This. Imagine being a company who suddenly has to do the right thing simply because they can’t afford the “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” approach any more.
Litigation may be an awful substitute for regulation, but at least its having some positive effect here.
Shame about the way they’re doing it, though. It’s a wet dream for politicians and activists in favour of age verification, and for the hackers who’ll inevitability get their hands on all of it.
Not even “can’t afford”. They’re rolling in money. They merely made the calculation that paying lip service to the problem (and farming their user base for even more data to leverage, count on it) could cost less than future lawsuits.
I don’t know if I would call mandatory facial recognition for children online “the right thing.”
I would say it is the parent’s responsibility to know what their child is doing and what platforms their child is using. If something horrible should happen, my first finger to point at would be the parents not doing anything to prevent it, usually out of negligence, not the Roblox company. A company can only do so much before they begin to assume control of responsibilities a parent has, and I would prefer governments and businesses have as little control over raising children as possible.
This is why many parents used to restrict children’s access to the internet to only when the parent can directly monitor it until they were an adult. Sometimes a “family computer” in a common room with the screen plainly visible was the one a child could use. Sadly, it appears this is no longer the case, and more and more parents are ignorant of what their children do.
If someone’s dog eats all the pills they left out on the counter and dies, it isn’t the fault of the dog and it isn’t the fault of the medical company that made the pills, its the fault of the owner for being negligent by not watching the dog and leaving the pills out. This is my opinion.
I don’t know if I would call mandatory facial recognition for children online “the right thing.”
I don’t think so either, which is why I didn’t say it. You skipped my final paragraph.
By “right thing”, I was referring to doing anything, which appears to be more than they’ve tried so far.
The parental responsibility argument was probably valid when there was 1-2 standard computers in a home and getting online was a Whole Thing in itself. Now we have supercomputers in our pockets that are permanently online. It’s a whole lot harder than a simple “parents should take responsibility” one-liner.
I’m not saying they bear no responsibility, but to hand wave that as the answer is not an answer.
Also: Thinking of myself at that age, though public internet didn’t exist until I was almost an adult, I know I’d have found ways around things. A digital equivalent to slipping out of your window to see friends or hiding your Brussels sprouts in a pocket.
The technical education required to correctly protect, monitor and configure the necessary hardware and software is unreasonable for the vast majority of people.
Though you could probably find a kid who’ll happily show you how to do it all…
I don’t agree. I think that the responsibilty a parent has to keep their child safe and teach them how to navigate reality has always been hard.
Parents in the 90s probably had as hard of a time with smartphones as parents do now with smartphones. When smartphones were brand new I remember many parents did not allow their children to have them at all, if the child even had a mobile phone. Not because they don’t love their child, but because they do. They want to protect them from having access to material children shouldn’t have. But children are smart, and they find a way around it with the iPod Touch or PSP that their friend has or other means. But in those cases the parents can say they did everything they could to protect their child.
The most fault obviously lies with the nefarious person grossly mistreating children. If they didn’t exist at all, none of this would even be necessary. Unfortunately, that cannot ever happen, because humans still do not know what causes them to be the way they are, or how to prevent it/treat it properly.
Now, Roblox certainly should be doing something about it, but the amount of fault they have in the issue is the least among other parties. But using mandatory facial recognition for that? I think that is way too far. I don’t see why DMs aren’t monitored. Seems like the perfect use case for AI: have an LLM scan DMs as they are sent and "flag"messages of potential suspicion for a human to then read the DM chain for context to verify. Or just remove messaging from the platform altogether.
Listen, I think its cool that people are following their dreams. But I can’t imagine looking at the modern world and thinking “The thing we’re really lacking right now is new video games”.
What I would love to see is the existing pool of video game developers enjoying more labor protections, shorter working hours, paid sick leave, and guaranteed housing/health care benefits. Because, as someone who has seen the industry chew up and spit out really talented developers, that strikes me as far more important than just learning to code or getting networked into the crunch pipeline at EA or Microsoft.
Walles says: “My favourite example of someone in our cohort who has work experience but is trying to break into the games industry is this young man from Nigeria. He’s a home builder, he’s project managing every day, building houses – and he codes. He wants to take that project management experience and become a producer in video games.”
This is such a bleak read, knowing how many people - both inside the gaming industry and out - who are struggling to find affordable housing.
I think it’s perhaps more necessary than you might think.
We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms. They intelligently gather players, and they successfully evade boycotting measures, but they don’t make people happy. And, the studios that went into them used to make such games but have been bought out and squeezed out by private equity.
If somebody really wants to play an online shooter, they’ll still play COD even if they hate it, IF it’s the only good option. The more new options appear, the less valuable those entrenched games get and the more likely they collapse entirely.
We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified. Even Gabe Newell won’t live forever.
We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms.
Where do you think future game developers are getting funneled? This is a tail as old as the industry. Big firms sponsor these entry level programs in order to glut the market with cheap labor.
We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified.
I do not think we need more game developers (particularly in an industry that’s contracting labor demand in the pivot to AI) more than we need housing developers (particularly in a real estate market that is struggling to meet new production targets).
Friendly reminder that not everything needs to be funneled through the lens of the geopolitical, capitalist, and technological quagmire of our times. People need things to live for, to dream for, to imagine. Even people who are fighting everyday for a better world need some time doing recreation. If it is the requirement of utopia to give up on frivolous yet joyful endeavors then what do you strive for?
look i’m not a ICE apologist or antyhing (these apply to EVs as well) but it’s not hard to figure out why car games are more popular. Also I’m not saying these are universal rules, i’m sure some disagree. But I think it’s safe to say these apply to most in the gamer market.
more power and speed = more fun.
Games are as close as most people will come to driving an expensive car like a BMW, let alone a Ferrari, or even actual racing cars.
Even if you argue people are just not culturally conditioned to aesthetically enjoy bicycles, could you even really appreciate them in the same way in a video game? you’d barely see them.
Cars are much more complex machines and that leads to each having a more unique character than bicycles, and that allows a greater variety of gameplay. For example, mid/front engine, ICE/EV, NA/turbo/super, FWD/RWD/AWD, etc. And usually in games there’s a progression from lower performance cars to higher performance cars.
Instead of leveling up your vehicle, you level up the infrastructure as you progress the game. By the end, you’re just taking the public transit system to the finish line.
I don’t know, bikes are incredibly diverse vehicles too. A tricycle is nothing like a cargo bike, a full suspension mountain bike, a road bike, a time trial bike, a BMX, a fixed gear etc. and they all feel very different to ride.
And while there might not be as many moving parts as on a car, a lot of engineering goes into the design of high end bicycles. If you’re into bikes, it’s very easy to appreciate the beauty and functional design of a well designed bicycle.
The fact that they are at their core simple machines which basic function hasn’t changed since the invention of the safety bicycle in the 1880s, yet have been innovated on ever since to arrive at the bikes we have today is what makes them fascinating imo.
Some people enjoy cars and some people enjoy bikes, but there isn’t really anything that makes one more inherently interesting.
I haven‘t played it but it‘s arguably the least discussed Metal Gear Solid game. At least people talk about 4 and 5. 3 literally just sits in the middle and sort of… exists.
I’ll blame the former guy all day long for his failings, but the Staggers Act deregulated the railroad industry in 1980, and was signed by Jimmy Carter. This mess has been a long time coming.
Peregrine 1 is not NASA’s. NASA paid for some payloads on the lander, but the lander itself is from Astrobiotic. It’s an important distinction because it seems like people are trying to blame NASA for whatever went wrong.
I hope you're asking in good faith. I'll try and give you a response as tl;dr as possible here.
Racism: hating people due to their ethnicity
Not racism: criticizing people (even of a single nationality or ethnicity) because of their politics
In the context of this article, most people in the comments are expressing privacy concerns over China controlling a larger percentage of the gaming market, and thus increasing the risk for demanding more data from the users installing that software on their machines. If anyone here were expressing racist concerns about this, people would be making disparaging remarks about yellow skin color or narrow eye shape, or something like that.
Furthermore, incorrectly identifying racism where there is none actually detracts from the actual anti-racist sentiment - in fact, the one I believe you hold - by muddying the definition of what is and isn't actually racism.
Hating a regime that commits ACTUAL RACIAL-BASED GENOCIDE is racist, I guess that means hating Nazis was racism against Germans? You are a fucking idiot.
COD suffered two deaths. The first was when it just became boring and familiar, which differs for everyone, but for me it was after MW3. Same shit every year.
The second was when it tried to chase the Fortnite/hero shooter trend, and lost its identity entirely. There is no theme anymore, it’s just a bunch of “operators” (celebrities and shit) fighting each other without any context on random maps. Nicki Minaj being a playable character pretty much sums up what the franchise has become. A completely unserious pile of slop.
I'm old. vCOD, UO, and CoD2 were my shit. Cod4 was the transition, but still good. Blackops lost the theme and killed any competitive scene opportunities for the game, and as you said, it's been Ctrl+c/Ctrl+v ever since, yet also worse every time.
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