Everything you’ve said is true, but I don’t think it really applies to this case where they’re asking about officially refurbished Decks being sold directly by Valve. The price of a standard Steam Deck is well established here, and any discount will be an actual, real discount on the product.
A bank I used for a mortgage has mandatory text message 2fa if they think you’re on a new device (won’t allow google auth/etc). And web browsers like firefox/brave block enough cookies/etc that it requires the “new device” authentication everytime I log in.
Problem is, for a couple months there was some delay with their text messages. It would take 10-20 minutes to send your 2fa code, and the code would expire after 5 min, meaning that by the time you got the code it was always expired and unusable.
Made it completely impossible to log in to pay my mortgage payments. Led to some really frustrating talks on the phone about how I didn’t want to pay with a credit card over the phone, I wanted them to fix their damn system so I could log in and pay via bank transfer like usual.
I did know that. I usually use the “gyro + flickstick” combination for fps games on the deck though, so the lack of a right thumbstick on the original steam controller means I still can’t use my preferred gyro control scheme.
My biggest frustration with the original steam controller thought is that I can’t get the BLE firmware update to work properly. I can use it with the original firmware, but trying to install valve’s BLE update (so that the controller can wake the steam deck from sleep) results in a non-functional controller until I downgrade.
They’re pricey for sure, but they have a lot of unique options and I imagine the production numbers are pretty low, so high prices are to be expected unfortunately.
The metal buttons in particular can have the surface finished in different ways to match your desired texture.
Yeah seriously. I have an original steam controller, but I want something that has the full layout of a standard controller plus track pads/back buttons/gyro.
You should check https://deckbuttons.com/
They have a bunch of different buttons from different manufacturers, and a good variety of materials.
Tbh I only bought this trackball because it was super cheap, and I wanted to evaluate if I could get used to a trackball. I can check the brand/model when I get home, but it’s a thumb-ball. Main nice feature with it is that it supports both bluetooth and usb wireless.
I’d like to try a fingerball as well sometimes, I find thumb ball plenty useable, but I don’t think I could do nearly as well at FPS games with it vs a traditional mouse (I might just need more learning time though). I think a fingerball might be better for me.
Probably not what you’re looking for, but I recently picked up a cheap bluetooth trackball mouse for my Deck. I already have good controllers, so I was looking for something that would let me play mouse heavy games while the deck was docked.
When did you try it? The experience is much better now (imo) than it was at a launch, but it still doesn’t run as well as I would like.
Real steam controller needs more buttons and another joystick though. When many games are designed around a standard controller, the steam controller can be awkward to use.
Many new PCs (generally the cheaper priced ones) come in S mode now, where you can only install Microsoft store apps. You can turn this off to allow regular PC programs too, but they require you to set up the Microsoft store before you can disable it.
If you’re trying to set up a new PC without a Microsoft account (which is getting increasingly hard), you can’t disable S mode. There was a workaround that involved booting into recovery mode and running some commands/registry edits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has blocked that too by now.
This is also the biggest reason Valve supports Linux and ChromeOS. Microsoft really wants full control over what software people can use on Windows, and Valve is worried about getting pushed off the platform.
Yes I’ve seen it before. Once Microsoft even updated their virus definitions to auto-delete the chrome installer when downloaded. Thankfully they reversed that one pretty quickly, but I had to completely disable all Windows virus protection to install chrome for a relative.
Yeah, I’ve gotten sucked into HSR as well (first f2p gacha game that’s ever hooked me), and I can’t imagine having time for another game like it. The daily content isn’t really any trouble to do, but having to do that for multiple games would get old fast. And the monthly content drops can be really substantial and take a long time to experience all the content.
In steam deck settings, there’s an option for external monitor safe made. This limits resolution/refresh rate/hdr to improve compatibility. You can also try manually limiting external monitor resolution.
I know I had an issue where an slightly older TV I had started rejecting signal inputs if the resolution was too high or hdr was on. Originally I thought my deck’s video output was broken, but I tried a 4k chromecast and the TV couldn’t display it either (despite being a TV that had previously supported 4k and HDR). Limiting to 1080p with HDR off made everything work again.
Sounds like Play Music All Access subscribers are safe for the time being.
Probably just not big enough. Pokemon-like games are very common, palworld was just hugely successful and a lot of the media coverage for it was comparing it to Pokemon.
This will probably be an unpopular take, but this my best guess at why Trump won.
On the election coverage I was watching (ABC), the biggest point they kept coming back to were questions of if people thought that the economy is better now vs when Trump was in office, and if people feel like they’re better or worse off financially that they were during Trump years. If I remember right, the poll data they showed had twice as many people say that things were worse economy/financially then they were during Trump era, vs people who thought things were better financially now.
I know that matches with my personal experience, I live in a rural area, and my company primarily does work for other small businesses. The Trump years had a huge amount of negative news, but my business grew a lot over those years. In comparison, the last 4 years have been very stagnant in growth. We’ve picked up some new clients, but many of the small businesses we did business with have closed down or had to sell to new owners. I wouldn’t say our business is doing worse, but everything costs more and our company profit/wages haven’t kept up. And I know it’s worse for a lot other businesses, at least from seeing how many I’ve seen go out of business.
A lot of the economic troubles came from Covid, so it’s not fair to place them all on the Biden administration. But I think a lot of the country is unhappy financially right now, and they think Trump has a better chance of changing that. I’m guessing a lot of the “undecided voters” that decided the election picked the option they thought would help them financially over all other considerations.
Don’t we all
I’ve seen people replicate the Wii U experience with just a steam deck plugged into a monitor.
I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see an official sale on Steam Decks for black friday. If you’re wanting a good deal on one, I would consider looking at the discontinued LCD models during the next sale.