I’m a bit hesitant about allowing or not linking to the website archives.
For the time being, and while we discuss about it among the mods, I’d like to ask you to refrain from posting any link to said archive.
If we decide to allow it, I’ll restore the comments containing said links I’ve removed.
Thank you for your understanding.
Final Edit :
After carefully considering both sides arguments, and talking about it with LM admins and the mod team, we decided to keep the direct links removed.
LM allows meta-discussions around piracy, but not linking to possible pirated content. As we do not have the means and resources to check the whole 12Go dump to make sure no there is no copyrighted content in one of those Rom Hacks. More information here.
Rom Hacking is a gray area which is, depending on your location and/or interpretation of your local law, allowed or not. LW is under EU Jurisdiction (see that part of the TOS), and has to abide with rather restrictive law on that matter. There is unfortunately no broad “fair use” exception in that jurisdiction, only specific exceptions listed here. None of them seem to be applicable to Rom Hacks, which mean that they are to be considered potentially illegal under LW jurisdiction.
From what I see in the archive link I posted, it only contains patches, not playable games, neither original nor patched. You need a copy of the game already to make any use of it.
You don’t need to have the full game to be considered as piracy. Anything allowing to break a DRM could be considered as such.
Edit :
I understand that most of you do not agree with that, and I do too, but as a mod I have to put my feelings on the matter aside and put the community and lemmy.world interest first. If we get DMCA (or the EU equivalent), consequences could be quite significant for this community or the server itself.
You can find a more specific explanation of my stance here :
Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise.
In the EU, things are a bit different. US Fair Use is quite open ended, with a lot of room for interpretation. In the case of EU copyright laws, the list of exclusions is explicitly listed in Information Society Directive Article 5.
In my opinion this could fall into either art. 5.3(d), art. 5.3(i), or art. 5.3(k), but I’m no copyright law specialist. I do have one among my friends, but she kinda got a child last week, I’m not gonna bother her for that 😅.
First, please take into consideration that lemmy.world website and organisation is bound to EU laws (as stated in the TOS). As such, in the current case the EU copyright laws, that are as previously stated, far more restrictive than the US ones.
As you stated, the objective of ROM patches is to modify copyrighted material. One of the right protected by copyright in the EU is the right to modify a software.
By default, if no licence is given, software is considered as being under the most restrictive licence available (even if the source code is freely available), which means, in this case, an “all rights reserved” licence, which prohibit software modification.
In the EU, third party patches are considered as derivative works, and requires an explicit authorisation from the copyright holder to be published and used on copyrighted material. Some exceptions exists, as previously stated, but applying them here would be quite far fetched.
For now, and while I keep researching on the application of EU copyright laws to try to find a flaw that would allow me to authorize those links, I’ll have to keep those links removed.
The comments would be restored if the link are removed by the comment authors.
I’ve been playing the new Solium Infernum with a friend - the first playthrough I did not particularly enjoy (partially my fault for not playing the tutorial first) but once I learned the mechanics my second game was more fun. The UI is not very smooth to use and there are some mechanics I don’t like, but overall pretty good.
I also picked up Mindustry again last night - it’s an open source Factorio + Tower Defense + RTS that is rather addicting… The new campaign they added a couple years ago is better than the original too.
I think I’m on the cutting edge of game releases, mostly focused on indie games. I have a huge Steam collection. This is also my nerd hobby.
Im subscribed to a bunch of game sales (like isthereanydeal) and casually browse steam pages every few days. I often play a genre then search for “games like X”. Lately it was metroidvania games. I found a game called Rabi-Ribi, which looks really uncomfortable to play. But the reviewers said to skip the dialog and ignore the loli, because it has really strong game mechanics. (And it does!)
Searching for indie games using steamdb with under 5000 reviews (lately I’ve been searching for games under 500 reviews), and checking them out.
I also make indie games as a hobby (nothing fancy!), so I like to look for inspiration from other indie game developers.
Lastly, Rock Paper Shotgun or Giant Bomb covers any big budget games I should know about.
Yeesh, I’ve never used the website but that NightCrawler person seems like they have some serious control problems. The fact that the whole community was willing to chip in/pay for it and take it over and the admin still refused to cooperate is pretty shitty. At least it looks like someone managed to convince the admin to let them host and takeover the site’s wiki.
This is oddly common in ROM hacking/mod scenes. There’s been no shortage of drama in the Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics communities, too.
At the very least I wish people would consider the bus test once a site/project gets to a certain critical mass. Insane to me that a site with this kind of profile never had coverage for that scenario this entire time.
I really hope that tcrf doesn’t take over. I STILL can’t contribute to that website because it requires you to sign up for Discord and agree to Discord’s ToS just to paste some stupid code into their bot.
after some further research, it became apparent that Discord staff could save a significant amount of money by changing S3 providers. The new bucket was set up, but when the time came to make the change NC refused to do it, even though he was not the one footing the bill.
There’s a conspicuous absence of explaining why they wouldn’t do it. What were their actual concerns? Did they not voice them or are they just being withheld?
NC refused to join the Discord to talk about solutions in real-time.
Why was this a requirement?
Did we vent in private? Sure.
And what did you say?
Did we dox or threaten? Fucking hell, no! And frankly I’m LIVID at even the suggestion that we did.
Well something clearly happened if his family was brought into it, so if you’re going to skimp on the details, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to believe that.
The whole thing just comes back to the larger issue with discord: the record vanishes.
One of my main tools has been SteamDB’s instant search - it’s basically a giant list of all steam games, sorted by review score, with a TON of different filters you can apply. Looking specifically for something released this year? You can filter for it. Looking specifically for a co-op action shooter, or a singleplayer 2d platformer? You can filter for those too. Wanting to exclude early access games or exclude games with a min/max number of reviews? You can do that too. Very handy tool
Who cares? I exclude genres I don’t like too. Play the games you like. I’m sure those poor indie games will do just fine despite a guy on Lemmy saying he excludes them.
Word of mouth. YouTube. Pretty much anything that isn’t an actual ad because the only games that I usually see ads for are games I do not give a shit about.
I decided to give a chance to Super Virus Defense. It was made by the brother in law of my best friend, but it was described as tower defense so it sat ignored for over a year. I play on PC, but it’s very mobile like. I’m addicted. There’s a grind element to buy upgrades, but it’s been so non mindless that it reminded me of how big companies just choose to make you suffer. Specifically, I can grind while completing higher difficulties in previous levels or by playing the endless mode.
Playing it made me want to create a post with all the Brazilian indie games that I really liked over the years.
Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - I'm back on my bullshit again. Uzuki arc was fun, but when it comes time for bracket I gotta lock in. And by lock in, I mean still play like a clown.
Splatoon 3 - Didn't have too much time to practice this week, but had one good session. Really trying to work on more actionable callouts, coordinating with our specials and planning a push together rather than merely announcing things after they happen.
Persona 4 Golden - Still just post-Kanji dungeon. At the rate I am going I will finish this game... someday.
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story - Man, forgot how annoying it was that you have to always go for weapon breaks against bosses or else you miss their blueprint forever. Also, RHDN shutdown has me wondering, if/when the third game's translation patch ever gets finished, where do I even look to find out about it?
Slay the Spire - I can quit any time I want, I swear.
Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came dangerously close to losing my Master 1 rank on Soul, but got a few wins so I'm safeish now. I know I'm too reckless and I'm trying to work on that. I did play one of the best games I've had at club this week, had the discipline to fold several tempting hands and it turned out to be correct every time. Sometimes protecting second place through smart play is more satisfying than lucking into first.
Gamescom, then I bookmark the trailer of games I’m interested at with their release date. A few months later I can just open the bookmarks and know what is releasing this month. Whenever I find out a game is delayed, I edit the bookmark with the new date. It’s very easy to keep track of new releases that way.
I do it this way, because I’ve had quite a few good games that I completely missed because of not checking the news in that week.
Still having fun with Helldivers 2. Player Base dropped but still around 40k in the meantime (don’t look at Steam Numbers only, there are console players too). There are constant updates and a big one is coming mid August.
Still Rocket League. Can’t shake it for some quick challenges in ~10 minute increments. I really wish I could either switch over to some SCUMMVM retro stuff, or a semi-casual fantasy adventure, but in ~10 minute doses.
I’ve considered Witcher 3, but it looks too time-intensive for a busy dad. I’m hoping for something that might need a few hours to get started, but then you can pick up & make actual progress in under 15 minutes.
I would actually say Witcher 3 is good for that. There’s like 100 smaller quests you can do in 5-10 minutes each. Some of the main storyline quests (which are marked as such) might take 20 or 30 minutes when you’re ready for them. It also has imo one of the best quest tracking systems I’ve seen, as well as best inventory system (sorting, yay) so you don’t have to remember everything after time away from playing.
Dark Souls games can also be played that way - from one bonfire (checkpoint) to the next is usually around 5 to 10 minutes depending on how you play.
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Aktywne