Official Prism requires you to sign in with a Microsoft account at least once. But since Prism is open source, you can also download unofficial builds with no Microsoft anything whatsoever.

You can download both and see which one tickles your fancy more, but I prefer Mineclonia. There WILL be differences as Luanti is a fundamentally different engine from Minecraft, but generally you’ll feel right at home.

Currently the biggest differences for me are that lapis lazuli is stupidly rare compared to Minecraft, and there are no unique stepping sounds for other mobs so it’s like Alpha and Beta where a creeper’s footsteps can blend in with chickens, cows, and pigs. Dual wielding is also currently primitive, and Nether portals tend to put you in the middle of lava seas. Caves are stupidly dark but that might get improved on.

But I did manage to build myself a nice big house with an inner courtyard, and get myself to the End and come back with an elytra and shulker boxes.

The unofficial Minecraft Pocket Edition Launcher you seem to have alluded to in your edit is pretty nice, and feels almost as if it’s a native port of Bedrock to Linux. All the Google and Android stuff is abstracted away.

Minecraft already has too much big tech influence on it with Microsoft, let’s not add Valve’s grubby fingers into the pie now, shall we?

And yet the Microsoft account migration which can be easily defeated by a JSON file according to you has attracted a class action lawsuit. Curious. Almost as if circumventing it is not my point.

Microsoft account DRM isn’t enough for you?

Checks out.

You ask someone to see or find some cool alternative thing you’ve been using, they’ll insist it’s either one more app or come up with excuses to stay with the corporate thing. It’s always the corporate thing.

Isn’t it already restricted in those four countries? We need to pushback harder so the restrictions apply not to four countries, but rather to zero.

It tracks your playtime, registers chieves, and uploads saves to the cloud. Oh and updates your stuff.

I mean, there are no ads, but I only made it deep into the first level. This can absolutely change with updates for the better or worse - whether Konami will do it or not is doubtful IMO. This seems to me like a quiet, lazy promotion.

The activities in case you use something like App Manager are few, and there are no trackers or permissions it requests or anything, fairly benign. The activity labeled Check Data is to reload a previous state if you previously quit the game prematurely? And the activities labeled Kiyaku are for the terms and conditions (that’s the Japanese word for them). It doesn’t have DRM or license verification.

The manual just explains the controls and is an overlay on top of the gameplay screen, it’s not the original NES manual.

I couldn’t figure out how to pull the NES ROM out, I think it’s part of the .so library they’re using.

I wouldn’t play this with just touch controls, but you may try. It has a single save-state system so you can brute force actions even with touch controls if you want.

We don’t hear this enough. Google doesn’t hear this enough.

It’s Mimi. She’ll keep the glasses if she had to compromise.

Doom clones

Almost everything would be a clone of Doom if it was first person and had you shooting things. I think it took a while before that term was dropped. Can we drop “metroidvania” too?

The winning move is not to play?

Who needs enemies with friends like these, right.

unbelievably ignorant or dishonest.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. But I guess since Valve is doing it and not Microsoft, I’m the one called ignorant or dishonest for calling it what it is. For every minor contribution to Linux they made, they made multiples of regressions to the entirety of the PC platform and games sphere. Keep sweeping everything under the rug to convince yourself your favorite American corpo is the savior - not all the volunteers that made the hard work Valve latched on for free.

It’s pronounced GIF

The whole reason why SteamOS exists is because Microsoft introduced the Windows store with 8.

Ah yes. People panicked that Microsoft was going to somehow self-mutilate the ecosystem they have built, and Valve decided to opportunistically jump on the bandwagon and sell a “cure” to a non-existent problem, by porting their DRM to Linux, and wooed the world by… forking existing Linux distros with their DRM set to autoboot on big picture, and Wine? Damn, I’m impressed. /s

I really don’t think you understand why people like Valve.

Rather there’s nothing reasonable about liking them in the first place. American corporation paying taxes to the current regime, founded by an ex-Microsoft employee turned billionaire and owner of multiple yachts. Developed its own DRM, then found ways to monetize and enshittify it to make even more off PNGs and chat emojis. Singlehandedly killed used copies for PC games way before it crossed Sony’s mind. A loot box pioneer. Also popularized the toxic F2P model from mobile to the PC world with TF2. Attempted to make paid mods with a hefty cut going to themselves. Didn’t offer refunds for well over a decade until Australia forced them to legally - and yet their refund system remains subpar. I could go on…

gamers getting a real choice on running an operating system of their choosing.

Yes you keep shifting the topic. I’m talking about game ownership and physical copies, here you are talking about operating systems. I can run a fully libre system running GNU/Hurd and play GOG games all I want, it doesn’t change the fact Valve made it so I don’t own my digital PC games any more than Sony wants you to own them - they made it so GOG is unironically a store whose entire selling point is “we let you download offline installers for the few games we sell” which is IMHO dystopian - so why are we still rewarding them? Is it the shinies?

If you don’t remember the shit show that was windows 8

I’ve used windows 8.1 and 8 itself briefly. All applications from previous eras of windows worked. I’ve no idea what you’re on about now.

When Valve does shady shit, we’ll call them out for it

Oh really? You’re not calling them out for the shady shit that I’m literally dangling right in front of you. All I’ve seen you do is credit other people’s work to them and shift the topic away from the fact Sony is copying their homework from them. And you keep doing that.

The loss of physical isn’t the real fight here though, it’s open competition.

The loss of physical is the loss of another venue for ownership, including the ability to resell or give away your copies - something not even GOG lets you do. Oh, and also it’s something Sony themselves made an entire ad around…

I’ll still buy from Valve just to reward them

Then you don’t care about the Sony dropping physical media thing, since you’re willing to give Valve a free pass despite literally paving the road Sony is going down on.

I’d expect people boycotting Sony over their decision to be better informed than that, and stay clear of Valve’s dystopia, right? Right?

EDIT: also since you said consoles are locked down to 1 store yourself, I want you to make a guess how many PlayStation users are going to figure out that they can go buy their stuff from GOG on hardware literally branded after Steam, where as I established, its subscribers don’t give a shit about other stores, much less GOG.

Live services are all the rage because, well, you can see where I’m going now. One or two could flop, but maybe third time’s the charm and it generates all the profit. That’s the reason other companies - not just Sony - double down on live services despite these flops.