I know it’s not going to happen, but I would love it if legislation could go as far as requiring companies to open-source their engines and servers after maybe a period of time, or on ending support for the game. It could be done ID-style where the company retains full rights of the content and trademarks, which would still require players to buy the game to legally play it.
I’m aware there are a lot of cases where games include middleware that’s licensed from 3rd parties that complicate preservation efforts. But if open-sourcing the code is the path taken, there’s a simple solution for that: just release what you can, even if what’s released is in an unplayable state without the middleware. It then becomes the responsibility of any volunteers to take that code and bring it back to a usable state however they choose.
This drama highlights that there’s still a great need for better computer literacy. Anyone with even a basic education in how software, source-code, and software licensing works can tell PirateSoftware is full of shit pretty much immediately. That is, anyone educated who are themselves not grifters.
You should only be granted copyright protections if you can guarantee the copyrighted material can become public domain after the time period ends. This would involve giving the government a copy of all source code and assets to preserve securely. This should be a flat policy for all copyrighted material, so 3rd party involvement wouldn’t complicate things.
The original intent of patents was almost exactly that. You’re protected for a handful of years, after that anyone can just use the patent as instructions for recreating it.
… then Disney and other fucking greedy ghouls of corporations got involved and greased the right palms…
For those who don’t know, this streamer is only tangentially related to the stop killing games petition because he made a comment about it being BS because he misinterpreted what it was supposed to do. He used his misinterpretation to spread false information about this petition leading to it not getting the support it initially should have.
When the guy behind the petition made a statement saying he didn’t think the petition was going to get enough signatures in part because of the misinformation being spread about it, PirateSoftware doubled down on his false claims and all of this lead to people doing the research they should have done in the first place and deciding to support the petition after all.
What we should probably be learning from this is that we should do our own research, and find out things instead of taking the word of random people online.
Edit: electric has brought to my attention that it wasn’t just one clip, but in fact a whole video dedicated to spreading misinformation that was made by Thor from PirateSoftware. Just wanted to be clear about that.
A comment? Am I misreading your comment or is this just ignorance of the situation? Because PirateSoftware made a whole ass video on the subject way back (the one allegedly rife with misinformation). I remember it on my feed when the campaign was getting traction, but didn’t watch it because my view of him was souring.
From what clips I’ve seen*, PirateSoftware misinterprets the majority of what he addressed. Either maliciously or unknowingly, which is why he was blamed for tanking momentum since that video did get a ton of views (before people wised up to him being a total cunt).
*Yes I know the irony of what I just said there after reading your last paragraph. I believe these terminally online streamers because I would not put it past PirateSoftware to be this awful after watching his videos for a small period and then the subsequent controversies coming out.
He may well have done but the only clip I have seen is the one where someone asks about it while he’s streaming games and he responded to that person with misinformation.
Ah. Makes sense. I caught a stream once and he pretty much just did discussions with the chat. A lot of his videos were just cuts from his streams when someone asked.
I think a lot of people didn’t hear about this guy until about 2 days ago. Personally I didn’t even know about this petition.
I knew about the lawsuit against The Crew, but I didn’t know anything about any more general petition, so I think the greater problem was simply a lack of advertising.
Oh gosh you’re way too kind. I wouldn’t call it that, but I am happy to share interesting things here. And I’m so lucky that you all read it and agree with me that it is worth the read!!!
I watch this dude sometimes, he says he’s a fulltime game dev but all I see him do is play other games. The game he works on has seen very little progress.
Would be nice if he at least admits he’s a streamer and not a game dev.
I’ve also noticed this from watching his stream and the more I learn about the guy the less I like him. He seems to misrepresent and oversell himself quite a bit.
Btw did he tell you about the time he worked at Blizzard, for the millionth time?
Are Apple devs even contractually allowed to say that they’re Apple devs? I swear every employee from every other company won’t shut up about it on twitter but you never hear a thing from Apple people. Have I just been missing them completely?
Deltarune didn’t exist yet. It’s an undertale ripoff.
Which is very telling, tobyfox released a whole game on his own. While this " I worked at blizzard, BTW" tool hasn’t with an (allegedly) entire company around him. He’s a grifter, he scams people around him to profit off of other’s work. That’s all he does.
Does it not stop you from signing multiple times? The UK one tells you you’ve already signed it when you try again. I tried it again recently in case i was misremembering signing the second petition after the first one was misunderstood completely by the uk government.
I’m not surprised it got a bad answer though. The government was completely dysfunctional by that point (and had been well over a year), I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just some random civil servant who was just told to weave a fig leaf at it.
Oddly, the EU one just has a checkbox that you need to check to confirm that you haven’t signed before. I’m guessing removal of duplicates happens only after closing, along with other data validation.
I thought this strange at first too, but I think it’s because of the disparate identification methods in different countries. If everyone had a digital ID card instant checking would be doable, but note it probably isn’t.
For the UK one it’s just tied to your email address to prevent duplicates, and you just input your name and physical address which will be used to confirm you’re actually a citizen.
You should have received an email with a receipt if you did sign. In doubt, sign again; signing twice will invalidate the second signature but not the first (confirmed by EU staff).
Omg… this comment… this comment right here 👆. This is what I needed to see because I relate so strongly to it. F’kn guy sucks! (By guy sucks, I mean coworker of my nightmares that leans on me like a cancer). But my god, I’m so happy for him.
I came to PS through YouTube shorts and his streams were cut to ribbons and repatched into something resembling a zeitgeist-appealing view.
Then I watched a couple of his long form videos and was like … eh. If anything it taught me more about the danger of using shorts as an onboard to any big vtuber. Much like movie trailers and their movies, they tend to overpromise and underdeliver.
This became undeniably apparent when YouTube started shoving Jordan Petersen into my feed. Much like the thousand monkeys at their typewriters, you can take the words of anyone who talks at length almost daily on a subject and edit them into something that sounds reasonable and appealing.
I already knew that JP was a right wing rhetoric Markov chain posing as an expert/pundit before YT started promoting him, but it really did cement the point.
Yeah, for real. YouTube is essentially placing infinite bets that it can drive you into the rabbit hole. Watched a short of Dillahunty give Peterson a verbal wedgy? You must like big words, so here’s more Peterson! Watched a short of Joey Swoll telling people to be polite, because it rolled on automatically? Here’s an Andrew Tate wannabe with shrivelled nuts to subtly criticise you about your dad bod.
Obsession and radicalisation are one and the same to the algorithm, and both turn a targeted individual into a money printer. And fuck the consequences right? Because Google got theirs.
Even Hitler out of context sounds good. Context is paramount. Never trust a good speaker with the extra time to edit himself in post with out the context of the original or their history.
It’s often not the speaker doing the editing, there are thousands of channels built around creating and releasing these cast-a-wide-net shorts to subtly drive you towards their goal of obsessively watching right wing vtubers saying things that compel you to be a selfish narcissist.
Nowadays its also quite common to design speeches around short form videos, so that you can then edit as much as possible into short little segments that are optimised for short form content. The right wingers do it a lot and, at least in Germany, our leftist party realised that this is a strategy to not miss out on.
I feel like a tourist on a safari trip with this whole saga. A colleague of mine told me about this situation and now I can’t look away.
When all is said and done, I definitely think it would be a good idea to have game libraries both physical and digital where people can play old games as they stop being profitable to developers.
I have vague memory of there already being such consumer made game libraries for old Gameboy titles back in the 2000s but those sites were taken down. It would be great to have some sort of system in place because this licensing bullshit is exactly why I ended up completely leaving streaming as a whole (for movies and shows) and went back to physical media in january/February of this year. I borrow dvds at the library now. It is fucking fantastic. I had forgotten how much I missed going looking for movies I’d like to see in places like Moby Disc and Blockbuster. It’s so comfy and when you find a movie you’ve never heard of before and you bring it home and it’s really good, it just feels so special.
I think games should have that too. I stopped playing games in 2015 because I just saw no end to having to fork out money all the time to keep up with the tech and getting new titles and gradually seeing how it was more and more an online thing instead of a physical thing so I just stopped. Didn’t like the direction games were taking. Seems like it is reaching a breaking point finally.
I kinda hate the guy so it’s hard for me to keep the tone neutral but I’ll try my best.
Long story short: He’s a popular streamer that had a few controversies that caused many people labelled him as arrogant or egotistical.
The latest one is his take on the “stop killing games” initiative that he was against. He had a video a few months ago were he misrepresentated the movement and spread misinformation (whether or not this was intentional or misinformed is up for debate) and caused a significant drop in the momentum of the movement, refusing to accept any criticism and doubling down on things. That was until recently were the initiative was in the last month and a half before the big deadline at only around 50% of the required signatures, but then huge momentum sprung up with a lot of people marking him as the “villain” of the movement and because of his controversy before it wasn’t long before word spread.
This has obviously led to harassment of the guy(which I feel is too far personally) which he responded to by tripling down on his opinion causing further being labelled as the villain. Eventually the momentum carried it over the finish and people are happy that he didn’t get his way.
whether or not this was intentional or misinformed is up for debate
It’s not, in his response to the initial controversy he cut out the part of Ross’ video that directly contradicted his misrepresentation, he’s a lying piece of shit.
My condolences. I don’t even dislike the voice, his attitude just makes him so punchable. You think he’s some kind of expert at first but then it dawns on you that he’s just confidently stupid.
His obnoxious voice is fake, just as him. There are videos of him outside the streaming. His voice is artificially lowered for streams and videos. He’s all fake.
The potential has always been there for phone games, but its far a few between that are worthwhile. Touch screens suck for controls, really limits to a few good genres, but the stores suck too for any form of support. I’m still bitter that they updated iOs and not xcom so I lost that game and couldn’t get a refund. Most good phone games are ports though, and otherwise so riddled with poor design and mtx its not worth the time. Honestly, the buggest disappointment with phones is that games could be awesome on them and they’re not.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things. Similarly mine has access to tons of great games but will spend weird amounts of time on some janky web based crap. Its not a sign its good, he just has no taste cause he’s an inexperienced kid. I similarly wouldnt look at his choice of mismatched clothes and chicken nuggets for every possible meal and think “wow that stuff’s great!” Maturity and judgement take awhile to develop, so I dont think its bad that he does that, but roblox is still utter garbage no matter how much him and his friends love it. A lot of people love garbage - it doesn’t make it good.
The inverse is just as true. Just because you and many “gamers” accept a rigid canon of what counts as “quality” doesn’t mean those games are actually good.
Go to any retro gaming board and you’ll hear the NES era hailed as a golden age. I’ve played nearly all those games—and apart from a few true gems, most of them don’t hold up.
Yet people still pay hundreds of dollars for cartridges like Action 52 and treat them like holy grails, even though we all know that some of the worst mobile games today are technically better.
The truth is, I don’t think the average gamer really knows quality. I think most of their taste is just parroting what someone else told them to like.
Quality deserves to be judged on its own merits—not nostalgia or consensus.
Action 52 committed a crime worse than all those gacha games combined: it was not fun. And you had to pay good money for the privilege of being bored out of your mind.
But seriously—what’s stopping you (or anyone else) from buying games outright for your smartphone?
No one’s given me an answer, so here’s the truth:
Nothing.
But sure, keep pretending every mobile gamer is chained to gacha hell, like their phones come pre-installed with Only Microtransactions Forever™. Everyone with a smartphone is forced to play gacha 24/7, no exceptions.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Bigfoot Sightings Inc.
Mobile is so thoroughly dominated by gacha that any game that tries to have an ethical business model has almost no hope of succeeding on the platform, no hope of competing with the endless sea of gacha.
And I'm sure you're about to cherry-pick like two counterexamples, but I know you know that those exceptions are so scarce that I have every reason to decide that it simply isn't worth my time to go out of my way looking for them.
Have you ever considered that many people make games not just for some arbitrary measure of “success,” but because they genuinely love the craft of creating video games?
Some of these creators simply want to share their creativity with the world—no gimmicks, no exploitative business models.
There’s an entire universe of these passionate developers out there. We call them “indie” devs. You’ll find them on platforms like itch.io, and they’re far more common than most realize.
Many make games for PC, some for the web, and plenty for mobile as well.
If you want to play truly good games—without being at the mercy of marketing machines, no matter the platform—it’s on each of us to seek them out and discover what’s really worth playing.
Its the age old subjective vs objective criteria, and for certain people of different perspectives one will outweigh the other. Nostalgia is very subjective - most of those classics are called classics because they were fantastic at the time of release. They dont hold up today on a technical level, so objectively their quality by today’s standards is dirt, but whether or not someone still finds it entertaining or fun to play is entirely dependent on that person. The only way to measure that is to take an average of the judgemental reactions of many people - essentially consensus.
The problem with phone games is that objectively the large majority of them are poorly made, with subversive mechanics meant to manipulate the casual audience into spending on them. Their goal isn’t fun so much as addiction. It works because it is so largely available to a massive casual audience. The large majority of these people wouldnt bother to purchase a console or a PC for gaming. I’ve met people who actively say they think video games are a waste of time but they’re on level 1000 of candy crush and spending money on power ups. These people do not visit gaming forums and are not gaming enthusiasts, they dont see an issue, nor would they care if you point it out. Subjectively, they like it, they’re having fun, and that’s fine, but that is not the audience you are speaking to here. For this crowd the issues are readily apparent. Its immediately obvious to use why these games are balanced poorly, why ads are shoved in our faces constantly, why the constant updates are anti-consumer. An enthusiast audience will always be more critical of such practices that the larger casual crowd easily ignores.
Last time I went to mcdonalds it was because of that same kid who loves phone games. He was so excited for chicken nuggets. I tried one, it was horrible. I choked down a burger that is an insult to burgers. No food enthusiast would ever recommend this, no self respecting chef would ever endorse this, and I can easily make better food at home for cheaper. But they’ve served millions, and have franchises world wide! People love it, so it must be great! It sure as fuck is not, and I certainly have the capacity to be a more discerning consumer with that just like I am with video games or any other interest.
I’m not looking down on anyone, but dont pretend that’s high quality stuff over there. Just like with the games, I said earlier theyre having fun and thats great, but its still low quality games. I can continue the comparison - beer. The most popular ones are complete swill (bud miller coors). Books - James Patterson and Danielle Steel will keep pumping shlock out until they die, and I bet that shit will still sell like hotcakes for years after. Its not like I’m going around knocking burgers and beers out of hands going “hey loser get some taste!” I just choose a higher quality item for myself. Dont be too much of a victim here, you’re allowed to enjoy those things too, by all means. Just dont fool yourself into thinking it’s high tier premium grade caviar.
@Screen_Shatter@atomicpoet Imho everyone who talks about quality in games should define how they define quality ;) I for example value story and game mechanics over graphics and usability perfection. So Balatro / Knights of the Pen and Paper or alot of the Square Enix Classic Releases on Android still are high quality games for me. My advice would be before you argue you start to define what quality means. After this you can much better measure and argue.
You seem to think your taste is more exceptional than people you deem as basic.
But how exactly did you arrive at your taste? Hype? Influencers? Marketing?
You compare games to beer and say Bud is “complete swill”. Fair enough. But almost everyone drinking IPA is doing so because some hipster said this is real beer – and everyone else just went along with it.
Personally, I’ve never read a James Patterson or Danielle Steel book in my life. But I’ve met plenty of people who claim up and down that Jack Kerouac and David Foster Wallace is top tier literature. How have so many people – who oddly seem to dress the same, have the same manners, operate with similar world views – seem to all be convinced those two authors are peak?
My personal standpoint is that nobody has taste unless they do the discovering themselves. That means no relying on marketers, gatekeepers, tastemakers, or algorithms. Go and dig for themselves.
If you’re willing to do that, form an opinion all on your own, kudos. But most people – even people who swear up and down that they have taste – won’t.
I try them out. Been gaming since I could hold a controller. Been reading for the same. Been drinking since well before it was legal, I know what its like to drink a warm 40 cause you had to hide it, no fridge. I avoid ads like the plague and I’m old enough that listening to youtuber shills is like ear sandpaper, the only thing they influence me to do is turn them off.
I am constantly seeking new experiences, that is the fun in life. With games my tastes have changed because of it. I barely play shooters anymore when it used to be a core genre because really it just feels lile same old with a new coat of paint. I go to beer and food festivals and try whatever looks good… Basically everything. And my book list is much like my gaming back log - I need more time, theres just too much. This is where reviews and recommends help - how do I prioritize my list otherwise? If I just select at random I will waste my time and money on things I dont enjoy. But taking a recommendation doesn’t mean I must like the thing, I can still experience it and form my own opinions, as everyone else does. Hell, its good when I agree with a reviewer - if they have similar tastes as me it becomes an opinion wprth listening to.
You seem super jaded about liking something that this community mostly hates. Whats the point though, why not just go enjoy what you like? You’re obviously not persauding anyone here, but I bet you can find communities for those types of games - I know for a fact clash of clans, fire emblem, genshin, all have them.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things.
Guys traditional games AND mobile games are going the way of the dodo because my 6 month old plays with their fisher price phone more than our phones or tablets. - OP
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