bin.pol.social

simple, do games w Anbernic no longer shipping to the US

Expected but sad. Almost the entirety of retro handhelds come from China.

mesamunefire,

Just about. People are expecting miyoo and some of the other companies to follow in a bit. Theres some American stock still in Amazon warehouses, but thats basically it.

It takes 3 weeks to get over here via boat so im thinking we will see more and more cancellations with various shipments in the next coming weeks.

Ellvix, do games w Useless rant about Witcher 3 romance
@Ellvix@lemmy.world avatar

Totally fair gripe, and I have the same one with choice trees in most games. I don’t mind little stuff that doesn’t affect the longer game, but holy shit, if choice A or B is going to wildly change the outcome of the game / who I’m dating / if a character lives or dies / etc, either make it super obvious or flat out tell me! I’d LOVE to have a little info icon next to dialog choices that would say “FYI if you choose this option you’re straight up rejecting any future romance with this char” or something. Immersion breaking? who cares! so is save scumming and a ton of other game mechanics. It’s all for fun anyway, I’d rather know what I’m doing and not waste time.

Sorry, rant over :D

FlihpFlorp,

Stuff like this is why I’m struggling to get back into cyberpunk

I love the game but I feel like every decision has some far reaching consequence which is nice that my choices matter but please tell me about this gameplay altering descion

NOT_RICK, do games w Anbernic no longer shipping to the US
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I love my Anbernic. Such a cheap and convenient way to emulate old games.

Ludrol, do zapytajszmer w Czy istnieje instancja Lemmy’ego, która mówi po ukraińsku?
@Ludrol@szmer.info avatar

Nie ma. Szmer, rekabru lub inna ogólna instancja zostaje.

jest tylko !poukrainsku

jeśli chodzi o mastodona to jest masto.ink gdzie jest już jakiś jazgot

lowleveldata, do games w STOP destroying videogames

neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it

So anything that uses server resource is irrelevant?

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

It means that the publisher needs to provide the player with the server executable, which is a one time expense for them to prepare, rather than continually paying for humans and machines to keep a server running on their end.

iegod,

I think that really depends on the server architecture.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

What the petition is strictly asking for is to leave the game playable. If that means the game requires multiplayer, then there should be some way to play multiplayer without the server on the other end. I’d certainly prefer that they just make the server executable available. I personally don’t care what the architecture is. People have gotten pirate MMO servers running. Even if it’s something the layman won’t know how to do, we need to have the option to run the server ourselves.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.

This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:

An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or “phone home” to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.

Here’s the part about being “playable”:

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).

This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

In a game like an MMO or most free to play games, multiplayer is all that exists. The game as it exists on your computer doesn’t even have everything that it needs to function. It’s asking for the game to continue functioning. As for CoD, the petition is not allowed to be prescriptive, so it would be to the government to determine specifically what must happen. In most cases, the shortest path to honoring what this petition asks for is to provide the server code, but I agree that plenty of games make that distinction very blurry.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Right, but the petition explicitly says it’s not expecting any additional resources.

neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it

If that was the intent, the petition should have been more clear, saying it expects any resources not part of the downloaded game but necessary for the full experience to be made available once the game is discontinued, perhaps specifically calling out server code.

If this turns into a bill, I fully expect online content to be excluded since that would require more than just removing the “phone home” bit of games.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Once they discontinue it, they dust their hands clean and their work here is done. That’s all that means. Releasing whatever they have to do to allow it to continue to operate is up to and including the moment that it’s supported. Discontinuing support and leaving people with something they can’t play is what the petition is asking to fix. If they did the work to make The Crew playable after the server was shut down, then they are still not providing any additional resources once they discontinue it; that work would have been done in advance. Once again, the petition can’t ask for how they’d like the problem to be legally solved or how the government should define the rules. In the video that typically comes attached to this with a more verbose problem statement and what we should expect as consumers, you can buy a digital horse, but turning the game off removes your ability to access the horse you paid for, so it’s asking to retain the ability to use everything you bought. That’s more than just a phone home if your game client doesn’t contain the multiplayer mode where you would use the horse (or CoD mulitplayer skin).

sugar_in_your_tea,

Is there a video? I don’t see it in this post or in the linked initiative.

I’m not in the EU, so I’m really not familiar with this process, and I’m guessing a number of EU citizens also aren’t familiar. If there’s any related information, it would be good to link it.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Pardon me. That’s an assumption on my part that the people in this community are the types that are so ingrained in this stuff that you’ve seen that video, and a link to this petition, a dozen times at this point. This is a campaign organized by Ross Scott at Accursed Farms. The main video pitch is here, and the super short version is here. And here’s the video that came along with the launch of the EU petition.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Awesome, thanks! This is literally the first time I’ve seen this petition, so I appreciate the extra info. I also wasn’t sure if it was part of Stop Killing Games or a separate initiative (looks like it’s at the 26min mark of the first video).

I’m in the US (looks like Ross Scott is too?) so I obviously can’t sign it, but I am very much interested on the outcome since it’ll likely impact me. If it’s strictly limited to SP games, that’s a lot less interesting since that can easily be region locked (so it would just be the same as piracy for me), but if it also forces release of server code, then I’m getting something I couldn’t before.

For US people, there’s still hope. It looks like Louis Rossmann is pissed off about this as well, but from a regular software perspective (Odyssee and YouTube), so he might try something similar to what he did with Right to Repair. He has a bit wider reach and probably a very different audience, and maybe he can help get something going in the US.

Thanks for the links, I’ll see what I can do to spread the word.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t really follow Ross Scott outside of this campaign, but I believe he’s a US citizen married to a Polish woman, living in Poland. It sounds like it would take an act of Congress to change things here in the US. My e-mails to my representatives have gone functionally unanswered, which doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yes, but it can start at the state legislature, which is a lot easier. But you need a lobbying campaign to get anywhere. Louis Rossmann has made some progress this way by banding together with farmers, and while it’s painful and expensive, it does work.

So if we’re going to do something in the US, we need a lobbiest, a lawyer (to draft a bill), and a lot of people to show up and give testimony. But we only need to win in one state, and then it gets a lot easier. So:

  1. Pick a state with good consumer protections and a market segment that’s somewhat rated to what you want (video games probably won’t work, but other software could)
  2. Work with pissed off companies to put together a lobby
  3. Find a few reps that care (e.g. the reps for those companies’ districts), and get them to sponsor your bill
  4. Appeal to regular people saying this is a stepping stone to what they actually want
  5. Get people to annoy their reps, show up to hearings, etc in support of the bill
  6. Get the bill to the floor (crazy amount of effort)
  7. If the bill passes, start the process over in the next state, which should go smoother

Once you have legal precedent, repeat the process with a small expansion to the thing you actually care about. This should be a lot easier, because you’re just expanding the same rights to more types of customers.

It’s much more of a long shot, but it does seem possible.

Evotech, do gaming w Oblivion "remastered"

If that is the only difference you can see you need some new glasses

mesamunefire, do games w Anbernic no longer shipping to the US

It’s a fairly popular retro gaming handheld company.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/851e70ee-a6a7-4cd5-a6a1-7b37ac3c184a.png

RvTV95XBeo, do games w (my first time here sorry) prison review and suggestions

At first glance I thought this was rimworld and you were running some organ harvesting operation of epic proportions.

Oisann,

haha yeah rimworld and prison architect are like twins in a hat though gotta say i tried out my prison and brother was it hard as life to get out as its super secured despite the weird layouts and all https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a790281c-6843-4499-86c1-78e7c5ff04bb.png

abominablecosmonaut44, do gaming w Oblivion "remastered"

I’m still excited for it.

What are you guys even complaining about here? The color pallette? Really?

StarvingMartist,

Never said I wasn’t excited friend, I would love to have another romp through my childhood. I complain because I love this game, and would like to see it how I remember. If it comes out with the brown filter over it, it’s whatever, it’s oblivion it will get modded back.

But I daresay there’s much worse things we could be doing online than griping about an old favorite, harmless fun I’d say.

Kyrgizion, do gaming w Oblivion "remastered"

I was so excited. Until I saw it’s going to be UE5. Ah well, Skyblivion it is for me then.

accideath,

Apparently UE5 only for rendering, the game logic still on the old gamebryo engine.

Because if done well, UE5 is fairly pretty and if it’s used just for graphics, maybe it won’t perform as badly either. The mixture of two engines tells me at the very least that the devs spent some amount of thought and time on the engine(s).

But yea, when it comes out and I find out it runs like crap on my 5700xt, I’ll just wait until Skyblivion is out. Not gonna be too long anyways.

catloaf,

That’s disappointing. So it’s going to have all the logic bugs of gamebryo plus that same annoying graphical feel of UE5

accideath,

Depends on how much work they put into the graphics. Sure, if they keep UE at default settings, it’ll look like any run of the mill UE5 game. But if they cared enough to combine two engines, maybe they also cared enough to actually make UE5 look and feel more unique and more Elderscrolls-y…

Also, keeping gamebryo for logic might be a good thing to make the game feel more like the original.

vxx,

It’s Bethesda. They probably did it in a couple months trying to recoup money after the Starfield desaster.

accideath,

It’s not actually done by Bethesda though but by Virtuos Games, which have both a history of making excellent remasters and miracle ports, and remasters that were very buggy at release.

rikudou, do games w STOP destroying videogames
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

It really looked like it’ll be signed quickly in the beginning, I was really hopeful.

Now I’m not really sure it will pass.

bjoern_tantau,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Sometimes they still look at a petition even if it didn’t reach the threshold. At least that has been the case for German petitions.

In the end they still get ignored, whether they reached the threshold or not.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

I mean, not even 500k people in the whole of EU care about this apparently, so we get what we deserve, I guess.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a bit reductive. Perhaps plenty care but don’t know to even look for this thing to sign, or are too young to know how games used to be made, or didn’t get the message about this petition in their own language. 1M signatures is an absurdly high threshold to clear; that’s one out of every 450 people in the EU.

witty_username,

I think that reframing it in the context of consumer protection for digital planned obsolescence might benefit this campaign. Ultimately, this is bigger than games and I think it could benefit from a broader appeal

sugar_in_your_tea,

Exactly.

And it’s something that only applies to a fairly small subset of people. If we look at Steam users (decent indicator of people passionate about games), Germany has the highest in the EU at 3.6M. 3.6M is ~4.3% of the German population, so if we extrapolate to the EU, that’s ~19M Steam users.

If we assume that’s an accurate measurement of people who would be interested in this petition, you’d need 1/20 of them to sign. I’m not in the EU, so I don’t know how popular these petitions are or what the requirements are (do you need to be voting age?), but if I assume a lot of people who play games are young, and that young people tend to be fairly uninterested in politics, getting 1M signatures would be incredibly difficult even if it’s something that all games agree with (and I would imagine most would care about this at some level).

So yeah, getting >400k signatures for something like this sounds like amazing success.

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, under 50% of the required signatures and it’s just a few weeks from expiring, there’s no chance this will succeed unless some big-name influencer gathers support for the petition, which at this point I doubt will happen.

It made some people talk about the problem, though. That’s a step in the right direction.

davad, do games w (my first time here sorry) prison review and suggestions

I haven’t played in a few years so take this with a grain of salt.

My approach is to build things out incrementally. If your cashflow stays positive the entire time, you won’t have money problems.

For design, try to find modular chunks you can repeat. A cellblock with bathroom and showers. A canteen. Make blueprints from them and twist them.

Do you have a foundation and walls around the entire space? I usually kept most stuff outside with a fence around the perimeter.

Oisann,

i honestly just go with the flow like the plan comes in my head its not the best as you can tell but i try to keep it quite better looking this prison as you see i am trying to make it like a very hard prison to escape from but at the same time somewhat of a prison for reform its not the best looking as i said but i try my best

Haess, do games w When Nintendo games were affordable
@Haess@lemmynsfw.com avatar

Original Nintendo games were $50 back in the day… Always regret buying Predator.

Elevator7009, do games w (my first time here sorry) prison review and suggestions

I have not played this game but someone at !tycoon might be able to help you.

dereality, do games w What's a cancelled game you really miss?
@dereality@lemmy.world avatar

Scalebound. That open-world Star Wars game. SimsVille

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • Gaming
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • krakow
  • sport
  • muzyka
  • NomadOffgrid
  • rowery
  • Technologia
  • niusy
  • esport
  • Psychologia
  • antywykop
  • test1
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • Blogi
  • lieratura
  • informasi
  • retro
  • motoryzacja
  • slask
  • giereczkowo
  • MiddleEast
  • Pozytywnie
  • tech
  • Cyfryzacja
  • shophiajons
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny