polygon.com

FlashMobOfOne, do games w Top D&D designers join Critical Role after quitting Wizards of the Coast
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

Good. WotC is wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

Aren’t Hasbro the villain moreso than WotC?

mos,

From what I’ve read WOTC has been a bad employer for a long time.

LovableSidekick,

Depends on who you talk to. I always thought the atmo was pretty chill. When I was there around 2010 as a contractor for a couple years they had a strange work schedule: 9-hr days Mon-Thurs and half day Friday - which was almost universally regarded as a screw-around day, along with at least half of Thursday.

mos,

Thanks for providing your view! I had only read the mostly negative reviews on job sites when I was thinking of applying around 2015ish.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

From my understanding, they used to basically be the same as Games Workshop is today: If you talk to people who work there “off the record” (or they are pushing the equivalent of a youtube channel… shout out to Rogue Hobbies) you’ll either get outright condemnation or LOTS of vague posting of a culture of theft and abuse.

But recent years have seen people get annoyed enough at the products that they now care about labor and we start to see a LOT more complaints.

L0rdMathias,

WotC+D&D is like ~30-40% of Hasbro. The only other brand they have that’s worth a similar amount is (ironically enough lmao) Monopoly.

HobbitFoot,

The problem for Hasbro is that, right now, the company doesn’t have that much in non WotC moneymakers and hasn’t had it for years. There have been attempts by activist investors to push for having WotC demerged from Hasbro so WotC isn’t subsidizing the rest of Hasbro. The across-the-board cuts were Hasbro leadership trying to placate investors, but they cut muscle and bone from WotC for some reason instead.

Sunschein,
@Sunschein@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, sure, but it’s like pulling the WotC mask off a Scooby Doo villain.

ilinamorato,

People have been complaining about WotC’s executive meddling in D&D and MTG for as long as I can remember, since before the 1999 Hasbro purchase. D&D 3e, mostly written after WotC acquired TSR but published shortly after Hasbro acquired WotC, was panned so badly that they dropped 3.5 just a couple years later. And 4e (including the first OGL fiasco) happened when Hasbro didn’t care about WotC because they were all-in on the Michael Bay Transformers movie. In fact, up until Stranger Things and Critical Role, Hasbro seems to have considered WotC the “Magic: The Gathering Money Printer” and done most of their meddling on that side of the house.

bestboyfriendintheworld,

I organized pen and paper RPG conventions back when D&D 4 came out. We banned D20 based games even then as a boycott of WotC.

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

And Crawford is an incompetent smartass. I honestly don’t know what any TTRPG would have to gain from including him in the team.

If they hope to chase 5e’s success by following in its footsteps - piss poor adventure modules, nonexistent DM support, unbalanced player options, and a game designer that contradicts himself on Twitter every other post while attempting to explain why he isn’t wrong - then good luck to them, I guess.

I very much doubt that 5e became the juggernaut that it’s now because of Crawford. If anything, it’s despite of him - mostly because of the free publicity granted by things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, and DnD being the default option for anyone who develops an interest in roleplaying for the first time.

ilinamorato,

How much do we actually know about what Crawford is like outside of the WotC machine? He might be perfectly competent but held back by executive mismanagement.

Crankenstein,

I would put money on the downfall of WotC being exclusively due to being owned by Hasbro and their executives forcing their greedy practices onto the team.

ilinamorato,

WotC was already pretty awful before the Hasbro acquisition, as I recall.

Crankenstein,

Internally, yea, but I was speaking more towards the decline of their products, not the treatment of staff, that was being discussed in the top comment.

ilinamorato,

Yeah, I guess that’s pretty subjective overall. In any case, they’re not so great now.

iAmTheTot,

Crawford worked on Blue Rose, Warhammer Fantasy, and Mutants & Masterminds outside of WotC.

ilinamorato,

Ok, I’m not familiar enough with any of those to know what that means in this context. But in any case, weren’t his contributions to those games all ages ago? M&M in particular came out almost 30 years ago, right?

Crankenstein,

Good, WotC HASBRO is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

FIFY

Creat,

WotC did some shady shit before, too. Certainly right improve since the acquisition though.

Crankenstein,
Serinus,

Either way, the money grab is why I didn’t get back into MtG recently.

I considered sticking my toe in and was told “oh yeah, just buy a $90 commander precon and hop right in.”

Yeah, no thanks.

zipzoopaboop,

Impossible to find without a markup of at least 40% if a final Fantasy commander

chrischryse,

Why?

RhondaSandTits,
@RhondaSandTits@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Sending The Pinkerton’s off to intimidate a YouTube reviewer

Tuxman,

Everybody who was passionate about games have left and been replaced by money-grabbing opportunists who only want to inflate the stock value, bail out and get their severance pay.

I don’t have links to it at the moment (I’m prepping dinner… so excuse the laziness 😅) but if you search “D&D controversy” or “OGL” you’ll find plenty of discussions and analysis.

In short: they tried (but are still attempting to) bring micro-transactions and loot box mechanics to tabletop games.

exu, do games w Ubisoft sued for shutting down The Crew

If you’re an EU citizen, please take the time to sign this citizen initiative to stop killing games. It could be our best chance of preventing such situations in the future.

www.stopkillinggames.com

youTellMe,

Thor summarizes the problems with this initiative pretty well: youtu.be/ioqSvLqB46Y?si=QPjVZcV7zteBPpos

TheEighthDoctor,

No he doesn’t, he creates strawman and fights them

SomethingBurger,

This guy’s strawman arguments have already been destroyed by plenty of people who actually know what they’re talking about and don’t have an interest in keeping the current situation.

Joelio,

The guy who won’t go 5 seconds without flashing his “20 years of service to Blizzard” badge also was dumbfounded at the possibility of people self hosting game servers like World of Warcraft, even though they’ve been doing it for years. Dude seems like a MASSIVE know it all.

iaaudio,

What a terrible take.

whithom, do games w Ubisoft sued for shutting down The Crew

If they release something with paid content, I should get to have that paid content forever, or get a refund. 🤷‍♂️

Lost_My_Mind,

Cries in MMOs from 20 years ago.

Brumefey,

Last week I downloaded Dark Age of Camelot which I have not played nor paid for 20 years, and my character was still there. I was really not expecting them to keep the data for so long without any payment.

Starbuncle,

I understand why most companies wouldn’t do that, but they should be forced to open-source online games that get shut down or otherwise made non-functional.

zalgotext,

At minimum they should provide copies of the software to anyone who paid a subscription, and then enterprising individuals would figure out how to get private servers running

apfelwoiSchoppen, do games w 8BitDo no longer shipping to US from China due to Trump tariffs
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

That’s the line. The line is crossed. Time to riot.

Lost_My_Mind,

Dude…the line was crossed like 7 years ago when ICE agents just started raiding innocent peoples homes, and kidnapping them in unmarked vans.

THIS is so far past the line we csn’t even see the line. The line is a dot from here.

Tm12,

No, the line is when you interfere with muh Capitalism. /s

Lucidlethargy,

Whoooooosh

Deceptichum, do games w US rep asks Valve to remove ‘Oct. 7’ game from Steam

Oh we getting rid of terrorist games now?

…steampowered.com/…/Americas_Army_Proving_Grounds…

not_that_guy05,

100% agree. Should be ban due to recruiting future terrorist to the US military.

x00z,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

We’ll be changing Counter Strike to be Counter Terrorists against other Counter Terrorists.

grte, do gaming w ‘Almost nobody left’ of D&D team that helped get Baldur’s Gate 3 off the ground, says Larian CEO

Hasbro is a terribly run company which is currently in the process of butchering the couple golden geese it has.

MJBrune, (edited )

They are the reason WotC canceled all those in-development d&d games a year and a half ago. All WOTC published games were canceled because their CEO passed away and they scrambled to find a new one. This new CEO saw all these in-development games and canceled them in an attempt to save money, and with the Dark Alliance game released the year before, they felt there was no recouping development costs.

Overall a huge bummer. I would have liked to play an immersive sim d&d game.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

I'd like to live in the world where multiple devs are making D&D games in Larian's engine the way there were a handful of Infinity Engine games 20 years ago. Replaying BG3 is great, but it would be nice to have new areas, characters, and calls to action while still having the freedom to just "verb a noun" the way you can in BG3.

MJBrune,

Larian isn’t sharing it’s engine and I feel like even if it did, a lot of studios want the creativity of building their own thing. Not just another D&D crpg top-down isometric game. A lot of the D&D games in the works were unique and took interesting risks that might have paid off.

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@beehaw.org avatar

I doubt they would sell the engine but it would be nice if we had good modding tools and map editors like in NWN for example, custom maps and campaigns could keep bg3 alive for a long time - especially considering that they have no plans for expansions afaik

Mongostein,

All those games were produced by BioWare over the course of a decade. BG3 is only a couple months old.

A sequel wouldn’t take as long to develop now that they have the engine and with the success of BG3, I think we’ll get another.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

There were a couple of games from Black Isle back then too. That's the sort of deal I'd like to see, but I also don't expect it to happen.

DeepGradientAscent,
@DeepGradientAscent@programming.dev avatar

they’re their CEO passed away

millie,

Utterly pointless comments like this make me wish I could downvote here. Surely you have something better to do?

Nighed,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

Get a client (or instance) that allows it then 🙂

princessnorah, (edited )
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I think they were implying they like their instance but wish they could downvote sometimes. My instance doesn’t allow it either, and coming from more than a decade on Reddit, it can be frustrating at times. Still, I wouldn’t leave Blahaj because my interests align with those of the instance’s owners.

DeepGradientAscent,
@DeepGradientAscent@programming.dev avatar

Surely you have something better to do?

At the time, no. However, sometimes I complain about people who complain.

MJBrune,

I didn’t even notice this comment until now. Looking at the comment I wrote late one night, there are tons more issues than that. Hell, I spelled ‘canceled’ with 2 Ls. I appreciate it though, reminded me to run my grammar checker.

DeepGradientAscent,
@DeepGradientAscent@programming.dev avatar

I am just an annoying grammar stickler, friend. I assume most mistakes are from typing on a mobile device or being a non-native English speaker, many times both.

My most severe gripes are the misuse and/or overuse of words like “like”, “literally”, “aggravate” and “jealousy”, or when I see “would of” instead of “would’ve”.

In a couple hundred years, the precision in English usage I pompously strain to uphold will be antiquated to the point of incomprehensibility. I admit that dying on this hill is a fool’s errand.

Therefore, take my comment as light-hearted jest.

yesdogishere, (edited )

Neverwinter Nights from 2002 is still the best DnD mmo for me.

TommySalami,

This, the OGL, the Pinkerton incident, the continued decline in quality products. Talk about squandering the opportunity of a lifetime with the renaissance of D&D.

Daxtron2,

Yeah, had a friend who was an intern project manager at Hasbro and I’ve only heard bad things about them.

Pratai, (edited ) do games w Microsoft completely misjudged Baldur’s Gate 3

Releasing a game and denying it to a console that outsells your own 2:1 shows how little Microsoft knows about gaming.

So… This isn’t surprising at all.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Only if your goal is selling the game and not the console

Blackmist,

They’re not selling large amounts of either.

MS is in the subscription selling business now. Their entire gaming future hinges on GamePass, and while I like the idea of games on tap (I’ve basically bought BG3 for my PS5 and nothing else in the year since I bought it, enough on PS+ to keep me going and I can barely catch up let alone keep up), I suspect the big devs that spend hundreds of millions on making AAA games are less than enthralled with the idea and if GamePass and day one “free” games win, the outcome will be more games that I’m not really interested in.

PS+ is not as good a product as GamePass, but I believe it’s healthier overall for the gaming industry.

Omegamanthethird,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

When you say PS Plus, do you mean the Essentials tier which is (was) equivalent to Gold or the other tiers?

For the record, I think PS Plus Premium and Extra are great (until the price hike). The vast majority of time when I want to play a game day-1, it’s not something that’s even on GamePass. So their day-1 stuff means nothing to me.

But also, Essentials has given me enough to play I could just never run out of games.

Blackmist,

The higher tiers. Not sure about the top one (Premium) any more. I got it because I thought I might want to play the older games, but it turns out there’s plenty of PS4 and PS5 games to keep me going, and frankly not enough choice of PS1 and 2 games to tempt me. A more complete library would have made sense, but I’ve literally got more on my shelf than they’ve got on PS Plus Premium.

And my internet is too rubbish for me to want to stream the handful of PS3 games either. It hasn’t even got MGS4 which would be the one interesting thing that hasn’t been anywhere else.

Potatos_are_not_friends,

PS+ is not as good a product as GamePass, but I believe it’s healthier overall for the gaming industry.

A worst product is better for the industry because gamers should pay for inferiority?

What are you smoking?

Blackmist,

I’d rather play great games 18 months after they come out, than mediocre games on day one. What’s hard to understand here?

The industry needs that day one £60 a box money, the same way the film industry can’t do without cinema takings.

If it doesn’t get it, we devolve further down the predatory DLC route.

pjhenry1216,

If it doesn’t get it

Then we get great titles from other studios that just repackage the same shit day in and day out.

Pratai,

How’s that working out for them?

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

The reason it’s not working out is because they had no exclusives, now they do and the people on the platform that always had exclusives are suddenly upset.

Pratai,

PlayStation doesn’t buy out IP that once was on all platforms and turn it exclusive you knob. They have ip that begin as exclusive.

These aren’t the same things.

If Microsoft want to exclusives, they should home grow it like Sony does. But they can’t. So they just buy it out.

They’re the Yankees of gaming, only they still can have a successful season.

pjhenry1216, (edited )

It's outselling is what caused Microsoft to not deny it. It originally denied it because they had a rule that games needed feature parity with both Series X and S. BG3 split screen couldn't be done on S. The massive success is what led them to relax the rule. And virtually no one saw this level of success coming from within the gaming industry, including the developers themselves.

Edit: I just realized this is being upset about Starfield.

That is totally the fault of gamers. The biggest reason given for buying a PS5 over Xbox was exclusives. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Sony started the exclusives battle and continually came out ahead. Obviously MS is going to fight. Making exclusives such an important decision in console purchases drove exclusives to be important overall. There's no sense in being upset that the industrynis literally responded to gamer's actions and stated motivations.

thoro, (edited )

What the fuck did you think was going to happen?

Microsoft would develop their existing first party studios and improve the quality of their first party titles, invest in third parties that they already had exclusive relationships with, or invest in up and coming studios?

Had Bethesda published a Microsoft exclusive since Morrowind?

caseyweederman,

Microsoft

improve

pjhenry1216,

You don't expect that from Sony so why expect it elsewhere? Sony started this game, gamers lauded them and rewarded them for doing it. Microsoft tried to not do that, and got beat down further than they had when they tried playing that game against Sony. Gamers wanted exclusives. Microsoft is providing that. You voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party and now are surprised leopards are eating your face.

This was a forgone conclusion for awhile now. Folks are just upset because Microsoft has an exclusive that Sony gamers want to play. Boo fucking hoo. I'm pissed it came to this, but gamers did this. I'm angry about it, but I don't feel sorry for gamers as a whole about it.

thoro, (edited )

Sony started this game

Did they, though? I think exclusives predate Sony and even the PS1. They’ve been a part of the console space since basically the inception of the medium. Xbox itself launched with an exclusive “killer app” in Halo. Timed third party exclusivity and exclusive Map Packs were very popular with the 360 when it was on top in the seventh generation as well.

I don’t think Sony has ever made an acquisition of the same scope as Zenimax either in price or in how much of the market was fenced off from a studio they previously had access to. That’s not even going into the Activision deal.

Maybe we can now point to Bungie, but that was still half the price. Most of Sony’s acquisitions over its time were studios that were already de facto developing exclusively for their consoles. Even Insomniac. If you look at their history, Sunset Overdrive is a lone anomaly.

Exclusives suck, but I don’t see them going away as long as consoles and capitalism exist. You’re basically throwing shade at Sony for daring to fund the development of critically and commercially acclaimed games that gave them the reputation of having a quality first party library. Starfield on the other hand was developed as cross platform title until Microsoft paid 7.5 billion to acquire a major publisher. Wasn’t this confirmed this week by the document leaks?

Few complain when Halo is released exclusively because no one is being surprised that those games are now exclusive titles. That isn’t the case with the new Bethesda deal.

AngryCommieKender, (edited )

Atari and Texas Instruments started the console exclusivity wars, and promptly shot themselves in the head.

pjhenry1216,

Sony and Microsoft used to pay for exclusives without buying the studios. So there's no real meat to the argument that "oh, the games were always exclusive because first party" or whatever. The consoles didn't really buy that many game studios until relatively recently in gaming history. They would pay a studio to not release on other platforms. This whole buying studios thing was just cheaper in the long run. So there's no real argument to be made about Sony just making better first party games. That's what they do now given that they own the studios. Both companies are guilty of buying out studios.

Exclusives pre-dating the PS1 was more out of lack of technology. No cross platform tech really existed. There wasn't a lot of crossover. Many platforms didn't last more than a generation or two. There wasn't even much cross over in the kind of games. If you liked fighting games, you bought a Sega over Nintendo for example. With the PlayStation, they competed against Sega first, Nintendo as more an afterthought. Xbox came in later to compete against PlayStation 2. The Nintendo 64 was just a different class, and even later, the GameCube. With Xbox and PlayStation, they had similar amounts of power and restraints (an N64 cartridge could not compete from a technical perspective against the storage of discs, plus multi-disc games could exist, not really feasible with cartridges) plus abstraction technology was more advanced and one could more easily write cross platform code. Now, you either had to pay for an exclusive or simply hope they only had the intent to target one platform (whether through preference or resource limitations). So the console wars really started to heat up after the death of Dreamcast and mainly between Sony and MS. Exclusivity wasn't via first party existed, but not to s great extent beyond their flagship games.

So, tldr, exclusivity has always been acquired via money and buying them. It's easy to say it's about developing better first party once those studios were bought outright to begin with. That's how most first party titles exist now.

dudewitbow,

If you disregard windows, and VR, yes.

Jax,

I don’t understand how anyone could use Windows 11 and think Microsoft would, at any point, improve anything.

NuPNuA,

No, but Oblivion came to PS3 later and Skyrim was outright broken on PS3, then Sony scuppered their console mod plans by not allowing deep enough system access. Safe to say they probably didn’t have the best relationship.

Pratai,

Sony doesn’t buy IP and deny it to other platforms. Their IP starts on Sony. If Microsoft never wanted to release Halo to Sony, it’s their decision to do so, but buying something that don’t had access to, then denying it is a shit move.

NuPNuA,

Gaming isn’t bedroom coders knocking out games in basic for microcomputers any more, it’s a huge entertainment industry and that’s how those industries work.

This is no different from Disney pulling Fox properties of other steaming platforms to put them on Disney+ since they brought them out.

pjhenry1216,

Yes they do. They used to buy exclusive rights back during PS2 days but eventually both MS and Sony realized it's cheaper to just buy the studios. Sony has only a small number fewer acquisitions than Microsoft. Both companies have always bought exclusivity.

eochaid,
@eochaid@lemmy.world avatar

Lol, Starfield was originally going to be a Sony exclusive. That means Sony was literally going to pay Beth money to deny Xbox gamers access.

MS just made the better offer.

Corkyskog,
@Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works avatar

My reason for buying a PS5 is my Xbone bit the dust, and my Xbox 360 also had issues when I traded it in. My ps2 and ps1 still work. There was also the fact that the only available options were PS5 or Series S. I didn’t buy the console for exclusives, I bought it because it was the better available console and my previous one was dead.

NuPNuA,

But you made that decision knowing that Bethesda games were going to be exclusive to the MS ecosystem.

Corkyskog,
@Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works avatar

No I didn’t. The announcement of their intentions to fully absorb Bethesda didn’t even come out until around the PS5’s release, and wasn’t completed until like 6 months after. Not everyone pays close attention to gaming news. And if you bought the console early on, there is a chance you never would have even heard about it, let alone completely understood the implications of the purchase.

pjhenry1216,

Ok? But your experience doesn't change what the number one reason given is though? Sure, I don't get Pixel phone anymore either because two in a row failed on me, but I don't go around telling everyone "no one buys pixel phones because they die easily"

NuPNuA,

Yeah, but MS games aren’t console exclusive. They come out on PC day one two which is a bigger audience than both consoles combined. Given the player numbers Starfield really hasn’t suffered due to not being on PS. In some countries it’s doing exactly what a console exclusive should and getting people to pick up an Xbox.

Pratai,

I guarantee you it’s not doing what it could if they released cross-platform.

NuPNuA,

If you don’t think a company as big as MS did a cost/benefit analysis before they made the decision I don’t know what to tell you. Of course any product available to more people sells better, but MS are playing a longer game. If previous Bethesda games are anything to go on, people will be talking about, modding, posting clips, etc of this game for a while and that’s tons of free advertising for XB and Gamepass.

Pratai, (edited )

ROFL… if you don’t think a company as big as Microsoft can’t make mistakes, I don’t know what to tell you.

And talking about a game isn’t selling copies. Nor is modding. People are pirating it and for good reason. It’s not worth the cash spent to donate to a company that thrives based on free labor to fix the bug ladened disasters they release.

NuPNuA,

How do you think marketing works? Someone posts a cool thing they’ve done in Starfield, and someone else gets some FOMO and decides to buy the game, sub to Gamepass, get an Xbox to play it, etc.

No not everyone is pirating the game, a lot of people on Lemmy may be as this is an echo chamber of techie types, but the general audience don’t even know how to, and if they prefer to play on console, can’t.

Clearly you have beef with Bethesda, and are letting it cloud your judgement here, but the fact of the matter is lots of people are playing and enjoying the game as is, out the box before any mods are officially available.

Pratai,

Clearly you’re a white knight for anything Bethesda, so I’m gonna dip out.

Hope that check your receive pays for your much needed vacation to reality.

NuPNuA,

Over one game? I thought Fallout 4 was a disappointing step back from New Vegas and 76 was a misjudged project that turned up messy and broken and I’ve never even looked at playing. The last game of theirs I truly enjoyed pre Starfield was Skyrim, over a decade ago. I’m not white knighting them, you clearly have an irrational hatred of them and are unable to admit when they do something positive, a common issue today when people turn hating something into their identity and are unable to ever move from the stance. Like most Devs, they’ve had their ups and downs and the ups should be praised and the downs criticised.

Bluescluestoothpaste,

I thought this article is about BG3, wtf are you talking about?

mcqtom,

They think only PlayStation should have exclusives because it’s the biggest.

eochaid,
@eochaid@lemmy.world avatar

What’s truly not surprising is Sony fanboys defending the benefits of exclusives up until Xbox has an exclusive they want.

Pratai,

Point out to me where I’ve done that please. And point out any fanboyism while you’re at it.

eochaid,
@eochaid@lemmy.world avatar

Well there’s the fact that you omitted Sony and Nintendo from your criticism entirly, despite the fact that both companies have bought numerous studios and paid other studios to make games exclusively for their respective platforms for decades, thereby reducing their potential revenue for some benefit that’s clearly obvious to those companies.

And yet, when Microsoft does it…they are just limiting their potential market for no reason and it’s obviously a stupid business move. Sure. Seems a little sus, is all.

Either the entire fucking industry is guilty of this “bad business practice” or maybe there’s a calculated reason for it. Pick one.

Pratai,

You don’t see me complaining about Halo, do you? Do you wonder why? It’s because Microsoft did it with an IP that was already widely popular across all platforms, and then pulled it. And if I remember correctly, told everyone they wouldn’t pull it.

Sony hasn’t don’t that. Again, as I’ve said, they begin with their own IP. And that IP from creation is Sony exclusives.

eochaid, (edited )
@eochaid@lemmy.world avatar

Um…Sony was in talks to pay for Starfield to be a PS exclusive - which would have taken it from PC for a year and from xbox permenantly - until MS bought Beth.

Also, Starfield is a new IP, not an “already existing and widely popular” one…

I’ll also mention that Phil Spencer publically admonished and fought against exclusivity agreements for years. He has said in interviews both private and public that he prefers a world where there are no exclusives. Until the market spoke and declared “exclusives” to be the measuring stick of a platform’s health, thus forcing his hand. And now here we are.

Pratai,

Elder Scrolls and Fallout are existing IP. Who cares about Starfield?

eochaid, (edited )
@eochaid@lemmy.world avatar

And here we finally have the primary motivation for this comment.

Well we won’t know for sure on those for a few years. All we have are old FTC docs and no public statements. Regardless, existing games aren’t going anywhere. But even if it happens for future games, well, Sony’s been sowing this harvest for some time.

www.resetera.com/threads/…/page-40#post-41953314

At least you can still play on PC on day one. Can’t do that with PS exclusives.

missingno, do games w Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2?
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

The Deck is targeted squarely at enthusiasts. While it's a fantastic product for that niche, anyone who thinks it's going to capture a market the size of Nintendo's any time soon is living in a fanboy bubble.

Hell, right now Valve isn't even capable of manufacturing half as many Decks as Nintendo will manufacture Switch 2s. They literally can't sell that number because they can't produce that number.

thatKamGuy,

Maybe it’s from huffing too much copium; but I think that Valve’s eventual Steam Deck successor will probably have mainstream console levels of appeal.

By that point in time, compatibility should be nigh-sorted (thanks to all the hard work currently happening), and users won’t need to interact with the Linux desktop mode at all. It would be completely transparent, and only enthusiasts and power-users would ever want interact with it.

The biggest thing going for the SteamOS platform is the immense library that it brings forward; no other console can compete with — even with full backwards compatibility (which even the Switch2 is struggling with).

nekusoul,
@nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de avatar

Probably not the Steam Deck successor alone, but the PC handheld ecosystem as a whole might be able to get there at some point (preferably mostly running Linux).

Though it’s kind of insane how much progress was already made over one generation: It went from a Kickstarter grift (Smach-Z), to the Steam Deck, to multiple competitors already.

missingno,
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

Eventually, perhaps. I do not claim to have a crystal ball powerful enough to peer decades into the future. But right now, for this generation, I can say we're a long way from that point just yet.

warm,

Yes, we need the Xbox handheld to fail, we don't want Windows to take Linux's best chance to grow.

4am,

What is it about backwards compatibility that the Switch 2 is having issues with? I thought it was all games that brought their own hardware, or depended on a feature that the new Switch doesn’t have (IR camera on the Joycon for example)

thatKamGuy,

From my understanding, even though they both run Nvidia-designed ARM processors - there are enough differences between the two SOCs that a direct 1:1 translation is not possible for all titles, and those will need to go through an emulation layer.

Additionally, there are certain titles won’t be compatible due to hardware changes (Ring Fit Adventure for example, and probably all of the LABO stuff?).

missingno,
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

For Ring Fit and Labo, they've clarified that those games aren't compatible with new JoyCons but can still be played with old JoyCons.

missingno,
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

Nintendo published a list of games with compatibility issues. Says they are "continuing to improve compatibility, including by working with publishing and developing partners", which implies they're hoping to patch in fixes for affected games.

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

Also Lenovo is releasing a legion go that ships woth steam os. Thay will help push steam os development and adoptions.

Lv_InSaNe_vL,

For some actual numbers, Valve had sold ~4 million steam decks since it was released over 3 years ago.

Nintendo has sold ~150 million switches to date. And they sold nearly 18 million of them in its first full year (2017).

RiikkaTheIcePrincess, do games w US rep asks Valve to remove ‘Oct. 7’ game from Steam
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social avatar

The wording of the complaints has me wondering if the game actually does anything “wrong” by the normal standards of video gaming. Like, does it actually glorify violence specifically against Jews? Is there some mission objective to butcher a bunch of civilians? I glance at the Steam page and it looks like the political statement its creator claims it is.

I’m pretty sick of this “anything that isn’t hardcore pro-Israel is antisemitic terrorism” horsecrap. Either care about human life or don’t, don’t BS me and everyone else like the acts and atrocities committed in video games suddenly matter when characters who happen to be (presumed) Jews are involved.

CerealKiller01,

Let’s flip the question around.

Would you be against a video game glorifying the Nazi invasion to Poland if it didn’t show Nazis killing civilians?

How about a game glorifying the IDF as it fights against Hama’s terrorists in Gaza?

Maggoty,

Throw a rock into the FPS section of your local game store. At least one of the games you hit will allow you to play as a German soldier in World War 2.

CerealKiller01, (edited )

I said “glorifying the Nazi invasion”, not “play as a German soldier in World War 2”. These are two very different things. Why the hell do I even have to explain this?

The game is called “Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. How about a game called “Bliutzkrieg Poland: Heroes of the third reich”? In what store can I buy that one?

ghurab,
CerealKiller01,

I’m willing to put $1000 that this game doesn’t glorify Nazis, and $100 more that it actively makes it clear to the player that while the game is played from the Nazi perspective, the game isn’t intended to glorify Nazis.

ghurab,

I’ve played neither games, so I cannot comment about their contents. The second part of your comment is specifically about titles.

“Knights of al-Aqsa”, as a title, does not have the same meaning nor implications of a your example. that would something more like “Bulldozing Israel, Knights of the Caliphate”, eventhough comparing the thrid riech to a caliphate is a stretch.

CerealKiller01,

Okay, let’s put that another way:

Do you agree that “Knights of al-Aqsa” probably glorifies Hamas?

Do you agree that “Panzer Corps” probably does not glorify the Nazis?

If you answered “yes” to both questions, do you understand the difference between both games?

ghurab,

Knights of al-Aqsa mostlikely glorifies Hamas, along with any other faction fighting against Israel.

Panzer Corps probably glorifies Nazis as well.

but it doesn’t matter, as neither of us have played any of these games, nor will we ever. My whole point was about your choice of words for the nazi example.

“knights of al-aqsa” doesn’t have an explicit context, it comes knowledge of current events.

“panzer corps” doesn’t have an explicit context, it comes knowledge of historic events.

Bliutzkrieg Poland: Heroes of the third reich” has a very explicit context. The third reich specifically refers to nazi Germany.

Your example make it seems as if you think defending Al-Aqsa Mosque is inherently an act of aggression, murder, colonial expansion, and ethnic cleansing.

CerealKiller01,

Panzer Corps probably glorifies Nazis as well.

Great. as I said earlier - I’m willing to put $1000 that this game doesn’t glorify Nazis, and $100 more that it actively makes it clear to the player that while the game is played from the Nazi perspective, the game isn’t intended to glorify Nazis. Would you be willing to take that bet?

Bliutzkrieg Poland: Heroes of the third reich” has a very explicit context. The third reich specifically refers to nazi Germany.

Sorry, but if you think “panzer corps” doesn’t specifically refers to Nazi Germany, that’s on you. The first line from Wikipedia reads: A panzer corps (German: Panzerkorps) was an armoured corps type in Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht during World War II.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_corps

ghurab,

I’m failing to get my point across, so I’m bowing out of discussion. However I understand your point, and partially aggree , but mostly disagreed with the phrasing.

cheers

CerealKiller01,

Fair enough. Have a good one.

B312,

Why’d you ignore the other comment lol

CerealKiller01,

What other comment?

B312,

Neve mind I just saw that you responded to it

NoneOfUrBusiness,

If the Nazis had legitimate grievances against the Polish? Maybe. Your premise is flawed in that it assumes everything a Palestinian resistance fighter does is terrorism that can't ve glorified. Let me flip your question around: Woud you object to an Irish-made game that allows you to play as the IRA and car bomb the British?

CerealKiller01, (edited )

If the Nazis had legitimate grievances against the Polish? Maybe.

Who decides what’s “legitimate”?

Parts of Poland belonged to the second Reich, but were taken away by force in the aftermath of WWI. From the Nazi perspective, they had every right to claim them back.

Edit: Wait, what just happened? Did you actually say saying you’d be okay with a game glorifying the Nazi invasion to Poland if they “had legitimate grievances against the Polish”? WTF?

Your premise is flawed in that it assumes everything a Palestinian resistance fighter does is terrorism that can’t ve glorified.

My premise assumes that every Hamas fighter that crossed into Israel on Oct. 7th is a terrorist. The “resistance fighters” that attacked military bases are the same people who raped party goers, burned to death civilians in their homes and kidnapped men, women, children and the elderly to be used as a bargaining chip and human shields.

Would I be for a ban of Fatah fighters attacking IDF bases? Maybe, maybe not. I probably wouldn’t argue over it with strangers on the internet, for what that’s worth.

Would you object to an Irish-made game that allows you to play as the IRA and car bomb the British?

Depends. is it called “Knights of the IRA” or glorify the IRA in any way? Then I would support the ban. Because the they were a terrorist movement that targeted civilians. Why would you even ask that? Are you seriously okay with glorifying terrorists if you happen to agree with their goals?

NoneOfUrBusiness,

Edit: Wait, what just happened? Did you actually say saying you'd be okay with a game glorifying the Nazi invasion to Poland if they "had legitimate grievances against the Polish"? WTF?

I mean depends on those specific grievances by the hypothetical Nazis, yes, because then they wouldn't be Nazis as we know them.

My premise assumes that every Hamas fighter that crossed into Israel on Oct. 7th is a terrorist.

You'll need a source for that.

Because the they were a terrorist movement that targeted civilians. Why would you even ask that? Are you seriously okay with glorifying terrorists if you happen to agree with their goals?

Your terrorist is someone else's freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela was listed as a terrorist in the US until the 2000s. "Terrorist" isn't a bad word that makes a whole organization irredeemable human scum, and considering the IRA's contribution to North Irish liberation, I'd say the answer is yes. "Terrorists" are people you can love or hate depending on their specific actions and goals.

CerealKiller01,

You just said you’d be okay with glorification of “theoretical” Nazis, but not if they hadn’t committed multiple war crimes, countless atrocities, murdering and incarcerating people based on mental health, ethnicity and sexual orientation. No, the thing you’re most with is that they didn’t have a good enough reason to invade Poland.

I lost interest in talking to you.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

I was obviously (okay maybe not very obviously) talking within the context of their invasion of Poland. Anyway Nazis didn't have legitimate grievances with anyone they targeted (because they targeted whole ethnic groups), which is part of why they're hated so much and what illegitimizes the comparison between them and insert your hated organization of choice here.

MajorHavoc,

Who decides what’s “legitimate”?

Ooh! I know this one! It’s the people with all the money, isn’t it? It’s usually the people with the most money who decide these things.

JigglySackles,

This game was published before that oct 7 issue. It’s not related.

CerealKiller01,

Oh, come on…

From the link: “Video game available on Steam allows players to simulate being a Hamas teroist who k*lls Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’” the account posted. In November, Nijm released an update called the “Operation al-Aqsa Flood Update,” which alludes to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel by having Palestinian fighters paragliding into an Israeli military base.”

FelixCress,

Would you be against a video game glorifying the Nazi invasion to Poland if it didn’t show Nazis killing civilians?

Nazi invasion of Poland - you mean like Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine?

CerealKiller01,

I’ve already given that example earlier…

FelixCress,

No. You have given an opposite example. If you want to use historic comparisons it is Israel which proudly follows Third Reich, starting with racist laws and ending with genocide.

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Yes, they did give that exact example just with the opposite political framing.

CerealKiller01,

No. You have given an opposite example.

I said “Would you be against […] a game glorifying the IDF as it fights against Hamas terrorists in Gaza?” (and I would link to that if I could figure out how to do that…).

The main part of your message is just you saying “Israel are Nazis!!!”, which is besides the point.

FelixCress,

Read again. Slowly.

hark,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

You’re making a false equivalence, but regardless, I am fine with any of that, even though I hate Nazis and the IDF, because it’s a video game. It’s virtual.

Maggoty,

Making a game about a specific attack that, at best, was purposefully indiscriminate, and at worst, directly targeted civilians is a bit more than the normal fare though. COD probably came closest with their false flag airport mission and that was a fictitious event.

RiikkaTheIcePrincess,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social avatar

Thanks for the information. I really didn’t know about that attack and was on my way out at the time so I was more reacting to generalities and what was right in front of me.

I don’t mean to suggest that anything and everything should be socially acceptable as freeze peach, just that I feel some people are being disingenuous and should be expected to point out an actual problem like “Look here, the rewards you get vary based on the racial and religious background of every civilian you kill!” Killing civilians who happen to be present regardless of other matters is murder. Killing opposing military personnel regardless of other matters is battle. Killing people because they’re Jewish is murderous antisemitism. Not wanting something seen doesn’t make it a crime… but I think some people are so stuck picking sides that even mention that there’s another point of view offends them 🤷

That said, could be Hamas is pure evil for all I know and there’s just no way to present anything they do without it being disgusting. I just… bleh, maybe it’s an autism thing. There’s a nit there that I can’t help but pick 😅 I want more sincerity and sense in this world.

Maggoty,

To be fair I think the hostages/dead civilians are more because they’re Israeli than their religion. There’s definitely anti-Semitism in Hamas, but Hamas was founded to resist brutal occupation tactics.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

Making a game about a specific attack that, at best, was purposefully indiscriminate,

I mean it also targeted the Israeli military so it definitely belongs in a game where you play as a Palestinian resistance fighter. Also the game was made in 2022 and only has a level about October 7.

Maggoty,

Yeah that’s a good point, we play Vietnam games with zero recognition of what probably happened to the villagers. I think it probably comes down to what someone thinks the main purpose of the attack was.

ghurab,

People missing the point. Politicians care more about fictional Israeli and jewish lives than real life Muslims and Arabs.

RiikkaTheIcePrincess,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social avatar

I see the matters as connected: I figure people who flip out about “antisemitism” at anything even mildly unfriendly to Israel are serving (deliberately or not) to defend, justify, or even glorify its vile actions. That is, I think it’s not “zomg those poor pixel Jews!” but rather “Shhh, don’t talk like people are fighting against the IDF for a reason! (Let’s just accept that they’re all horrible evil sub-humans who must to be exterminated for the good of our wonderful, beloved friends and allies!)”

Davel23, do games w Speedrunner already beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Nintendo Switch 2

Ikaboze had access to a handful of save files at Nintendo Switch 2 Experience: Tokyo, one of which has a well-equipped Link that puts him right outside of Hyrule Castle. He makes quick work of Calamity Ganon.

So he just loaded a save file right before the end of the game. Not a speedrun.

hypnicjerk,

that’s the art of clickbait: it never said it was a speedrun, only that he was a speedrunner.

ZapBeebz_, do games w Phil Spencer wants Epic Games Store and others on Xbox consoles

EGS isn’t any good on PC. What makes them think a workable console version is coming any time soon?

Molecular0079,

Yeah, they still haven’t fixed the slow ass scrolling performance in the client and have barely introduced any platform features to their store. It’s so bad.

bungle_in_the_jungle,

I’ve been using Heroic launcher and it’s made a massive difference fwiw.

ZeroHora, do gaming w Capcom adds new DRM to old PC games, raising worries over mods
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

DRM in old games so you are only affecting people that bought the game? Genius

drislands,

They’re not worried about pirates, they’re worried about nude mods. It’s still idiotic, but it is consistent.

ZeroHora,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

Bu than people could download a pirate version and install mods, in the end the pirate version is way more attractive than the original.

drislands,

I don’t disagree. But the inciting incident was when an official Street Fighter tournament went awry when the person hosting left on a nude Chun Li mod. I imagine they’re specifically trying to prevent that from happening ever again.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

They probably care far less about that than they do the ability to mod in costumes instead of buying them.

Chronographs, do games w Secret actor behind Metal Gear Solid 3’s EVA revealed after 20 years

Jodi Benson

ytsedude,

If you’re like me, you might not recognize her by name, but she is Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Barbie in Toy Store.

Watching some old MGS3 cutscenes, I can hear it. There’s no way I would’ve guessed it without knowing, but you can hear a little of Ariel in EVA’S voice.

Yokozuna,
@Yokozuna@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks. Opening up that site and being greeted with “we share your info with 800+ companies” made me turn around so fast.

RightHandOfIkaros, do games w Switch 2 game-key cards won’t be account- or console-locked

They still have no real reason to exist though. Theyre a catalyst for ending physical media.

You get the worst part of owning a physical copy (you gotta find the physical game and put it in the console every time you want to.play that game) combined with the worst part about owning a digital copy (you still have to download all the game data).

Unless these versions of the game are cheaper than even the digital versions of the game, then there is no reason anybody would just pick the digital version over these. Any person interested in selling the game when they are done playing will just get normal physical media.

Dudewitbow,

its worse than comparing it to physical media that has all content on media, but better than display boxes that only has a digital code in it.

digital key carts are more replacing the latter (which is better) but there will definitely be a few devs who will opt out of physical media storage costs for the key card

acosmichippo,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

how is it better than display boxes?

Kelly,

Transferable licence.

They can be sold, gifted, inherited, etc.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

That inheritance is going to be on a pretty short timespan, since 3DS and Wii U online services and downloads are already gone.

missingno,
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

It is still possible to redownloaded previously purchased 3DS and Wii U games, they haven't taken that down yet. You just can't buy anything anymore. They haven't said how long they'll keep that up for, their FAQ simply says "for the foreseeable future", but we know it can't be forever and ever and ever.

Wii downloads went fully offline in 2019, 13 years after the console's launch, or 7 years after the console's successor. I wouldn't try to extrapolate off a single data point though, Switch servers may potentially last longer based on both a longer console life-cycle and a desire to keep backwards compatibility going.

Dudewitbow, (edited )

outside of the official service, there is actually one other feature that people forget exists, and would be relevent to the resell of the key.

updating by local user (no not the recently announced game sharing stuff, but the ability to update a game via just being near a device with the update)

edit: of course, this will only work if nintendo okays the transfer of the BASE game instalation as well. time will tell if its possible or not, as its a situation thats functionalyl hard to test.

CHKMRK,

The 3DS and Wii U eShop was available for more than a decade, a full 6 years after the Switch was released. So all in all I’d say it was available pretty long, especially considering that there was no authorization required to download a game, so they were paying for servers to give away games for free

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I think an inheritance should probably last longer than a decade. This is still an arbitrary expiration date that’s bad for the customer.

RightHandOfIkaros,

Okay but NES games are still playable and transferrable. Even earlier games for the first gen consoles like the MagnaVox Odyssey are still playable, and those are far older than one decade. And if it suffers physical damage, even to the point of becoming inoperable, as long as you dumped the ROM of your game you can continue to play it (at least in the US).

If a ditigal game shop server goes away, you better hope you downloaded your data, and that the hard drive you downloaded the data to never becomes inoperable. Because once that happens, it is gone forever. Even if you technically legally still have the license still to play it, if you tried to bring a legal case about being unable to access a game you paid for, the game publisher can just invoke their right as granted to them by the EULA of the game license you are forced to agree to to use their software (shrinkwrap license) to “revoke your license at any time, for any reason.”

Much, much harder to do that when someone owns a physical copy of a game, as that would require forcibly removing the physical game from you (AKA theft).

jacksilver,

I mean with this setup you can still sell the game and it keeps a used game market. I don’t like not actually “possessing” the game cause we know everything online shuts down eventually, but it’s much better than the “physical games” that actually just have a download code.

RightHandOfIkaros,

Its effectively a self-destructing game set on a timer.

Not unlike real physical games that succumb to time and damage, except you cannot dump the gamedata to preserve your own physical copy.

Also, physical games deteriorate at a much slower rate than Nintendo shutting down their servers. Sure, you have the right to download your digital Wii games you paid for, but have fun doing that right now on servers that no longer exist. The WiiU and 3DS eShops are next, they already have purchases disabled.

I can still play physical NES games, the only maintenance required is changing the battery, if the cart even has one, and keeping the pins clean.

jacksilver,

Oh yeah, real physical games are better, no arguement from me.

Just calling out that it could be even worse.

deur, (edited )

Nintendo doesnt want to sell them either. They lose so much revenue on wholesaling and manufacturing. Digital gets them that sweet sweet 100% of the consumer price per sale. Holy fuck they’re just counting the days until they can finally convince idiots physical shouldnt exist. Ask Sony and Microsoft what they learned about even trying to suggest they were killing the used market.

uranibaba, do games w No, Steam wasn’t hacked, and your account details are safe

store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam?emcl…

You may have seen reports of leaks of older text messages that had previously been sent to Steam customers. We have examined the leak sample and have determined this was NOT a breach of Steam systems.

We’re still digging into the source of the leak, which is compounded by the fact that any SMS messages are unencrypted in transit, and routed through multiple providers on the way to your phone.

The leak consisted of older text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames and the phone numbers they were sent to. The leaked data did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data. Old text messages cannot be used to breach the security of your Steam account, and whenever a code is used to change your Steam email or password using SMS, you will receive a confirmation via email and/or Steam secure messages.

You do not need to change your passwords or phone numbers as a result of this event. It is a good reminder to treat any account security messages that you have not explicitly requested as suspicious. We recommend regularly checking your Steam account security at any time at

store.steampowered.com/account/authorizeddevices

We also recommend setting up the Steam Mobile Authenticator if you haven’t already, as it gives us the best way to send secure messages about your account and your account’s safety.

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