This happened to me a few times lately.

Half Life 2 VR Mod - Played it for ~4 hours, before all of a sudden it won't launch. I click on play in Steam, and after 3-4 seconds, nothing happens, then the play button is active again. No errormessage, nothing.

Resident Evil 2 Remake - I have almost 15 hours in it, almost finished the Claire campaign, when from one day to the next it won't launch. Just a black window pops up for one second, then it just stops, the play button is active again, so this game also leaves the user hanging without any errormessage.

Look, I have been gaming on PC since 2000, and with 25 years of experience, these situations are infuriating for me. I have my goto steps (check file integrity in Steam, update nVidia drivers, ec.) and if those don't work, I look on the Steam forums, google, etc for solutions, so eventually I'm gonna figure it out.

But dear gamedevs, please, please, please for the sake of less savvy players, include at least some clue of what the user should do. A blanket statement to the effect of "game failed to launch, please try the following: verify game files, uninstall then reinstall game, make sure you are on the latest drivers for your GPU, etc etc. If game still won't launch, visit our FAQ page here, where we listed all possible solutions..." could suffice for people who just want to play. At least they would not be totally stumped, and would have some options before they also google the problem, but man... Also, maintaining a FAQ about launch issues, bugs, crashes, etc. would be expected for a paid customer to have support for their product...

I somewhat understand that in 2025, game devs can expect everyone to eventually google what they don't know, but an errormessage would still go a long way in establishing a communication with the user in the time of crisis - "Hey, we failed now, but we have some general ide about the problem, here are some general options, and here is where you could seek further help" is an essential part of customers support - even in 2025, and it's so basic, I don't even understand why I am still talking about this.

TL;DR - User loses it over games that don't show errormessages after failing to launch.

Seriously, the amount of times this happened to me is astounding.

Pull up a YouTube video. Adjust the volume at the start. After playing for a while, I want to skip forward 5 seconds, so I press the right arrow. The video does not skip forward, so I press it again. I press it again, and in 4 seconds, I reach maxiumum volume.

Only at this point do I realize that, ah, this is part where YouTube interprets my right arrow as volume adjustment again, and I have to click on the play button or on the video itself to pause and play again, and only then will the right (and left) arrows mean what I think they mean.

I have never, ever - EVER wanted to use right arrow as volume up and left arrow as volume down for a YouTube video. not a single time in (almost) 20 years! And it does not even make sense from a usability standpoint, since the up and down arrows are already adjusting the volume up and down at all times, regardless of which part of the player is "active" (it should always be the play button. Fucking always).

The solution would be so simple, it hurts. Have the left and right arrows always mean 5 seconds backwards and forwards, as the up and down arrows already mean volume up and down. There is absolutely no need to switch the action of the left and right arrow, depending on if you clicked on the volume adjustment first. Oh well, chalk it up to "things I will never understand".

I used to browse Reddit 90+% of the time from my phone through the RiF app, so after June 30th, here is what I did and what I recommend as a starter pack for others in the same situation:

• Create account on lemmy.world, so the browser part is covered
• Search for the information on which app provides the closest to the RiF (Apollo, etc.) experience
• Instal Liftoff and be happy - it is just like RiF :-) (for Apollo and others, it could be different - find your own favorite!)
• Dial back dramatically on using Reddit at all. I only load 4 subs in my phone's browser, because I did not find the Lemmy / Fediverse alternatives yet
• Constantly look for the communities to replace the subreddits you are still visiting
• OPTIONAL - once or twice a week, look at /r/pics and /r/videos and laugh at the creativity of the still ongoing protest :-)

So that is where I am right now, posting this via the web browser on the lemmy.world site, by pressing "create a post". Seems easy enough for now, but I find it a bit confusing that other people can post from Mastodon and other Lemmy instances... Do they see the same communities I do? Do I see all Lemmy communities if I use lemmy.world....? So many questions, but it's exciting to explore this brand new structure.

Even after reading the Fediverse and ActivityPub articles on Wikipedia my head is spinning, and I don't really understand how everything fits / works together, but here I am! An ex(-ish) Redditor after the APIcalypse, looking for cool new communities, and excited about the future that the Fediverse can bring!

(I'm willing to learn! Someone please link me a FAQ where I can find the answers to my questions :-) )