2: Of course every outlet that can write about Cyberpunk is going to right now. It's what people are searching for. They want clicks on fresh content that is relevant to their readers' interests.
The USPTO is notorious for granting insane patents knowing they are invalid or too vague and expect the court system to be the final arbiter. It’s almost as if they like stirring shit up for there own amusement.
One of the biggest controversies at the start of all of this was Ubisoft pulling The Crew whilst pushing people to buy The Crew 2. Frankly it’s amazing we haven’t seen that more often with the near identical sequels such as the Madden, FIFA, F1 etc games.
No one’s forcing you to buy a remaster… unless they are because they revoke your right to play the original so it’s your only option.
Remasters and remakes will still happen but companies won’t have as much freedom to yoink a purchased product from your pocket years down the track in the name of some profit strategy.
But I want to resell it to the same person for further profit
One of the biggest controversies at the start of all of this was Ubisoft pulling The Crew whilst pushing people to buy The Crew 2.
I know about The Crew, but it’s not like Ubisoft had a Special Edition or something lined up that replaced the original game, and you had to buy it again. There was no reselling, the sequel is a different game.
Nothing in the SKG initiative is against Sequels, Remasters, Remakes, whatever. It’s not even about keeping a game in stores forever. It isn’t against yearly releases of Fifa, Madden, NBA 2k, that get removed after a few years, as long as you can still play your copy of Fifa 26 in twenty years.
No one’s forcing you to buy a remaster… unless they are because they revoke your right to play the original so it’s your only option.
That’s the thing though, does this really happen? Usually games that get completely removed, that you can’t even play anymore are multiplayer games, live service stuff, that are just so dead that nobody is even remotely interested in a remaster, so the game is just gone.
People could still play the Overwatch that they paid for if the game hadn’t been designed to require Blizzard’s continued support and approval to function. In some number of years, Fortnite will be shutdown or replaced with something different and the people who grew up playing Fortnite will never be able to go back to play it again.
There’s clearly interest in online-only games that are killed. World of Warcraft and Runescape have classic versions so you can play a variation of the game how it used to be.
True, didn’t think about games like this, but that’s the case for every online-only game, even if the changes might not be as drastic as OW1 -> OW2. It’s not like you can roll back a patch in FF14, Siege or Destiny and play on that version, if you don’t like the direction the game is going.
I don’t think a part of SKG is making sure all different patch versions of a game are available and playable, once the devs end support for a game.
BTW I’m not against SKG, I’ve signed the petition, but when people say this would keep companies from selling the game forever, kill yearly installments of some franchise, or would “force” devs to make old version of their favorite game available, that’s not what SKG wants to do.
I’ve been modding games and making mods for games since before Nexus or SteamWorkshop or anything even existed… I guess people just genuinely have never even heard of moddb these days, like how gamefaqs is an ‘ancient relic’ or w/e.
basically just a huge compendium of everywhere all kinds of mods for anything are hosted, that’ll give you an idea of how the game modding scene is actually rather dispersed, not only monopolized by nexusmods.
not sure if its in this huge list but:
fpsbanana
is another one i am quite familiar with, been going strong with mostly source mods… possibly since the late 90s, at the least the early 2000’s.
They won’t get any kind of reckoning that we’ll understand. They’re rich, powerful, and insulated from pain. They’ve all got golden parachutes via their weaselly networks. There will be no karma, unfortunately.
I don’t think they will receive a reckoning, but their children might.
It’s especially disgusting when we realize rich people are setting their children up to inherit a world where everyone hates them for being rich from exploitation.
Lutris is awesome.
Open source games, games with their own launcher, games on steam, gog, etc are all in it. Can pick to run things natively on Linux, use proton (pick your version or just use latest), wine, or choose from others, and it does it seamlessly. For games you already have installed on steam, you don’t need to reinstall them, it finds them and makes them runnable from within lutris once you connect your steam account, you can also install games that you own on any of your connected launchers, and browse/download your undownloaded games from them
Examples for some of the stuff I have all in it now:
Catacyslm: DDA catapult launcher (free and open source game - highly recommend you try it out. Takes some getting used to, but there isn’t much you can’t do. Also, make sure you get cataclysm-tiles or use a launcher. ASCII is pure, but hard to get used to. Also, DO NOT buy it on steam.)
All of my installed steam games
Cyberpunk 2077 and the witcher 3 via gog
FFXIV (the official launcher, not steam)
Vintage story (open source but not free - highly recommend if you like open world survival crafting games with a big emphasis on survival)
Deciding how to invest my resources, where to expand, when to attack, defend, or retreat, scouting and countering my opponent’s plans…
…but when it comes to the physical act of doing this stuff, it feels so horribly awkward that it’s like I’m fighting the UI more than my opponent.
Clicking and dragging selection boxes as if my troops are always in a rectangle formation? Right-clicking to attack but accidentally moving instead… And ugh, the endless series of tedious build queues.
The actual mechanics feel more like data entry — the kind with real bad RSI — than military leadership.
FYI, there are a handful of games that put unique spins on the genre out there. Most of the ones I can think of off the top of my head put you in control of a “cursor character” that’s like a commander. It puts a speed limit on APM, which I think gets the genre back to focusing on strategy. There’s also Northgard, which is like a cross between an RTS and a 4X game, and pieces of the map are tile-like, so rather than this unit moving to these coordinates, you’re commanding a unit to move from this tile to the one next to it. Then there’s the Total War series, where the battles are slow paced, and the macro level resources are handled in turn-based strategy.
Mount and Blade (Warband, WFAS, and Bannerlord) is another that I would say puts a unique spin on RTS. You are down on the ground with your troops and need to give orders like when to have certain troop groups attack, retreat, change formation, etc. You have the opportunity for your own skill as a fighter to matter, but once the battles reach a certain size, it becomes far more important to have a tactical advantage than to just be good at fighting yourself.
You may enjoy Zero-K more than most other RTS, at least. It’s in the Total Annihilation style like Supreme Commander or Beyond All Reason. One of the ways it sets itself apart is with a diverse array of commands you can issue to your units so they can micro themselves. I haven’t played much of it, so I can’t give a ton of examples, but it has commands to do stuff attack while maintaining distance, compared to how StarCraft 2 forced you to learn to stutter step your Marines, manually alternating between moving and shooting.
It’s also free and open source, based on the Spring engine, and available on Steam. It felt like it played well and was filled out well in terms of mechanics and units when I gave it a try a year or so ago, but I just haven’t been playing any RTS lately.
Agreed, Agreed and they still shouldnt have done it. Sometimes I say shit I know I shouldnt to customers because they are being assholes. They complain, the boss tells me off, I say “Fair enough” and I dont do it again for a while. But I know when I say the thing I shouldnt that “I’m gonna get a talking to for this” fortunately I’m government employed and I’m union so I know that a little backtalk isnt going to result in outright dismissal.
Ultimately the company could have turned around and sacked them all because I’m sure the company has a social media policy that basically says “if you do anything we dont like, we can fire you” and they would have had to fight it. They took a risk and I’m glad they didnt get fired (yet) but with all the layoffs in this space at the moment I wouldnt have.
If you say one thing to a single customer, there’s that. But when you make that snarky post on a public forum it has a chance of getting amplified and misunderstood.
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