Pride month celebrations were my go-to events in secret. My family doesn’t really understand the niche appeal of the game, and state religious agents can’t really “disguise themselves” ingame. But if Jagex is veering right, they might (like twitter) sell my information to security agencies the same way the Sauds/Turks did to Twitter a few years ago.
At least I get to wear my pride cape 24/7 until my membership runs out. In hindsight, It was a bad idea to assume that shooting stars/maple forestry/w301 hate chats were “isolated incidents”. They’re clearly part of an ongoing trend that has the CEO’s approval. Oh well, there’s always a countdown to good things. I should enjoy it while it lasts.
My question is when workers in game studios start to make unions. It’s a massive industry and the people actually making the games are constantly fucked over.
Now can be both the second-best-time to plant a tree and the first-best-time to grab a bucket of water!
Remember everyone, the forest is on fire and there’s not many places to run. The fires of climate change affects the entire world, and this administration and the wealthy that back them will gleefully pour fuel on the flames and let your house burn.
You can stand around begging for rain, asking why the landlord didn’t fix the sprinklers or why he never checked the fire extinguishers or why he’s hiding under his desk clutching the cash register for dear life…
Funny thing about wildfires: the ashes allow a new generation of flora to take root. It will suck for us, but the children of tomorrow might have unions, vacations, and universal healthcare by default.
I can dream of a future, even if it won’t be mine to enjoy.
Yes, but there are also European developers. Such as Ubisoft, which previously had major issues with harassment, and probably still does. If they have a union, it certainly isn’t a powerful one.
The French trade union Solidaires Informatique has pursued both criminal and civil charges. Not sure how much that accomplished, but at the very least a bunch of assholes were fired or resigned, so they weren’t completely ineffective.
in my head its because its an industry where going solo is viable and if they arent working at a company thats their goal so they have full contol over the vision and make all the money and one day they want to exert the same creative control over others and get overtime/overwork out of them
The irony is that becoming a solo dev is rarely feasible and even more rarely leads to a product that pays up more than just working elsewhere.
That immediately makes people point to success stories, like Stardew Valley. Dunno about others, but I don’t have a family + girlfriend to sustain me for 4+ years, nor am I blinded by the dream possibility of reaching millions of sales when so many games struggle to reach 10k sales.
Because he “has experience managing a public company” and in his portfolio only focuses on cherry-picked KPIs and no mention of any negatives at all.
I hate that our society encourages failing up and instead of punishment because of poor management skills and decisions, they do mass layoffs and give themselves fat bonuses because of “cost savings”.
Frankly, if a company fails, they will ruin other companies; it’s never their fault because of “complicated reasons”.
I like the game (as well as the similar https://store.steampowered.com/app/211820/Starbound/) but every time I play it, I wish that it had more ability to create stuff that does things. Like, more Noita-style interactions with the world or Factorio-style automation. The stuff you can make is mostly static.
This 100%. I looooove Noita and any deep systems-driven games where players explore, discover, and create content for years.
One of my favourite things is the sudden discovery that a game is much bigger and more open-ended than I thought. Especially when it happens dozens of hours in.
I’ve been playing a lot of terraria with my son recently, it’s been a lot of fun going back to it. Coincidentally, I just saw the trailer for Noita for the first time last night, and thought “woah, that looks cool as hell…”
I die too fast in Noita to get too deep into it… I liked what I played of it though. Something about Starbound made it feel like Temu Terraria… I can’t put my finger on why it feels so … fake? Like physics or the way the player model moves and interacts with blocks is off or something. Maybe it is just too close to Terraria and the many hours I spent in Terraria makes anything close feel off.
I suppose in a few months, after this current round of Minecraft, I’ll be pulled into Terraria again. I had a pretty good head of steam on the way to finishing my 2 year old run of BG3 when I made the mistake of opening Minecraft… Terraria is about the only thing that could rival minecraft in addictive qualities for me. It has the added benefit that I can talk my wife into playing Terraria but she won’t touch minecraft.
This is a great game. They’ve managed to pull off a roguelike citybuilder; a genre combination that one would think would not work. Great visuals and atmosphere too.
I didn’t think I would like it because I like colony sims and city builders where I’m just playing the same map for extended periods, but I gave it a try on game pass and ended up playing hundreds of hours. It’s something special.
It really is special. I initially tried it out because I liked the aesthetic and the map setup/setting; small fantasy colony surrounded by impenetrable forest in a post-apocalyptic world. I was really skeptical about the roguelike x citybuilder hybrid as I like long city-builder sessions with huge maps and elaborate city designs, but they pulled it off perfectly.
I have 100+ hours. I did stop playing after the one of the early access builds made some changes that undermined by core strategy, but that’s a personal thing. Really need to try out the DLC and start from scratch.
I’m in like the opposite camp… But I’ve never been able to get past the initial learning curve of the game. Something has never clicked with this one for me
It also runs quite well and looks great on medium and low settings. I can run it on high on my 2060 quite easily, but I don’t feel like I need to cause the artstyle works so well.
Might not be a big deal for others, but I love when games look good while taking very little computer resources.
Only this motherfucker could make a blockchain based product in 2023 and think he’s still ahead of the curve (and not, y’know, turning up to buy tickets on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg).
I'm not really that familiar with LTT. I did subscribe to his channel, mainly because I was bemused by him borking his PC by rushing an install of Pop_OS and Steam. ("yes, do as I say", if you recall). Reading the PC Gamer article, it appears he did the same, "just drive on without thinking it through" approach to this prototype cooler. I haven't watched a lot of his videos and anyone can make a mistake but, there is an expectation that a "tech expert" show a bit of diligence. Plus, if he's showcasing a vendor, he should make sure they have every chance to shine.
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.....this guy is starting to look like a poser now....
imho, what’s happened at LTT has a few separate root causes:
A focus on extremely high output that means poor-quality work and poor working environment.
Extreme unprofessionalism that works okay when you’re a handful of guys who are close friends and all personally invested in the mission, but not when you’re a big company with communication problems across the various working groups. This is normal growing pains when a company moves from “nimble start-up” into “big production”, but Linus has been handling it really badly, and seems like a big part of the problem. Stepping back from the CEO role was a good first step but he’s obviously still de-facto running the company.
I can’t call Linus a poser since he and his team quite apparently know a massive amount about PC hardware, but the above factors mean they’re going to make near-constant screw-ups, and now they’re seeing real comeuppance from that.
edit: I just read the rest of the allegations on Xitter and holy shit this is worse than I thought. She really buried the lede. It’s still “unprofessionalism” but a level of unprofessionalism that totally crosses the line far beyond normal growing pains. Flubbing workplace sexual harassment is a serious leadership fuckup.
Well yeah, LTT has long gone fully corporate. This was a problem years ago already, it was just always weird seeing so many flock to their channel when it was clearly a rote production like a 15 years ongoing weekly crime drama, not an actual tech channel.
Their production value is often stellar, don’t get me wrong. But that’s it. That’s all they have. It’s all about optimizing the production to maximize ad revenue.
Imo, any large company, even if started hardcore by linus and luke (and co), will always in the end be mostly created by all the employees.
The ownership of any large company should imo always be gradually moved over to the people who work there.
Worker coops are not a silver bullet and will always be corruptible in any way any other democracy can, but at least it has the possibility to be proper, in contrast to strict founder / investor ownership where you are at their mercy.
If they just focused on the drama and fun stuff there would be no issue imo. The weirder videos are sometimes fun to kill time, but it’s clear they’re making a lot of mistakes (look at any server video by them).
Trying to provide accurate and in-depth reviews really isn’t their strong suit.
I fully agree. But that’s the thing, if you don’t consider LTT as a tech channel anymore, like GN or whatever, it’s fine. I now consider LTT as pure entertainment, I will never go to them to actually buy a PC or a tech product. For that I go to forums, I watch multiple reviews, etc. And if the production value is all they have, I’ll just watch it like a show with actors that are - well - acting.
I’m not trying to defend LTT, what they did was shite and I feel that they should be held accountable. But let’s compare apples with apples, LTT isn’t a tech channel anymore.
This is how I feel about LTT too. There should never be one single location you go to for all your review needs - even if it had every single product in existence in for review.
I’ll look at LTT videos to see people doing dumb shit with tens of thousands of Britannian Monies worth of tech, sometimes there’s some genuinely good “hey, this exists” (see: PowerToys which gave me Spotlight on Windows), and sometimes it triggers a “hey I could use X, I’ll do my own research and collation of reviews”.
If they can get their Labs up and running and their tests being transparent enough that they can be peer reviewed, then Labs will be a tool in the toolbox, not the toolbox itself.
I get a feeling MS doesn’t want to be in the game production/publishing space anymore. They see bigger growth opportunities elsewhere. I personally believe that it’s a big mistake and the ai bubble will cost them dearly, but chasing very short term profitability has never hurt an executive.
I’m not concerned about some young videogamer getting free healthcare. I’m more concerned with the DOGE GOBLIN getting BILLIONS in government contracts to build rockets that blow up spectacularly, wasting a billion dollars with every explosion, just so he can quip “Just a scratch.”
That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.
I’m not worried about American citizens getting health care, I’m worried about Foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs getting BILLIONS in government contracts, paid for by taxes on the working class, while calling those same workers/taxpayers “parasites.”
That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.
Okay, sure. But consider that they didn’t earn those billions of dollars by sucking up to the right assortment of Wall Street financiers, rich family members, and ego-driven Presidential nominees.
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