bin.pol.social

Eyck_of_denesle, do games w PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery

Windows comes bundled with solitaire. How is it allowed in schools?

A_Union_of_Kobolds,

Give the kids Linux! Build a generation of superusers!

warmaster,

Supertux depicts imagery of speeding, misdemeanor and felony. +18 Age rating for Torvalds and all of his derivatives.

turbowafflz,

I think the current microsoft version of solitaire has microtransactions and ads so is actually significantly worse

vaultdweller013,

Why, how, the fuck do you add microtransactions to fucking solitaire?!

iAmTheTot,

It’s not really micro transactions as much as it is a monthly subscription to remove ads.

vaultdweller013,

Its fucking solitaire you can play the old version from windows 95 online for free. This is beyond fucking stupid.

iAmTheTot,

If that satisfies you then all the power to you.

FuzzyDog,

Real question, why wouldn’t the win95/xp version satisfy someone? Isn’t it the same thing with simpler graphics?

iAmTheTot,

I can’t speak for other people, I don’t even play solitaire. Realistically, I imagine most people get new PCs with newer Windows versions and play whatever solitaire is on there.

vaultdweller013,

Im a Utilitarian to a fault, of course I think the windows 95 version is just as valid. I wear everything down to scrap.

Zangoose,
@Zangoose@lemmy.world avatar

Step 1: Add ads into [insert app of choice here] that are really annoying

Step 2: Make people pay to get rid of them. Bonus points if it’s a subscription

Step 3: People hate your app but it’s the one that’s installed by default so they use it anyway

Step 4: Profit

vaultdweller013,

The fact that this business model earns moneu rather than car bombs annoys me.

RogueBanana,

They added micro transactions and ads to fucking solitaire? How have I not heard about this till now…

TriflingToad,

iirc it’s a subscription too

iAmTheTot,

This isn’t really new. Solitaire has had ads for over a decade now since Windows 8, and there is a monthly premium subscription to remove them. As I understand it they also don’t show during offline play, but might be wrong about that.

redhorsejacket,

Offline play? It’s SOLITAIRE. Offline play should be the ONLY play, by default.

Feeling like I took crazy pills this morning…

ggtdbz, (edited )

If it makes you feel better/worse, the subscription is shared across multiple games. I was playing a bunch of Microsoft Jigsaw at one point (don’t ask), and while you could play as much as you’d like for free, the fact that they squeezed ads into it to extort you (or more likely, clueless older people) really cheapened the whole thing.

They had a lot of pretty photos which were probably not free, but come on, this is Microsoft, they have the money. I think this should’ve been bundled with Windows for free. I truly think a lot of people might even look back on it fondly the way they do with a lot of the older bundled-in games. We will take for granted how much the default option with any sort of technology around us has an impact on us as kids. Maybe not everyone, but not everyone loved pinball or inkball.

Actual textbook enshittification: what was once a space for a nice default thing to fall back on if you were bored and had their operating system has now become an “opportunity” to “generate more business.” Very sad. Computers are impossibly wonderful machines, everyone who has access to one should be able to enjoy a few basic things, packed in, for free - with no strings attached (looking at you candy crush).

I’m sure there’s a nice free or paid jigsaw game made with love out there that could satisfy that itch I felt that one week in 2020. Hm.

Edit: I have now redownloaded Microsoft Jigsaw and might just expand this comment into a full post/rant about the state of modern consumer software through the lens of Microsoft’s current casual games suite

iAmTheTot,

There are daily challenges and things like that which is what I would refer to as online play. Not that crazy imho of you’ve put thousands of hours into vanilla solitaire that you may welcome something to spice it up.

RogueBanana,

Damn I have fond memories of those games back in xp and 7 era but ig enshitification is evitable when it comes to Microsoft

AwesomeLowlander,

You’re being funny, right? Tell me you’re just kidding

the_post_of_tom_joad,

I can’t see any news that you can ‘pay to remove ads’ but lots of “how do i remove ads in solitaire” with settings instructions or registry edits so i think op is only half right

AwesomeLowlander,

Jesus I’m so glad I moved to Linux

pixelscript,

I also don’t think it comes pre-installed anymore, you have to get it through Microsoft’s meme store that no one uses.

absquatulate,

MTX and ads? Then it’s clearly only 3+ and should be allowed lol

Maggoty,

Because you don’t place bets on your solitaire hand.

ech,

Maybe look into the game being discussed even a little before commenting on it.

Maggoty,

I did. I’m not going to go buy it for this though. They literally use poker terms, poker imagery, and real poker hands. Saying it’s just because there’s cards involved is disingenuous.

ech,

And yet you say it’s cause of “gambling”. So you’re either lying about looking into it or lying about what you saw.

Maggoty,

This is all on their steam page dude.

ech,

So lying about looking into it. Got it.

Overshoot2648,

You could use the same for majong or pachinko like games like Peggle. The issue is the actual gambling, not just the game elements or risk, reward, and points going up. Loot boxes are 10× worse.

Maggoty,

No, we know that stuff that glorifies addictive activities can recruit or cause relapse as well.

sundray, do gaming w This is spot on for so many games

Meanwhile, in Star Wars:

“This is Snow World. It’s all snow there. That is Wet World. The whole planet is wet. Over there is Sand World. Nothing but sand everywhere.”

carbonari_sandwich,

Behold Coruscant! The entire planet … is a city!

zyratoxx,
@zyratoxx@lemm.ee avatar

https://files.catbox.moe/em26db.png

Behold Umate

Coruscant’s tallest mountain and the only place where the planet’s surface is still visible.

lemmy_get_my_coat,

That’s some trivia I did not previously know, thank umate

Xenny,

You should watch Andor. It’s an actual good star wars show. Probably because it is mostly an original story in the star wars universe.

GraniteM,

I did not expect an absolutely savage takedown of capitalism in the middle of my Rogue One prequel. 10/10, would unionize my workplace.

lemmy_get_my_coat,

Absolutely loved Andor, the tension was so thick.

qarbone,

I mean, that is just a sci-fi concept. Ecumenopolis.

hannesh93, do games w Stardew Valley 1.6 is Coming November 4th.
@hannesh93@feddit.org avatar

That guy legitimately made his hobby into his job.

There’s 0 reasons for him to still keep updating the game with as much content as he’s doing except for his own satisfaction. Truly the best developer a game can have

Rhynoplaz, do games w Horse archers ruin every game they are in.

Repost. Stolen from an Asian news site in the 13th century.

UndercoverUlrikHD,
@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

Which in turn reposted it from a Roman source

DragonTypeWyvern,

Fucking Parthian tryhards

lloram239, do gaming w I don't want to "Press any key to continue" to the main menu

Why is that there?

It’s there due to the technical certification requirements of XBox. All games are required to become interactive after a set number of seconds. When you have a complex game with long loading times, that might be difficult. The load start screen works around that, it’s simple enough to load quickly and it is interactive, i.e. “Press any key to continue”. It’s not useful, but it fulfills the certification requirements, all loading time that follows or might happen in the background while that screen is shown, doesn’t count.

It the same reason why you see so many games have the same “You’ll lose all your unsaved progress if you exit the game” screen, even in games that save so often to be a non-issue. It’s a certification requirement too. There is a whole bunch of stuff like this in games (and movies) that is not there because anybody wants it, but because some contract somewhere says it has to be there or you aren’t allowed to publish your game (see also the way names in movie posters never line up with the people on that poster).

PS: This has been around since at least the Xbox360s, don’t know what Sony requires or how Microsoft might have updated their requirements since then.

bionicjoey,

God I wish they wouldn’t try to adhere to these awful requirements in PC games.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

If you have a particularly slow PC, this screen would be good feedback that it hasn't crashed while booting the game. It also keeps the game consistent across platforms.

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.cafe avatar

Yeah, they're not gonna do all that stuff for cert and then go "now let's remake our whole intro sequence to be more convenient!", I don't think devs typically have that much free time

bionicjoey,

It wouldn’t be that hard. Devs already have to make all sorts of adjustments for different platforms

Lowbird,

Getting rid of that screen would be a negligible improvement and also might mean getting rid of any unique art that some may indeed want to see.

stephen01king,

And they are better off using their time to do those improvements rather than something inconsequential like removing the press to start screen.

TwilightVulpine,

The save warning is helpful for kids who don't get how game saves work yet.

lloram239,

The problem is that the majority of games do not tell you what you are actually losing or how to prevent it. Do you lose the last five seconds or do you go right back to the beginning of the game? How far away is the next save point? Games don’t tell you. You have to try to find out. There are a few smart games that will tell you “2min since your last save”, but they are pretty rare.

And of course in modern times that screen is rather unnecessary to begin with: Just save the damn game and let me continue were I left of. Xbox has QuickResume, but a lot of other platforms still have nothing like it.

TwilightVulpine,

Seems pretty common in games with auto saves that they will show a little icon whenever they are doing it.

Lowbird,

It’s usually a really subtle and easy to miss icon though, especially in a game that otherwise demands all your attention.

Zalack,
@Zalack@startrek.website avatar

IMO it’s a good feature and it’s a good thing it’s required. I remember the days when I would boot up a game and never be sure if my system crashed or not.

This requires the game to start giving you feedback before you start wondering if you should do a power cycle.

towerful,

I mean, better loading feedback would be better than an arbitrary “interactive within 1 second” blanket rule, leading to this whole “press button to continue” workaround.

That’s like a generator needing an earth rod, and the engineer putting an earth rod into a plant pot. Sure, the earth rod is there, and sunk to regulated depth in dirt… but it’s a plant pot.
Just make an accurate loading screen with accurate feedback.

Zalack,
@Zalack@startrek.website avatar

Imo that’s still not enough. Plenty of crashes or failures happen in a way where loading screen animations still keep playing. Having a cursor you can move around to validate that the process is still responsive is important feedback.

I also remember lots of games that did exactly what you are saying and there was no way to tell if it had hung during loading or not because you couldn’t check if it was accepting feedback.

DaSaw,

Neither of these things can be true, because they’ve been around since long before Microsoft got into the console game. I’m pretty sure Atari 2600 games had that prompt. I know NES games did.

lloram239,

blog.csdn.net/baozi3026/article/details/4272761

TCR # 003 BAS Initial Interactive State

Requirement

Games must enter an interactive state that accepts player input within 20 seconds after the initial start-up sequence. If an animation or cinematic shown during the start-up sequence runs longer than 20 seconds, it must be skippable using the START button.

What earlier games were doing was very similar, but was done for different reasons. Arcade games had an attract mode that would show gameplay or intro cutscenes in a loop when the device wasn’t in active use and had an “Insert Coin” flashing to attract players. The normal game would only started once coin got inserted into the arcade machine. Early console games had that attract mode too, just “insert coin” replaced with a “press start”.

What makes the modern start screen different is that there is often no cutscene to skip, no gameplay to watch, it’s just a pointless screen before you go to the main menu.

DaSaw,

Wouldn’t just going straight to the main menu qualify as an “interactive state that accepts player input within 20 seconds”?

lloram239,

Yes, but you’d have to get there in 20sec first, which in case of very elaborate main menus, might not always be the case. The start screen provides a safety buffer so that you never fail at this certification criteria, as all the loading time after the start screen doesn’t count.

Fenix,
@Fenix@feddit.de avatar

TIL

Blackout, do games w Why do Counterstrike and the other top 10 games on Steam NEVER change?
@Blackout@fedia.io avatar

I'm in my 40s and I've been playing counterstrike since I was in my 20s. I play other games briefly but anytime i'm bored I still hop on CS. It's a habit like checking your locks 3 times or taking your clothes off to poop

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Buddy… What?

Asafum,

They’re just referring to normal habits we all do like checking your oven for the family of mice you let live there before leaving for work or brushing your teeth one tooth at a time while watching the Flintstones in a language you don’t understand. We all do it.

vonxylofon,

You don’t have a poop knife?

Tramort,

That’s a reddit thing.

There are no poop knives in the fediverse

vonxylofon,

Poop dessert fork will have to do, then.

OopsAllTwix,

That’s disgusting. I only have a toe knife.

WalnutLum,

Yea like moving all the food on the top shelf of your fridge to the bottom and moving everything up shelf by shelf every morning or making sure you vacuum your walls properly. Standard stuff.

deepfriedchril,

Gotta make sure everything is locked, helps with pooping.

Krackalot,

I don’t know about every time, but I’ve had an intestinal blockage. Everything came off. I was sweating and crying for what felt like hours. Pooping was the best feeling I’ve ever had at that moment.

pixeltree,
@pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Been there, though I just took a couple hours in the shower with the enema wand set to “pressure wash”

meco03211,

While I don’t fully disrobe, the freedom of pulling one leg out of my pants is amazing. You can get a nice spread going for those times you need to bear down a bit.

CrayonRosary,

It’s a habit like licking the bottom of your shoes when you get home.

MrHandyMan,

The older I get, the less I want to learn new competitive games because I just don’t have time anymore. It’s just nice to go back to something familiar every now and then.

Davel23, do gaming w Rant: Valve's new Steam Deck screws speak volumes about their ethos.

Valve is possibly the closest thing to a non-evil company in the world today.

ivanafterall,

This is why Gabe is my billionaire of choice in the forthcoming billionaire mercenary wars.

bear,

When the corporation wars start over the remaining arable land and drinkable water, I’ll be joining the Steam Corps

andrew,
@andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun avatar

Maybe this is going to be the real Half Life 3. You thought it was scary in VR? Get ready for IRL.

picnicolas, (edited )

I had to stop playing Half Life Alyx when it got to the dark flashlight bit with zombies jumping out at you. Nearly gave me a heart attack. Definitely couldn’t handle it IRL. edit: autocorrect

andrew,
@andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun avatar

Yeah I definitely took breaks and actually just never went back after a certain point. Not because it was too intense directly, but one of my breaks, I just never went back.

picnicolas,

Same. I was planning to but never did and that was years ago. Hoping to set up the old vive again soon.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Yeh, you say that. But you know they finished Half Life 4 about 2 years ago and are holding it back on purpose

YMS,
@YMS@kbin.social avatar

Mostly because they have to wait for Half-Life 3 in order not to confuse the customers.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

That’s been in the warehouse for 10 years.

All_Your_Base,
@All_Your_Base@feddit.cl avatar

One of the benefits of not going public, I guess

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

But it only works as long as the replacement for Gabe Newell has the exact same ethos about the business. Changing hands always risks changing how things function at a company. Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years, it’s very likely that a replacement will want to “shake things up.”

When Newell retires/passes, things will change. Time will tell if it will be for the better or the worse.

Fubarberry,
@Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz avatar

Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years

Supposedly he’s doing this with his son. Only time will tell though.

theangriestbird,

Great, the Kendall Roy of Valve

antrosapien,

How much time do we have?

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Well he’s 61, and the average life expectancy for males in the US is 73ish. He is well-to-do, so he likely has better access to healthcare than most, meaning he will be one of those who lives past 73. I’d suspect we have twenty years at best, but more likely about 10 years if he retires at a “reasonable” age.

Sentau,

Unfortunately gabe is also overweight and hence has the health risks associated with being overweight. So him only living till the average age has a higher possibility.

Phen,

Not exactly. Of course Gabe could be replaced by some idiot who fucks everything up, but if Valve doesn’t become publicly traded it will continue to be in the best interest of whoever ends up owning it to continue doing things this way. Gabe doesn’t do good things just because. He does it because happy customers means more money in the long run.

Publicly traded companies on the other hand need to extract as much money as quickly as possible and have no regards to what will happen to it a few months later. So even if Gabe dies, all Valve needs is a leader interested in what’s best for itself.

erwan,

Private companies owned by institutional investors are no better.

The real difference is the the founder still own the company.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

When GabeN dies, shit gonna hit the fan.

Davel23,

It's my understanding that Gabe's son is being prepped to take over when the time comes. Hopefully he shares his father's values.

SnotFlickerman, (edited )
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Dear God. Because Nepotism has worked out so well so many times in the past. /s

Just shut down the company now, Gabe.

From an interview with his son:

“If it’s one thing I’d like to see Valve do, it’s push it with more their ideas,” he said. "The people there are the smartest I’ve ever met, the hardest working, the most inspiring. The culture at Valve is a very good one but they’ve kind of found this point where they’re a working machine. And that’s good, but I think they should reach out and do something scary. Do something that they don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

They make incredibly smart decisions, but sometimes you have to do something stupid. Sometimes you have to have a stupid crazy idea and say ‘fuck it’, go with it. Valve has a mindbogglingly enormous amount of resources at their back, and I hope they find the courage to throw it at something new. I want to see them push the envelope again.”

Yeah this chucklefuck is going to break shit day one, guaranteed.

Cavemanfreak,

Eh, it sounds more like he wants then to go back to the roots and developer a groundbreaking game, like Portal, or HL2, again. Which doesn’t sound like a bad thing. To do something groundbreaking it probably helps if you dare to do something that is scary.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

They literally already did that with the SteamDeck, it’s absolutely groundbreaking. They created a whole new product category, but it took years of planning and patience and watching the market. It happened with prototypes like the Steam Controller, the Steam Link, and the original vision for Steam Boxes, as well as the nearly decade of work they’ve done on Proton to get Windows games to run well in Linux. It didn’t happen with a “stupid crazy idea” that they said “fuck it, go with it.” It started with a smart idea, well executed, over a long period of time, with many bumps in the road on the way to success.

Steam Boxes were originally announced in 2012, this is the result of a full decade of work.

averyminya,

Unrelated: do you know a hot saucerman or are there 4 fans of this random show-cast?

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Everyone loves Scotty Auks, doncha know?

argv_minus_one,

@SnotFlickerman @Cavemanfreak

And one hell of a lot of work, too! Reimplementing the Windows APIs that Wine didn't already have, and then optimizing those implementations enough to be not only sufficient for some of the most performance-sensitive software under the sun but faster than actual Windows, is no small feat.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I wonder how much of Newell’s past at Microsoft helped with that? He helped produce the first three versions of Windows.

While Windows works wildly differently these days and the last one he worked on was Windows 3.0 (maybe 3.1?) and a massive amount of stuff has changed in how Operating Systems work since then.

However, I do wonder if his familiarity with the old systems helped at all.

Cavemanfreak,

Yeah, you are correct, and that’s why I think he was talking about games specifically. That’s a grade A assumption from me though (and a bit of hopium?)

tricoro,

People here are so scared of bad things happening that they can’t even imagine that something good might happen.

Crotaro, (edited )

So SteamDeck, Valve Index and pushing back against the short-term money maker that was NFTs until half a year or so, among other things, aren’t scary enough projects when you’re “just” a game developer and distributor?

K0W4LSK1,
@K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Hope is the word that scares me here

lea,

I love their approach to Hardware and Linux but have we collectively forgotten that Valve had a huge part in pushing loot boxes and underage gambling? Far from being the least evil company, but still a net win for consumers and I appreciate that they exist.

Plume,

And you wanna know why? :)

divulgâcheIt’s because they’re not public. So investors can’t ruin everything like they always do.

megopie,

More specifically “private equity” investors who are gradually looting the US economy.

metaStatic, do gaming w What game mechanics do you love and hate?

FUCK. THE. ALWAYS. ONLINE. PARADIGM.

MJBrune,

Not truly a game mechanic but I love the passion against GAAS.

teawrecks,

Does this include cloud streamed games? I for one am still waiting for a streaming exclusive game in the vein of Elden Ring or BotW. Bonus if it’s an MMO. Imagine how much more mysterious a world could be if no one is able to datamine the binary. The only way to discover things would be players actually discovering them.

MJBrune,

Eh. I would say that they are still mysterious and interesting if you don’t look at the information on a website saying what’s in the game or not. So yeah, I don’t really like what cloud gaming is doing. If you want to keep the mystery of a universe, have some self-control.

teawrecks,

I’m not saying “for each player, they are able to experience a sense of wonder in a game when played in isolation”, that’s old hat. I’m saying “for all players, everyone experiences a shared sense of wonder and discovery in an artificial world they live in together”.

I’ve never played Elden Ring, yet I couldn’t help but see the community make new discoveries together. The first couple of days every post was about Margit, then a few people found the fake wall that hides an entire zone, and a month later someone has reverse engineered the levels and found a wall that takes over 1000 hits to get rid of.

When the binary is entirely hidden from the users, and the only thing the users have have access to is a window peering into the world as you want them to see it, you get to create an entire set of physical laws that is hidden from the players. Players have to work together to conduct experiments, peer review each other, compete with each other, and become experts in very narrow fields of research within your simulation. Imagine spending months as a community raising in-game funding and developing the technology to sail/fly/launch to a New World for the first time, and when you finally arrive you know you are the first set of players to ever see it, specifically as a result of your efforts.

What you’re describing is a neat little one-off escape room experience. What I’m describing is an actual world. We currently cannot do this.

TeryVeneno,

While this is a cool concept, I don’t think there is a single organization with the money needed to pull it off that wouldn’t also ruin the concept with monetization features. Maybe some kind of community made game could accomplish it, similar to what the Thrive devs are doing, but the amount of consistent resources needed would be a lot.

teawrecks,

Yeah, that’s why I think we’re in an MMO slump right now. The only companies who can afford the scale “need” it to be a cash cow. So they need really predictable methods of generating income, which means not doing anything too interesting. I’m hoping one day we’ll get past that. I think we have the technology right now for indie devs to roll out a semi-affordable MMO of decent quality, but I also don’t want the market to be flooded with garbage MMOs. We already have too many of those.

boonhet, do games w Is it time to start a campaign against kernel-level anticheat?

It should be said that I’m not against games detecting cheaters and banning them from online play. It’s very specifically kernel-level anticheats that I can’t stand on principle.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I’m against them being able to ban you from playing online in its entirety, which is something they can do because most online games don’t let you run the servers yourself anymore. Sure, if someone cheats on official servers, ban them from the official servers. They should still be able to play, cheating or not, on the server they run themselves, but that’s not an option we even have most of the time.

tiz,

This one is such an overlooked part of this whole dilemma. The problem is NOT THAT the official servers not allowing clients without kernel level anti cheat. It’s just we don’t have an option to host our own servers anymore and we’re confined to following the rules.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

It is “overlooked” because it is a non-answer.

Nobody wants to play with all the cheaters and the people who got banned because they couldn’t stop talking about how much they love CSAM in the lobbies.

I mean, look at twitter. After the recent mass exodus to bluesky there is anger because they are realizing their quarantine zone is REAL shitty.

I do wish more games would provide player run servers as an option. but I am under no illusion that that is going to be good for anything other than “Hey, remember when we all played Chivalry 2 for a few years? What say we play that on Friday night and then ignore it for another decade?”

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

That is a perfectly valid use case for a video game that I paid for though. I do exactly that with games like 007: Agent Under Fire (in split-screen), and I played games like Rainbow Six 3 long after the official servers weren’t there anymore. Agent Under Fire in particular is a lot of fun with all of the modifiers on, like moon gravity, and I wouldn’t mind playing some multiplayer games with friends with cheats like that one on; things that you wouldn’t want on in a ranked queue, but things that I should 100% be able to do with the product that I paid for.

grue,

That’s a strawman argument. First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option. Second, even people who want to run a public server would still be free to ban people (for whatever reason they wanted). We’re not talking about being forced to tolerate antisocial fuckwads.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

As something nice to have? I fully agree (and said as much)

As an alternative to anti-cheat solutions/“solutions” as was being presented?

No, it is not an answer. Because it would indeed be forcing people to tolerate “antisocial fuckwads” or forcing people ti find private servers to play with each other like in the good old days.

grue,

or forcing people ti find private servers to play with each other like in the good old days.

No shit, Sherlock. That’s exactly what I was advocating for.

I wouldn’t call it “forcing,” though – that’s another strawman. It’s “allowing” the option.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

Cool

Also, it isn’t a straw man if you are arguing a completely different topic than the one the thread is about. But cool. You learned a word.

BombOmOm,
@BombOmOm@lemmy.world avatar

First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option.

Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.

We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.

SteveNashFan,

In my experience with TF2, many popular community servers have common-sense rules like no slurs, cheats, etc. The great thing about a player-run server is that, if you want, it can be stricter than official guidelines, as Valve for example is pretty hands-off beyond the obvious in-game cheats. It allows pockets of the community to shape the experience they want to have more adeptly than official servers ever could.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

The problem is “pockets of the community”.

Back in the day, I LOVED Unreal Tournament (… I still do actually). And a lot of that is because I found servers with people who became friends I still chat with (hell, one of them is even in the same Warframe clan as I am).

But that is INCREDIBLY unapproachable and I know plenty of people who never “got int” UT or Quake or TF2 because they never found those communities and instead got stuck with random pubs full of assholes.

That said: That is not about anti-cheat. That is about matchmaking versus player run servers. Which is a very different discussion with nuances in all directions.

boonhet,

Yes, that’s part of the StopKillingGames agenda as well. Allow us to control our own servers! For fuck’s sake, it’s CHEAPER for them, because WE’RE paying for hosting. A dedicated server costs money! And it keeps people buying into the ecosystem after the initial sales high because you form communities and then tell people IRL how awesome the game is. Assuming you have time for real life friends of course.

I’m not against the existence of a matchmaking system, or even against it being the default. Just give us a tiny menu item “Dedicated Servers” somewhere and keep that one around forever, even when the publisher is long bankrupt because the CEO blew all their profit on sculptures of oddly shaped penises or something.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

They see it as a threat to their business model. Without any other option, you have to be on the latest version, seeing the latest skins, and you’re unable to bypass their store and mod them in yourself. If I can help it, not giving me the option to run the server myself will be a threat to their business model.

xavier666,

A dedicated server costs money!

Game company: “Why don’t you give that money to us and we will give you a server?”

vodka,

Make a cheater pool and put anyone you detect using cheats in a separate matchmaking system that only matches cheaters with cheaters.

And never ban anyone, ofc.

Passerby6497,

“Butbutbutbut server side anticheat is haaaaaaard and requires us to actually think about what values are actually valid and understand our own internal game states. Kernel level anticheat lets us be lazy costs us less and requires less development time!”

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Unless they deviate substantially from how they build games in genres like shooters, server side anti-cheat isn’t going to catch everything that kernel level anti cheat does. However, kernel level anti cheat doesn’t catch hardware cheating anyway, so if cheating is always going to be imperfect, we ought to stop short of the kernel.

Passerby6497,

That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything. But anything important can be sanity checked by the server when the client checks in, all without opening a vulnerability in your customers’ systems.

So much kernel level anticheat is about offloading the processing power to the customer, and unreasonable desires for control over the systems involved and overall game environment (and probably a decent amount of data mining).

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

A lot of cheats send completely legitimate information back to the server, and that’s what they’re seeking to stop with the client side implementation; I don’t think it has anything to do with costs. I haven’t heard of any data mining happening, and surely someone would have caught it with wire shark by now, but there are enough things that we know for sure about kernel level anti cheats to make it offensive.

nekusoul,
@nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de avatar

I think the way to go about detecting cheats server-side would be primarily driven by statistics. For example, to counter wallhacks one might track how often a player is already targeting an enemy before they become visible. Or to counter aimbots one could check for humanly impossible amounts of changes in the direction of mouse movement, somewhat similar to how the community found out a bunch of cheaters using slowmo in Trackmania.

Add in a reputation system that actually requires a good amount of playtime to be put into the highest tier of trust for matchmaking and I think one could have a pretty solid system that wouldn’t have to rely on client-side anticheat at all.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything

The problem is that the things that aren’t caught? People don’t say “Ugh. Easy Anti-Cheat suck”. they say “Ugh, fucking Battlefield is un fucking playable. BOYCOTT IT!!!”

There are alternative methods that may be even more effective (I personally think this is a genuinely great use case for “AI” to detect things like tracking players through walls and head snapping). They also have drawbacks (training and inference would get real expensive real fast since it needs to be fairly game specific).

Whereas kernel level bullshit? It clearly works well enough that the people who have the data (devs and publishers) are willing to pay for it.

And if it reduces the risk of a particularly bad exploit hurting the reputation of the game and tanking it harder than Concord?

Which is why “fighting back” is so difficult. We, as players, are asking for the devs/publishers to trust us. But we have also demonstrated, at every fucking step, that we won’t extend even an iota of trust back and will instead watch thousands of hours of video essays on why this game sucks because of a bad beta.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

Was it Delta Force that made everyone lose their shit because it “accidentally” warned people would be banned for usb thumb drives?

Because… that is coming. No, not the thumbdrive. But scanning your various devices to detect hardware based cheats. Which… is likely also going to be pushed by logitech and razer to get ahead of the crowd that are sick and tired of needing their bullshit software to properly use mice and are looking toward alternatives.

LaLuzDelSol,

Look if companies could implement successful anticheat without kernel access they sure as hell would, regardless of cost or effort. There is a TON of money to be made in competitive fps games alone, and they’re pretty much all overrun by hackers

rumba,

requires less development time

Here, step into this 200GB repo with about 50 third party plugins and someone else’s game engine and find all the states that aren’t exactly like they are on the design docs, and do it at scale, across a cluster of servers that all have to interact.

20 years ago, i’d be right there with you.

It’s actually hard for a big game to do those things. The people making the cheats are as good as the developers and only need to find one nick it the armor every time.

FWIW, I’m against kernel-level anticheat, and I didn’t downvote you :)

wreckedcarzz,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

The one downvote from a cheater 👌

KoboldCoterie, do games w Recommendation engine: Downvote any game you've heard of before
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

Ooh, I’ll play.

Final Profit: A Shop RPG is an RPG about a deposed elf queen who opens a humble shop and slowly advances through the ranks of the Bureau of Business with the eventual goal of defeating Capitalism from within. It’s unique. It has some incremental game like mechanics, and can get a little repetitive in the mid-game, but it has a surprisingly compelling story and a lot of unfolding mechanics that keep it interesting all the way through.

Roughly a 30 hour playthrough with many endings, NG+ and some optional challenge modes that remove or change some of the most obvious strategies for advancement, so if you finish it and still want more, you can play through again with a somewhat different experience.

shrodes,

Man this made me feel guilty downvoting. Great game, a real surprise packet for me, think I got it in a Humble Bundle and tried on a whim and had a great time.

Think it’s an Aussie dev (single person?) too, and still getting pretty frequent large content updates

KoboldCoterie,
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

The dev is also very responsive! I left a (positive) review with some critical feedback and they commented on it very quickly and had a bit of a dialog with me about the comments I’d made; they ended up revising the Steam page based on review feedback (mine and others), too, which made me want to support them even more!

ByteOnBikes,

I really can’t handle the RPGMaker look of it.

I’m willing to give it a try though

KoboldCoterie,
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.

That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.

___qwertz___,

I think the To the moon series hides the fact that it’s RPG Maker rather well

KoboldCoterie,
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

Definitely another great one!

Katana314,

The worst part is, there are certain ways a top down spritework game can look unique, and even put some personality on the characters. But the classic NES RPG look just seems so arcadey and wrong to me.

derpgon, do games w PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery

Fuck PEGI, their ratings always sucked and weren’t useful at all. Full blown swearing? 13+. One cigar through 500 hours of gameplay? Adults only. Never cared, never will.

rimjob_rainer,

Violence and gore? 13+. Some boobs? Adults only.

Killing good, love bad.

wizardbeard,
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And people pretend that only American ratings systems pull this kind of bullshit.

SaharaMaleikuhm,

If anybody knows about love it’s rimjob_rainer.

slazer2au, do games w Does AAAA just mean awful triple A games now?

It’s just a marketing term. Just like AAA is a marketing term meaning we spent more money advertising this product than we spent on development.

PlantJam,

Have any companies besides ubisoft used the term yet?

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

I seem to remember MS claiming they were opening the “first AAAA dev studio” (The Initiative). Since then, the studio has been radio silent, lost a bunch of talent, and needed help from Crystal Dynamics to work on their first game (Perfect Dark reboot).

ms_lane,

iirc Square Enix called Forspoken ‘AAAA’

aciDC14,

Ah, i guess the “A” in “AAA” stands for Advertisement.

quafeinum,
@quafeinum@lemmy.world avatar

Except that there was no advertising for concord lol.

aciDC14,

True dat.

ms_lane,

Monopoly Go is the only real AAAA

CrabAndBroom,

The A is for “Actually this game is $90 now instead of $60.”

sp3tr4l, (edited )

It originated as a marketing term for Skull and Bones, right?

Realistically, its a corporate buzzword that is supposed to mean that the game delivers an exceptionally high quality experience, graphically, narratively, gameplay wise…

…but what it seems to actually mean is that the budget and manhour count and development calendar time ballooned to far greater than the original plan/estimates due to incompetent management.

At this point, I propose that ‘AAAA’ applies to basically any extremely costly game backed by a huge publisher that owns many development studios, that has been in development for over 4 years before any kind of release, ie, stuck in development hell, execs convinced its going to be a massive hit such that they sunken cost fallacy other games or even other studios out of existence so they can keep funding their uber project.

With a definition like this, Skull and Bones qualifies, so does Concord and Suicide Squad.

Basically… it doesn’t have to be from a grandiose marketing campaign attached to a AAA game, its more about being stuck in development hell and continuously funded to the point of destroying other parts of the business making it, like a financial cancer.

ms_lane, do games w How to decide what kind of controller one should purchase?
  • Microsoft has their own controller protocol, xinput, it only works with xbox and PC
  • Sony and Nintendo both use BT HID, but add their own non-standard extras to deal with trackpads and gyros, on PC there are drivers to deal with this (inc. w/Linux kernel, extra on Windows)
  • For Wireless, Sony and Nintendo both use standard Bluetooth, you can pair a Switch or PS4/5 controller straight to a PC (though you will need extra software on Windows)
  • Microsoft uses either their somewhat proprietary 802.11AC implementation (only works with their dongles - you will need extra software on Linux, fully supported in Windows ootb) or standard Bluetooth, their BT has the highest latency of any of the 3 major controllers, but their 5ghz 802.11AC has the lowest. BT mode requires no extra drivers and will work fine ootb on Linux or Windows. You can’t use a headset plugged into the controller or connected by BT (to the controller) if you’re connecting the controller via BT.
  • MS has additional trigger rumbling/tension on the Xbox One/Series controllers, in Windows it will only work with MS Store apps - it won’t work on any Steam game :( on Linux it will work, but nothing really supports it either.
  • Sony has a much better implementation in the PS5 controller, nothing outside Sony published games use it though - but it’s compatible on Windows with additional drivers (DS4Win) (not sure about Linux here)
  • For Nintendo Switch on Windows you will need BetterJoy (previously, BetterJoyForCEMU) to support switch controllers properly, this also makes a DS4Win style gyro server, so anything that support ds4win will support Switch gyro too.
Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah this is a solved problem with a lot of third-party systems though like 8bitdo has, since they just allow you to swap modes. Granted, sometimes it’s a bit wonky since for example the Switch won’t support analogue triggers but eh, it works for everything and everywhere, so I’m happy to have a single pad that has everything anybody can utilize.

xavier666,

If I could award this comment, I would have. Thank you, you answered a lot of my questions!

1Fuji2Taka3Nasubi,

Also, the button layout on switch controllers is different (A & B is swapped compared to XBox). This mostly matters on emulators, although you can remap the buttons, it can get confusing that they don’t match the games’ instructions on screen.

SatyrSack,

X/Y are also swapped.

Doodleschmit,
@Doodleschmit@lemmy.world avatar

This comment is how I always hope my info dumps go when someone asks me a technical question about something I have good experience in using. 10/10 comment, love it.

SatyrSack, (edited )

Sony has a much better [trigger rumbling/tension] implementation in the PS5 controller, nothing outside Sony published games use it though - but it’s compatible on Windows with additional drivers (DS4Win) (not sure about Linux here)

It also does not work wirelessly. The controller itself and its basic rumble obviously do, but you will not experience the fancy haptic features unless the controller is connected via USB.

garretble,
@garretble@lemmy.world avatar

How it’s been four years and Sony hasn’t released a dongle to solve this problem is beyond me. Especially now that they are releasing more and more games on pc.

I have my pc in my living room, and while I’d like to just go wireless, I’ve currently decided to compromise with a super long cable just so I can get all the dualsense features.

Hylactor,

I use a ps5 controller on pc and get rumble? Even the weirdo trackpad in the middle works like a cursor.

coriza,

I also have a PS5 controller, as far as I understand, haptic feedback is not humble, it is a resistance in the triggers (L2 and R2) só a game can make pull the trigger be harder of softer depending on the situation.

I don’t know how many or which games uses it seem how many games still does not correctly display PS controller icons and etc and fallback to the MS iconography.

As far as I know haptic and maybe the mic/phone are the only things that does not work over BT. But I also think I read that some things that does work with BT does not work over USB

Hylactor,

Ah, interesting. That sounds pretty negligible, feature wise. Might be fun on a racing game or something I suppose.

Rai,

It’s fucking AMAZING.

I got a Dualsense controller because it looked comfortable. Then Returnal came out and I experienced the haptics and triggers… Absolutely insane. Even the lil controller speaker makes satisfying sounds on a perfect reload, or when you pick up certain things.

You’re right about driving games, though—playing Pacific Drive with it is completely awesome. The triggers vibrate on rough terrain along with the haptics, and the brake trigger feels like you’re actually pressing a car brake down.

I wouldn’t recommend either of those games WITHOUT a PS5 controller after trying it. They would feel so… flat. I’m looking forward to playing more games that support the triggers and haptics.

Rai,

Haptic is different than the adaptive triggers, it’s like a way more 3D rumble. If you have a Dualsense controller, I HEAVILY recommend Returnal if you’d like to really feel the haptics and triggers. It’s AWESOME.

Pacific Drive is another game that takes full advantage of the haptics and triggers. They really being the game to life.

It does need to be plugged in, though.

coriza,

Wow I didn’t know. Do you know if it work Linux the way you described? Even if using USB

clif, do games w PSA: If you still have a Mojang account for Minecraft: Java Edition, you have less than a week left to migrate to a Microsoft account to avoid profile deletion

I tried to recover my Mojang account and migrate it three times. Each attempt gets a stock response asking for certain info (receipt, email, username). When I provide this, I get a response from a different support user asking for the same thing I just provided. After three to five back and forths (with the same questions and the same answers) I get busy, frustrated, and leave it for a few weeks.

Once I have time, I start over and the exact same thing repeats again.

I wrote it off as a loss last year with an asterisk of “another reason to fucking hate Microsoft”

themeatbridge,

Yeah, I bought it during beta testing and my account was attached to an old email. Gave up trying to migrate years ago. I’m actually surprised they still haven’t deleted it already.

andrew,
@andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun avatar

Class action time?

nous, do games w Would "suggest price" be a positive option for steam?

This assumes people are rational and that what they say they are willing to pay matches what they are actually willing to pay. And that is just the people not trying to abuse the system.

Dran_Arcana,

Personally I don’t think I’d advocate for OP’s suggestion, but you could solve the problem by making the suggestion also a commitment for X period of time. If you make the suggestion, and the price drops within 90 days, it automatically purchases it, etc.

JASN_DE,

And what’d you get? People putting in 0.10. Unfortunately useless, as the poster above said.

Dran_Arcana,

potential solution: minimum commitment 10% of original list price?

Mitchie151,

You can put in a buy order at 0.1 for a share worth 100. You’re dreaming, but you can still do it. Don’t think it really qualifies as abusing the system.

XeroxCool,

I’m guilty of this. So many times, I’ll see something at full price and say I’ll wait to buy it on sale. Then it goes on sale and I don’t feel like spending the money at all. Granted, I’m not trying to sway the market and screaming my bid, this is just my internal monologue. I have a backlog of games and a busy adult life, so it’s not like I’m game-poor. Just regular poor.

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