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Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

I'm catching up on the last 20 years of gaming I've missed for not having a Windows machine :) Bonus points for most of the old games being super cheap now.

I'm really happy with mine. Games just work, no tweaking or weird configurations necessary, gamepads and other controller schemes work well, and; it's running Linux in the back! Once you configure something like Syncthing in desktop mode, it carries on working in the regular console mode.

I really can't say enough good things about it, but one thing I'm wary of is the DRM stuff Steam uses. Never had a problem with it, but my Switch doesn't need to phone home to believe I own the games I've bought, and it worries me that even the "offline mode" needs to check-in every three weeks :/

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Steam doesn't require DRM, some games purchased on steam can be run without steam running.

Valve provides a very simple (and easy to bypass) DRM which many games on steam use, this is likely what you're referring to.

Other games use third party DRM such as Denuvo which is hard to bypass and generally hated (can cause performance issues). These games have warnings on the store page.

Ultimately Steam had (has?) a monopoly on the PC distribution market and didn't really take advantage of it to do anything anti-consumer (instead this period introduced a number of prosumer changes like refunds) so while it is a company it's one I trust more than most.

As far as content platforms go, Steam is one of the very few that I trust. So it's not a huge concern in my humble opinion

The worst part about the Steam Deck is Steam; I'm eagerly looking forward to some more general Linux communities building alternative OS setups in the future, although Steam Input still doesn't seem to have a good Open Source alternative.

Aside from that, the device is fantastic, I have very few complaints. The portable form-factor is transformative for a lot of older PC games, it's an emulation powerhouse, gyro controls make first-person shooters actually playable (which was my big concern with not having a mouse). It's repairable, it's running Linux.

I don't know if I would recommend it for everyone, but it's pretty much the perfect console for me (or will be if I ever figure out how to replicate the OS experience without Steam).

> I'm catching up on the last 20 years of gaming I've missed for not having a Windows machine :)

What are your top 10 games that you have caught up on so far? (please exclude any recent blockbusters from this list)

When you're catching up on all the games you couldn't even consider before, a bonus side effect is all the chaff has gone through the sift of time ;) So there are many games that got struck off my list as time went on.

The only ones that remained, I bought, and were actually _good_: Uncharted, Resident Evil 2 (Remake), South Park The Stick of Truth.

Ones I bought still thinking they should be good, and was disappointed: Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands 3, Brutal Legend, Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Rising. They're not bad games, just not worth my very limited time. I probably would have loved them when I was younger though.

> my Switch doesn't need to phone home to believe I own the games I've bought

However once your Switch _can_ connect to the internet Nintendo can just erase all your games.

Oddly, it also does phone home if you are a family. Having one copy of the game that is shared among the 4 kids at home is insane.

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