IGN and Gamespot were basically the legacy (text) web media in the US. And they definitely both tried to rely on ad revenue for a lot longer than The Internet would tolerate it.
So basically every single youtuber trying to make a name for themselves attacked it. Because old media are corrupt and you can only trust this new channel who would never try to sell you anything so let’s play some Raid Shadow Legends". Which then ballooned when we had folk like totalbiscuit and gamergate both actively arguing that all these old game journos are corrupt because they… speak to the people they interact with on a daily basis or whatever that nonsense was.
We saw similar with the rise of twitch streamers where they would be really quick to paint all the youtubers as corrupt shills because they take sponsor deals and totally only say positive things about games because they are getting money under the table. Now time for twelve ads in a row before grinding to take part in the twitch rivals event next month!
Whoa, what the hell. How are you throwing Totalbiscuit and the entirety of GamerGate’s scandals and social furor into the same, offhand pile?
John was strongly opinionated and enjoyed being a bit of a smug ass as his online persona, but he was mainly about making games more accessible by advocating for more, and more inclusive, settings for all the games he played.
“Ethics in games journalism”: Bain 100% spearheaded the “All of old media is corrupt and lying to you because of sponsorships” and the gamergate crowd used him to legitimize them. Plenty of webcomics of the era did a “I am not a bad person and I don’t condone what all these angry people saying the exact same thing are doing but… maybe you should listen to us. Err, me” style joke with the mouthpiece looking a LOT like Bain
He would pretty regularly do “I am gonna get cancelled” level jokes on his podcast with Cox and Dodger and would go off on wild ass tangents about how it is “okay for women to look pretty” and so forth any time someone complained about oversexualized male gaze wank fantasies.
“Let’s look at the options menu”: On the surface this is really good. In practice it was yet another case of “Those evil devs are trying to fuck us” because he was active in an era where PC games were very much third class citizens for all of what we would now consider “third parties”. Like, we were genuinely lucky to even GET a Sands of Time PC release and much of the “lazy devs” rhetoric goes back to people like him
His legacy is a complex one. I’ll fully admit to loving his videos because he was speaking as a PC Gamer at a time when it felt like all the major publishers were abandoning us. That said, even as a young’n in the software development world (and a hobbyist gamedev) most of his rhetoric felt unnecessarily meanspirited and like it was focused on the people coding the games and not the people paying them and setting deliverables (one of the early hints that I leaned a hell of a lot more left than right…). And I mostly dropped his podcast because it increasingly felt like he was doing the same shit whichever dipshit at Penny Arcade was doing where the slightest pushback led to “I AM THE GREATEST VICTIM THIS WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN!!!”. And… he was very much a well to do British man when it came to his stances on LGBTQ and there was a LOT of transphobia that we’ll just pretend was ignorance.
But Bain wasn’t the only influencer I enjoyed content from. And as gamergate increasingly kicked off, it became painfully obvious that the guy who still insisted “ethics in games journalism” was the true divider was saying almost the exact same talking points as the people who literally put someone I semi-regularly chatted with on IRC into hiding. Not to mention some of the biggest targets of the hate movement were people he had “feuded with” for years. And when he finally DID address things, it was very much a “They have some good points but I don’t agree with how they are going about it”. Its unclear exactly when he knew about his cancer but many people (self included) suspect the reason he never really spoke out against gamergate is because he didn’t want to risk his money train and… I get it but also he was still profiting off the suffering of others to an obscene degree.
Skimming through it, forbes.com/…/totalbiscuits-legacy-and-the-collate… is a pretty good summary of a lot of the controversies of Bain’s career written shortly after his death. And I vaguely recall Eordogh being a regular contributor during the good years of Vice/Motherboard for what that is worth.
But yeah. I think the general take is that, at best, Bain was a useful idiot. At worst… he was the asmongold of his time right down to constantly framing things as people trying to steal your gu—err games. But there is very much a reason he is often considered the face of gamergate.
Other than being in existence longer than pretty much any other game review platform, ign still isn’t that great, or accurate. Reviews have been meh for the last decade or more.
I still have most of my old next Gen issues, with the demo CD roms. I think I have the entire run of PC Accel, which unfortunately was just way too ahead of it’s time. Look up the story if your can find it, it was pulling in more and more subscribers every month but the publisher scrapped it because basically, it was subversive, it was 18+, it was viciously critical of games and the industry when warranted but also gave the best praise to those that earned it. It was the non-douche precursor to Maxim(if you can believe such a thing exists).
It’s a sad story, after they got shuttered, the lead editor and several others put most of their own money on the line to try and restart the company publish new issues, but this was long before the Internet had any social immediacy. Subscribers mostly didn’t hear about them trying to restart, there was no real forum or community where people could keep up on the topic and join the cause. I found out like 4 months after they tried to restart and was devastated, I had no idea and would have resubscribed in a heart beat.
It’s also really shady how the publisher discontinued it. I had already subscribed for the next two years and I think they canceled it with like a year and a few months left and so then I just started to get PC gamer, not even a refund.
I’m not going to pretend that I read many of the zombie outlets.
But understand that games media (and most other news media) has been getting gutted for closer to 20 years than not. The only reason so many outlets are even SLIGHTLY good is because of people like John Davison working their ass off to fight for every single inch.
So maybe, just maybe, we could avoid “Whatever, they suck so fuck 'em” levels of posts? Focus more on what got games media to this state rather than self-righteous apathy.
Mutilation seems to imply more than just violence or killing. For example, Days Gone has a scene very early that involves flaying someone’s skin off, I would imagine that type of stuff would qualify.
That’s true but anyone agaimt its inclusion would just say it doesn’t add to the story. “Clearly it detracts from the story, as the player would be distracted by the horrific event instead of enjoying the game” -some hypothetical mastercard Exec, right before fining Valve.
It’s not a court, so there’s no appeal from that, unless there’s an appeal granted by the contract itself.
That’s the thing, who defines what artistic value is? I’ve seen some pretty creative pornography over the years. Is that artistic value? I’ve seen very creative depictions of violence and uses of profanity too. What about on the other end of the spectrum, Is Tetris have artistic value?
I think pornography is an “art” the same way gastronomy is an “art”. Both serve a simple function: one to arouse you, the other to be enjoyable food to eat.
I think the more general definition of art is something that generates more complex emotions and thoughts.
Right now in Rimworld I am sending child soldiers to bring more ammo to the mortars that are busy pounding away at some primitive tribesmen that are angry at me for dumping a few tons of toxic waste on their home or something.
Those that survive the mortar bombardment will be lobotomised and enslaved. If they have enough limbs remaining to be useful to me I will probably use a few of them as slaves and the rest will be sold to the empire. Any that the empire don’t want will be harvested for organs and dumped in a corpse pit.
I didn’t ask if the tribesmen consented to any of this.
I keep trying to learn rimworld. I drop out of most tutorials some time after building a refrigerator. Any recommendations on how to get further along? This is a game I’ll love once I know it but I’m not there yet.
Do the relaxed scenario girl and a lower difficulty for an easier time. Drop in a year round grow area, and mountainous area to mine a base into the mountain.
Lower difficulty, in all present difficulty options the raid strength is determined largely based on your colony wealth. If you have massive towers of gold then expect big raids.
Even flooring adds up to wealth, massive rooms with carpets can become a non insignificant value. This isn’t to say don’t build them, but you should make sure a reasonable amount of your total wealth is invested into warfare. It can be quite easy to hoard things that are useless to you but have a fair bit of value to them.
Absolutely and more! We also have psychic powers, murder robots, friendly murder robots, vampires, genetic engineering, organized religion, semi-sentient plants, space ships, cannibals, space drugs, drugs in space, rabid woodland critters, eldritch horrors beyond comprehension, giant bugs, orbital bombardments, and also the looming threat of starvation as you watch all that you built burn. That’s all before we talk about things that the modding community has brought to the game.
To be clear, the RimWorld doesn’t force you into any one play style, and most of the things listed above can be disabled or avoided if that’s not your jam. At its core the game is trying to tell a story, it’s up to the player to help shape that story. It’s absolutely fantastic; quite literally the best $30 I’ve ever spent on a game (if we’re talking hours played, I’m just about to turn the corner on 2,000 hours (in the spirit of disclosure, a chunk of that is also spent making mods for the game)).
As someone who does not take amex they want to charge me between 7% and 14%. Maybe if I did more sales they would not charge as much, but the reason amex is not taken in as many places as mastercard or visa is the 7% to 14%.
I am in Canada, and amex is famous for charging way too much in merchant fees. They also charge it under a silly system based on the type of card used (the more “elite” the more the merchant pays).
This might just be my insomnia talking, but I thought a reasonable idea might be to call and reduce the available credit by however much is comfortable. For me, it would be fairly reasonable to reduce it by 50%. I assume they use some kind of magicians handshake to value their company based on how much potential credit is out there… Maybe it’d do nothing though. Anyone know?
I am not a financial guru so hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this, but your credit score is affected positively the more available credit you have. So by voluntarily lowering your available credit, you’re actually hurting yourself way more than the card companies. At least I think that’s how it works, or rather one of many factors.
You guys use them for actual credit? To me it seems that in Europe they are mostly used as a debit card directly charging your account, but compatible with the global payment processing of them.
Flexibility to keep cash in an account earning higher interest until payment is due.
Not having to constantly check enough cash is in your low interest checking account (which you’ll keep low so your cash earns more interest elsewhere & to minimize losses in case of unauthorized debits).
Well think of it like this. I keep an amount in my checking account (basically no interest) to cover the credit card bills. Extra I move out to an online savings account that does have a ddcent interest rate. By having a date when the CC bill comes due, I can check once a month (7 days before due) and move money if needed to cover the bill. So while the checking has practically no interest, I was getting close to 5% on the savings for a while. Still a far stretch from the 12% cds I got as a kid, but it’s something.
“Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part” includes just about every fighter or shooter game. They really want to have COD delisted over this?
“The sale of a product… which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value… (such as… images of… Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part”
insert joke about COD lacking artistic value, but clearly there is more to COD than just body mutilation.
“Patently offensive” and “lacks serious artistic value” are entirely subjective classifications. With those restrictions, any game with country music should be delisted.
Unironically, COD getting delisted would probably get mainstream media coverage and legitimate outrage from people who “don’t play video games” but actually do.
Up to the third comma, yes, but all the rest seems to go beyond that pretty arbitrarily.
When they say anything that “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”, and qualify that with “in the sole discretion of the Corporation” that just means “anything we don’t want to be associated with, and we will be the judge of that”.
That’s what makes it so vague, how is a Merchant or an Acquirer supposed to know what Mastercard might find damaging to the goodwill? They have to guess, or use trial and error*. Most will just err on the side of caution, which means customers get blocked from even more purchases, just to be safe.
Or talk to Mastercard, which Valve apparently tried, but they wouldn’t respond.
It’s much worse than that. How they word it is “if it may damage the public image of mastercard”. And they don’t review the content, they review the means used to prevent the damage to their brand.
So valve doesn’t even need to have anything that actually damage mastercard brand, it just need to be that mastercard is not comfortable enough with the measures used to prevent it.
Yeah, right up until assholes start posting “MASTERCARD SELLS SMUT INCEST HENTAI GAMES” on TikTok. Then it’s a problem, and MasterCard considers that damaging to the brand.
Except that’s entirely false. Even now they are pretending they do nothing, it’s the intermediaries who force things.
Mastercard sells absolutely nothing. And they have no responsibility for anything sold. And no one ever thought it was mastercard selling or even allowing to sell illegal things.
In fact, most people will believe no one sound of mind will buy something illegal with a credit card because mastercard and the likes will give your identity to the police.
So it’s not about illegal things, and it’s not about their image.
In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries
Spoken like someone that doesn’t understand language or communication.
There is literally a name for this type of response, and yet you’re out here accusing people who are apparently more knowledgeable than you of insanity.
Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all? That is not my understanding.
Yes, most cryptos are treated like pump and dump scams. 99% of usage is like that. Absolutely does not change the underlying utility nor would I recommend “investing” in them.
Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all?
Monero - the digital token with no real world value, yes. You don’t need crypto to fix this issue. Brazilians can use Pix and would not depend on MasterCard and Visa, and this includes everything from physical purchases to digital storefronts to paying in installments and more. All attached to currency that actually means something and zero crypto bros trying to pump the value up or down on their delusional subreddits.
Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective. Unless I’m missing something that makes it easier for the government to censor innocuous NSFW content. And we don’t have anything like it in the US so it’s useless to me.
Monero can be used immediately without storing a balance for longer than a few minutes, although a correlation attack would be trivial like that. But at best it is not subject to market whims any longer than you decide is necessary for your anonymity needs. It’s the perfect case for purchasing NSFW software, where you want the purchase private and uncensored even when it’s perfectly legal. That sounds like an incredible real world value, even after the crypto bros are long gone and the value dumps (imo) 99%. But it’s a tool that needs no real world value.
Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective
If the Brazilian government decided to go against the constitution to censor my online purchases like that, buying hentai games would be the least of my concerns. And then it wouldn’t matter if I’m using your fake crypto bro tokens or not.
And we don’t have anything like it in the US
Of course not. You live in a weird techno feudalism where the government can’t do anything because that’s socialism and the only solutions you trust are some random tech bro dependent crap like CashApp.
Nope, I’d rather use seashells than something like Monero. Crypto is got negative value, the time wasted hearing people like you preach about it is never going to be returned to my life.
especially in countries like the US?
Seashells would be an upgrade in a country like the US, but failures of your payment systems do not change anything for the inherent value of random online tokens.
Seashells require face to face interaction, they weigh a lot and they are not convenient to obtain. Nor are they fungible or even anonymous. I am not convinced they are better than Monero, or that Monero has no value.
Seashells require face to face interaction, they weigh a lot and they are not convenient to obtain. Nor are they fungible or even anonymous
That’s all true, which is why seashells are terrible. But even being terrible, they beat the imaginary crypto bro token. That’s how bad the crypto bro token is.
Again Monero is immediately useful to many people, and so are other cryptos. You don’t have to use them and they may not be useful to you. But they are useful to others.
We totally didn’t do that! Valve and other merchants obviously kept receipts.
I almost love how normalized flagrant lying has become in the corpo-political sphere. They’ve become so emboldened by just telling whatever unbelievable lie they want and expecting to get away with it. If it’s not catastrophically illegal to do so, they just lie. I don’t take anything not said under oath seriously anymore, and even then, I take it with a grain of salt.
Upset about conservatives and their puritanical practices. Votes for puritanical conservatives. What, do you think because he fucks kids he will allow your gooner game?
My brother in Christ they are a self proclaimed anti queer conservative organization. Do you want to be right? Do you care if you’re correct or not? Or do you want to blame everything on the ghosts in your head?
Ah yes, because the left wing is famous for the proliferation of requiring a government issued ID to use the internet in ways that make them uncomfortable.
You know that American conservatives have been banning books from libraries, and banning topics like racism and homophobia from being talked about in schools, right? American conservatives love censoring anything they don’t agree with. They are the original snowflakes.
I suspect your butt is just chapped because you can’t drop a hard “r” on BlueSky.
Hi. Texas conservatives in Houston took over the city schools and removed libraries to create a prison inside the school itself. Fuck you and your talks of censorship. You don’t know censorship and think the conservacucks don’t do it because they ain’t targeting your white cis heterosexual ass. You have no opinion worth censoring because your just that white bread bland.
Well that’s why I didn’t say “leftists.” But if we’re continuing to be honest, leftist governments also censor. I don’t think you can find any ideology that doesn’t censor, actually.
I’m sorry. Did you just say you want to vote Trump because you think they’re against censorship? The guy that threatens journalists, and politicians that report or say bad things about them. Do you not think that’s censorship?
I don’t even have a bone in this fight. I just want to understand the thought process.
Censorship means different things to different people. For those on the left censorship means suppression of liberal ideas, suppression of journalism exposing corruption and brutality, suppression of peoples history. For those on the right censorship means they can’t say the n word anymore.
Would you care to guess what censorship means to haloduder?
You mean the guy that is president right now, while this is happening, that is doing nothing about it because he’s too busy dealing with his pedophile rape escapades becoming public knowledge?
Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.
As Valve correctly points out, this is a blatant & outright lie. They have cut off any number of legal entities over pressure from politicians or groups. Now they have to own it.
You will find such language pretty much everywhere. And there are reasons for it. A good example are certain drugs that are technically not illegal. Because they have not been officially classified yet.
That used to be a thing here in Sweden some time ago, where they’d just change some little compound and could technically, legally sell it online until it was deemed otherwise. Because it’s now technically a new formula. Once it was classified, they just repeated the proceas.
MasterCard might not want to be seen as an enabler in the drug trade. So while it’s technically legal. They don’t want anything to do with it. And would like the option to take action.
And according to the articles. It’s not MasterCard pointing to that regulation, but the processors. As MasterCard notes. They’re not a bank, they’re not processing your payment. They just provide the technology to do so.
Furthermore. I’m quite amazed that people seem to think Valve is this really good company that we can all trust and take their word on. Valve says one thing. MasterCard says another. I wouldn’t take either one of them on just their word. Better to take a step back, and see how it develops so you don’t make yourself a useful idiot.
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve
This whole thing reads like a telephone game where nobody wants to take any responsibility.
they did the exact same thing in the porn industry. naturally Visa and MC didn’t communicate directly with the individual porn companies. So thats’ how places like CCBill and what have you took off. and then Visa and MC laid out their weird rules to CCBill who then passed it along to the individual companies.
Honestly, I don’t care if MasterCard doesn’t want to take responsibility. It was their rule and their intermediaries that caused the situation and they did not intervene when valve tried to reach out directly.
They are responsible through action or inaction, no matter how they try to deny it.
kotaku.com
Aktywne