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:

…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!

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!

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?!

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 :)

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.

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

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:

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!

Delta Force:

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

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.

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:

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)

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!

GOG error:

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

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:

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

Steam Deck / Gaming News #13