gamingonlinux.com

Chee_Koala, do games w Paradox Interactive has completely cancelled "Life By You"

Well HECK! I have been advertising this game to every gamer I know, finally a Sims game that’s not EA… :( I was very hopeful when they delayed without a new date, just take your time and get it right. Dang, I was really looking forward to this

slazer2au,

Paradox is just as bad as EA with DLC. Look at Stellaris, or Victoria, or cities skylines, or surviving mars

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

They sell you a product at a fair price without putting it behind a loot box, unless I missed something. I don’t think that makes Paradox “just as bad” because they make a lot of DLC that you could choose to not purchase.

Grangle1,

TBF, when it comes to The Sims specifically, that’s the same as EA’s model: a bunch of DLC/expansions you don’t have to buy.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Until the next one is an always online live service that means it has an expiration date built into it by design, and that’s not even conjecture; we already know this.

slazer2au,

Cities Skylines 2 launch is worse than any EA launch I can remember. Even that sense of accomplishment horseshite. They released a paid DLC 5 months after launch while not dealing with core functionality bugs.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I’m going to rate “exploits addiction to make billions off of legalized gambling for children” as worse than putting out a sub par, broken sequel with DLC 5 months after release.

Moneo,

Using the floor as a bar.

mosiacmango, (edited )

In a hilariously circular way, EA has this beat still.

The Simcity 2013 launch was so terrible it killed Simcity and the studio Maxis, basically paving the way for City Skylines to take over the genre 2 years later.

It was online only, to the point where if you disconnected from the Internet you were booted out of the game. It also did most game rendering server side to force multiplayer/anti piracy/EA Origin store, and they only had enough infastructure for 1/10th of their player base on launch. That 10% isn’t exaggeration, either. They underestimated server load by 90%.

It was also a severely buggy, local resource hog somehow, even with being mostly remotely rendered. Since only a tiny fraction of the servers needed for the game were online, the game just chocked itself to death.

It took months to get it to a “working” state, at which point people had discovered all the insane and dumb behavior by ingame actors like citizens just picking a random house to go to end of day/etc. The tiny city limit size caused by being always online was also a very sore point for players, as you could barely build anything in a city building game. You could finish buillding your “city” in just a few hours, at which point you had to buy another “zone” that was separate from your current one. They didmt seamlessly connect like old SimCity or city skylines, you actually entered another tiny city slice to build on. It was terrible, and the size limit was clearly one of the measures to reduce server costs, as each zone looked like it was a new small server instance.

By the time they actually resolved the server issues, the game was dead, ending a 20+ year legacy in gaming for the brand and the studio. EA hasent made a simcity game in 11 years because of its failure. It was a shitshow and a half.

Moneo,

They sell you 15 minor features for $10 each and then every tutorial/gameplay video you watch has 5-10 features you’ve never seen before. It fills you with fomo and when you do cave you end up spending $80 to make a $40 game slightly more interesting. It’s predatory as fuck, paradox can go fuck themselves.

Sorry, I really hate paradox.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

What am I fearing that I’m missing out on when there are 62 DLCs for Cities: Skylines but I only wanted 3 of them? I wanted Green Cities, After Dark, and Mass Transit, but I really couldn’t care less about Airports. Why does this FOMO apply only to DLC and not the entire library of video games out there that you can opt to buy or not? I really don’t understand it. If you buy one Paradox game, do you have to buy every Paradox game or else miss out on having the entire library? I hope that this doesn’t come off as me being hostile. I just genuinely don’t understand it. Latching on to gambling addiction in EA’s Ultimate Team DLC is a concept that I can easily understand how it’s predatory. Making a bunch of other products that you may not want to buy does not strike me as predatory but as casting a wide net to make the right content for the right customer.

Moneo,

Just because you’re able to spend $60 on 3 DLCs instead of whatever the 62 DLCs cost, doesn’t mean those DLC are worth what you’re spending. I can buy a single banana instead of the full bunch if I want but if they cost $10 each I’m not getting a good deal.

The fomo is because I’ve already invested in the base game. I can ignore content about games I haven’t bought yet but if I want to watch tutorial videos that have every DLC I have to filter out all the content I haven’t paid for. I can’t engage with the community on equal footing unless I spent 4-5x the price of the base game on overpriced content. That is not an enjoyable experience and has left me with a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to Paradox games. I don’t want to navigate the cesspool that is their monetization strategy so I simply don’t buy their games (I pirate them :^) ).

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Well, first I’d say that those three DLCs cost a maximum of $45 and not $60, if they were MSRP, with current MSRP being a little less than that, but I don’t know if they ever got a price cut. Second, Steam sales happen like clockwork, for DLC as well, and there’s no way I spent $45. Third, the right feature to the right person might be worth that price, and that’s the benefit of their model. Over the course of so many years, they can keep working on the game and add niche features, some of which might be up your alley, rather than putting out a base game that lacks features important to you and never expanding the game.

I’m not sure why the tutorials for features you don’t have are a problem, because then you wouldn’t be doing the things they’re doing anyway, but I’m sorry that ruined the experience for you. It’s really hard for me to call that a cesspool though. They just put out a lot of product where you can decide what’s important to you, and I’d say that’s exactly what it ought to be.

Moneo,

$60 CAD and sales do not justify the base price. Nothing you’ve said has remotely convinced me any of their DLC is worth what they’re charging.

You’re not going to convince me this shit isn’t predatory and vice versa. Later.

GregorGizeh,

They added an option to subscribe instead. Pay a monthly fee, get access to any and all dlc.

I dont love their monetization model either but I understand the need for financial return on the investment of continued development.

Moneo,

Plenty of developers continue to develop content for years after release without selling overpriced DLC. Y’all are coping.

RightHandOfIkaros,

Realistically, at least for Stellaris, Paradox updates the game for free for everyone that breaks everyone’s in-progress games and breaks key features of the game by fundamentally changing how the mechanics work. Then they sell the DLC that is absolutely necessary to fix whatever they broke for people who don’t own the DLC.

Paradox creates the problem and then sells the solution.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t played that one, so that’s news to me, as I didn’t experience that in Cities: Skylines or Surviving Mars.

lath,

Ck3 with the plague mechanics does this. The base game has some default settings that absolutely wrecks everything once plagues get going and only having the DLC can change those settings.

KombatWombat,

I only played Stellaris off and on, but I went years without buying an expansion and always thought the new systems were complete and better than what they replaced when I returned. Breaking current saves is frustrating, so I guess you would need to delay an update if you had one you planned on returning to.

If you didn’t know, you can roll back to older versions of steam games with some work. A few games have a built-in system, but most of the tile you have to manually replace files after redownloading the old versions.

DarkThoughts,

Yeah. Pdx went the same shit route as EA by now, even have subscriptions too. Doesn't matter if I have to through hundreds of bucks at EA or Pdx for a single game. It's both the same shitty principle.

Moneo,

All my homies hate paradox.

Cethin,

Yeah, but having the games in competition would force then to try to win players to their side over the alternative, for both of the games. It would have been nice to have an option when playing this genre.

Kraiden,

Have a look at Paralives

Chee_Koala,

Thanks a lot for sharing, i’ve wishlisted that!

cmhe, do games w Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content

Funny, it turns out it is more brand damaging not to sell adult games, than to sell them…

eletes,
@eletes@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah before all this if you told me “MasterCard is selling incest and rape games!” I would have said no, Steam is doing that. But now I feel like they want to have a heavier hand.

Ultimately I think it’s pressure from the Trump admin/project 2025 on companies to eventually make porn illegal

LiveLM, do games w Playtron wanted to take on Windows and SteamOS with their GameOS, now they're announcing a cryptocurrency

Peddling shitcoins in 2025. Lmao.
Cmon now, announce your gAmInG chatbot to complete the stupidity bingo.

VitoRobles,

Oh, the dream of earning crypto while I chat with AI chatbots to maybe one day buy NFTs.

Oha, do games w Godot Engine hits over 50K euros per month in funding
@Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

thats impressive

SatanClaus, do gaming w Valve ban advertising-based business models on Steam, no forced adverts like in mobile games

This is great.

This is only happening because it’s a pain in the ass for them to monetize it right now.

It does not mean they won’t in the future.

Hopefully this type of thing continues as SteamOS gets released and maintained. 💜💪

Ulrich,
@Ulrich@feddit.org avatar

It’s not just a pain in the ass, it’s not possible. That’s why they’re banning it.

simple, do games w Steam Survey for July 2025 shows Linux approaching 3%
@simple@piefed.social avatar

If anticheats would work properly on Linux I would probably ditch Windows forever. Alas.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

There’s definitely some selection bias for me that made it easy to not even be interested in buying the types of games that won’t work on Linux, and that made my switch easier. I hope the solution that we eventually arrive at isn’t, “Here’s a custom kernel compatible with our anti-cheat,” but instead, “Here’s a way to play our game without kernel level anti-cheat.”

cecilkorik,
@cecilkorik@lemmy.ca avatar

The only way to do that is to use Linux anyway, ditch Windows, and give them the middle finger until they make their game available. No amount of asking politely or screaming obnoxiously will make them care if people just continue using Windows because they feel like they “have to” play this game and keep paying them money, because all they care about is money. Only when they can clearly see their position is losing them money (3% is probably not clear enough for many of them but time will tell) are they going to change their behavior. There’s nothing else that motivates them more than seeing money slipping through their fingers.

Depending on white knights like Valve and CDPR to ride to our rescue is good but they can’t do this on their own either, and in fact they’ve already done very close to as much as they reasonably can. They need our help, we consumers are the ones who are statistically not doing our part. We need to recognize that we have the bulk of the agency here and we need to start to use it.

We have to choose what matters more to us, the future of playing video games on our own terms or letting the developer dictate how much we need to spend and what rights we need to give up to able to play a popular video game right now. We’re not talking about something we need to live. This is a choice we can make. Will enough people choose the future instead of immediate gratification? I don’t know, available evidence doesn’t paint a particularly reassuring picture, but I never am willing to give up on hope.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

A little dramatic, but yes, I’m already not playing those games.

cecilkorik,
@cecilkorik@lemmy.ca avatar

Is “Stop Killing Games” also dramatic? Maybe we need to be dramatic to accomplish actual change. Thanks for the backhanded compliment though, I guess.

overload,

I wonder what the percent market share is that desktop Linux needs in order to be enough for devs to implement a Linux-friendly anti-cheat

NuXCOM_90Percent,

To be clear:

The anticheat software CAN work on Linux about as well as it does on Windows. Most of the more invasive syscalls don’t exist but said tools are also backing away from those on the Windows side as diminishing returns and fear of pulling a Crowdstrike. Alternative calls are used and most of the major anti-cheat solutions actually already do that and already support Wine/Proton in ways that most game devs never will.

The issue is that the devs (so their publishers) actively disable support for that. They have EAC et al check if it is running in Proton and quit if it is. There are reasons for that (much smaller testing surface) but it is also hard to believe that companies like EA actively updating all their old Battlefields to block Proton isn’t intentional and political.

Err, and then you have stuff like DBZ Xenoverse 2 which just will never have their EAC updated because it is more effort than adding a few new skins to go with the latest movie.

ClassyHatter,
@ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz avatar

There are also rumors that Microsoft will remove third-party apps like antivirus apps and anticheats from Windows kernel. If that happens, it will pretty much solve the anticheat problem for Linux as well.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

Yes. That is the aforementioned “pulling a Crowdstrike”

But, as I said, stuff like EA actively going through basically every Battiefield since 3 and actively disabling Proton “support” indicates a political aspect to things. And there will still be the same testing surface issues that make live games hesitant to support “Valve and some company say this is fine” for games that make more money than many small nations.

exu,

EasyAntiCheat and BattleEye work on Linux thanks to Valve’s efforts. Unfortunately many devs explicitly deny Linux or only allow the Steam Deck.

areweanticheatyet.com

somerandomperson,

Just avoid the games that use them. Games and the software they install should NEVER EVER run kernel-level. Also the games that use those ac’s are bad anyways.

If you must play those games, passthrough your GPU and hide the fact that the VM is a VM.

BombOmOm,
@BombOmOm@lemmy.world avatar

Just avoid the games that use them.

Agreed. I have no desire to give EA root access to my system, full access to everything I do on it … just to play a game.

I’m amazed Microsoft even allows such on their platform, given how large of a vulnerability it creates; as CrowdStrike demonstrated.

somerandomperson,

Well…microsoft was allowing kernel-level apps (in general). Now they’re shooing every app from the kernel.

Good: ACs won’t run as root anymore :D

Bad: It includes AVs (anti-viruses) D:

Of course, it’s rolling out slowly.

chortle_tortle,

passthrough your GPU and hide the fact that the VM is a VM.

Careful with that, I’ve heard of folks getting banned because it can still look fishy.

somerandomperson,

Idc if it looks fishy because i’m discouraging this anyways.

Nico_198X,
@Nico_198X@europe.pub avatar

depends on the game. i play Dead by Daylight and Marvel Rivals just fine.

Kolanaki, do games w Paradox Interactive has completely cancelled "Life By You"
!deleted6508 avatar

I’m not really that upset considering it was going to end up the same as The Sims (with its content in DLC piecemeal) anyway, coming from Paradox.

It visually looked like an asset flip simulation shovelware game you can find all over Steam by searching for the shit with the worst reviews, too.

SkaveRat,

Should be noted that paradox was just publishing it, not developing

grandkaiser,

So… Paradox tectonic is not related to paradox…? Are you sure?

SatouKazuma,
@SatouKazuma@lemmy.world avatar

It was being done by a Paradox-owned studio out of California, over whom Paradox likely had little day-to-day operational influence.

grandkaiser,

Then Paradox was developing it. They own the studio. Who else is going to build the game? An executive?

I am sure that everyone would agree that Paradox owns/developed/published Europa Universalis 4… But that was made by “Paradox Tinto” or Stellaris was “Paradox Development Studio”… The publishing wing of Paradox doesn’t develop games. Obviously. But I don’t understand why thats in any way relevant to the discussion. Paradox (the company, not specifically the publishing wing) was 100% responsible for the development, the testing, and the publishing of Life by You. They built it, they took it down.

belated_frog_pants, do gaming w Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed

This is such horse shit. I hate these puritanical CC companies

IndiBrony, do games w Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed
@IndiBrony@lemmy.world avatar

Time for Steam to make their own payment process then!

PlzGivHugs,

As much as I like Valve’s work, I don’t think thats a good fit for them. Their staff seem to enjoy working on difficult technical tasks, and lose interest very fast when it comes to mundane maintenance, thus their numerous underutilized and unmaintained features throughout Steam and their games. A payment processor seems like exactly the sort of thing that would get forgotten about a month or two after it gets finished.

duchess,

Implementing direct debit shouldn’t be too hard and straining. Most of their staff is maintaining an e-commerce platform, they‘d do fine.

HexadecimalSky,

Yeah, also its less “valve staff get bored and dont do mundane tasks” iirc thier pay is based on what thier coworkers think the value of thier work was, which is usually in how visible/noticeable which discourages long projects thay take more than a year and mundane tasks that are not very clear and visible

PlzGivHugs, (edited )

From what I understand, they’ve moved on from that structure. I believe that was one of the things talked about after the release of HL:A, with one of the employees saying that it was part of the reason the game actually got finished. That said, its been a while and even assuming I’m not misremembering information rarely leaves Valve, so I could be wrong.

Edit: I’m wrong. See sp3ctr4l’s comment below.

HexadecimalSky,

ah, didn’t hear that, yeah its from heard a long time ago

sp3ctr4l, (edited )

You appear to be wrong.

(It’s ok I will still give you a hug tho)

geekwire.com/…/behind-scenes-half-life-alyx-valve…

GeekWire: So you’ve been working on this (HL Alyx) full-steam since 2016?

Robin Walker: We started in February of 2016, I think, with a small team, and we brought out a small prototype. Then people started to play that, understood what we were trying to do afterward, and started joining up.

We had 80 people on the team when we were about midway through. The exact size of the team I wouldn’t be able to tell you. The way things work at Valve, people organically join once they’ve finished up what they were doing before, and if what you’re doing makes sense to them.

So it was always full steam ahead, I guess, but not in the sense that all 80 people were there from day one.

Also I’m just gonna LOL at Valve making HL Alyx, basically the first ever AAA VR game, in 4 years, with a max team size of 80, compared to uh, Concord, Skull and Bones, Marathon, etc.

Fucking lol.

Literally almost all Valve has to do is nothing and just watch half of their competition implode around them due to their unimaginable stupidity.

sp3ctr4l, (edited )

I have never heard anything from any Valve interview to the effect of how specific pay rates for specific employees are actually set.

I think (as in, this is my semi-informed speculation) it is closer to:

You get hired to fill a specific role, with a specific pay rate (Valve still like, lists specific job openings with specific role requirements), and then uh, you have tasks within that realm that are fairly clearly your responsibility… but at the same time, everything going on at the company is essentially one big github issues list, a whole bunch of feature requests and bug reports, and everyone can contribute to any of those, assuming they’ve got their core responsibilities covered as well.

(This is appealing to anyone who has ever worked in a tech corp or really any corp ever, because the standard way this works, at least in American corps… is you get hired for a role, that often has an exceptionally all encompassing job desc, or an absurd number of requirements… and then your boss and their boss just continuously, hierarchically, assign you new and more ever growing responsibilities…ie, your job has ‘scope creep’ the way a poorly developed game does. Valve inverts this and makes the ‘scope creep’ much, much more voluntary for the employee.)

(If you’ve never worked a software dev focused or adjacent role, you would be amazed at how often and regularly management and C Suite just demand you learn and do things entirely not in your job description, just treat you as a ‘computer person’, as if a heart surgeon is also a brain surgeon and also a metabolic expert and also a pharmaceutical designer.)

Like, there are probably still yearly reviews / the ability to try to negotiate yourself a raise… but I don’t think there is some kind of… formal, everyone votes in some sense on how much everyone else should be paid.

Valve is still a private company, not an actual worker cooperative that votes up or down an entire business budget for the whole year or w/e.

They are just a lot more flat of an organizational hierarchy, have a lot more unconventional work culture, but still ultimately a private corp.

HexadecimalSky,

They may have moved on from the structure they had ~10 years ago but there was documentation and interviews about that internal structure. yes it worked similar to that, there where tasks to be done but employees could largely choose whatever they want to work on, there where no formal managers but plenty de facto managers, there was base pay scales but most of the pay was bonuses, that where indeed based on the reviews of your coworkers based on how much work/value you appeared to make for the company. Because valve is private is why it had such a unique structure. Alot of former employees spoke about how that pay structure killed alot of projects and deincetivised maintenance tasks. Then because there was no formal management, if you wanted to work on larger projects you had to convince coworkers to work with you there was no assigned teams or bosses, and if your project took longer then the year, it would be likely there would be no fruit of your labor and you would likely be rated lower, i.e. less pay. Of course no formal bosses does not mean there was not cliques employees that had been there longer and/or had more influence with more coworkers had more power to form teams and trusted when working longer projects, also employees would connect with coworkers so that the work they did would be noticed. Who completed your employee review would be basically random, so you had to hope/ensure everyone knew what you where doing.

Obviously there are alot of issues with this, I hope they have since moved on but last I heard there wasn’t much traction to change it. There is no board to appease and Gabe is the one who made the system, change is difficult for valve.

sp3ctr4l,

They… kind of sort of already have.

You can just throw money into your Steam account, via the mechanism they came up with for Steam Gift cards.

So, buy a physical gift card, or just give Steam your bank/card info, take money out of bank, give to your Steam Gift balance.

So uh, presumably, that Steam Gift Balance doesn’t exist in a bank anymore, beyond being a withdrawl from your account, its now just … a $USD value associated with your Steam account, that you csn now buy anything with, and your original bank/card company has no visibility into that second transaction.

So… they could theoretically use what I just described above as a ‘workaround’, you just make the offending games only purchaseable via goon gift balance.

ugo,

deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • sp3ctr4l,

    Ah.

    That’s true.

    In fairness, I was trying to assess the capability of Valve to just make their own payment processing system, which they still largely could do.

    Granted, this would be a bit of an endeavor…

    But uh, fintech stuff is pretty common these days, Valve has a lot of money, and they could easily poach or hire some experts to guide the process of making their own version of something like Plaid or Chime or CashApp or Remitly, etc. but only for their ecosystem, not allow actual user to user direct cash txns, and work that into their own pre-existing Steam and Steam Mobile frontends.

    Valve does kinda know a thing or two about servers and server code, I’ve worked a bit on both game network code (as an enthusiast/mod maker/etc) and on import/export transactions amd dbs (professionally)… the actual coding involved in a video game server stack is way, way more complex imo… Valve really only need help with the legalities and regulations of setting up a compliant psuedo bank and payment systems in different countries and such.

    Then they could tell PayPal to go fuck themselves.

    I am not saying this is likely to happen, just saying it is hypothetically possible… and Valve is kind of known for innovating the gaming space, pushing the envelope, raising the bar, as they say.

    But, that being said… all that effort vs just delisting some shitty RenPy smut e-novels based on incest?

    Yeah, I’d just can the goonslop too.

    I’m seeing about 7000 ‘adult only’ games on the store right now… so… its not like they’ve just banned porn games.

    ugo,

    deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • sp3ctr4l,

    But since there are only a handful of payment processors, what if they all collude and do this?

    This is possible, but I kind of doubt that say, MasterCard and Visa are going to blanket ban all kinds of ‘adult’ charges… at least right now.

    Like uh, ever been to a strip club?

    Its not like Visa and MC don’t know that the ATMs there are infact at strip clubs, and even those ATMs are still ultimately using Visa or MC as a payment processor.

    I imagine that if they weren’t already, this event has likely spawned a payment processor independence project internally.

    I’d say probably not full fledged, ‘we are actively developing this’ project, but it may have at least spawned some discussion along the lines I above described.

    The way large tech corps tend to work is that a whole bunch of at least high level, general concept plans are drawn up, considered in meetings, sorta like cards pulled out of a deck, into your hand… and then there is deliberation as to whether or not to actually ‘play’ said card.

    The way I know that above paragraph is that uh, hah, like GabeN, I used to work for MSFT, and a few other companies/nonprofits with a significant tech aspect.

    But at the same time, I’ve not worked for Valve, I have no special, specific insight in that sense, and they are also rather notorious for being quite opaque about things they aren’t ready to full throatedly publically endorse… my guess there is that part of their culture largely stems from the notorious HL2 Beta/Alpha hack, way way back.

    muusemuuse,
    @muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works avatar

    PayPal wouldn’t dare attack Steam for accepting external payment methods with rules they don’t agree with and can’t change because they don’t own those companies. In addition to opening them up to potential lawsuits, it could catastrophically backfire if Valve simply said “fine, we don’t accept PayPal anymore, but we do accept crypto now.”

    PayPal would die in a week. The investors would drag out a guillitine by the next earnings call.

    ugo,

    deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • muusemuuse,
    @muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Paypal has a reputation for this kind of thing from before Trump 2.0 though. They’ve ben doing this since at least 2003.

    nialv7,

    Maybe time for some to start a adult only game store that uses crypto to settle payments?

    sp3ctr4l, (edited )

    Nutaku exists but I don’t think they use crypto?

    Also you can buy adult games on itch.io, again, don’t think they do crypto though.

    The whole problem with … you know, actually using crypto for retail…

    1. transaction times are abysmally, orders of magnitude more slow than using PayPal or Visa or MC,
    2. crypto is exceptionally volatile, way, way less price stable than actual currencies,
    3. transaction fees tend to be way, way worse than using traditional payment processors, because what you are actually doing is closer to a realtime forex currency conversion service,
    4. or, if 3 is not the case, that means the retailer themself is directly holding a crypto wallet, which means they have massive financial risk and instability due to the extreme volatility of crypto, when all their other expenses are in USD or w/e

    There are reasons why basically every single retailer that has ever tried to directly accept crypto either cancels that after a year or two, or goes bankrupt, or both.

    I guess it could work if you convince game devs/publishers to directly accept payment in crypto…?

    But that still seems kinda unlikely.

    Also kinda like it would immediately be flooded with NFT/cryptobro scamslop, you know, like every single crypto basdd or crypto funded game, literally ever?

    nialv7,

    You raise good points. It’s great that other store fronts still exist where you can sell adult games. But I do worry if credit card companies will come for them too one day.

    Re: crypto. Some of what you said is true. Transaction fee are comparatively expensive (but also note credit card companies charge transaction fees too, just not directly to the consumer). But other points aren’t necessarily true. Transaction times have improved a lot, there are networks designed for fast transaction times, and usually the payment can complete in seconds. The volatility problem is solved by stable coins, which have their values fixed relative a currency. (Of course stable coins can, and have failed in the past. But that only concerns you if you keep your money as stable coin. For one-off payments this shouldn’t matter). Retailers don’t have to hold cryptos if they don’t want to. Crypto markets have pretty good liquidity nowadays, it’s not hard to get rid of the coins immediately after you get them (well to be fair if you are getting Valve volumes it could be a problem, should be fine for smaller stores).

    Crypto is a fast evolving field, so problems are being solved by the day.

    sp3ctr4l, (edited )

    Transaction times have improved a lot, there are networks designed for fast transaction times, and usually the payment can complete in seconds.

    Hrm, well, if that is true, then that is a considerable improvement.

    The volatility problem is solved by stable coins, which have their values fixed relative a currency. (Of course stable coins can, and have failed in the past. But that only concerns you if you keep your money as stable coin. For one-off payments this shouldn’t matter).

    But it absolutely does matter if you are a retailer that builds or uses a payment processor system around a ‘stable’ coin that suddenly flatlines one day.

    There goes your ability to sell things!

    Or, even worse, if the retailer does hold a standing balance in the ‘stable’ balance, or pays the sellers directly in a crypto… welp, theres, what, half of a months operating revenue, poof, gone, all the sellers? Now totally broke, unless they’re also active crypto traders at the same time as being people who make things to sell.

    Crypto markets have pretty good liquidity nowadays, it’s not hard to get rid of the coins immediately after you get them (well to be fair if you are getting Valve volumes it could be a problem, should be fine for smaller stores).

    I mean, you kind of showed a major flaw right there.

    Yep, volume is much better.

    But… not sufficient for actual large scale retail, or many, many small to mid size retailers.

    Also, to the best of my knowledge… no ‘stable’ coin has anywhere near the volume of say BTC or ETH.

    Crypto is a fast evolving field, so problems are being solved by the day.

    No, hard disagree.

    Most coins haven’t even figured out how to actually be significantly, meaningfully untraceable, other than XMR.

    Even a tornado blender thing can be unwound… or it can just steal some of your money.

    What else has crypto figured out in almost 20 years now?

    Well, aside from being an optimal vector for scamming people…

    A new verification paradigm that still leaves it orders of magnitude more energy intensive than traditional payment processors?

    NFTs? Who cares, its the least efficient FTP protocol ever devised, quite easy to poison or social hack.

    I guess if payment processing speeds are now comparable to existing payment processors… wow, crypto is slightly less useless than what proceeded it?

    I’ve beem following this shit since before Mt Gox opened the first online trading market.

    Crypto has managed to become the most speculative, fundamental-less investment ‘asset class’ of all known human history.

    It still isn’t really private, and you still can’t generally buy things with it, barring a few niche exceptions.

    You can send a check, a digital eCheck, as payment for many, many things, thats been around longer than crypto.

    If you are running an adult video game store, just accept that, can paypal.

    Might be slow, but its very, very simple, and cheap for a store to implement.

    nialv7,

    Case in point, itch.io just wiped all adult games as well.

    sp3ctr4l, (edited )

    No pun intended:

    Well fuck.

    You’re right, they literally did just do this, almost tagged everything NSFW/Adult no longer appears in itch.io’s search, I just made a new account and specifically checked the ‘show nsfw stuff’ setting and… yep.

    Currently I am only seeing like uh… 3 games.

    There used to be 100s, probably more like 1000s.

    They have not taken down the actual urls for actual games, but you have to know them directly.

    Kotaku seems to have an actually decent overview, very recent:

    kotaku.com/itch-io-nsfw-porn-games-delisted-colle…

    Well uh… if itch actually sticks with this decision… either as you say, somebody is gonna have to figure out how to run a crypto based adult game platform of similar scale to itch, which will not be easy for all the reasons I’ve described, or create their own nsfw-friendly payment processor system, which would also not be easy.

    So, that means that largely donation based nsfw game development is now effectively over, at a stand still, untill someone figures out how to at least semi-automate some kind of workaround via probably some kind of much, much sketchier ‘sending money to a friend’ type loophole in venmo/cashapp/chime, etc, which is also probably very legally dubious/iffy at a platform level.

    The whole problem with all this (aside from the business/platform end costs and complexities) is that even if you do switch over to crypto, or make your own payment processor, or use some kind of loophole, its now much more difficult for an average person to go through all these steps.

    I guess this is the -current year- version of back in the 90s and early 00s, the FCC and RIAA cracking down on ‘explicit’ music, the younger generations will now have to get clever and do something analagous to invented torrents, but that actually results in money moving around to support devs.

    EDIT:

    A quick search shows that there are indeed alternative, minor payment processors oriented toward or friendly to things like strip clubs / sex toy shops, who transact in USD.

    merchantmaverick.com/adult-payment-processing-mer…

    Probably the most straightforward business solution for an adult game platform would be to use one of these, but uh, they’d likely have to make a whole new brand name, a new website/domain, a different company legally, to avoid what PayPal would otherwise possibly see as you violating their policies.

    Again, you could use crypto, and wow hey, finally an actual compelling use case for it!, but uh, either route you go is gonna be complex and risky for platforms, creators, and users/consumers… tradeoffs.

    baggins, do games w New Valve trademark for 'Steam Frame', looks like we're getting new hardware

    Similar to a deck, the concept of a frame gives the impression of a barebones structure that one can improve or build upon.

    awesomesauce309,

    I was getting mainframe. A steam deck style server box you plug in next to your router and can stream to your deck, your phone, your whatever. A home pc console mainframe.

    Developers like consoles because it limits the platforms you need to optimize for. The steam deck gave pc gaming a benchmark. If they made a standardized home console you can still run your own software on, i would bet on a big growth in proton support

    frongt,

    I was thinking TV, but there’s already Samsung’s The Frame™.

    FreeBooteR69,
    @FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca avatar

    The problem with VR is the quality of games are quite substandard. We know they were capable of much more considering HL:Alex, but the industry decided they would output only half-assed shit quality phone games. Also whatever vr controller replacement they come up with, don’t use low quality dog shit potentiometers ffs.

    bjoern_tantau,
    @bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

    Most of the fun I had in VR was with “real” games ported to VR like Doom 3.

    doug, do games w The Long Dark gets a big free visual enhancement update out now
    @doug@lemmy.today avatar

    I kickstarted this, played it for 10 minutes, got my ass kicked by some wolves, and never played it again. I need to retry.

    Drbreen,

    Sounds like my kinda game!

    PlantJam,

    Is pretty great! It hits the right balance between survival and crafting for me.

    Flemmy,

    Lol I played TLD before the story mode was implemented, there was only open survival mode and starting points. The exploring and resource management is really fun, and wolves and cold snaps force you to move from barn to barn and sticking near car wrecks, getting a working hunting rifle was quite hard.

    dinckelman, do games w ASUS reveal the ROG Ally X with more RAM, more storage, larger battery

    Even besides the corporate issues, I just can’t help but not like this handheld.

    It looks like a cheaply built gamer device, and it feels like a cheaply built gamer device in the hand too. Between them and MSI, it’s almost as if they’ve put literally no effort into engineering anything, and just threw together a whatever they could, on the basis of a generic shell.

    Not to mention that having ArmoryCrate is literally a downside in every way, and having 2 years of warranty NOW, after they showed up on FTCs radar, is laughable

    Defaced,

    Because it IS a cheaply built gamer device in a generic OEM shell. Pretty sure Microsoft has gotten enough flak for handheld Windows that they’re starting to build gamescope type optimizations like directSR. It’s not enough for me to switch back but maybe it is for others, who knows, hopefully Microsoft can stop riding the AI hype train to eventually build something to make armorycrate obsolete.

    BombOmOm,
    @BombOmOm@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah, there is a reason everyone talks about the Steam Deck, it’s an actually good device that Valve put a bunch of effort into making soild. There is also the problem that many of these other handhelds, like this ASUS one, are running an OS full of background processes constantly sapping your battery. Again, Valve put a bunch of effort into making the Steam Deck good and it shows.

    PonyOfWar, do gaming w Valve detail their plans to combat Steam Deck OLED scalpers

    Some desperate scalpers on ebay are already trying to sell the 512GB version for 1000€. Despite the fact that you can still order one for half the price and receive it within 6-10 days.

    azdle,
    @azdle@news.idlestate.org avatar

    Yep, the extra sad thing is that there are actually sold listings too: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=steam+deck+OLED&rt=n…

    Some people just can’t be helped, I guess.

    beefcat,
    @beefcat@beehaw.org avatar

    it could be drugs or money laundering rather than people actually paying that price for a real deck.

    shadowbert,
    @shadowbert@kbin.social avatar

    Does that make it better?

    beefcat,
    @beefcat@beehaw.org avatar

    did i imply it does?

    lambda,
    @lambda@programming.dev avatar

    I could be wrong, but I would bet that launderers are probably not targeting this niche device. I’d guess that the people buying them are more likely from a country that they don’t sell in. Like Australia for example.

    GreyEyedGhost,

    That’s not how laundering works, but it probably isn’t laundering. The product is the excuse, the price difference is where the laundering happens.

    lambda,
    @lambda@programming.dev avatar

    Yeah, I get how laundering works. I just don’t know why they’d pick this specific item.

    GreyEyedGhost,

    They wouldn’t, except for laundering on a scale too small to be worth going after.

    Mwa, (edited ) do games w Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

    W steam/valve

    ConstableJelly, do gaming w Microsoft closes Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and others

    Via Kotaku:

    Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s [Arkane’s Redfall] troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays.

    All reward, no risk for the executives demanding that their best-in-class immersive sim developer create an empty live service shooter. Stupid decision led to predictable outcome and the workers feel the ax for it.

    LoamImprovement,

    And they’re probably carving themselves a nice bonus out of the tax write-off for the studio closure.

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • esport
  • rowery
  • tech
  • test1
  • krakow
  • muzyka
  • turystyka
  • NomadOffgrid
  • Technologia
  • Psychologia
  • ERP
  • healthcare
  • Gaming
  • Cyfryzacja
  • Blogi
  • shophiajons
  • informasi
  • retro
  • Travel
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • gurgaonproperty
  • slask
  • nauka
  • sport
  • Radiant
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny