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Sterile_Technique, do gaming w You can't sue us for making games 'too entertaining,' say major game developers in response to addiction lawsuits
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Addictive and entertaining are synonyms now?

doctortofu,
@doctortofu@reddthat.com avatar

Wanna try some super entertaining pills, or would you prefer a syringe so you can pump entertainment straight into your veins? First round is free, don’t you want to be entertained?

christian,
@christian@lemmy.ml avatar

Somewhere in here there’s a joke about the cocaine laced with fentanyl that I keep getting told is a massive problem that requires more police funding to deal with.

The feds can’t imprison me for making cocaine “too entertaining”!

TheFriar,

I can make you feel entertained, baby!

Kusimulkku,

Something really entertaining can feel addictive just because of that I think

Naz, do gaming w Tarkov studio claims it actually doesn't have the server capacity for everyone who bought the game for $150 to play its upcoming PvE mode, still wants players to pay extra

Yeah honestly, I bought Tarkov second-hand for $8 and even then I felt like I was getting ripped off.

It’s probably not news to anyone but the game has extremely lax anti-cheat controls.

As for why people would cheat in an online game, it always seems obvious from a psychological standpoint, but the cheats for Tarkov are so egregious they’re like full blown developer offline DEBUG TOOLS.

I don’t mean “oh no, aim assistance, and they can see you through walls” – the cheat tools are hooking into features of the GAME ENGINE ITSELF, allowing players to see:


<span style="color:#323232;">PlayerName, Current HP, Current Level, Full inventory contents, currently equipped weapon, position, heading, estimated value of inventory, estimated value of your account, age of account creation, and so on.
</span>

They can also: Teleport, FLY, increase or decrease their run speed, jump height, and so on.

The cheaters are basically running around with admin privileges in the game, and the developers don’t give a flying fuck. It’s like GTA5 levels of cheating.

Why would anyone play such a game, much less pay $150 to be abused by people? You can slam your dick in a car door for a lot less.

semperverus,
@semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

Whats sad is that people keep wanting more client-side anticheat to fix this, when the real answer is server-side anticheat and changing the engine to stop being so leaky with that much information.

huginn,

It’s easy to just handwaive and say “Server side will fix it” but here’s a major issue:

You have to render people in before they appear. How do you do that without the client knowing where people are?

thantik,

You do something called raycasting to determine visibility beforehand, and don’t render anything not visible.

misterdoctor,

lol raycasting isn’t optimized for server side deployment, it would increase the poly count of the mesh tenfold, which would in turn increase average ping and fps. Couple that with the client side rendering problem and I don’t know anything about development just kidding

huginn,

Your suggesting the server maintain a real time render for every single player and somehow manage to get the data back to them in less than 17ms so that they don’t have empty frames that suddenly become people?

Because that’s a ludicrous requirement in terms of latency (ping is totally reasonable at any value under 100ms) and server capacity.

Because your solution sounds like it would cause popping constantly and be a major burden on the server, which is already the largest overhead on a released game.

30p87,

By rendering people, as in sending data about an object that should be rendered, in a few pixels before they would be visible. And not at all on distances, without a scope (as they would not be visible). Footsteps etc. could be represented by two noise levels precalculated by the servers very roughly, so you can tell someone is there behind you, but a cheat could not determine where exactly.

huginn,

You want a server to determine if a player should be visible (ie render each player’s perspective) and then get that back to them right before someone walks around the corner? With latency you’d need to render people in at least 200ms before they appear… Which is still plenty of time for a hacker to flick to them and kill them.

30p87,

True that, but I imagine such sudden flicking to seemingly random positions to be much more obvious than if the hacker had 10 seconds to see the player, tactically preaiming a corner pretending to hold an angle to then be lucky and hit a shot. Would be harder on games with smaller maps, CS like, as holding angles would be much more common than in open worlds - eg. Tarkov.

huginn,

My point was that you’re multiplying server costs several times to do that complex rendering and still not solving the problem.

ProgrammingSocks,

If the trajectory and speed says either the client or another player will cross a wall soon where the player sees them THEN it could send the data to the client. You need some tolerance for ping up to maybe 200ms but that’s it. Wallhacks could give you at most a flash of a couple specific people.

huginn,

You need to account for every gap in the wall, nook and cranny and peephole for these sightlines. You’d have to bake so much detail into every calculation server side that it would effectively be rendering the entire map to host a single game.

ProgrammingSocks,

It could be a client-side check with verification on the server. Basically transmitting which places are in view. Ray casting like the other person said. Not raytracing which is much more computationally intensive. A server side check basically so that the client can’t just say they’re looking around every corner at once.

huginn,

But then you’re adding extra latency to all visual calculations.

Your client needs to know if something is visible within the framerate of their PC.

You cannot do that fast enough.

ProgrammingSocks,

Why not? More computationally intensive things are done to calculate lighting in a lot of modern games as I alluded to. Yes it would increase the load on your CPU but that’s less of a problem nowadays with higher core counts and clock speeds and it’s not like modern anticheats don’t steal some CPU cycles already. I think you underestimate the power of modern computers. I’m not trying to be condescending here but it is worth remembering that gigahertz means BILLIONS of calculations per second.

We’re only talking in theoreticals right now anyways, it is entirely possible that a game studio has tried this and it hasn’t worked, I just don’t put a lot of faith in modern game companies.

huginn,

You cannot break the speed of light with computational effort.

You’re saying that you want to have a round trip from client to server and back happen in-between frames.

You cannot do that. Period. You will not ever have latencies that low.

Even if you frame lock it at 60fps that means you’re calculating views, sending the data up the tube, checking it on the server, responding back with all the data about the new character that should appear and then rendering the new guy within 17ms.

That is physically impossible.

ProgrammingSocks,

That’s why I already proposed tolerance for ~200ms with trajectory projections

huginn,

So you’re going to take all the places a character could be in the next 200ms, do Ray casting on all of them and send that data to the server to check every 17ms?

While the server also does that for 15 other players at the same time.

Do you know what algorithmic complexity is? Big O notation? If so - that’s a n³ * 15m³ problem space that you’re expanding out across 200ms every 17ms, where n is player locations possible in x/y/z and m is the other players locations. Physics collisions are usually the biggest drain on a computer’s cycles in game and in the worst case that’s n² complexity.

You’re talking insanely taxing here.

ProgrammingSocks,

It’s mainly client side not server side. I’m not typing out an essay for you about a random ass idea I had one day on a forum.

huginn,

I’m just baffled by the idea. No need to defend it though, this is all arbitrary anyways. It’s not like anyone is going to do this.

ProgrammingSocks,

True, I’m of the belief that gaming companies aren’t too fussed about cheaters if they’re bringing money in some way.

ColonelPanic,

There are many ways of doing this. I know the source engine uses visboxes, which are calculated once at map compile time. It takes a while to compile, but it means that clients can use the pre-compiled data to calculate parts of the map that are visible and the server can use them to determine what the player can see at a given time. I’m not sure whether it does that or not, but it would make sense to use that data.

jjjalljs,

I don’t know game development but uh do you? What are you rendering when the player can’t see them? I might legitimately just not get what you mean

huginn,

You constantly have to render people in when they can’t be seen but will soon be seen. Which also means instead of keeping track of just locations the server needs to render the scene in sufficient detail as to determine sightlines.

Usually games just do this by sending info to clients of where everyone is and letting the clients render people in when the client determines that the sightline isn’t interrupted.

Some games will just not send the positions until they’re within a certain range of each other, but I’m a realistic game like tark you’d need several kilometers of info in case someone scoped in.

If you don’t do this correctly it leads to characters popping into existence from thin air

ShortN0te,

You could use things like ray tracing to determine if one player can be seen by another on the serverside and only send packages when they can see.

But to resource heavy to do that.

Edit: Thinking about it, you simply have to render the whole map with all players server side and based on that determine which players can see each other and based on that send the information to the clients.

huginn,

You do see why that’s a serious issue right? Before the Server did nothing more than maintain a list of x,y,z coordinates of player positions. Now it’s rendering the entire game space and doing 3d calculations.

That’s several orders of magnitude more complex and costly.

ShortN0te,

That’s exactly what i said.

Still no reason to put a root kit on the customers PC.

huginn,

There’s no way in hell you’ll ever get a game company to agree to that. You’re talking 100x the expense of running a server at a minimum.

Crackhappy,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

Hell. I have enough trouble knowing where I am much less predicting where other people will appear.

cbarrick,

Cheating is such a hard problem.

Like, this is what leads to invasive client-side anti-cheat. Which also happens to be one of the main blockers for OS portability.

But if you make it so that the server has to constantly validate the game state, you get terrible lag.

You really have to design your game well to deter cheaters. And you have to empower server moderators to ban cheaters. This sorta implies releasing the servers so that communities can run their own instances, because these studios don’t have the resources to handle moderation themselves.

bountygiver,

the validation shouldn’t cause too much lag since game needs to sync up the game states anyways, which is an operation that is inherently way more expensive than any validation anyways (since each frame of the following game states need to adhere to the game rules anyways, there’s already inherently some form of validation). It’s more about not trusting everything the client says the game state should be.

Jorgelino,

I mean, i’d argue that a car costs a bit more than $150, but i see your point.

themusicman,

Call an Uber

Crackhappy,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

I’d rather pay someone else to slam my dick in a car door for 150 clams.

helios, (edited )
@helios@social.ggbox.fr avatar

Cheaters are a big problem in this game. To experience the cool parts of the game without all the bulshit, there is still SPT-AKI for playing solo and also the SIT mod for PvE multiplayer coop.

Zero22xx, do games w After getting Stardew Valley to 'a good place' with update 1.6, Eric Barone is now fully focused on his next game

Haha I’ll believe it when I see it. Pretty sure he said something similar a couple of Stardew Valley updates ago. This seems to be his number one love and obsession and one of these days while working on Haunted Chocolatier again, he’s gonna think “hmmm that would actually go nicely in Stardew Valley” and start working on SV again.

Just FYI I’m not complaining or anything. I think it’s funny and relatable. But I’m not gonna hold my breath for this game until it’s actually out.

raltoid,

I’m not saying there’s going to be another Stardew Valley update, I don’t even know at this point. Right now I am focused on my next game. So, we’ll see.

-September, 2021

bimbimboy,
@bimbimboy@lemm.ee avatar

Right now I am focused on my next game

The right now is over, now it’s stardew valley time again!

Damage,

It’s possible he actually doesn’t like Haunted Chocolatier, therefore escaping back to work on Stardew Valley when he can’t force himself anymore

Tja,

So damn relatable.

bennel, do games w Ubisoft boss says it knows players think it has an 'inconsistency in quality,' so it delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows to flip that script

I disagree. Ubisoft has been very consistently trash for a while.

BonerMan,

Not really, look at anno for example. Its just the big titles that are regarded as not good.

neidu3,

1602 was the best Anno. Fight me.

BonerMan,

OK, I personally think 1404 with the interesting and challenging campaign including the Venice dlc was the top, afterwards I think 1800 is the next best. My most controversial opinion is that both 2070 and 2205 where good and well made games, with some flaws of course but that doesn’t mean its bad. Shure some disliked the setting and I was septic as well.

neidu3,

Never played the futuristic ones. What appealed to me with the anno games was the atmosphere of sails and settlers.

BonerMan,

They bring that atmosphere to the future settings very well actually

donuts,

I agree on 2070 and 2205. I really enjoyed them and I chalked it up to me liking sci-fi enough to be able to bear it.

BonerMan,

Yeah a setting change like that was very risky, but the next is also going to be very interesting going into the opposid direction.

I quite like SciFi so the setting itself wasn’t a problem for me. 1800 goes into the steampunk direction, would appreciate a full on Steampunk Anno. And a Dieselpunk version would be cool as well.

olicvb,
@olicvb@lemmy.ca avatar

Yea, I mean Watchdogs 2, The Division, Steep, I know some friends loved For Honor and R6: Siege is amazing (idk how the game looks today tho with all the updates they made).

Seems people tend to see ubisoft as AC and FarCry only.

BonerMan,

Some people love to shit on ubisoft when others are way worse.

ech,

I have enough shit to go around.

Katana314,

I still applaud Watch Dogs 2 for integrating offline and online play much better than Dark Souls did. You can still pause the game, for instance.

Harvey656,
@Harvey656@lemmy.world avatar

All of those games you just picked are quite old, watchdogs 2 came out in 2016, these games no longer are the ubishit standard, they are far above it. Plus Ubispft doesn’t make sequels to those games anymore, for whatever reason.

PunchingWood,

I personally loved Avatar and Outlaws.

They’re not groundbreaking games, but they’re both very immersive and for fans of both franchises it’s a lot more fun to explore in these games.

icecreamtaco,
@icecreamtaco@lemmy.world avatar

Their current Monopoly game is infamously bad

BonerMan,

OK, but who gives a shit about a monopoly game? Either play it like a normal person, when drinking with friends or don’t.

icecreamtaco,
@icecreamtaco@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve watched huge vtubers play it multiple times and every single time the game ends early from a crash. Or the game accidentally bankrupts a player. It’s bad publicity

BonerMan,

HM… Yeah thats Bad publicity.

But that never happened to me, and I played both games for over 200 hours each. I even played them on Linux through emulation and it didn’t happen.

Aielman15, do games w Cities: Skylines 2 devs warn players of performance problems: 'we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted'
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

I’m kind of used to devs releasing apologies for their games after a bad release and the following review bombing. It’s almost guaranteed to happen for any modern AAA game, it’s the sorry state of the industry. But now, we’ve reached a point where devs apologize for their games before they’re even released. This shit is hilarious.

What’s next? “We’re going to release a game four years from now. You should temper your expectations, it’s probably going to suck.”

I mean, kudos to them for warning the potential customers, instead of lying to them or luring them in with nice trailers and trying to silence journalists by prohibiting them from showing game footage (I think I remember someone doing that…). Although I’m not sure how I should thank them. Should I buy the game because they were honest? Or should I not buy it, because, well, they were honest? I’m confused.

AProfessional,

It’s possible some machines power through it. Just don’t preorder it and wait until you know it will work for you.

jedibob5,

I mean, I think it just demonstrates that the problem is not on a development level, but rather on a project management and (particularly) an executive level.

Crunch and unreasonable deadlines in the gaming industry are the norm, and there’s too much pressure from higher up to deliver a product as soon as possible, even if it isn’t 100% ready.

Unfortunately, there’s no real good answer for this as a consumer… If the game does well, the execs who set the deadlines pocket the profits. If it does poorly, the developers who worked on it bear the brunt of it by either getting insufficient raises, an even higher level of pressure on the next game, or at worst, get laid off.

The real answer would be widespread industry unionization. Efforts to do this are ever-so-slowly being made, but it’s not even remotely close to being a reality. I’d say that if the game appeals to you and you don’t mind performance issues at launch, buy it, but if not, then don’t.

Korkki, (edited )

problem is not on a development level, but rather on a project management and (particularly) an executive level.

In any industry as time progresses the production becomes more and more capital intensive and that needs more and bigger investors and all that capital means that there is a bigger risk and that is mitigated by the investors by requiring “their guys” to staff the management and these people are unusually really bad for the technical and actual value side of the business on the long run, because they are usually people with financial or marketing backgrounds. They fundamentally work by the logic of profit maximization and there are always easier and more surefire ways toi achieve that than with supplying a good product. It’s even worse when the end product is something that could be considered “art”. In AAA it all eventually leads into pushing bland installments under rushed deadlines for the same once successful franchise out one after another, just because that is where the risks are lowest and money is still being made.

hiddengoat,

You're failing to take Paradox's lifecycles into account. Even though they're only the publisher, keep in mind that they're used to supporting games for 8-10 years after launch. Cities: Skylines came out in 2015 and has seen continual development ever since. Its performance was also abysmal at a point, but people kept playing and the devs kept improving it to the point where nobody even fully remembers why we cared about SimCity going to shit when Cities: Skylines was right there.

hiddengoat,

Given that Paradox has near decade-long lifecycles for their games the launch window is utterly meaningless. Hell, Europa Universalis IV had an expansion released earlier this year and it was released in 2013.

meatand2veg,

Imperator has entered the chat

hiddengoat,

That game had the unfortunate timing of being released when everyone knew CK3 was around the corner. It ended up being seen as a stopgap release and that just got worse when CK3 came out. It got a couple of DLCs but the players just weren't there anymore. It has some good ideas.

Microw,

Tbf the whole game was someone taking the half-developed CK3 and slapping an antiquity simulator on top of that.

JustZ,
@JustZ@lemmy.world avatar

I wonder what is the oldest game to get a real expansion.

andrew_bidlaw,
@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

Of singleplayer games, it may be Quake. This one was created before the recent remaster and compatible with different engines.

In honor of Quake’s 20th anniversary, MachineGames, an internal development studio of ZeniMax Media, who are the current owners of the Quake IP, released online a new expansion pack for free, called Episode 5: Dimension of the Past.

hiddengoat,

Episode 6: Dimension of the Machine was released in 2021. Quake was released in 1996, making it 25 years.

I have a feeling there's probably some obscure-ass Nethack clone that's been getting regular updates since the creator first programmed it on a PDP/11 but outside of that I can't think of any actual commercial products that have received expansions that long after.

Sigil doesn't count, but it should.

andrew_bidlaw,
@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, guess, Doom and Quake are the earliest non-arcade games that are still accessible to current generations of players making it somehow relevant. I feel like only Sega could do something, like releasing one of their classics updated with some new content, but it won’t be the same as original cartridge releases and obviously incompatible with them.

pimento64,

I would say what’s next is preemptively decrying death threats, but they already do that when they preemptively fabricate the death threats.

AProfessional,

As a software developer I can say threats from users are absolutely real unfortunately. A lot of people suck and it’s easy to hear from them.

pimento64,

Sure. But if you know your product is going to be trash, why not jump ahead of the curve and victimize yourself to start with? It’s not difficult to do these days, and why wouldn’t you do it? Altruism? At this point, not assuming this happens is just naive.

DancingIsForbidden, (edited )

the game will be optimized eventually. if you want to wait until then, do so. me, I just want to play this. I don’t care I’ve been waiting a long time for this game, and I have a very powerful desktop PC so I don’t really care.

I am upset they do not have a native Linux build this time around, however. And I don’t care that proton has gotten good, a game like this needs to run natively to get the full experience. The first one did and Unity makes it trivially simple to export builds to other operating systems.

llii,

Should I buy the game because they were honest? Or should I not buy it, because, well, they were honest? I’m confused.

Wait for the release and reviews. Then decide if you want to buy the game or not.

ogeist, do games w The Witcher 4 got a surprise reveal at The Game Awards, and this one is all about Ciri | PC Gamer

Can’t wait to see the Netflix adaptation again with Henry Cavill as Ciri.

Siethron,

You’re joking but I feel like that would satisfy EVERYONE’s fantasies

tpyo,

Just cast him as all the roles. in everything

Gradually_Adjusting,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

He’s busy… Doing everything

SoleInvictus,

I would crowdfund the shit out of that.

TheGreenWizard, do games w The 'Stop Killing Games' initiative is close to its final deadline, and after that, its leader is understandably done: 'Either the frog hops out of the pot, or it's dead'

Ah, another post where I get to rant about Piratesoftware. Fuck that self righteous, egotistical, fear mongering, ignorant, big headed, grifting, skript kiddy, cornball. Dude couldn’t be assed even to read the Q&A, then makes up stuff about the initiative out of thin air. Dude is such a little weezel, I can’t BELIEVE he still has a following after his hate campaign against the initiative. The fact that anyone outside of his immediate family cares about what he has to say boggles my mind.

TLDR: Thor, not my cup of tea personally.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

Louis Rossman is, at best, a “free speech absolutionist” libertarian, but he is probably the youtuber with the most experience actually working to get consumer (well, small business) rights legislature passed. And he specifically talked about this www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4zH8bJDI8

In a nutshell: It doesn’t matter if thor is a dipshit (he is and always has been). Attack the arguments, not the person. Because others will have similar complaints and all “He is a fucking prick and he didn’t read the FAQ” does is hurt your argument and make things seem culty.

Because if it really WAS actually addressed (and understand that a response is not necessarily a refutation), point that out. Rather than require people to go dig through a bunch of youtube videos and blog posts.

inb4_FoundTheVegan,
@inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world avatar

Attack the arguments, not the person.

I mean… Piratesoftware certainly went after the person.

dustyData,

The relevant actors in this discussion already tried to address the arguments. Ross made a response video because Thor refused to talk to him like a petulant child.

Thor simply doesn’t care, his first comment to the initiative was literally “eat my whole ass”[sic]. The whole conversation is way past rational discourse. Thor decided to actively oppose the initiative under the main argument of “this is fucking stupid”(direct quote). There simply isn’t any rational argument to address. It’s all a personal attack and misinformation from a narcissist with an audience. He knows that this initiative kills his grift business. That’s all there is to know about the content of his rationality.

radiouser,

They certainly didn’t conduct themselves in a polite or persuasive manner during their argument(s). As others have said in this thread: he has attacked everything but the topic and when they did they (purposefully) seemed very confused about the overall goal and desire of the campaign.

Is this a case of being wrong about your initial conclusions and doubling down? Or is this a bad actor spreading purposeful misinformation? Going by the video alone it’s hard to see an alternative.

ArchmageAzor,
@ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world avatar

He’s a dev himself. He won’t be able to abandon his next game after it flops if this goes through. That’s why he’s spreading disinformation. I can only hope MoistCritikal’s video on it helps.

Also, SKG should seek legal action for defamation.

Madagaskar_sky,

See, this again. They can abandon their game, it’s just that they have to patch out call home to function functionality. Patch out account verification and other bullshit. The game won’t work like before? That’s OK, it’s about reasonable playability. MMO with no players? That’s OK. No match making? That’s OK. However it was playing before abandonment, just let that run on the computer.

Maybe the final law will ask for a local server client, but the petition is only asking for reasonable playability. Reasonable.

dustyData,

He is referring to the fact that the only game pirate software has made was abandoned 7 years ago in early access and the dude just keeps patching it without significant content to avoid steam flagging and keep charging money for an unfinished demo. It’s an unimaginative ripoff to boot.

Madagaskar_sky,

OK, I didn’t know about that.

DoucheBagMcSwag, do games w Bungie confirms it stole art once again, will undertake a 'thorough review' of Marathon assets

The art director followed Antireal on Twitter.

Stop the bullshit. They knew what they were doing

Chozo,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

The art director followed Antireal on Twitter.

If not for this, I would've chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it'd be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.

It's a shame, because he's a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.

Nikls94,

They could just market it as “with Art by Antireal” and give him the commission and fame he deserves…

Railcar8095,

designs being abstract enough

They copied the text and the name of a made up company. That’s so blatant I can’t believe nobody just asked “wait, is that on our lore or something?”

echodot,

That’s what I don’t get. Presumably there is some lore behind this game (unless they really are that lazy) so why don’t they just use one of the companies that they definitely have for the game

Acid2688,

So abstract they contain the artist’s personal logo.

mriswith,

They copy-pasted text and personal logo.

If you think that’s “abstract enough”, I’m guessing you’re either a plagiarist or an “AI artist”. Or do you want to admit that you didn’t really look at the comparison images?

Chozo,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

Or do you want to admit that you didn't really look at the comparison images?

You're already like five comments deep into an argument that hasn't even happened yet, calm down.

wccrawford,

I only see the first of the comparison images linked here. The line of identical symbols inside squares is pretty convincing.

The second image contains lines of text copied verbatim, and is undeniable.

bsky.app/profile/antire.al/post/3lpa4gamtzs2l

mosiacmango,

More pics are coming out. One of them has the artist’s handle in it. Original art is the yellow to the right. Whoever added it to the game intentionally smudged the name, but left enough of it to be readabale.

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/5cae0af1-0891-4376-ab8d-54c842a0bb06.jpeg

bsky.app/profile/…/3lpafkzimqc2x

Cethin,

Some of the stuff has the artist’s logo still on it.

Renacles, do gaming w Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again'

I’m sure he’ll do it right after launching Hyperloop

Cosmos7349, do games w 'The gold rush is over:' Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon devs say that big Game Pass and Epic exclusive deals have dried up for indie devs

I mean it’s a play as old as time; “we give great deals to the sellers and the buyers, until we own the market”

BirdyBoogleBop,

Does Epic have any market share past free games and fortnight?

pivot_root,

Developers. UE5 is chalking up to be the defacto standard for modern titles that don’t have budgets large enough to make their own engine.

EGS, on the other hand, is still an abysmal failure beyond the lure of free (and increasingly shittier) games and a yearly 25% off discount coupon that people fall for.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

I really wish they’d start by not making the EGS program a fucking UE5 app. Seriously, using the whole ass engine to render html is stupid beyond belief

pivot_root,

Wait, is it seriously a full-blown UE5 application?

DdCno1,

I was going to call shenanigans, but then I looked at the details of the application:

https://i.imgur.com/J30SGAr.png

So it seems there is something to it.

pivot_root,

That is ridiculous. Even Electron would have been better…

ICastFist, (edited )
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

If you peruse the folder where it’s installed and compared to any UE4 or UE5 game, you’ll notice all the other similarities in .dll files, folders and whatnot. Even the CrashReporter.exe is the same you see in unreal games. Or you can check the config files at Epic GamesLauncherEngineConfig which has stuff like BaseEngine.ini which, among other networking configurations, also has this:


<span style="color:#323232;">[/Script/Engine.Engine]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ConsoleClassName=/Script/Engine.Console
</span><span style="color:#323232;">GameViewportClientClassName=/Script/Engine.GameViewportClient
</span><span style="color:#323232;">LocalPlayerClassName=/Script/Engine.LocalPlayer
</span><span style="color:#323232;">WorldSettingsClassName=/Script/Engine.WorldSettings
</span><span style="color:#323232;">NavigationSystemClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemV1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">NavigationSystemConfigClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemModuleConfig
</span><span style="color:#323232;">AvoidanceManagerClassName=/Script/Engine.AvoidanceManager
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PhysicsCollisionHandlerClassName=/Script/Engine.PhysicsCollisionHandler
</span>

Meanwhile, in Epic GamesLauncherPortalConfig, the “game” part of the launcher, you have DefaultGame.ini and DefaultEngine.ini, the latter’s first 2 lines pointing back to the Engine folder: [Configuration] BasedOn=…EngineConfigBaseEngine.ini

So, yeah, it’s the actual engine. I was going to complain about disk bloat, but my Steam install is currently sitting at 1.3GB and I’m not entirely sure how much of that is from cached stuff. GOG Galaxy is taking ~980MB, but roughly 650MB are from redist installers (MSVC2005, 2007, dotnet, etc), so a “clean” install would be way lighter than Steam or EGS, the latter at 1.1GB on a clean install.

steakmeoutt,

Why is it stupid exactly? UE5 scales very well and places very little demand on hardware for simple tasks.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Ever heard the saying “Everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer”? Basically, just because you have a tool, it doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for every job. UE5 is great for making games, cinematics and loads of other stuff. But why use it to effectively behave as a browser like Chrome or Firefox, but worse, when there are alternatives made specifically for that?

steakmeoutt,

That’s not really a valid response. Please accurately clarify why UE5 is inefficient at running a store. Benchmarks and other evidence is required.

pivot_root,

I don’t think benchmarks are really needed to explain this. The whole game engine part is an unnecessary step.

To initialize a web browser component within UE5, you first need to initialize UE5 and then the web browser within it. Or, you could initialize a web browser directly, saving the memory and time needed to start up UE5.

They clearly have developers who know how to use CEF or whatever web view framework since they added it to Unreal Engine, so it’s not like they don’t know how to add it to a standalone application.

steakmeoutt,

Wait, wait. Do you think that “the whole engine” is loaded for every UE5 executable? I can tell you that’s not at all how this works. The point of a scalable engine is that it loads whatever relevant libraries or portions of the engine that would be needed, including swapping for custom code where appropriate. The idea that the storefront is unoptimised purely because it uses a game engine is just as ignorant as saying that you should measure all computers purely by a single metric. Maybe you could also compare EGS to other stores and measure only the executable’s size? By your reasoning there’s no need for benchmarks, so surely the store with the smallest exe wins, right?

pivot_root,

When I said “the whole game engine part”, I was referring to the usage of the engine at all. The whole engine obviously isn’t loaded, but there’s further abstractions and initialization code compared to using CEF or the Edge web view directly.

I’m simply saying that it’s a waste of resources to require loading or initializing any other part of Unreal Engine (including the component loading code!) when they’re only using it as web view.

I’m also not saying any other storefront is better. Steam is a bloated pig that half uses CEF and half uses Valve’s own proprietary GUI library, and the various other Electron-based publishers’ launchers suffer from different but equally stupid problems.

steakmeoutt,

You have provided absolutely no proof that using UE5 to run EGS is a waste of resources nor that your idea of using a browser directly would be more performant. Just saying things isn’t proof and the burden sits with you.

pivot_root,

I’m not about to install EGS to prove something that can be deduced using common sense and critical thinking.

Abstractions are not free. The more of them you add, the more resources will be consumed by the application. Unreal Engine is an extra layer of abstraction sitting above some web view framework. Ergo, using the same web view framework without the Unreal Engine component abstraction would be cheaper.

Gabu,

Nope. Godot, a fully free Unity-like Engine is shaping up to be the defacto standard for good games (AAA garbage is being ignored purposefully)

pivot_root,

I know Godot exists, and it’s preferable to supporting Epic, but it isn’t up to feature parity with UE5. Particularly, when it comes to asset streaming and open world games, Unreal has better support out of the box.

I would love for Godot to be the standard and first choice for every developer (including AAA), though.

UndercoverUlrikHD,
@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

“ignoring the major players in the industry”

UE5 had turned into the standard whether you like it or not. I personally don’t like the engine, but that doesn’t mean I’ll lie about its position in the market, and neither should you. You aren’t doing Godot any favours with it

Gabu,

When said “major players” only pump out trash that’s not fun to play, yes, I will ignore them gladly. The last AAA game I bought was Fallen Order, which I promply refunded after finishing, since it was more of a walking and climbing simulator than anything else – and that was one of the better AAA games to come out in the past decade.

Indie devs and studios are the ones actually carrying the industry forwards.

UndercoverUlrikHD,
@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

Your preference doesn’t dictate what’s industry standard is my point. It would be like someone only playing exclusively Total War games claiming the Warscape Engine is industry standard, sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it.

The last AAA game I bought was Fallen Order,

A shame you missed out on Baldurs Gate 3 then. Alan Wake also got great criticism.

Gabu,

Fallacious reasoning. “Indie” isn’t a genre of games. I don’t claim AAA games are garbage because of a preference – they’re objectively slop made without passion as a cashgrab.

UndercoverUlrikHD,
@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

Lol, alright dude

Rose,

Steam is largely driven by Valve’s own games and freebies as well. 1.5M currently playing Dota 2 and CS 2, with the next best being F2P games: PUBG with 370K online, Apex Legends, and Naraka.

ABCDE,

Rocket League and Fall Guys are also on there. Not sure how much paid games sell there though.

Ledivin, do gaming w Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again'

Elon’s companies have been successful despite his input, not because of it. If you’re interested, do some reading on how middle-management protected their teams from his nonsense in both Tesla and SpaceX, basically just feeding him bullshit that sounded good and ignoring him whenever possible. Those people are why the companies have thrived.

Shit, just look at Twitter before and after. The valuation difference is staggering.

mesamunefire,

twitter is probably the best thing to happen for spacex, testla and other companies lol. He just spends all his time shitposting.

Grimy,

Not to mention all the preference he will show his own companies because of the appointment buying Twitter got him.

givesomefucks,

It’s risk assessment.

If you have a startup and someone offers you 9 figures so they’re the CEO and you still run the day to day…

You’d be an idiot to risk it, because any number of billion dollar companies can fuck you over thru innumerable ways.

So every once and a while someone with shit tier risk assessment lucks out and suddenly becomes unimaginable rich. And those are the people making offers on the next generation of startups.

The system is set up so the worst people possible run shit. Because no sane person would keep “letting it ride” to the point they make billions, and a crazy person who does becomes too big to fail. And once they get to that point, they’ve convinced themselves no one else is smart enough to play Russian roulette 100 times in a row.

At that point they’ve conned themselves into really believing they’re geniuses who know more than anyone.

Bieren,

I tell people this all the time. There are people who have the job of distracting musk like a 3 year old. They don’t believe it and continue to worship him. They act like he personally invented everything and refuse to accept the truth. The only thing he actually invented was the cybertruck.

Soup,

Did he actually invent the Cybertruck? He drew the world’s shittiest picture that was all straight lines and then made a bunch of toddler-level claims about its abilities while demanding results from the teams of real people that actually had to make his nonsense even somewhat functional.

People who deserve the title of inventor actually do the fucking work. He just said “and it’ll be invincible and climb over mountains and can pull GOD and be SO COOL”

Snowclone,

I read this whole article by some truck review guy? And he was confused because he said the cyber truck came within a hair of filling a niche in the truck world that was pretty much free to take, but just narrowly ended up being in a much better established range of trucks that it had no hope in competing in. So yeah… he did all the demanding and none of the thinking, and everyone else was just there for the paycheck.

Soup,

The niche was what the Rivian and fuck, even the F150 Lightning are doing. The Cybertruck looks like ass and I could almost say the appearance is “kinda neat for trying something different” if it wasn’t such a dogshit product in every single way.

Ledivin,

I can’t help but laugh every time I see one, and in the occasional instance that the owners actually pay attention to the world around them and notice, they always glare at me 😂 they know exactly how fucking stupid they look, they just try to pretend nobody agrees

Snowclone,

Yeah that sounds about right. From a pure business standpoint it’s an error in every way.

pennomi,

Shotwell is an amazing person for operating SpaceX to such success, despite all of Elon’s efforts to the contrary, like trying to cancel Falcon Heavy.

Strider,

I had a boss like that once. Yes, it can be done.

But the bottom line is they still think they’re great and everything will go on.

That is very harmful to society.

Denjin, do games w WoW's Leeroy Jenkins, one of the internet's oldest memes, turns 20 years old—and after looking back on what we wrote in 2005, I feel like we've failed Leeroys everywhere

internet’s oldest memes

2005

Dancing baby would like a word

Visstix,

Yeah that’s maybe youtube’s oldest meme (probably not), not the internet.

robolemmy,
@robolemmy@lemmy.world avatar

Dancing baby was way before youtube existed

Dorkyd68,

There was a lady lawyer show on TV called ally mcbeal and she was like crazy or something and used to hallucinate the dancing baby. I don’t remember it that well as it was an old people show and I was a kid but yeah way before youtube

Denjin,

Dancing baby was everywhere, truly the first Internet driven viral phenomenon. And yes, it did feature in Ally McBeal which was a huge TV show mid-late 90s which goes to illustrate how truly viral the dancing baby meme was at a time where Internet usage was still limited to only a minority of people with access to desktop computers.

Visstix,

I meant leroy, not the baby.

robolemmy,
@robolemmy@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, sorry. Context is not my strong suit

FooBarrington,

One of. Not the oldest meme, one of the oldest.

grrgyle,

Chewbacca would like a word.

LookBehindYouNowAndThen,

Chewbacca ate my balls.

grrgyle,

You get it

samus12345,

Yeah, dancing baby was 1996, 9 years before 2005, which is an eternity in internet years. Leeroy is one of the internet’s older memes, sure, but way too new to qualify as one of the oldest.

Cocodapuf,

All your base are belong to us.

Make your time…

ms_lane,

Mushroom Mushroom

GissaMittJobb,

one of

Denjin,

10 years…

SomethingBurger,

20

Denjin,

10 years between Dancing Baby and Leeroy Jenkins

CrowAirbrush,

Dancing baby was a mere screensaver, no?

prole,

Lol for real… This title made me feel old

CubitOom, (edited ) do games w 'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'

I can’t wait to play Elden Ring 2 when it’s made by Nintendo because Elden Ring used summoning and now only runs at 12 fps.

FerretyFever0,

Nintendo also owns the rights to platformers, racing games, and rpgs. Tough luck, that's just how it is.

Valmond,

NPC dialogs? Owned by Nintendo too.

Atherel,

Hey listen!

ShaggySnacks,

Did you pay for that parent use?

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Don’t forget alarm clocks

addie,
@addie@feddit.uk avatar

Or ‘love hotels’. You want to rent a room by the hour, Mario gets his cut.

Anivia,

If it was made by Nintendo (not Gamefreak) it would actually be optimized

CubitOom,

If by optimized you mean removing most details and adding a cartoon filter over it.

https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/4b840016-edd6-4107-9699-c882d0be1061.jpeg

Vs

https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/516ec639-0810-4fda-b92e-572bc9286fae.jpeg

Terrible legal practices aside.

glitchdx,

Nintendo deserves a lot of shit for their business decisions, but not for their art directions. windwaker and sunshine still look good to this day by simply appling higher resolutions and some anti aliasing. No game with “realistic graphics” has ever stood the test of time.

CubitOom,

No game with “realistic graphics” has ever stood the test of time.

Hahahahahahaha

Auli,

Which ones still look good a decade later.

vaultdweller013,

Shadow of the Colossus is what 20 years old? It’s pretty much as realistic as the PS2 could handle and still looks decent.

ech, do gaming w The PlayStation Network outage proves PC gamers were right to resist its mandatory sign-in requirement

They were right for many other reasons. This is just one.

Beetschnapps, (edited ) do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'

Ah yes “…Bethesda’s managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.”

Thanks for clearing that up AI writer.

Also how is it thrilling to “blast off” and “set foot on a new planet” when the game is more clicking through menus and fast traveling.

In No man’s sky you actually land. In star field you fast travel.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

RockPaperShotgun’s review is out now, and I could not agree more. The game is so meaningless.

It’s crazy impressive. Especially on a technical level. But it feels like a tech demo more than a game almost. It’s still fun to idle time away in, but it’s not engaging. At all. It’s brain idle time. In a positive way, but also no more than that.

Erk, (edited )

In this case I’d call that a positive statement. That’s what I was looking for when I decided to get the game… I’m not going to shell out my dimes to Bethesda hoping for disco elysium, I basically want something that makes demands of my brain just a little more than solitaire or minesweeper.

I don’t really agree with it not being ‘engaging’ though, I guess depending on what you mean. I’m not staying up at night wondering what’s gonna happen next, but I’m staying up past my bedtime designing space ships and then running out of cash and going and doing a fun loot-and-shoot mission to get more money to build more space ships. That ain’t bad.

srecko,

It was not ai but a joke how he is famous to the wider audience.

Treczoks,

In No Mans Sky, you’ve seen five planets, you’ve seen them all.

Beetschnapps, (edited )

Not necessarily but yea it trades the bespoke environments for generated ones that aren’t so dissimilar.

I think it makes for interesting comparison. Both space traveling games, one comprised of specially designed levels navigated by menus, the other less variety but you actually journey to them and given the sheer number you can actually discover and name a planet no one’s ever been to.

Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.

Treczoks,

Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t advertise really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.

Yep. There are three space games on the market that are not too far apart: NMS, Elite: Dangerous, and Starfield. They have similarities, they have differences, and they have different target audiences.

Erk,

They’re up to ten or twenty now.

buddhabound,

I told my buddy the other day that it was Bethesda Menu Simulator 2023, and I wasn’t wrong. I was working on my outpost, so I’d place some stuff, go to star map, select the planet with the material, pick a landing spot, land, get up, mine ore for 5 minutes, fast travel to ship, repeat 2-3 more planets, choose the outpost, land, place some more stuff. Then repeat.

Dubious_Fart,

i find it less headache to just sit in UC distrobution and fast forward 24 hours to keep reseting inventory to get all the mats I need to build, at least my starter shit.

Jakeroxs,

You could skip fast traveling to your ship, or do any of the plethera of quests instead of what you’re doing

buddhabound, (edited )

Or, and I know this is a crazy idea, Bethesda could have made a game that has enough content to fill the space (pun intended) they created. Yes. I can run back to my ship through the mined out area I just cleared just to prove a point that the game is as flawless as you’d like to believe. Or, I can offer one fair critique of the game.

I’m looking forward to what modders do with the canvas Bethesda has provided.

Jakeroxs,

Nah I mean you can just fast travel off the planet without first having to fast travel back to your ship, a few less loading screens and menu interactions right there.

buddhabound,

Honestly, I didn’t even think to just go to another planet without stopping by my ship first. That’s somehow… worse? I thought it was super weird when I realized I could do it from the outpost without a ship nearby, but hadn’t thought to just fast travel everywhere all the time.

Jakeroxs,

Definitely saves some time and extra loading screens/menu navigation, sorry I wasn’t clear with what I meant initially.

toxicbubble,

coming from elite dangerous, flying in NMS feels incredibly simplified. landing is literally “push a button to land”. either way, they both beat starfield in that department

Beetschnapps,

Totally it is but that’s the style. The game isn’t trying to simulate complexity, it’s more a kick back and relax game masquerading as a prog-rock album cover. Pressing X to let your ship land itself gives you just enough time to hit a joint and make a plan.

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

weird in starfield i also have to press x to land, so whats everybody’s big deal?

Beetschnapps,

“Press X to Pay Respects”

Koffiato,

Landing or taking off isn’t interrupted with a loading screen in either game. You also have freedom of pointing ship to a direction and go there.

Those two things combine to make you feel like you are moving around the game world as opposed to game world moving around you.

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

that may be true, but starfield has some fun quests and interesting characters, which makes the world feel real and not like im the last human being in the universe

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