The three patents—all filed in Japan between May and July 2024—draw similarities between Palworld and 2022’s 2022’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus specifically. Their descriptions concern game mechanics like “riding an object” or throwing a ball to capture and possess a character in virtual spaces.
They should have sued the coward police department. The rest of the world plays the same games people play in the US. I grew up playing GTA, didn’t steal or shoot anything.
It was such a unique twist on the tactic rpg genre, nothing quite like it. Plus it had great music (including a musical cameo at the bar), good progression, and a decent story.
Ah, it’s good someone is looking out for the poor poor shareholders. Just earlier I saw a long line of them at the unemployment office, begging for food from passerbyes, destitute in their poverty. /s
The shareholders at the local yacht club were really bummed out because many of them were saving really hard to add another ship to their collection, and some might even have to cancel a 2 week international vacation. Ive started a GoFundMe because no shareholder should feel so deprived of those basic needs.
It really is sad these days. You can see them holding signs written on the back of Form 10-K documents at road intersections say things like:
“Need dividends. Any amount helps. God Bless.”
But really, you have to just ignore them. You know anything you give them they’re just going to blow on equities in unproven klepto-corporate business models with over aggressive spending attempting to capture market share in industries paying abusively small wages to their destitute workers. You can try to help them like I did one time:
Me: "Hey, here’s a couple of shares in a company that hires those recently released from prison for light industrial assembly work giving them a good reference for future employment. Its not worth much, but they do some good for the community."
Them: "Can I as a shareholder petition the board to fire the ex-cons, ship the assembly work offshore, and perform a stock buyback increasing the value of the shares?"
Me: "I don’t think the board is interested in that as it violates the company mission"
It’s refreshing to see evil motherfuckers being evil openly instead of trying to hide it with doublespeak or outright denying it. I love Coffee Stain Studio’s games and how they handle monetization, and this announcement makes me worried for both the studio and their projects.
Don’t worry, the business model of companies like Embracer is literally to strip mine “inefficient” businesses run by artists through short circuiting the positive feedback loop between game developers passionate about what they do and loyal fans, trashing the work environment for the employees by cutting everything, and ripping off fans until they realize the place that made the art they love is alive only in name.
Gaas was a mistake and I’m hoping companies begin seeing this and course correcting. I get why it happened as it was wildly successful for most, but I’m pretty sure customers don’t actually want the same game and content for forever. Maybe there’s a way to fix it without abandoning the model entirely, but personally I’m hoping it goes away for good.
but I’m pretty sure customers don’t actually want the same game and content for forever.
The success of long lasting MMOs like WoW, EVE, FFXIV, GW2, Warframe seems to suggest otherwise, as well does the longevity of games like Fortnite, LOL and other non-MMO gaas games. There are even other examples that I'd count - I'd call paradox games like stellaris GaaS as well since they live off constant updates (stellaris has had them for 7 years now and going) and paid DLC. Hell, there's people that have been playing Ark, Rust and games like that for a decade now.
So I'd say there is definitely an audience for it, a massive one, as long as its done well. Destiny devs just sucked at it and had years of controversies, this is just the latest of their fumbles.
Wasn’t one of the main selling points for the EGS that there would be strict quality control so only “good games” would be on this store? And now it will be filled to the brim with the worst shovelware anyone has ever seen.
That is, if this will actually happen. I feel like Sweeney found a couple of seconds away from Epic’s lawyers and is talking out of his ass
While I don’t approve of Epic’s stabs at exclusivity, Steam needs a competitor to keep it in check, and one that is making some efforts to support the preservation of art is a welcome choice.
My experience with GOG is that it is a fringe option, at least in the combined North American (USA+Canada) culture. Plus, the unfortunate reality is that in many cases GOG’s principles preclude it from being a genuine competitor to Steam. Insisting on being DRM free means half of released games never go to the platform, so it will always be the secondary “better if” option.
I worry about Steam’s functional monopoly on PC game access. It hasn’t been an issue so far, because it has remembered that it is, first and foremost, a service, providing consumer protection through a generous refund policy and supporting devs with easy access to simple matchmaking and anti-cheat systems. But without a healthy competitor, it would be easy for Steam to start milking it’s users and developers alike.
Really, if any game in your Steam library has a playtime of over 500 hours, you may be getting enough value from the games you buy that a catalog service actually becomes worse value by comparison.
I fit in this bucket, and so do a few of my friends. I’ve gotten so used to the Steam gamer lifestyle of waiting for games to go on sale, buying them on sale, and then slowly building up a massive catalog of games that I think I will enjoy gaming. It’s very rare that a hot new game will entice me to play it without waiting for a sale, because I know what it feels like to be disappointed in a $70 purchase.
If there is a hot new game that I am interested in, Game Pass might be appealing because it allows me play a new game for cheaper. But I also don’t play games very quickly, because I’m busy. A narrative single-player game usually takes me at least two months to get through. If I play that game via PC Game Pass, that’s at least $24. Most of the time, I can get a game on sale for $24 or less within 2 years of that game’s initial release.
I also think about how, if I go the Game Pass route, I will feel a pressure to play that game quickly, because I feel like the meter is running and I don’t want to waste my money. This makes it harder to enjoy the game because I am forced to play it at times that I don’t really feel like it. If I instead buy the game on sale, I can pick up and put the game down at my leisure, which just fits my life better. Sometimes waiting for the sale sucks, but I have my backlog to keep me warm.
Yeah, when I did the 3 month trial I felt pressured to make the most of the subscription so I put aside some games I had planned on playing that I already had. I didn’t find myself needing game pass since I already had enough games so I never renewed once the trial ended.
If there is a hot new game that I am interested in, Game Pass might be appealing because it allows me play a new game for cheaper. But I also don’t play games very quickly, because I’m busy.
Steam allows us to avoid FOMO. I’ll wishlist it, meanwhile I’ll play my massive backlog. By the time I complete one single player game, the wishlisted game is already on sale and the game has matured with updates. It’s perfect for the adult gamer.
I feel like, aside from the specificity of video games taking far more time and investment to finish than other media, no to mention the dedication to F2P titles, the news could’ve really pointed out that it most likely is not turning a profit because no other streaming service does.
Netflix has always operated with billions of debt that only grows, Amazon, Disney+ and Max only exist because they’re backed by the biggest corporations in the world, and Spotify pays nickels to its artists.
Which might be another point to consider, that the convenience that users get from subscribing to these services do nothing to actually support the creators behind its titles - see every cancellation, whether its a tv show, movie or game - and while having an ever growing library of media is enticing, having few but objective choices still make far more sense when it comes to gaming.
As an aside I’m not particularly fond of the author brushing the change to digital streaming as inevitable, and going back to buying media being backwards, when we are on the verge of constant media erasure from companies, and with physical ownership - and piracy, in extreme cases - becoming more and more vital. If anything, it is less the technology that got us so far, and more the control that IP holders exercise over digital media, and the ability to delist, control prices and manipulate supply and demand at will.
Video games do not promote violence according to any modern ethical research on the question.
I can’t imagine the pain of these families, and I’d want to lash out at any available target, too. They might even get lucky and have a settlement offer from Activision rather dragging everyone through a trial. But if this even makes it into a courtroom, I would bet that it will ultimately go nowhere. There’s just no credible evidence to support the claim.
I mean, some game studios consult child psychologists and lawyers to better implement addictive gambling-like mechanics without being liable for that. Media does impact the consumer, and the bigger the initial predisposition, the worse the effect, and kids like shiny animated casino boxes. But violent games that do reach the market and aren’t dead on arrival are mild in that and can only supplement other, more real problems like mental health issues, trauma, neglect, bullying. And in 99.9% cases it’s just an excuse to push them under the carpet. Like, from drawing a line to what makes older demographics cause daily mass shootings. Not videogames, not even guns mostly, but the environment and culture as a whole.
I mean, some game studios consult child psychologists and lawyers to better implement addictive gambling-like mechanics without being liable for that.
For example? They couldn’t consult child psychologists for this purpose. It would be an ethics violation of the highest order and would get any license revoked.
Media does impact the consumer…
What kind of media? Evidence?
But violent games that do reach the market and aren’t dead on arrival are mild in that and can only supplement other, more real problems like mental health issues, trauma, neglect, bullying. And in 99.9% cases it’s just an excuse to push them under the carpet. Like, from drawing a line to what makes older demographics cause daily mass shootings. Not videogames, not even guns mostly, but the environment and culture as a whole.
Again, videogames simply do not influence social behavior. It’s difficult to find credible non-biased research, but here are a couple of relatively recent articles:
Tear, Morgan J., and Mark Nielsen. “Failure to Demonstrate That Playing Violent Video Games Diminishes Prosocial Behavior.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 7, July 2013, pp. 1–7. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068382.
Goodson, Simon, et al. “Violent Video Games and the P300: No Evidence to Support the Neural Desensitization Hypothesis.” CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 48–55. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2020.0029
What “older demographics”? “Daily mass shootings”? Where do you live?
All that said, environment does seem to impact social behavior. It’s likely a much stronger influence than a recreational activity.
There’s evidence that they’re linked to additional violent thinking, but not a sole factor in making a sane, healthy person into a killer. The former is more nuanced than simply "ban because bad correlation’ though
One thing I wish we could ban are opportunistic suits from hungry law firms that are just hoping that these companies will settle rather than fight an obviously frivolous suit. This is an insult to the civil legal system
What evidence links video games to violent thinking? I’m unaware of any.
That question aside, there’s simply no evidence that gaming impacts behavior, which as you suggest is the major interest here.
One thing I wish we could ban are opportunistic suits from hungry law firms that are just hoping that these companies will settle rather than fight an obviously frivolous suit. This is an insult to the civil legal system
Of course, media often overblows such studies because they don’t understand what a strong or weak correlation is and what behaviors these studies are correlating against, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding. Social science may be among the most difficult of the sciences simply because it is measuring patterns with unique biases in their subjects, such as the Hawthorne effect, and extremely high variance that can be difficult to address. For example, the frequency at which and types of games people play now vs 30 years ago is radically different. This is why meta-analyses that examine results across many studies can be valuable, as it often takes repeated studies under changing methodologies and populations to get a proper idea of a social correlation.
I should also emphasize that a positive correlation doesn’t really imply games need to be banned or controlled. In fact the articles linked above mention exactly that – the real concern with a lot of studies is the influence of violent video games on children and their propensity to bully. This doesn’t necessarily imply that video games should be banned, but it can be helpful for guidance to counselors to understand how even minor factors influence social dynamics.
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