Part of the reason is because most people don’t notice the lawsuits or think this is boilerplate legal stuff that happens in the background all the time. They’re too distracted by the entertainment side of things.
Considering their policy doesn't allow for other stuff like this, yeah I am not surprised.
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Reminds me of the time when a Spiderman mod removed the VERY few instances of a pride flag in a recreation of NEW YORK CITY and a Skyrim mod that removed any potential gay romances that only occur when wearing a very specific amulet (including a single dead skeleton couple off the beaten path.)
Those got booted as well cause.....come on now. Its blatantly targeting a group of people about their sexuality and gender who have BARELY any presence to begin with in these games.
Starfield is even more egregious as its LITERALLY just a menu option and the rare use in dialogue....
Really pathetic and sad people would even feel the need to make them to begin with. Let alone feel the need to upload them to a platform.
I think it’s a story when it’s perhaps the largest flop in the medium, much like John Carter. It’s somehow worth writing five articles about the Joker sequel flopping.
John Carter didn’t get that much attention either, and what it did was mostly about the leadership changes in Disney tanking the advertising and not about the movie itself.
As a fan of the books, the movie was pretty bad. The only good parts I can recall were the CG, and the actors who played Tars Tarkus and Kantos Kan. Everyone else in the film was mid to bad.
Do you think more people care about the average video game story or the average story about the theater? Live performances, not movies. Theater, Dance, and Visual Arts all get their own sections in the NYTimes, for instance, but video games are demonstrably bigger and don’t get the same attention. There’s rarely even a mention of the likes of Call of Duty in mainstream media when they do exceptionally well, let alone exceptionally poorly, and that’s really the crux of the article.
That has more to do with New York having a thriving theater scene and a NY newpaper promoting a local thing that is popular with its readership and the companies that pay for advertising. It is something that sets NY apart from a lot of other locations, even if theater is pretty common in most areas.
Kind of a chicken and egg when it comes to games, since readers won’t be expecting games news in mainstream sources they don’t dedicate resources to writing the articles. That makes business sense because most people who are looking for game news already have a number of web sites to choose from.
I agree that theater is something that New York has in abundance over most areas, but are there not movie focused sites better delivering those articles on movies as well? Is it not worth covering something at all just because it’s at other news sources? If it wasn’t, any news outlet would only print exclusives. And this extends beyond the Times, as the article points out; that’s just the outlet I personally have a subscription to, and their circulation extends far and wide regardless.
My point is mostky about people’s expectations and that people who want news on games probably aren’t interested in gaming articles from papers/major news sites and companies in general aren’t looking to advertise on gaming articles in the same way that makers of fashion would want to advertise in the theater section.
I really like this post btw, I never really thought about how sparse reporting on games is outside of dedicated sites.
Like I said though, they do have some really great articles in gaming, just not with their own header, so they’re harder to find. And they do know what isn’t covered by other outlets, because they tend to do profile pieces rather than news coverage. But if Joker’s sequel is worth writing five articles about, surely the largest failure we’ve seen in games is worth one, you’d think.
An article about Joker 2 has the novelty factor of bombing as a sequel to Joker, which was a massive hit. They will got a lot more views on any one of those five Joker 2 articles than they will from multiple articles about a game nobody heard about.
More views = more money. It doesn’t matter whether something is more ‘worthy’ or not.
For the New York Times, that’s not really their incentive system compared against their subscription model. Still, it’s a disparaging difference between how they treat both industries. Losing hundreds of millions of dollars would be news in any industry.
Also, generally speaking, people interested in news about games read and seek out gaming sources that cover gaming info. Like kotaku.
Gaming is popular enough that there are several dedicated news and information sites to choose from. The “news” is for stuff of general interest. They could cover some gaming news, but for the most part people who want gaming news get it from more dedicated sources.
I do find it interesting though that the finals is another game that basically has not been advertised to anyone, and that has a very strong but small community. So not advertising your game is not automatically a death sentence although it probably doesn’t help.
They story should have been how a $200m investment into a live service game failed. An investor who knows jack shit about games reads that and now thinks live service games are a risky invetment strategy.
How efficient is it to antagonize people that are actively promoting your own content for free on other platforms? Does this actually work for Nintendo?
I guess they antagonize anyone that has moderate exposure using their IP
In some countries copyright law says that if you let people use your copyrighted material with little to no impediment then you cannot suddenly request whoever is using your material to stop
Let’s say that Nintendo allows fans to make fan made Mario games for 5 years. Then they suddenly sue everyone and say “hey you have to pay for copyright or shutdown”. A judge can decide that since they didn’t enforce their copyright for some time they cannot sue people that are using their IP.
From a legal perspective the act of policing your own copyrighted material is the company’s responsibility. This law prevents companies from relaxing their copyright claims for years (essentially allowing people to use it) and then suing everyone for using their IP. In other words Just let everyone use it, then sue them. The law is there to prevent that
Nintendo is likely super strict because “let people use your copyrighted material with little to no impediment” has room for interpretation in a court room. So they go to the conservative side and shut down everyone. Also consider that they’re right next to China. The piracy capital of the world. It’s not a surprise they’re scared about their copyright.
I’m not saying that what they’re doing is right. It’s not. But I see where it comes from.
People that don’t know of this (or don’t care) will indiscriminately buy their products. To unseat them it would require a handheld that targets the same market and a killer game for that handheld.
Nintendo is a “family friendly” brand before all else and really only cares about the experience of children playing their games and adults buying their games for children to play. They count on their core IPs to draw in those kids as adults, but don’t put much effort in catering to an adult audience. They put more effort in with the Switch (game store with more adult oriented games), but still minimal effort - their original properties are family friendly.
They see other people using their IP as diluting their brand value rather than promoting it. They think their characters are what makes people nostalgic for their games and drives brand value. So they want you to only be able to see your “favorite Nintendo characters” from Nintendo official sources and have complete control over that experience.
I think they’re wrong about most of that. The characters are, for the most part, pretty generic and simple. What people like about Nintendo is that the games are accessible, they played when they were kids, and they were often introduced to those games by parents or older siblings. There’s a social context to Nintendo games that is unique and nostalgic. They’re often some of the first games you play as a kid, and they’re the first games you think of when you want to introduce your own kids/nieces & nephews, etc. to gaming. I don’t think that unofficial Super Smash Bros tournaments or Gary’s Mod having fan-made Mario models in it dilutes that in the slightest but Nintendo does drive away adults who are the primary drivers of the Nintendo brand’s popularity (as they are the purchasers). Once it’s these young adults’ turn to share Nintendo games with the next generation, I think Nintendo’s litigiousness will hurt them because it will have driven many of these people away.
the time in which the TV is on but users aren’t doing anything is valuable
Ads are making everything worse. Yes and ads are disturbing the doing nothing. Doing nothing is very valuable to me. It’s the time when I have some time for myself.
Ads have funded a lot of content in the past. I don’t mean just in the Internet era, but in the TV era and the radio era and the newspaper era. We’re talking centuries.
Unless you’re gonna get people to pay for your content, which can create difficulties, attaching it to ads can be a way to pay for that content.
Now, all that being said, that isn’t to say that one needs to want to choose ads or needs to want to choose ads in all contexts or can want unlimited ads. I’d generally rather pay for something up front. Let’s say that it takes $10 to produce a piece of content. For ads to make sense, it has to make the average user ultimately spend at least $10 more on some advertised product than they otherwise would have, or it wouldn’t make sense for the advertiser to give the content creator $10. I’d just as soon spend $10 on the content directly instead and not watch the ads. Ultimately, the average user has to pay at least as much under an ad regime as if they just paid for the content up front, and doesn’t have to deal with the overhead of me staring at ads.
But for that to work, the content provider has to be able to actually get people to pay for whatever content they’re putting out. If it gets pirated, or people disproportionately weight the cost of that up-front payment, or people are worried about the security of their transaction, or what-have-you, then the content provider is gonna fall back to being paid in ads.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with advertising in general. I kinda hate that too. What I have a problem with is super invasive advertising where it collects a monumental amount of personal information, maliciously and often without your consent, to target ads for specific products.
And anyone who says they’re not doing it, I don’t believe them anymore.
Roku is capturing everything that’s on your TV and processing it as personal data.
They actually made the load time worse with their update. Not by a little, by a fucking tonne. Going from any interior to outside now takes like a full minute and 30 seconds, its ridiculous.
It took that time before the update for me as well. 1-2 minutes for every loading screen. There was a mod for that (before the next-gen update) that you could not load via nexus, bc the setup was a little more conplex, but it worked really well (see www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283 )
The method of this mod was to speed up the fps only while in the loading screen to 300-350 bc the loading times were somehow tied to the fps. Well done Bethesda.
It seemed a lot faster for me prior to this latest update, but they were never superb. Here’s hoping either the mods can be fixed or bethesda can get their shit together.
I’ve literally always done this with fallout 4. I think Skyrim too. Not because I thought it was improving anything mind you, it was taking so long that I would tab out to scroll some website while I waited.
Xcom2 had a nice “feature” where if you hit capslock right when the mission starts to load it paused all animations and actually loaded the damn mission far quicker than normal
Hah, those are the load times I used to get on my Xbox One with its dinky HDD. At the very least, The Midnight Ride has been updated to post next-gen, and I now get really small loading times (<5 sec) on my SSD. The game feels less rough around the edges, too. Only took 3 hours to set up :,)
Super strange because on PS5 the load times are extremely fast since the patch. indoor / outdoor transitions are never longer than 4 or 5 seconds, and quick travel maybe 6 or so
It’d honestly be hilarious if all the creators just started rebranding their fan projects with Palworld Pals (or any other similar IP). Start shifting the discourse away from Pokemon. I’d love that.
Once my Switch broke and the Steam Deck released, I decided I didn’t want to bother with Nintendo anymore. They’ve been killing their communities for far too long.
I saw a docu i think about smash bros. from nintendo, very cool docu serie btw, and the guys that organized the first tournaments got a letter or something that they where not allowed to organize such tournaments (mind you just fans playing the game in a bigger room nothing more) because, and here it comes, the game should not be played like that! Wtf.
Nintendo has kind of always sucked as far as passionate fans are concerned. Their products are some of the best out there, sure, but they are ruthless.
Playing devil’s advocate, they’re just protecting their IP. Problem is they can’t spend resources or time figuring out who is or is not profiting from their work, so they just stamp out all the bugs in the house that get big enough to be noticed. I guess, I really don’t know.
I accidentally heard about it a month ago and watched a bunch of videos about the studio and the game. Pretty interesting, and i was really looking forward to see how bad it is. I was kinda surprised how big the following of the game is, and most people i know have no idea that the game exists
Yeah well just because you haven’t heard of it and no one’s heard of it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t hyped, It just means it wasn’t typed very effectively.
Personally, I might be done with the series at this point.
Did they not just put a lot of the vehicles behind a paywall in GTA V this year? If you previously had them, you were fine. You would be SOL if you didn’t buy them in the game before the update, though. IIRC some of cars were even stuck behind the GTA+ subscription.
I don’t want to buy a game, and then have to buy some of the exact same content again years later. They should have also told people that they would be paywalling the cars a decent amount of time before they went through with it, imo.
It’s not the end of the world or anything, but I’m concerned that this might be an attempt at starting a new type of profiting. This is worse than the horse armour from Oblivion. At least that gave you new models and textures.
“We’ll just sell them a game, then we’ll sell them the same assets in the same game years later!”
Just wait until it spreads to more game companies. I wish that there was a stronger push back when it happened. People are going to completely forget about it until it happens again.
With their current track record, maybe I’ll buy it after a decade haha
Aside from R* Social Club being finiky if you’re offline, GTAV and RDR2 didn’t flaunt with the line between SP and MP, in my experience. Each felt separate and optional to the other.
Never played much GTAV (4 was the last good one as far as I’m concerned, at least so far) but yeah, I loved how RDR2 and RDR Online don’t force one into the other!
GTA trilogy wasn’t developed by rockstar iirc. That being said, pre-ordering games is a dumb move anyway since games aren’t finished when they are being released nowadays
And it’s almost like they cant run out of binary code + a license key to distribute.
And the preload period is stupid anyway since you will most likely need a day 1 patch anyway.
I didn’t see that coming, and it’s a welcome development. If it warps the general PC hardware market enough that devs start optimizing for a standard platform, it’ll result in less buggy products at launch. And maybe orienting development towards a relatively underpowered platform will make it easier for those of us dumb enough to that like to spend more on a desktop to hit those 60 FPS targets.
I think it’s more important that it gives Valve a method of avoiding being shoehorned into a “Windows only world”. The Steam Deck is largely why Linux has pushed past 2% market share on the Steam Hardware Survey consistently now. Holo, which is the codename for SteamOS on the Deck, makes up over half of Steam on Linux.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not dillusional. Windows is still far and away the majority platform and will be for some time. However, there is a real, functional choice now that didn’t exist a few years ago.
True, but even if Steam were to offer a x% lower cut on sales for Linux users if the developer makes a Linux-native build, it’d still not entice many to build and maintain a native port if they are only saving x% off a tiny y% of users. Other poster’s point being that incentives like this would actually become enticing to companies when Linux market share (Proton users) increases.
Doubtful Steam is gonna offer a share cut on all sales when it runs on Proton for the 2% of userbase using Linux, and from that only a minority would care whether or not it’s native anyway.
Valve could start by releasing a Steam Deck SDK for Visual Studio that exposes an “Export to Steam Deck” option when targets the latest release of Steam Linux Runtime.
Currently they offer Docker containers which is good but could be improved.
Back when Steam Machines were a thing and Valve tried to only push Linux native games, game developers got placements on Steam Store’s landing page banner in return.
Proton is so good that devs have actually gotten better performance by dropping their native Linux build and just running a proton-emulated version in Linux 😀
The benefit of Steam is backwards compatibility. The moment you force native porting you lose your greatest benefit. Since you anyway have to build backwards compatibility with Windows you gain nothing by incentivizing native Linux and the developers gain nothing from being incentivized to build native because their games will work through Proton.
There’s no reason for Valve to incentivize native builds. It’s the devs that need to have an incentive to develop natively for Linux. And with the market share being what it is there’s no incentive for the devs either.
I see you don’t know about Steam Linux Runtimes which are backwards and forwards compatible. 1.0 (“scout”) is based on Ubuntu 12.04, so already 12 years of binary compatibility.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about OS backwards compatibility, it’s user library backwards compatibility. Imagine if proton didn’t exist and you have 15 years of Steam library that has expanded on a yearly basis. You now buy the Steam Deck to play your library. What games can you play? I guarantee you couldn’t play 99% of your library because less than 1% of all games on Steam have been made natively for Linux. If you can’t play 99% of your library what’s the point of owning the deck? This is why Valve is pouring money into Proton, because Proton is the tool that gives users backwards compatibility for their library. Without proton the Steam Deck would be an utter failure.
It’s also why they don’t need to incentivize native builds, because they already solved that problem on their own with Proton. Why put effort into having developers develop native builds when you could just put that effort into Proton and essentially get the same result (and extra benefits) without hoping the developers do something they didn’t want to do in the first place?
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about OS backwards compatibility, it’s user library backwards compatibility.
I never proposed to ax Proton, so I’m not the one here missing any points.
It’s also why they don’t need to incentivize native builds, because they already solved that problem on their own with Proton. Why put effort into having developers develop native builds when you could just put that effort into Proton and essentially get the same result (and extra benefits) without hoping the developers do something they didn’t want to do in the first place?
I explained several times already that game updates breaking Proton compatibility is a real thing that would not have happened with native games.
Game developers develop for dedicated platforms other than Windows all the time. They’re called game consoles. Native games don’t just mysteriously break on updates or suddenly ban players because the game developer out of the blue decided that Proton is cheating. First launch of games doesn’t annoy with those stupid Microsoft runtime installer scripts, etc. Proper native games could be optimized the way console games are instead of relying on multiple levels of Windows compatibility layers (the newest BS Proton has to deal with is gamepad compatibility for launchers via a special input wrapper) – they are just a smoother experience all around.
So you understand that it is way more beneficial for Valve to support proton than native Linux, and then say that Valve should incentivize native builds?
So you understand that it is way more beneficial for Valve to support proton than native Linux, and then say that Valve should incentivize native builds?
Proton should be the focus for older, existing games and native games should be the focus for new games. Not really that hard to understand.
In some far future, sure. But at the moment Linux barely makes up 2% of the users and that number is not going to rise if developers started developing natively for Linux. There is currenttly negative incentive for developers to develop natively for Linux, I can’t find the article but there was a developer who ported their game to Linux and while Linux was barely a speck of their playerbase the Linux users made up the majority of support tickets. Valve would need insane incentives to get developers to develop for Linux. Or they could take fraction of that effort and make Proton better. Quite frankly I’m not sure why I even need to explain this, it should be a no-brainer to understand why supporting Proton right now is much better for Valve than incentivizing Linux builds.
In some far future, sure. But at the moment Linux barely makes up 2% of the users
Fun fact: Whenever a console maker launches a new console, ahead of launch the user base is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%. And yet no one of them would even think about not incentivizing game development for the upcoming platform.
and that number is not going to rise if developers started developing natively for Linux.
Based on which argument? Games on occasion break on updates. Players get banned for using Proton. That’s negative publicity.
There is currenttly negative incentive for developers to develop natively for Linux, I can’t find the article but there was a developer who ported their game to Linux and while Linux was barely a speck of their playerbase the Linux users made up the majority of support tickets.
Doesn’t change the fact that native games lead to a better experience for consumers (which I already outlined).
Valve would need insane incentives to get developers to develop for Linux. Or they could take fraction of that effort and make Proton better.
Start by offering a proper SDK that plugs into Visual Studio. You’re acting as if incentivizing would cost insane amounts of money, based on no fact at all.
Quite frankly I’m not sure why I even need to explain this
You barely explained anything. I explained why emulated Windows games lead to worse user experience. You refuted nothing of that.
Fun fact: Whenever a console maker launches a new console, ahead of launch the user base is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%. And yet no one of them would even think about not incentivizing game development for the upcoming platform.
Actually, no. There’s a reason why for multiple generations we’ve had only 3 console selling companies, because all of them have a pre-existing user bases. We saw when a new player wanted to come to the market, Google tried with Stadia. Not exactly a new console, but a new platform where to play games. Sure, they literally paid companies to get their games on their platform, but in the end they still failed because they could not build a user base. And to bring this point back to Steam Deck, Valve doesn’t need to incentivize native Linux builds because Proton can make those games available on the Steam Deck. Steam deck is literally a success without Valve ever incentivizing Linux builds. Oh, and Valve also had a pre-existing user base to make Steam Deck a success. What you’re saying is so wrong I shouldn’t even be explaining any of it.
Based on which argument? Games on occasion break on updates. Players get banned for using Proton. That’s negative publicity.
With those negatives you’ve shown that at best native builds retain the existing user base. That is not the same as growing a user base.
Doesn’t change the fact that native games lead to a better experience for consumers (which I already outlined).
That is not a fact. That comes down to implementation and considering most developers are not familiar with Linux it’s very much a stretch that they could actually give a better experience than what Proton gives by default. Proton does a really good job, I personally have had minimal issues with Proton and considering the impact it has had on Linux gaming I don’t think I’m the exception here.
I also urge you to look at it from a game dev perspective. You see your game run acceptably on Proton. Do you really want to put in the effort to learn Linux to such degree that you can make the native experience better than the acceptable experience Proton gives, for no additional effort? If I was a game dev, I wouldn’t do it. I’d put that effort into making a next game.
Start by offering a proper SDK that plugs into Visual Studio. You’re acting as if incentivizing would cost insane amounts of money, based on no fact at all.
Sequeing from the previous point. Okay, Valve offers the proper SDK. What’s the incentive for the game dev to actually use it? Why should they spend time learning how to make a game for Linux when they could make another game for Windows and know that it probably also works on Linux thanks to Proton? Unless they themselves want to make a game for Linux there’s no reason for them to actually use it.
You barely explained anything. I explained why emulated Windows games lead to worse user experience. You refuted nothing of that.
Because it needs to explanation. Just go into any Linux gaming community and ask what has been the most impactful thing in Linux gaming for the past decade. The unquestionable number 1 reason is Proton. If there’s anything right now growing the Linux user base it’s Proton.
Does Proton do a worse job than a developer making the game natively for Linux. As I alluded to before, not that clear cut of an answer. But the part you’re so adamant on ignoring is that does making a native build pay off compared to just having Proton handle it? I imagine most game devs would say “no”. Linux playerbase is still too small for developers to give it any attention, which is why Proton is a fucking godsend because it allows users to play games on Linux even if the developers don’t even consider Linux support.
As long as the user base is too small for developers to care all efforts should go into Proton. Valve can’t make developers care unless Valve literally throws money in their face to make them care. And Valve does not need to do that because Proton does a good enough job to not need to throw money at the developers.
That’s it, I’m done. If you’ve got anything to say I have my middle finger up towards the camera. I get it, your pet dream is native Linux gaming. Nothing I say matters because you want to believe your dream. Nothing you say matters because I’m not going to believe your unrealistic dream. I literally don’t care what more you have to say because to me it comes across like a flat earther explaining why the earth is flat. I’m not going to waste any more time explaining how the world is round and with that I consider the discussion concluded.
It doesn’t really matter though, because Wine is mature enough that it’s not a hacky diy fix, it’s a viable solution. None of the games I play run any worse on Linux than they did on Windows, and some run better. The vast majority of people don’t care whether it’s native or not, they just want it to work.
how i personally see it is that it welcomes devs to set a new minimum pc requirement to target. due to valve not doing contstent iterations (which imo is actually a good thing), it gives people a point of performance comparison reference to when wanting to play a new title.
It’s a noble stance, but literally everything is digital these days. Even disk based games are requiring day 1 updates (or aren’t coming with the content on the disk in the first place), meaning you’re at the behest of the platform to keep your content available.
Most games come on the disk and don't require an internet connection (unlike some Xbox titles like Halo Infinite). Day 1 updates only matter for PC because performance can be hit or miss. On consoles, it's not such a painful prospect. My PS4 has been offline since I bought it and every game has run fine after installation. I'm aware that Cyberpunk doesn't run well but it never should've been on PS4 in the first place.
Digital storefronts like GoG do allow you to own your game by giving you the ability to download DRM free versions of games. It's possible to do but publishers like EA have primarily live service games which means DRM is their bread and butter.
Game preservation is important to me so GoG is a godsend for the work they do.
All those games may run fine for you, but you’re still missing day one patches for most games. Maybe even some content you wanted and didn’t realize was even there without being online to download patches and hot fixes. Also more and more reports of console discs not having any data on them and just being a code to allow you to download the game.
I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it is the reality of gaming today.
It sucks. I've been backing up PS3 games on my hard drive for a while now and I'd like to be able to do that for the PS4 too.
My contention is why we need day one patches in the first place. Surely, if games were properly tested, they wouldn't need to be patched as soon as they release. Just seems weird to me that they release a patch immediately following release when that could've been done before release?
I don’t disagree. But these days going gold doesn’t mean the same. They all seem to take the last month or two to still iron things out before it really releases.
Yeah, cloud versions (which are stupid) require an internet connection… do they even sell the cloud version as a cart? If they do and it’s not advertised as such, that’s obviously a problem.
I won’t argue that the eshop isn’t full of shovelware because it is - but even shovelware needs to be preserved.
The problem with this line of debate is that there are some games worth having that are only on the eshop and it’s still a digital barrier to you truly owning the software. Saying most games are available on a physical medium doesn’t help those that aren’t and it’s a situation that’s only going to get worse.
Essentially what I am saying is that none of the big 3 are innocent here and just because some are slightly better than others doesn’t make it okay.
Agreed on all points but there’s some nuance I feel you’re neglecting.
I never said Nintendo was blameless or beyond reproach (they suck in lots of ways) only that they do have physical carts that work out of the box. This is something that continues to benefit me. For example, I picked up Advance Wars reboot on the way to the airport and was able to pop in the cart and start playing at the gate. Credit where it’s due, you know? I harass everyone I know with a Switch to buy physical because that’s the only way we’ll continue to have this shred of ownership… at least that’s still on the table as a possibility compared to the other two.
Digital is not the problem. Lack of true ownership is the problem. GoG is DRM free. Steam isn’t great on this, but it’s better than other alternatives for now. Sailing the high seas is the best option in many cases.
It’s not all or nothing, you can take small steps to stop supporting the worst offenses. First step, don’t use any game streaming services where you just subscribe to a rolling catalogue each month/year. PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass are examples of this.
Nintendo is awful too, their games should be ripped from physical media if possible and emulated, or otherwise aquired on the seven seas and emulated. It’s a great way to play their games without supporting their evil practices.
Support FOSS games and FOSS-friendly companies. Valve is a good example. Although not perfect by any means, they have proven to be far friendlier to FOSS apps, games, and platforms than most other companies. If you have to get DRM-locked games, get them through Steam. At least they have offline mode and allow full access to all your game files so you can save them to a separate location for archives/backups.
It starts with small things, but if lots of people start doing this, it will have a noticable effect.
The source notes that for Mac there have been 2 exclusive games across all versions, and for Windows, there have been about 2560 across all versions. There doesn’t appear to be a listing for Linux unfortunately.
It depends on how the source categorized the information and how Microsoft classifies the Xbox One versus the Xbox One Series (whether as being two actual different consoles, or two versions of the same console.)
There is only one entry for anything related to Xbox One as far as I can see so I expect the 12 it notes are distributed across all versions of the Xbox One, or that there are 0 dedicated games for the Xbox One Series proper.
The less exclusives, the better. We don’t need lock-ins, we need open platforms and open systems. If I want a plug&play gaming experience I can buy a console, if I want maximum performance and quality in a more maintenance and setup intensive package I can build my own PC.
For real - it’s so nice nowadays being able to play nearly any hot new game I want to on my desktop. Never been a huge fan of consoles - keyboard+mouse was always far more natural for me, but then again I was big into C&C and SC when I was a kid. The only console I’ve really loved since the N64 is the switch, and that’s largely because I can bring it on a long flight and fuck around in ZELDA: BOTW or TOTK for hours on end, which is awesome (I tend to avoid putting games on my personal dev laptop, and it also only has an iGPU).
MKB is more natural because controllers are redesigned constantly to create a false sense of innovation. The fundamentals of controlling a figure on a screen have not changed, nor have hands.
Shouldn’t FF16 also be on this list? Given that FF7 Rebirth will almost definitely see a PC port, I don’t think the ongoing development of an FF16 PC port should exclude it from the list.
kotaku.com
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