When you “buy” software, you’re buying a license that grants you permission to use it subject to the terms & conditions. The stealing as the law would see it is from using software without purchasing a license or using it in violation of the license.
It even extends to digital content people “buy” on Steam, or Google Play, or Amazon including books, music, and videos. You didn’t buy that content, even if you think you did. You bought a license to it which is why occasionally Amazon or whoever will just scrub the content from your account without your consent. That’s also why in some countries you pay VAT on e-books even though you don’t pay VAT on real books - because you actually bought a software license which is liable to VAT.
So the best advice is don’t buy digital media from online services. For games and software it is unavoidable but recognize you don’t legally own squat although most console games on disc or cartridge can still be sold second hand. But even that is being eroded. Nintendo apparently are planning to sell “physical” games in stores but you open it up and there is a redemption code inside. Sony and Microsoft have both tried to get away from physical media too.
Breaking News: RPG does what all RPGs do but we will compare it to only what one well know RPG does instead of simply saying it’s an RPG that does RPG things.
They could have said any other recent RPG game and it would have applied. Using Baldurs Gate 3 is probably just because Avowed is in the Pillars of Eternity world which was another isometric game, but still it’s just an RPG. It could just be channeling Pillars of Eternity instead of Baldurs Gate 3. Why do we have to use Baldurs Gate 3 for every comparison out there?
BG3 is a great example simply because there is so much content you can miss. I’ve put 1300+ hours into it and I still see things I haven’t seen in any prior playthrough. Granted they aren’t large story things or quests anymore but still, even the little stuff adds up.
Personally, I find it frustrating to see the buzz Baldur’s Gate 3 gets because I remember a time when games like BG3 weren’t a rare sight. I mean, shit, BG3 is just a logical evolution from BG1 and 2. It’s got modern graphics, modern UI, modern controls… Same basic gameplay, same kind of choice that can lead to many replays because there are so many ways to do any given quest, etc.
It isn’t that BG3 isn’t deserving of praise; it definitely is. But the fact it is like a breath of fresh air shows just how awful the industry itself is. They didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before, and instead went back to old-school roots and fucking dominated the scene by simply not making their game watered down garbage with a lack of agency.
That’s the thing though - bg3 isn’t praised because it’s good relative to the state of the industry. It’s a game that did everything right, not just comparatively but in general
I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but you’re right. I think it happened around the time every action genre starting introducing “RPG éléments” to the point that they became de rigueur.
It was only natural that RPGs themselves would borrow back from the action genres that were borrowing from them.
Anyway yeah, it’s nice to see a big RPG bring just an RPG.
Of all the callow villainry, I wish a comparison to Baldur’s Gate 3 was the worst I’ve heard. I have seen such articles talk about Avowed in terms of Skyrim, which was released closer to Banjo Kazooie than Avowed. No irrelevant remark is beyond them, no matter how patently inane.
Yeah but every NBA game gets flooded with negative reviews and these people will buy it again next year. It doesn’t matter how many negative reviews it has if it sells well.
I always have a laugh when half of these reviews are “wow guys this poorly rated game that everyone told me is garbage turned out to be garbage. They’re making the same game every year!”, fast forward to them posting the same review next year.
I got Madden 22 for free and for awhile I was enjoying it. It was my first Madden game since the 360. So I start going to forums for the game, and every single post was about how bad the game is, highlighting ridiculous bugs, shitty AI, missing features.
Then details about Madden 23 started to come out and everyone that was tearing 22 apart was absolutely in love with every little thing that was shown.
Man I remember being on the Gamefaqs forums back in like 2005 or so, and people were complaining about this exact scenario back then. Some things never change
Single player shooter’s aren’t bad or even unpopular right now. But I think people are beginning to realize that anything that has EA’s name attached to it is trash and just avoid it on principal.
Jup, even new iterations of their older IP seem to be devolving instead of taking that which was fun and expanding on it.
Maybe they should use all these behaviour experts to investigate why people keep playing games instead of figuring out how to maximally predate on your customer base.
Ubi does the same. I found the last farcy so Uninteresting that I stopped playing somewhere mid game. And the first signals from their pirate game are also not encouraging, while I know many people that looked forward to it.
Everyone in the single player fps demo is replaying the old good games, or seeking out like custom doom wads or the occasional actually good indie fps single player game, having at this point long given up on large studios being able to make a compelling single player fps.
Sure, a lot of us enjoy lots of other kinds of games too, but good lord is there an unscratchable itch for a new, compelling FPS campaign thats actually interesting and challenging.
It's boomer shooters or nothing in that space right now. We're starving out here. On my radar in the coming year or two are Mouse, Core Decay, and Agent 64, but no one knows what kind of quality we'll get out of those. Also, is it a crime to just throw in some competitive multiplayer that's meant to be played a handful of times with friends instead of being the next e-sport?
It’s also inspired by „the wanderer“ painting that has been referenced a million times without most people even realizing that yes, someone did that first.
“I poured many years of my life into this, just to feel empty. In quitting, I have found my real passion, and have been obsessively working on music. I’ve even released my first ever album, SPIDERWEB PRINCESS, which is filled with my darkest, most genuine feelings from all of my experiences. Nothing I’ve ever done has ever been so meaningful to me. I have so much of myself to share with the world, and I’d much rather be remembered for something I actually enjoy.”
This guy is why PR consultants and Social Media teams exist. Some people just should not have contact with the public. However good he might or might not be in his work on the project itself, someone should have told him to sit down and shut up and let someone who knows how not to damage the entire game with a single statement handle the communication.
I generally have nothing but a deep sense of loathing for marketing, but I genuinely feel bad for the people who have to try smearing lipstick on this pig.
I’m not much of a fan of the series, but the complaints I’m seeing are in the “I only get 30fps instead of 60fps on ultra!” kinds of things that make me roll my eyes super hard
The eye rolling would be justified if the 30FPS was on something like a 3070 or something like that, but when the complaint comes from someone sporting a 5090, well…
If the game runs at 30FPS on the latest, greatest top-of-the-line card from Nvidia, imagine what kind of performance people are getting from 4060s or RX6600s…
A game that’s this badly optimised is a disrespect to all gamers.
Is that what the situation is? I think that’s also only the case on 4k with brutal mode enabled or whatever.
Obviously that’s still not great if so, but I’d still put it in the eyeroll category personally. I don’t really feel butthurt if I have to run at 1080p or enable vlss or not get 120fps or whatever, especially on day 1 for a game.
But I come from an era where there were games you had to shrink some 3d games lower than 320x200 to get a playable 10fps, so I’m also probably feeling some “back in my day we walked uphill both ways - kids today” energy here. What do I know.
"There's no such thing as bad press" is such a dogshit saying that is demonstrably untrue. There is absolutely bad press, just because we're talking about it doesn't mean it's good for the product. For every one schmuck who thinks they'll buy Borderlands 4 just to prove how good their computer is, there's a hundred people who have decided never to buy it at all and half if them have written off gearbox entirely.
the joke isn’t about being gay at all. it’s about reactionary people complaining about things being woke and gay but refusing to play with a woman on camera at all times. it’s using their inconsistency against them; not advocating for it.
Lol yes, thank you. I’m of the opinion that using /s defeats the whole point of sarcasm… But at the same time I suspect the world is going crazy via misinterpreted sarcasm on the Internet… It’s a tough decision, maybe I should be using /s but then it’s not sarcasm anymore…
I don’t think sarcasm is the problem. The bad actors are. In fact i think sarcasm is more necessary than ever:
If we don’t understand what is and IS NOT sarcasm, the opinions of bad actors won’t be laughed at. If they aren’t actively laughed at they’ll be encouraged by the idea that they’re being taken seriously.
If people don’t learn to recognize bullshit with friends(in a safe environment) then they’re going to fail to differentiate the truth elsewhere where it can truly hurt them and those around them.
Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.
Poe’s law is based on a comment written by Nathan Poe in 2005 on christianforums.com, an Internet forum on Christianity. The message was posted during a debate on creationism, where a previous poster had remarked to another user: “Good thing you included the winky. Otherwise people might think you are serious”.[4]
The reply by Nathan Poe read:[1]
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
The original statement of Poe’s law referred specifically to creationism, but it has since been generalized to apply to any kind of fundamentalism or extremism.[3]
I’m a straight male who is very secure in my masculinity. But I’ve gotten shit from people when I use female characters in games. Never understood why that’s a problem.
time for all of us to volunteer at your garbage dump like that dude who offered to buy his local garbage dump because his Bitcoin hard drive might be there
This is why I think it’s funny people still believe ‘the Internet is forever’. Data disappears all the time. If you really start paying attention it’s scary how ephemeral the Internet truly is and how much is lost all the time.
I think it’s a good way for most people to think of things when posting to social media, etc. as you might not know how long what you put out there might be out there, and you might not be able to take down or modify it without someone capturing it before you have done so.
And then you’ve got absolute mad men like Concerned Ape making stardew valley 10 times better with free updates for years and years. Showing these money hungry companies how it’s done.
Honestly, why would we need a Stardew Valley 2? There’s so many harvest moon games but are they really anything more than small iterations? Not to mention those have been garbage since the IP was basically stolen from the original developers.
I feel like Stellaris is a measurably different game than release. I bought the game on steam like 10 years ago and while it looks largely the same, the mechanics have seemingly had complete makeovers or renovations every few years. As far as I can tell most of the modified mechanics have been introduced to the base game as well, so those without DLC aren’t completely left out.
The game used to be some weird rock-paper-scissors game of either wormholes, gateways, and jump drives with corvette death columns. There was an optimal way to play and everything else was a handicap
The scale is just a little bit different here, isn’t it. One guy (maybe a few more) and an indie sensation that makes a ridiculous amount of sales vs. a company that needs to pay wages for 30 people.
We can have a discussion here, but comparing standard run rates vs. a massive exception isn’t a great starting point.
Yeah it’s also one guy who got so rich off it he never has to work again if he doesn’t want to. Haunted Chocolatier isn’t because concerned ape is a game dev now and needs money, it’s concerned ape wants to make a new game. He clearly loves stardew valley and that’s part of why he keeps updating it.
Terraria is a better exception to use but still an exception. I’m not asking for every game to give free unplanned massive expansions, though I will continue praising those who do such things and absolutely add them to my list of “buy their next game if I’m remotely interested”.
What I want is games that feel like they’re trying to give everyone a fair deal. A base game that’s good on its own and doesn’t feel like a downgrade from the previous game. A few expansions that are good, reasonably priced, and make the game further into its best version of that iteration of the series. And a reasonable number of non expansion dlc that add something and ideally don’t leave me trying to decide what ones I want to get. And by the end of life the game can be not quite the cheapest but full, good, and complete. That way when the next iteration of the series is dropped I’m not left thinking it was because they just wanted to sell me the same things over again. Civilization does this excellently.
Yes, companies with 30 employees are, in fact, money hungry because that's how the employees fucking eat. One person's recurring costs are nowhere near the recurring costs of dozens of people. WEIRD HOW MATH.
Stardew Valley, Undertale, Braid, all of these one-man (mostly) shows generated enough revenue to effectively retire their creators overnight but if they had to pay 30 motherfuckers with the proceeds... yeah, not so much.
I’ve worked for those (sized) companies and employee pay is not as much as you’d think. Not to mention higher sales don’t equal more pay (for the actual workers.)
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