles and a community tinker team to facilitate more community engagement in both testing and tinkering. It is always hard to find testers for unstable cooker releases; they like us are volunteers that are putting their free time into it.

---

5. Are there any notable challenges you’ve faced as a team while working on RetroDECK? Maybe challenges in building (or maintaining) Retro, or perhaps in the emulation scene as a whole?

Xargon: Yes, that happens from time to time, but I remember the first time: RetroDECK was so huge to be built as a flatpak that the free runners of GitHub weren’t enough. Not having any funds to pay for a build server, I thought I had hit a dead end. But as you can see, here we are.

Lazorne:

The technical challenges are numerous, as what we are doing is quite unusual and I’m sure not something others had in mind. We are putting apps inside an app, to run them via an app to create an app (Yo Dawg). In emulation or rather FOSS at large, there is always something happening, but we do our best to monitor it. There are tons of passionate people out there.

---

6. I can imagine the video made by Russ (of Retro Game Corps) made a significant impact in downloads and installs, can you tell me how that went?

This is a link to that video, if you're interested in seeing the full breakdown on what RetroDECK is, how it works, and a full set up

Xargon:

I have known Russ since the days of 351ELEC when he was creating content related to our firmware. We often discussed making a RetroDECK video, but the opportunity never arose until one day he surprised us with one. We were not expecting it at all!

In the following days, our download meter quadrupled, and our user base possibly increased as well. Usually, I don’t care about the numbers; I tend to forget them. RetroDECK was created because I wished to have something like it that was not available back then, and also to contribute to the FOSS community by delivering the best software that I (or we) can. However, I have to admit that I was very excited when it happened.

I always fear that the more widespread we become, the more effort is required to support the users, and the more bugs are found.

And you know what? We managed it, and we even learned that we don’t have those huge hidden bugs, just a couple of minor issues here and there but nothing major.

Lazorne:

STONKS

But to further comment on Xargons worries about the user spike:

How you design a community is important, with a suddenly increased userbase things can quickly get out of hand in both issue management and communication. But I thought of it more as setting up an IT-Support Desk for a major company and I had already put those structures in place.

For me the community is our stalwart supporters and biggest critics, but also our first line of support. By leveraging the community itself most of the non-issues can be solved directly via community helpers. Then with the community's help we can filter out the “real” issues and address them in either the code or documentation.

---

Linux & the Steam Deck:

1. What was your first impression when you got your hands on the Steam Deck, and how did it shape the direction of RetroDECK?

Xargon:

”Man, this is surely HUGE!”

However, like love at first sight, the Steam Deck was not just a technical marvel; it was also strategic for the growth of Linux. Maybe I was more excited about that than the console itself. Imagine what it would mean for Linux to have access to all the Windows games… And that’s what’s happening. A lot of people I know have now migrated to Linux.

Needless to say, the Steam Deck is now my primary gaming device. I spend more time developing RetroDECK than playing it.

Lazorne:

I directly preordered my Steam Deck and got it in the second batch. Having a full Linux Desktop powered gaming device with multiple Input Types instantly sold it to me.

I had developed a fondness for Valve and their hardware as I knew even if it would not succeed, the community would be there to develop for it. Another reason was Valve’s commitment to their hardware, even my old Steam Link was still getting updates even though it had been discontinued for years (it is still getting updates!).

For me all these inputs that were possible via Steam Input were extremely fun to tinker with. I also wanted to showcase how complex you can make things with Steam Input and leverage it to an extent I had not seen any other application done before. The touchpads, back buttons, touchscreen, and gyro made it a beast.

---

2. Were there any specific limitations of the Steam Deck hardware or software that you had to work around when developing RetroDECK?

Xargon:

Well, I was used to working on Anbernic embedded devices, so for me, it was like running free. So, nothing hardware wise...

However, Flatpak comes with some limitations that I have learned to wrangle and think through over the years. But it brings more benefits at the end of the day. I really like the project, and I cheer for them. Sorry, Flathub team, maybe you hate me, but you’re doing a great job! :)

Lazorne:

Steam Input is still quite buggy in Desktop Mode; there are tons of issues that only exist on Desktop Mode / Linux Desktop to this day. Steam Input is also prone to crashes when building our complex VDF files and that is quite annoying. Several bugs exist; for example, we still cannot render radial menus properly in Linux Desktop.

Another challenge was the lack of documentation from all the projects out there and even from Valve, our wiki has more information on what controllers Steam Input support than the official Steam Developer portal.

Being a “None Steam Game” also caused several issues, with randomized folder ID’s, how the input profiles were stored and many other things that there simply was no documentation for (RetroDECK wiki got it!).

---

3. Steam Deck users often experiment with alternative software and emulators. How do you ensure RetroDeck remains stable and user-friendly while allowing flexibility for power users who may want to customize or tweak their experience on Linux?

Xargon:

I wanted to give RetroDECK a console-like experience: you buy your console, connect it to the TV (similar to downloading the Flatpak), turn it on, and answer a couple of questions—just a few, not too many. Then you can start playing after adding your games. Everything is already pre-set and ready. If you don't like the preset, you have some options: go into the settings and change what we expose, or for more advanced users, open your emulator and tweak it. Every component that comes with RetroDECK defaults, tweaked for our environment, Steam Deck, and generally what we and the community believe can provide the best experience out of the box. However, this might not fit everyone (but almost it seems), so they can tweak it. If you misconfigure or break some components, no problem: RetroDECK can reset them to factory defaults, making experimenting easy and safe.

I know there are alternatives now, but honestly, I don't look at my neighbors' gardens; I cultivate mine with passion and care, so everyone will have their beautiful garden!

Lazorne:

To add to what Xargon said: Our plans are still to make several aspects that are currently prompts into a nice Godot version, to make it even easier. We also plan to expose more features to advanced users from the get-go. We also facilitate tinkering by providing guides on the wiki for those really who want to tinker, showcasing all the creativity in the community (check the May 2025, blogpost).

---

4. Steam Deck’s unique hybrid design is a standout feature – desktop and gaming mode. We don’t see that on Windows handhelds. What are some of the challenges you faced in making RetroDECK work smoothly on such a device?

Xargon:

Tweaking the high-end emulators to get maximum performance is quite a challenge. It's really easy to get full framerate on a 90s console, but what about the modern ones? Of course, Steam Deck hardware is what it is, and in my opinion, it's already a miracle that it exists.

Lazorne:

I find RetroDECK and several controller-heavy native Steam games work best in Game Mode. It’s also why I run the Bazzite-Deck image on my gaming PC at home to get Game Mode there as well.

---

5. How do you see RetroDECK evolving alongside future updates or new models of the Steam Deck? Will it be heading to other handhelds in the future?

Xargon:

Other handhelds? Well, yes, it runs on every x86_64 Linux distribution, including SteamOS, so technically it’s already working on all those kinds of handhelds. Is it optimal? Until now, it has worked out of the box as far as I know. One huge limitation is, of course, that all those handhelds are expensive, and we cannot afford to buy them all. The actual donations are just covering the server costs, so we rely on the user’s experience and reports like with the ROG Ally. Steam Deck 2 is on my wishlist, so yes, RetroDECK will surely support it when the time comes.

And about future updates, yes, as we usually release a minor version every month or two on average, I don’t see myself retiring from the project in the future.

Lazorne:

As Xargon said, we are heavily reliant on user reports. Cost is always an issue with new hardware, and I’m spending my hard-earned cash on hunting down secondhand versions of various inputs to test RetroDECK with. My original Steam Deck broke down recently, so I had to save up and got myself an OLED now (YAY). But for me, it also feels wrong to ask for donations. As long as we can pay the yearly build server and the hosting fees, I’m fine with it.

---

Gaming Preservation & Emulation:

1. Do you feel like RetroDECK contribute to the broader mission of game preservation?

Xargon:

In some ways, yes, we are not the Indiana Jones that searches for artifacts, nor the professors that can study them and explain them in detail. Instead, we are the museum curators who can make the general public aware of the art and history that would otherwise be lost. We are trying to do it in the most accessible way possible

Lazorne:

I think so. Our goal is to make it easier to play your backups and develop tools to easily manage your collection and present it in the way you want. We also get feedback from other projects, and they give feedback to us; it is a give-and-take situation. We are, in essence, just a complex meta-app with various integrations, and we want NO CREDIT for all the effort that emulators, game engines, ES-DE, and others are doing. We point out to our users that THESE projects make it all happen and to donate to them if they can; they deserve the credit, not us. We also emphasize NOT to go directly to the emulator/game engines/etc for support. Our dependencies should not bear a support burden because we have decided to integrate their application and caused issues.

---

2. How does the team feel about the idea that emulating games, and making them available for emulation is important for games preservation?

Xargon:

Nowadays, we have the technology to save everything we do, but often this technology is used improperly. I personally see video games as a medium equivalent to movies or books: they are a snapshot of their times, an artistic expression of a group of individuals (sometimes a single person) who want to communicate something. Unfortunately, big corporations often see them as mere money investments and returns, but this happens with other media and artists as well.

The main problem with preservation nowadays is not technology, but corporate greed. Those who hold the licenses for their products are not always willing to donate them to human history; in fact, they are often against it, even when they are no longer generating significant revenue. Imagine if today the families of Picasso or Da Vinci locked away every piece of art created by their predecessors, or if the owners of old historical texts did the same.

This is what’s happening to games: we have already lost some games because of DRMs. So please, companies, after a game has sold enough and enough time has passed, free it. Make it available for all of humanity.

Lazorne:

Many of my consoles have died, but I still have my games as digital backups and several thousands in boxes. For me, it is important to be able to play them, but also to experience them in new ways with mods or romhacks. I think several emulation projects out there are the unsung heroes; they saved obscure arcade cabinets, consoles, and thus retro gaming in general.

They prevented us from suffering the same fate as the first movie industry, where most of the art was lost. But I do agree with Xargon that we need copyright reform and a way to preserve video games moving forward. The Reuters report was quite alarming, stating that 90% of all games from the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii era and earlier are unplayable today on modern hardware and access to them is non existent.

Right now, emulation and the pure hope that my old consoles and games don’t turn into dust are the only ways for me to share the games I own and grew up with my kids.

---

3. Do you have a personal favorite retro system you feel most passionate about?

Xargon:

Yes: PC-DOS/WIN, Sega Megadrive, and later on Game Boy Advance, as these were my beloved systems that I grew up with. I had many more, but these are special to me.

Lazorne: I love the: PSX to PS3, PSP, SNES, MegaDrive, Dreamcast, Saturn, PC-Engine, PC-DOS/WIN, C64 and Amiga.

---

Bonus Questions:

1. What are your favorite games? Both retro (emulated) and modern (not emulated!)

Lazorne:

It is a very hard list to make (my own note here, Lazorne wrote me a few times after sending their completed responses, wanting to add more games - this is a dedicated gamer who wanted their list just-so before posting):

• Little Big Planet series (PS3, PS4) (Bring them to Steam Sony! With Steam Workshop for Creations and levels! Let Steam host it! DO IT!)

• Timesplitters series (PS2, GC)

• Alundra (PSX)

• Suikoden series (PSX, PS2)

• Final Fantasy series (multi)

• Little Big Adventure 1 & 2 (DOS / PC)

• Heroes of Might and Magic series (DOS / PC)

• Doom series (DOS / PC)

• Elder Scrolls series (DOS / PC)

• Minecraft Java (PC)

• Black & White (PC)

• Dwarf Fortress (PC)

• Lightgun Games (Point Blank, House of Dead etc)

• All mods and romhacks out there!

Honorable mentions:

• The Addams Family Pinball (Pinball)

• World of Warcraft (MMO)

• Dungeons and Dragons (TRPG)

• Drakar och Demoner (TRPG)

• Mörk Borg (TRPG)

• Monkey Island series (DOS/PC)

• Space Quest series (DOS/PC)

Xargon:

Oh man, this is heavy. I will do a non-numbered top 10, else I would include too much:

• One Must Fall 2097 (PC-DOS)

• Little Big Adventure 2 (PC-WIN)

• Duke Nukem 3D (PC-DOS)

• Jazz Jackrabbit (PC-DOS)

• Sonic The Hedgehog (MegaDrive)

• Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow (Multi)

• Fallout 3 (PC)

• Fallout New Vegas (PC)

• Skyrim (PC)

• Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) Honorable mentions:

• Ragnarok Online (MMO)

• World of Warcraft (MMO)

---

2. Do you feel any lack of enthusiasm for gaming itself? A lot of my friends are devs for various projects for the Steam Deck, and a common thread for them is that while a lot of their personal time is spent making the avenues for people to game...the spare time they have themselves to play the games can also end up as a chore. Do you feel this?

Xargon:

I kind of go through phases: there are times when I don’t feel like playing games and want to develop, other times when I am tired of developing and want to play, and other times when I just want to watch movies or shows. It’s always been a cycle.

Lazorne:

As Xargon said there are phases but there is a difference between working on something out of passion and doing it as part of your daily grind.

I think it is the same in some ways; I play less and tinker more, but sometimes the journey is what is fun and not the result itself.

I think many people can relate to that, almost like car enthusiasts who restore an old car but never drive it and move on to the next project.

The good thing about FOSS development is that it never ends. You are always tweaking the “car” until you call it quits yourself, and the best part is someone can take over from you as you have shared it with everyone.

---

3. What other projects, be they Linux, Steam Deck or generally open-source are you most enamored with?

Xargon:

Well, Linux and Steam Deck, as I said before, I think is a winning duo as Valve did a lot for the Linux community because of the Steam Deck. I believe a new desktop era has silently started.

Then I love, of course, all the emulators and Retro Handhelds, although I took a brief distance as I feel that the environment is starting to become overcrowded by the continuous hardware releases. I mean, do we really need a constant iteration of the same chipsets?

I really like hacking things: like taking a device and following some guides (as I don’t have the skills to improvise) to hack the software and unlock its hidden potential. For me, it is a hobby. I’m also really interested in UMU Launcher.

Lazorne:

ES-DE and ROMM are the ones we create internal memes with, but we try to maintain good relations with as many people as possible from other software projects, OS, and hardware developers. Personally, I really like Input Plumber, UMU Launcher, OpenGamePadUI and Bazzite.

---

4. Where can the community find you?

Lazorne:

The true sources of information are the RetroDECK Wiki and GitHub. Discord is the most active so far of the social instances. We always try to put anything relevant that is being said in social instances on the Wiki or GitHub. You should not need to create accounts on various platforms to get accurate information. I personally don’t like that some projects put their entire communication chain and documentation behind locked platforms.

• The RetroDECK Blog (an update on what the team have been up to)

• The RetroDECK Wiki (your one-stop spot to find all the info you need)

• RetroDECK's Lemmy (Lemmy community)

• RetroDECK's Discord server (the space where the most community members congregate

• RetroDECK Matrix

• RetroDECK's Revolt server

• RetroDECK's GitHub

---

5. Why is Discord the most active social instance?

Lazorne:

In short, most people are there.

But there are always some people commenting towards us and other projects that FOSS projects should not use these locked down platforms at all by principle.

In a perfect world that would be true, but the crux of the problem is that these instances are sometime created by your biggest fans and when that happens you have zero control over it. Our subreddit for example was first created by some fans, but that became problematic when users started to ask for various updates, support and we were not affiliated with it. So, we got donated ownership over it from the fans (thanks!) and I don’t think it is healthy to shut down fan efforts to speak about your project where they want to congregate. We have also seen an up-tick in both Revolt and Matrix users in the past weeks and that is good :)

---

6. Biggest challenges RetroDECK has? Problems? Hurdles? What makes this project hard?

Xargon:

Well, sandboxing and containerization is certainly challenging, as safety often comes at a cost. We hope to make some things easier with to deal with in the backend in 0.10.0b.

Lazorne: In addition to development, moderating a worldwide community is sometimes quite a challenge as we are all volunteers.

We are also always trying to support each other internally, if some tragedy happens the rest of the team is always there for each other.

There have been many times when life itself takes time from the project dealing with:

• Family
• Life / Love / Death
• Work / No-work
• Other IRL issues

But we have so far always been there for that person who is currently having a bad time, always trying to help with the best of our ability.

---

7. EmuDeck feels almost to be the ‘default’ emulation suggestion made to new users on the Steam Deck. Since they came onto the scene, they almost seem ubiquitous to the scene. How do you feel about EmuDeck as a project?

Lazorne:

They have a different goal and vision than ours, and all can exist in parallel. They are broad in their focus on multiple platforms with their installer scripts and extra applications, while we are narrowly focusing just on a Linux Flatpak application.

Xargon:

Some people believe we are similar, and yes in a way. Honestly, I never tried EmuDeck because when I started RetroDECK, it didn't exist. If it had, I probably wouldn't have started RetroDECK. Since then, I've obviously stuck with RetroDECK on my devices, so I don't have much to say about EmuDeck. I believe our approach is different: RetroDECK is a single application that can be installed or uninstalled, whereas EmuDeck seems to have a more multiple ways approach.

---

8. What’s next for RetroDECK? Can we get any ‘sneak peeks’ at what you might be bringing in the future?

Lazorne:

Version 0.10.0b is a major rewrite of the very foundation of RetroDECK, which we started back in version 0.9.0b.

We are not unveiling everything, but we can say that it will feature a new modern API called RetroAPI to make future Godot integration easier (not part of the update) and will also allow other developers to use RetroDECK in new and interesting ways. Xargon can give a tiny apéritif from the cooker about the API. All I can say is that we want to address one of the biggest complaints about how hard it is currently to add more systems into RetroDECK.

Xargon:

At the moment, we are rewriting a lot of code to make it more malleable. Recently, we introduced RetroENGINE, which makes RetroDECK a headless runner for desktop users and developers. Just double-click your game, and RetroDECK will take care of everything else.

We are now rewriting the framework to work through API. This will be the base for the future Godot Configurator, where we suspended development until this part is ready. Technically, with the API, anyone can interface with RetroDECK and even write their own Configurator if they wish, as the Configurator will only be a front end and will not execute backend actions; the API will do that.

This might be fun for developers or power users. I am excited to see what users will create with it.

A lot more is “cooking” in the pot.

---

9. Any other gaming related projects you like?

Lazorne:

I really like:

• PrismLauncher for Minecraft,
• VCMI for Heroes 3 and
• Fheroes 2 for Heroes 2.

Cataclysm Dark Days ahead I also think is very neat (I’m just bad at it).

I love all the romhacks and modding communities out there. But Moguri Mod for FF9 PC is my current favorite I would like to highlight it.

Xargon:

I go with:

• RomM
• AmberELEC (of course)
• OnionOS
• MUOS
• Batocera
• morganizer2
• FemC mod for Persona 3 Reload (which I cannot play due to Denuvo, I am glaring at you)

...and the game modding communities, especially the Skyrim one.

---

10. Anything else?

Lazorne & Xargon:

We would like to thank our community, the rest of the team, former team members, all people in FOSS and all the supporters that make all of this possible.

---

11. Anything obscure / last words?!

Lazorne:

The internal Pizza War is real and is the number one cause for constant drama inside the team.

Xargon: Your “Pizza” should be classified as a Cardinal sin, my great Italian grandmother is turning in her grave. If the rest of Italy knew of the monsters you are creating in the cold north... La Legione Della Pizza Italiana will form and will march against you northern barbarians.

Lazorne:

---

one note - the team tells me that while Russ (Retro Game Corps) video is still entirely relevant, updates may move some actions, and change some slight aspects. So please be aware if something feels off - it's all still there, just perhaps changed due to updates!

---

...and that's that! I hope you might have enjoyed this little glimpse behind the curtain of at least some of the team responsible for RetroDECK!

Again, I love so many plugins, so many applications and programs and suites and projects creators and developers, and so few of the team behind them get to step onto the stage (so to speak) and let us know their views on gaming.

There are many more of these to come, some more light-hearted, some quite in-depth with the development side of their projects, but I will be posting more as time goes on.

If you'd prefer a 'prettier' formatting of these, then I have my friend Noah of SteamDeckHQ posting this early this coming week on his website.

And I guess, let me know what you thought! I really hope you enjoyed this! Any formatting errors, or spelling mistakes are all mine.

Finally? Thanks to my friends for agreeing to this, I adore RetroDECK, it's been my only choice for emulation on my Steam Deck forever now <3

This month's titles have been revealed (as Amazon always does!)

'But what is Prime Gaming'? I'm new to it!

It's as simple as free games every month! Prime Gaming offers a rotating selection of free PC games each month, ranging from indie titles to AAA classics. This is dependent on you having an Amazon Prime subscription, but if you've been near my Mastodon posts at all you'll know I can't stop shouting about how good the deal is.

To me, it's the best deal in gaming (mostly because I get so many GOG titles each month!), I just love it. Once claimed, the games are yours to keep forever (usually via Epic Games, GOG, or Amazon Games launcher).

Past giveaways have included games like

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

• The BioShock games (Remastered and originals)

• Shadow of Mordor

• Dishonored

...and like, why even bother listing them, it's a lot

Quick summary for how it works:

• Requires an active Amazon Prime or Prime Video membership.

• Games must be claimed within the monthly window (they don’t carry over).

• Some games require linking accounts (e.g., Epic Games)

This month's games:

Now Available: STAR WARS™ Galactic Battlegrounds Saga [GOG Code]

Now Available: LEGO® Star Wars™ — The Complete Saga [GOG Code]

Now Available: Styx: Master of Shadows [GOG Code]

Now Available: The Invisible Hand [Amazon Games App]

---

May 8: Wolfenstein® II: The New Colossus™ Digital Deluxe Edition [Xbox and PC via Microsoft Store Code]

May 8: Amnesia: Rebirth [Epic Games Store]

May 8: Hypnospace Outlaw [GOG Code]

May 8: Doors — Paradox [Epic Games Store]

---

May 15: Saints Row: Gat out of Hell [GOG Code]

May 15: ENDLESS™ Legend Definitive Edition [Amazon Games App]

May 15: Golf with Your Friends [GOG Code]

May 15: Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 [GOG Code]

May 15: Mail Time [GOG Code]

---

May 22: FATE [GOG Code]

May 22: Thief™ 2: The Metal Age [GOG Code]

May 22: Chessarama [Epic Games Store]

May 22: The Lost Ashford Ring [Legacy Games Code]

---

May 29: Samurai Bringer [Amazon Games App]

May 29: Trinity Fusion [Amazon Games App]

May 29: Liberté [Epic Games Store]

---

...you can read more about it all here in the Prime Gaming blog they posted, if you'd like

(my pick of the lot is actually Trinity Fusion - a great Metroidy game with some really nice music, it took me by surprise just how good it is!

I’m here for another little post to share the interesting things I’ve spotted in gaming! Be it Steam Deck, Linux, general gaming or probably-not-relevant-at-all! And I know, it’s been 2 days since my last of these posts:

Which you can find here!

...but that was a dedicated GOG-specific one, so I reserve the right to inundate you all, if you’ll let me.

M aim is to phrase this in a more personal manner than most gaming sites do now. My ever-lasting inspo is the old, old video game sites, blogs and magazines that I never had the privilege of being alive for:

• image/gif/link heavy (I’m a big GIF fan – and I pronounce it with a hard ‘g’)
• personal voice (no 1930’s nasal radio presenter voice here!)
• mostly news or articles or points you won’t find on the ‘big’ gaming sites, these are the smaller, lesser things that I’m drawn to. I figure you’ll have spotted the big news posts elsewhere!

So grab a coffee? Or a tea? Or a tequila? And enjoy <3

---

Winlator:

What is Winlator?

Winlator is an Android application that lets you to run Windows (x86_64) applications with Wine and Box86/Box64. It’s been very much the hot ticket in the last few months, with the Android emulation scene being deeply invested. I vaguely remember some handheld being developed that even uses this in their marketing (though for the life of me I can’t remember which?!)

Games like GTA V, The Witcher 3, Tomb Raider 2013 run perfectly fine depending on the device. It’s kinda like the new ‘what’s next in gaming’ for phones.

What’s happened?

The Android scene has a reputation for having some rather rabid fans. Then there’s a breakaway group of those fans who are just shitty people. Harassing the devs of these projects is far-too-common in that scene, and it seems it has finally hit Winlator also. So we’ve seen a hefty amount of that in the last two or three days, but also the developer has been accused of virus activity being found.

So...dev stumbles, fans harass, and the project is dead.

Goodbye Winlator...for now?

---

Elden Ring

I’ve tried. Maybe 4 times now I’ve tried to like Elden Ring? I adore the fantasy settings, and this one has a grim Gothic edge to it which should really appeal to me...but I can’t take being killed 48 times before I can figure out a pattern.

Ironically, I love Death’s Door and Tunic (I know, Tunic is not souls-y, but it still has some of those elements to it)

Anyway, Elden Ring has now sold over 30 million copies. So I know for a fact I am in the minority, so I suppose if you’re tarnished – celebrate?

BTW, are you excited for the upcoming Elden Ring-y multiplayer game Nightreign? The specs required have been released, too:

---

Early Access:

I think I’ve got one E.A. game, because I love the ocean and any underwater settings (Leviathan and Deep Star Six, anyone?), which actually equates to 2.38% of my Steam Library (I’m an avid GOG buyer, not Steam!) – called Ocean Keeper (an underwater rogue-lite game).

Typically, I’ve no interest in Early Access, I don’t think I should pay to have a dev push an unfinished game on me, I get to deal with the bugs, and then have a shit time. But, it seems everyone else kinda loves it.

This graph shows you just how popular this has gotten, and is getting over the years. It’s a sad new state of gaming, but its showing no signs of slowing down:

---

Blacklist:

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist now has achievements!

Agents,

We are pleased to announce that Steam Achievements are now available for Splinter Cell: Blacklist!

As a heads up, achievements will be retroactively earned for the accomplishments already completed in your game. For the sync to happen, you need to launch the game once. Once synced, the previously unlocked Ubisoft Connect achievements will be automatically unlocked on Steam.

To ensure that you can complete 100% of the Steam Achievements for Splinter Cell: Blacklist, we've removed 19 achievements that required online services that are no longer available for the game.

You can read their announcement on Steam here, but it’s literally what I copied and pasted so...there’s no real point

---

Nightdive:

Nightdive Studios uploaded an interesting video to YouTube.

In this special Deep Dive bonus interview, Nightdive's Locke Vincent and Larry Kuperman sit down with Bartosz Kwietniewski (Head of Business Development) and Marcin Paczyński (Senior Business Development Manager) at GOG.com to explore Nightdive's relationship with GOG, how GOG has grown and evolved over the years, the importance of game preservation, and more!

At 29:30 it’s got a nice little length to it, and if you’re like me and love YouTube but hate ads, I’m going to recommend either uBlock Origin on your desktop browser, or something like NewPipe on Android to watch it without a trillion shitty annoying ads. And I know, there’s probably no one here on Lemmy who doesn’t know how to circumvent ads but...better to warn for that possibility!

Anyway, here’s the video’s link, really worth a watch!

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Nightdive Again:

There’s also an interview with Stephen Kick (Nightdive CEO) on Epic Games’ blog site. It’s really interesting – I’ve found so many interviews with big names behind the big games on Epic’s blog, irrespective of your (no doubt negative) opinion on their company – so I really encourage you to read this one!

It makes me very excited for the upcoming System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster.

You can find that interview on Epic’s site by following this link!

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Front-ends:

I’m not even sure if that’s something I should hyphenate or not. Is it a single word? Does it matter?

I’m just curious whether anyone here uses them, and if so what they do use?!

• Heroic Games Launcher

• GOG Galaxy

• Playnite

• Falkor

• Pegasus

I just wondered what people might use, and what they think of them! There’s certainly a lot of options these days for desktop gaming :)

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GOG & Pix:

Exciting news for our Brazilian gamers!

Pix payment is now fully available on the GOG store

Starting now, you can choose this popular instant payment method provided by the Central Bank of Brazil at checkout to grab any title you want – fast, simple, hassle-free, and yours to keep forever

Thank you for being a part of the GOG community – you rock!

As to what Pix is, you can find that out here

They already had an option called "Bank Transfer" for Brazil, which was actually paid with PIX through BoaCompra. The new method is listed directly as PIX on the cart. Its been tested and it's basically the same, only through other payment processor. Only real difference was that is hasn’t given an e-mail confirmation from the payment processor, only the standard GOG receipt.

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Star Wars:

AND some more nice GOG news (they've been so busy lately!):

With Star Wars Day approaching, we want to honor this amazing franchise in the best way we can: by adding iconic classics from a galaxy far, far away to the GOG Preservation Program!

• STAR WARS™ Dark Forces (Classic, 1995)
• STAR WARS™: X-Wing Special Edition
• STAR WARS™ Battlefront (Classic, 2004)
• Star Wars™: Rebel Assault 1 + 2
• STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter Special Edition

General consensus is that KOTOR would have been a nice one to have added to the program, but this is still amazing news to read.

You can find the latest games added to the program here with this link to GOG’s site

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Junk Store turns one:

This was their own announcement, it’s just easier for me to just copy and paste their announcement straight-up here for you to read:

Today marks one year since we launched version 1.0 of Junk Store — and what a year it's been.

Version 1.0 was met with a lot of enthusiasm, with over 250,000 downloads to date. We also released a GOG extension, which has seen solid uptake. Since then, we’ve made countless updates and improvements to both.

Along the way, we rewrote Junk Store into a standalone version and even got it accepted onto the Steam Store — briefly. While that was a setback, it pushed us to build something even better.

Instead of relying on Steam, we created our own infrastructure: a full web portal, a storefront, new build and delivery pipelines, and a much-improved Junk Store. All the work we did preparing for Steam wasn’t wasted — it made Junk Store stronger and more flexible than it ever could have been tied to Valve’s systems.

We built our own installers, downloaders, and streamlined extension management (it’s now a single button click). We added support for Amazon, Epic, GOG, and any emulator you can call from the command line. There's even a global download queue — which, not joking, probably cost over 1,000 hours of blood, sweat, and code over the last year.

Now, we're closing in on a major launch. We'll have more details soon, including what the final release will look like and what the cost will be.

We know not everyone will be thrilled that the next version isn't free — but the original open-source version will remain available for those who want it. We're aiming for a model that’s both fair and sustainable, so we can keep building and supporting Junk Store for the long haul.

Thanks to everyone who's been with us on this ride. We truly appreciate your support, without you we wouldn't have made it this far.

The best is still ahead.

As always,

The Junk Store Team

---

Expedition 33:

Made by a small team of just 30 members, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has now sold over one million copies (as of three days after their launch). They also boast a nice fact that they reached over 120,000 concurrent players on Steam, too.

One thing is for sure, this is a beautiful game, and if you haven’t played it yet its so worth your time!

It’s also:

• 30% off on EtailMarket
• 26% off on GameBillet
• 10% off on IndieGala

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8BitDo:

Known for their 3rd party controllers for like...everything, which also happen to be quite high quality, 8BitDo has announced it is no longer shipping to the US from China. The 145% tariffs are once again to blame, as is the removal of exemptions for shipments under $800.

Last News Post I listed other companies in the same space (like Anbernic and Retroid) who have stopped shipping to the US after these dumb tariffs.

(you can see here the estimated tariff charge on the Retroid Pocket 5 from AliExpress – I found this image a user (No_Clock) posted which helps illustrate the cost you might expect)

U.S. buyers can still order items from *8BitDo’s U.S. warehouse, but the website doesn’t clearly indicate stock availability—only the checkout process reveals which products can’t be shipped. Popular items like the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth Controller, N64 mod kit, and mini Xbox controller are some of those currently unavailable.

The tariffs classify video game consoles and accessories as toys (not tech), making them subject to high costs. This has caused panic (which is my understatement of the century) in the gaming world, leading to layoffs and halted operations for some companies.

---

MAME:

MAME 0.277

Have you been wondering what MAME 0.277 will bring? Well, now you can find out! First of all, we’ve added support for compiling on 64-bit ARM-based systems running Windows 11 using the MSYS2 CLANGARM64 environment. Updates to included third-party libraries should resolve some issues people were having with new compilers and development environments.

In improvements that you can see, Konami GX blending effects are now looking much nicer, Sega Model 2 3D geometry is behaving better, and some remaining issues with Philips CD-i graphics decoding have been fixed. You may be able to hear improved sound emulation in some Famicom, WonderSwan, and Game Boy games, too. If that’s too subtle, you should be able to hear the difference in the DMX and LinnDrum percussion synthesisers.

There’s a big update for the Apple II and Macintosh floppy disk software lists this month. A lot of Macintosh NuBus cards have been overhauled as well, so let us know if we’ve inadvertently broken your virtual Macintosh setup. There are plenty of other software list additions, including a batch of tapes for Sinclair computers.

That’s all we’re going to cover here, but much more has happened this month in MAME development. You can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file

---

Epic Games:

Teased a free game coming soon, in-line with other Star Wars announcements, it looks like you’ll get a free-to-claim Star Wars title!

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Delta Force:

If you were hoping Delta Force might be supported on Linux, then don’t hold your breath:

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La Quimera:

...has been quietly delayed. Worth noting is that this happened on their release day, with no official announcement as to why, or when to expect it to arrive. More odd is that it was posted by the devs to their discussion board on Steam, but it was quickly deleted. So...who knows.

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Custom GameBoy:

I’ve shared MaSaKee’s work before, but this is a user who hacks hardware and creates their own ‘versions’ of handheld consoles.

This time they have GBA built into a Wii Classic Controller! Images as follows:

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Game Pass:

Seven games have been announced for Game Pass for May 2025 (so far!):

• Anno 1800 (May 1)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (May 1)
• Dredge (May 6) one of my fav games of all time!!!
• Revenge of the Savage Planet (May 8)
• DOOM: The Dark Ages (May 15)
• To A T (May 28)
• Spray Paint Simulator (May TBD)

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Wizordum:

Wizordum is finally out of early access!

The Ancient Seal of Terrabruma has shattered, unleashing the forces of Chaos once more. As one of the last Mages of Wizordum sanctuary, you must embark on a quest to find the source of this corruption and push the Chaos back before they consume the kingdom in a speedrun-friendly fantasy FPS tearing a page from the spellbooks of ‘90s fantasy FPS classics like Hexen and Heretic.

You can read their announcement here on Steam!

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GOG error:

Have you seen the cute lil GOG display? I adore it!

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Coming Soon:

I’ve been asking my friends if they’ll agree to me ‘interviewing’ them (this is a very loose term, it’s just going to be a question-and-answer which might be the least professional thing you’ll ever see) and posting those here.

I’ve done this before in the past (back when I was on Reddit), but I suppose I want to expand the idea and post them here.

I like the idea of getting to know the people – the devs, support and community managers behind the projects you use on Steam Deck and Linux. I feel like sometimes those people are forgotten, and its the end product you see, not those behind it.

A peep behind the curtains, so to speak.

To start with I’m organizing this with Lazorne (and the RetroDECK team), but will also be doing this with AA (of Decky Loader), the Junk Store team, two YouTubers who create content on Linux and the Steam Deck...and so on.

Hopefully this will be fun, at least it’s something unique to Lemmy, and again – I think the people who spend countless hours behind the projects get the least attention, I’d like to change that a little

Finally?

Any thoughts on my posts? I get asked a lot if I have a site for these, and for now the answer is ‘no’, but I will heed the advice and back these up somewhere. Unsure why exactly, but that’ll be less-than-little effort to do, so I’ll get to it eventually!

But what do you think? Have you any suggestions? This will be the 13th of these I’ve posted, and I’d love to hear if you’d want me to do something (anything) differently!

& any errors on here are all my own. There's always at least one. So...forgive me!

One reminder:, since this is the 13th of these, and here are the others:

• Steam Deck / Gaming News #2
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #3
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #4
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #5
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #6
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #7
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #8
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #9
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #10
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #11
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #12

p.s. if you wanna find me on Mastodon because I'm constantly sharing nonsense - you can find me here:

This 'edition' (I feel a bit odd calling it an edition, like I'm selling you a newspaper or something) might focus more on some GOG news, so consider this more of a 'lite' news version I guess?

Try keep in mind:

• I'm no professional, I just love gaming news
• I write these in a certain style: trying my best to replicate 'old' gaming sites, forums or articles (which tbh I wasn't even alive for), since to me it feels that even the better sites covering gaming are constantly vying for your support or showing ads
• These are image and GIF-heavy posts (sorry!)
• I'm currently on holiday on a small island off the south coast of Thailand, where 'velium' (not valium) is happily handed over the counter like candy with no prescription. So this may make zero sense

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It's Just GOG?

I've seen some interesting GOG things these last few days, and thought they deserved some attention. It's natural in gaming and particularly with the Steam Deck that your focus would be on Steam. But one thing I keep on harassing people about is GOG. I love it, and I love them!

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GOG Preservation Program:

25 years after its original PlayStation 1 release, Breath of Fire IV finally returns, available right now on GOG, thanks in part to the (semi-recently revamped) Dreamlist system that GOG has in place

You can grab it and keep it forever now: https://www.gog.com/game/breath_of_fire_iv

This wouldn’t have happened without the support of over 22,000 passionate Dreamlist voters and the fantastic team at Capcom, who trusted us to bring you this masterpiece in its very best form.

And what do we mean by its “very best form”? Well, Breath of Fire IV also joins the GOG Preservation Program. Our release is fully optimized for modern PCs, with Windows 10 & 11 support, both English and Japanese localizations, upgraded DirectX rendering, new display options (Windowed Mode, V-Sync, Anti-Aliasing, refined gamma correction), a reworked audio engine (with restored missing environmental sounds & added new sound configuration options), and more improvements.

Simply put, this JRPG classic is now made to live forever :)

But, GOG didn't stop with just one. Like last time they brought games to the program, there was a bunch at once. Eight other games, each over 20 years old are now 'as good as they can be':

• Ultima Underworld I+II & Ultima 9: Ascension (completing the Ultima series in the Program)

• Worms Armageddon

• Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood

• Realms of the Haunting

• Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon

• Stonekeep

You can find all the new arrivals here with this link

Oh, and we’ve also prepared a special video that goes more in-depth on bringing BoF IV back, as well as introducing all the other titles to the Program. We hope you enjoy it! If you do, consider following the GOG Classics Vault channel for more content like this.

This video can be found with this link!

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Gogg Downloader:

A few weeks ago, a user named Hassan Abedi created Gogg: an open-source tool for downloading game files from GOG:

It's a minimalistic command-line tool I developed to help people download games they own on GOG for offline play or archival purposes. Gogg is written in Go and uses the GOG API. It's available for different operating systems, including Linux and Windows.

The most recent new version, 0.4.1-beta includes a major improvement for their service - a GUI built with Fyne.

This means you can now choose how you want to use Gogg:

• Stick with the existing Command-Line Interface (CLI) for scripting and terminal use

• Use the new GUI for a more visual experience, which might be more comfortable for some people.

Besides the GUI, Gogg still has features like:

• Downloading game files, extras, and DLCs.
• Resuming downloads.
• Managing a local catalog of your GOG games (list, search, refresh, export).
• Calculating required storage space and hashing downloaded files.
• Running on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

New release's download link on GitHub is here

(You can find the latest code and the documentation on the GitHub repository with this link, too)[https://github.com/habedi/gogg]

Planned for the future is support for Safari and Edge

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Comet:

A little while ago I convinced my friend imLinguin that Halt and Catch Fire is one of the best TV shows around, and by far the best which is focused on computers - software and hardware.

• The trailer for season one is here btw, if you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about!

Without spoilers, there's something in the show called Comet. And, if you know Heroic Games Launcher (a method of playing GOG, Epic Games and Amazon titles on your Steam Deck, Windows, Mac or Linux desktops with!), you'll know it uses something called Comet:

Open Source implementation of GOG Galaxy Communication Service for SDK bundled with GOG games

After watching Halt and Catch Fire, imLinguin worked on a little logo for his own Comet, which you can see here:

It's a nice little nod, and is now something of two things I adore!

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Relisted:

Maybe you're used to the sad news that games are being de-listed. It's sadly quite common with every platform, and is always due to the publishers, never the store-fronts.

This time however we're seeing good news, with a few games now relisted onto GOG:

• Slain
• Valfaris
• Valfaris: Mecha Therion

These were delisted in March, but back now. So thankfully it was only a short wait!

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Gamesieve:

https://gamesieve.com/

This one is rather impressive, and has already had a few little changes which help users. I'm just going to format and paste the info here as it is, since the hard work is done for me already (and there's no room for my own nonsense opinions being thrown in!)

This one is quite long, and detailed, so beware!

What is it?

Full-text search for the entire GOG game catalog, with advanced filters and price-tracking for 12 currencies. I've tried to optimize for information-density without reducing usability. I also put a lot of effort into correcting and enriching the data from GOG's API. Lots more of all of that to come.

Why?

Because I wanted to prove to myself I could, and because I keep discovering new gems on GOG which I wish I'd known about years ago already. The way GOG surfaces games keeps throwing up the same old titles I already know - but there are simply too many games there for me to try and browse through them all without any direction. GOG's search and filtering is acceptable - but not more than that, while so much more could be done in this space.

Searching:

• The search field will search through most of the information you see on a GOG game page - though not the reviews or the technical requirements (those I'll try to expose as a filter at some point down the road).
• You can use "phrase searches", which are also useful for searching for special characters, e.g. for ultimate 'intellectual property': "™" "®"
• You can exclude -terms -"and phrases", e.g. space shooter -warhammer -"star wars"
• I've tried to be intelligent with the way search works - really thinking about which results you might want. E.g. you can search for rpg or roleplaying game and get the same results. I might have blind spots though, so let me know if a search doesn't return something which you think it should.

Grouping:

• By default all editions, expansions, demos, goodie packs and bundles are grouped together into a single result for the main game. You can toggle this off in the top left for a more classic search (as on GOG). The one usecase I've personally identified where this is really useful is when searching for specific goodies like soundtracks.
• Search will return a result if any grouped product matches. Filters only apply to information about the "main game".
• If there are three or more products grouped with the main game, they'll be collapsed. (The 3 editions and 65 expansions for Europa Universalis IV take nearly two full screens to show!)

Product types:

• I've manually identified all editions, demos and goodie packs, and given them separate categories. It's always possible I missed - or misidentified - something. If so, please let me know about it. (N.B. I did apply a broad brush to what is a "demo". Prologues and similar free "tasters" also got lumped in there.)
• There've been a few cases where I made a call on what's most useful which goes against the way products are actually structured; e.g. the chapters of Higurashi When They Cry Hou are technically standalone games, but I decided that they make more sense grouped together as expansions. Lust From Beyond (NSFW) is grouped as an edition of the "M Edition" remake (rather than the other way around), and so on. I'll be happy to discuss the merits of specific cases if anyone cares.

Sorting:

• Default sorting when browsing (and on the homepage) is percentage difference of current price to the best from the last 365 days, followed by percentage difference of current price to the all-time low, followed by release date on GOG (most recent first; taking the date of the full release for early access games, where possible). So this preferentially exposes the best "new" deals, rather than the same old discounts you see during each and every sale.
• Default sorting when searching is "relevance score"; that is how similar each matching game is to the search terms.
• More sorting options are coming very soon.

Filters basics:

• There are two types of filters:

1. Regular drill-down filters, which can overlap with each other. You can exclude each of these with the "X" to the right.

2. Multi-select filters, which have no overlap (with the exception of "never"/"none in the last year" for "frequency of sales"), which allow you to pick multiple categories independently (so that's effectively an OR operation).

• All filters are just regular links, so you can open them in a new tab to browse multiple paths. This does mean all filters trigger a full page load (no fancy JavaScript here), which can be annoying if you want to enable multiple multi-select filters. I might revisit this decision, but for the moment the tradeoff felt worth it.

More about filters:

• The "exclude NSFW" filter is special, in being applied by default (also applying to the recent releases in the sidebar). It's a single click to turn it off, and that's remembered for followup searches. Once it's turned off, the "NSFW" term shows in the Tags filter and can be "required" as usual for any filter.
• If you're not certain what a specific filter does, try hovering over it for a tooltip (if you're not on a touch device), or simply enabling it. The resulting page will frequently have an explanation at the top, e.g. that the "rarely" filter for "frequency of sales" indicates that the game has been on sale 1-3 times in the last year.
• It's a lie that I added the "At most 10 expansions" filter from the "About the game" section purely to exclude Paradox games. You can after all also exclude that filter to get all games with more than 10 expansions! (And then you'll see that of the 30 results, 'only' 5 are published by Paradox.)

Price tracking and currencies:

• I have price history for the US since April 2021, with massive thanks to gogdb for providing that. Whenever you see "all-time low", that means "since April 2021".
• I have price history for Canada, Brazil, the UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, China and Australia since early December 2024. I extrapolate price differences before that based on US price history, but this is pretty crude, so take it with a grain of salt.
• For the moment I only present price information in a single currency for each country. If you have a usecase for wanting a non-default currency for one of these countries, let me know about it?
• As far as I know, prices in the entire eurozone are identical, so if you're from France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, etc, you should just be able to look at German prices. (If anyone knows an example to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it!) At some point down the road, I intend to actually compare prices for all products for all eurozone countries to make certain of this, but for the moment this isn't a priority.

Data quality:

• Besides badly chosen defaults (the many release dates of xmas 1991 and NYE 2000 and so on), data entry at GOG is obviously the work of humans who occasionally suffer from fat fingers. I've identified and corrected a lot, but I have no doubt there's a lot more to find. I'll be happy to take a look at any errors you know about, and since I'm also a human, please let me know about my own fat-fingered mistakes as well! (I'm also thinking about a way to contribute fixes back to GOG, though I suspect I'd really need a more rigorous process for that to actually be useful / something GOG would actually want.)

---

World of Goo 2:

Available now on GOG! Sadly still a higher price than on other store-fronts, but what can we do. The price for DRM-free joy is higher than the alternatives, I suppose!

---

Amerzone Remake:

Amerzone - The Explorer's Legacy has released also on GOG.

Answer the call of exploration as you travel to Amerzone, a forgotten Latin American country, to fulfill the last wishes of a late explorer. Investigate the ruins of this secretive land reclaimed by nature, meet intriguing characters with deep backstories and solve intricate puzzles to uncover the truth. Will you unveil the mysteries surrounding the mythical Great White Birds?

The link to the store page on GOG is here!

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Junk Store:

My preferred method of playing GOG and Epic Games titles on my Steam Deck is Junk Store.

I like the UI and how it so closely resembles Valve's own for the Deck - it feels about as native as I could hope, and like it is an extension of the official Deck's UI/UX. I love it.

Anyway, Junk Store is turning one year old tomorrow! Since their first release, 12 months have passed. Nice to see that a project which began as a method for playing Epic and GOG for the dev and friends was released to the public.

If you're interested in some more Junk Store info, then check out:

• The GitHub page is here

• Their website is here

• Discord link is here

• Their update on what is next for Junk Store is here, which I shared one month ago on Lemmy

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Top Lists:

The recent bestsellers on GOG are:

• Breath of Fire IV
• Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Ed.
• DOOM (2016)
• Control Ultimate Ed.
• Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Collection
• In Sound Mind - Deluxe Ed.
• Alien Isolation Collection
• Homeworld Remastered Collection

The top wishlisted in the last 30 days are:

• Croc: Legend of the Gobbos
• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
• Silent Hill 4: The Room
• System Shock 2: 25th Anniv. Remaster
• Sudeki
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Resident Evil Bundle
• Dino Crisis Bundle
• F.E.A.R. Platinum

---

A Recommendation:

If you've not played it before, I can't recommend Islets enough. Its one of those games to me - which feels uniquely perfect on the Steam Deck (like DREDGE, Art of Rally, Hades and so on!)

Its such a cute lttle indie Metroidvania that stands out thanks to the charming hand-drawn art style, and cozy atmosphere.

The game’s unique hook is its interconnected floating islands, which you gradually piece together like puzzle pieces.

Combat is smooth and satisfying, with upgrades that add depth without silly overwhelming complexity, while the small but dense world encourages backtracking in a way that never feels tedious. Add the quirky characters, and you get a game that’s both relaxing and engaging—perfect for players who love exploration-focused adventures like Hollow Knight or Ori, but prefer a more approachable, breezy experience. It’s a short game, but I just love it.

---

And Lastly?

If you missed their blog post last year, GOG shared 10 fun facts about GOG themselves. I love these, and maybe you will too, if you're looking for some quick entertainment!

https://www.gog.com/blog/10-fun-facts-about-gog/

---

That's all folks

Sorry its so brief compared to my other efforts. I just thought it nice to focus on a space which rarely gets the attention (I think) it deserves.

I love GOG and their DRM-free stance. I love how GOG takes games preservation seriously, and most importantly I love the color purple - so that means this one wins hands down :)

News Links:

You can check my previous (and far longer) News Posts here - I’ll link them for you so if you’re curious:

• Steam Deck / Gaming News #2
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #3
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #4
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #5
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #6
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #7
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #8
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #9
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #10
• Steam Deck / Gaming News #11

Mastodon

If you want to follow me on Mastodon, I’m posting there every single day (typically), so come join in if you’d like:

...anyway, I hope you enjoy some of this! My next News Post will be back to the regular a-little-bit-of-everything content. I hope you're all having fun playing whatever games you're loving at the moment, too!

💜