I remember playing Far Cry 3 on Steam way back when… It opened up uPlay. I was not happy, but what can you do.
So I played for a bit, then… the game crashed. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the game, but the uPlay lost connection. Everything else worked just fine. Happened several times after that, never bought anything else from Ubisoft.
Even if their launcher isn’t such piece of shit anymore, I don’t care.
Plus it works so smoothly I never even think of it as DRM
AFAIK SteamWorks DRM is something developers have to actively implement in their games. From what I understand, by default Steam is merely a delivery system without DRM.
As a linux gamer, a game that is not available on Steam is a game i won’t even bother checking. I can easily run non-steam game using lutris or heroic-game-launcher but I prefer to stick to my walled garden than step in their’s.
No, they should definitely be accountable for all the other shitty things too. This is just a game I was actually kind of excited for, hence why I’m upset about it.
In short, Epic is anti-consumer. They claim better support for developers, but in reality consumers are the one paying for that. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but you the consumer have no choice in it. You are forced through exclusives and other limitations to use inferior service for the same price. Even free games they give are there to drag you into their ecosystem and abuse.
This is why Valve doesn’t feel threatened, I assume, and is not likely to feel the pressure from Epic anytime soon. For that to happen, Epic would have to get on par with features and customer benefits equal or better than Steam and that’s not happening anytime soon. Epic would rather throw hundreds of millions on exclusive deal with some developer and force you the consumer to buy the game on EGS than actually improve the service.
As someone who used to run a louis rossman electronics repair business for a couple years before i burned out.
LG G5 was and still is my point to for perfectly fixable devices.
Motorola is trash because you have to dismantle the phone from the back layer by layer just to reach the front screen.
HTC was even worse with two tier motherboards and octopuss ribbon cables were a nightmare to navigate.
iPhone was/ is possibly the easiest fucking phone to fix, ironically…however by the iphone 8 and onwards apple found increasingly shitty ways to make 3rd party repairs nearly impossible.
windows phones, nokia, and others were hit or miss. tablets were long winded affairs but generally easy due to their inherent size.
ive been out of the game since 2019 when covid dropped. id really like to hear the inside baseball on any current operators running repair business.
i used Repair Shopr software to manage my customers. idk if thats still the go to or if another has bested it.
When I couldn’t repair my Nokia and replace the 5 € USB-Port because there happened to be a small crack in the screen (of course you have to remove the glued on screen to accese the innards), I caved and bought a Fairphone 3.
Worst decision ever. The stupid thing refuses to break to let me even use the better repairability.
Honestly, I think I’ve never dropped a phone as much as this one. And apart from a few scratches there’s nothing. I think it’s the battery cover that usually just pops off like on the indestructible Nokia phones of decades past.
Really funny how I can use Nokia as both a positive and a negative example.
All of the selfish things I’m learning from the comments in this thread about what Microsoft has been doing with their console such as banning aftermarket tech like controllers or generic SSDs is why I finally quit buying consoles entirely years ago and why I stopped paying for Xbox live. Enshitification is a real thing, my dudes.
I was thinking about this in another thread where someone made this joke: With how much stuff Valve does outside of gaming, are we sure they have never done a 3rd iteration of something before? Like, they do business stuff too and are into a ton of random tech related things like BCIs. We only ever really hear about the game related stuff, tho. Or possibly when Gabe gets a new boat since they interview him on it.
You can’t typically get punitive damages for contract disputes. Also, there is a very real possibility that the contract hasn’t been breached by the new owners’ actions. It sounds like they used their superior bargaining power to put a lot of questionable yet enforceable provisions in the contract.
Ive heard of it once where the defendant litterally wrote a book on how to use overseas buisness to pull off scams like the one he was being accused of
Typically, conduct would have to rise to the level of fraud to justify punitives in a contract based dispute. That’s a very high hurdle in most jurisdictions. Also, at that point the conduct complained of would likely be based in tort, not contract.
yes, but mobile games now are literally casinos, with research going into making them as addictive as possible to maximise in app purchase and advertisement revenue
source: worked in ad tech for several years, specifically in the mobile gaming industry, monetisation/ad optimisation. a job I regret doing and which feels very scummy in retrospect.
Because they all come with microtransaction stores, including several of the ones you’re specifically lauding, ya numpty.
Just because YOU haven’t wasted money on microtransactions does not magically make them unsuccessful in getting many children to blow loads of their parents’ money.
No, they don’t. It’s not hard to find premium, paid mobile games without microtransactions—I’ve already listed examples. And I’ve cited hard data: there are 14,139 such games on iOS alone.
If you can’t find even one of them, the problem isn’t the platform. It’s that you’re not actually looking.
To be fair, the iOS app store will show the top 200 paid games, and that’s it. There are a bunch of categories for games, but ‘paid’ isn’t one of them; there is no other way to see or filter just paid games. It’s always sucked and Apple has never fixed it.
I honestly don’t know how any developer is supposed to be successful on there with a paid game, because if it’s not already in the top 200 list, most people will never be able to see it in the store without specifically searching the name.
Ah, the classic “world hunger is a myth, I have eaten today.”
I’m not saying there are not the rare gems in mobile games (just bought Don’t Starve on Android last month!), but like 99% of games for mobile are just s money making scheme using dark patterns to influence your brain to give them money.
And congrats on not spending on micro transactions! You do realize the world doesn’t revolve around how your perceive things, right? If young people are exposed to micro transactions like that, it alters their brains and not in a good way. And that’s science, there really isn’t much you can argue with.
You do realize that iOS alone has more paid premium games—without microtransactions—than the entire combined library of NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, right?
Your premise would be true if kids were compelled to spend money. But I watch my kids’ spending habits like a hawk. If what you were saying were true, I’d notice transactions being made.
Which leads me to believe that you’re either exaggerating or deliberately engaging in moral panic because others are having fun in your non-preferred way.
My kid has spent more money on new Switch games than Roblox.
So because you do it correctly, everyone else should get fucked or what? Like, you know how many people have bad parents?
So, congrats, your kids won’t suffer from that (or maybe they will once they have their own money because the path way of “spend a $1, get an in-game item, get an instant rush of feel-good hormones” is forming even with moderation). But other kids may, unless of course you think that it’s somehow their fault they have shitty parents.
So no, I really don’t want this around kids whose lives will be ruined just so your kids can have a fun time (which they can have in other ways, including other games).
I just spent the last two weeks in San Diego and hated it.
I hated the freeways, the strip malls, and the car-centrism. More than that, I hated the complete and utter hostility towards walking.
There were places that were 0.5 miles away. It would take three minutes to drive there yet an hour to walk because the assholes who designed the city couldn’t be bothered to build a pedestrian overpass.
I feel very strongly that cities like this are everything wrong with the USA, and that the reason so much shit happens in the USA are because cities are simply unlivable.
But Americans—specifically American voters—have decided this is what they aspire towards, and being antagonistic towards the average American is ultimately unhelpful.
Now why do I mention this? Because there’s a host of things that suck, and there’s only so much bandwidth to give a damn.
The real problem you’re talking about isn’t games. It’s financial literacy. Schools don’t teach it. Employers are hostile towards it. Governments just want you to spend—they don’t want you to save.
Financial literacy is what saves people from making terrible financial decisions.
Specifically worth pointing out the research and refinement of the skinner boxes in mobile games today is a continuous and ongoing process, with revenue also being continuous and ongoing. Any games and moral panic of 80s to 2000s were about products that didn’t change after release and were one-time only purchases.
Modern mobile games vs. shareware are incomparable in terms of harm they could do, real or perceived.
Moral panic is unrelated to games having addictive elements.
A better comparison would be how retro games would be designed for you to die/lose over and over because they were based on arcade dynamics, where the customer has to keep putting in quarters to continue playing.
Because the games are intentionally made with micro transactions as the main feature.
Like, if you play Witcher or Control or whatever, the focus is on you enjoying the game. If you play Fortnite, the main focus is on getting you pay. The game is probably still fun, but every single thing in the game is meant to make you pay.
It’s absolutely not the same thing. I used to play a lot as a kid (still do) and I have no problem with today’s kids doing the same. But I want them to be able to enjoy games without constantly being manipulated into spending as much money as possible.
And it’s not just about kids either, I think these predatory tactics affect adults too.
It’s not a moral panic, the problem is capitalism.
I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.
Actual conversation had with my wife, who was watching me play near the end:
“That chick is cute. I bet her romance is adorable!”
“She’s aromantic and asexual, you can’t romance her.”
“I bet her quest line is fun”
“Nope. It’s a really boring fetch quest where you set her up on a date with some bland woman old enough to be her mother. She is also very obviously sexually and romantically attracted to this woman.”
“…huh.”
I love Parvati but Drinking Sapphire Wine is a terrible quest.
I thought The Outer Worlds was violently mediocre, and yeah, its really long uninteresting fetch quest, but:
Parvati says she’s not interested in physical affection, but I don’t recall her ever saying she was aromantic. The closest thing I remember is that she feels like she’s better at dealing with machines than people, which definitely doesn’t mean the same thing.
I also don’t recall her ever saying anything sexual about Junlei?
how old does this woman look to you that you think she could have a 28 year old daughter?
The quest was nothing new sure, but the reason I’m doing the quest? I want her to have the best dam date ever. I just wanted to see her happy and help her get ready for her date. Not sure what they were talking about with her being aromatic, don’t remember that. And about the age thing? not sure what they meant by that either, she looks the same age as Pavarti to me.
Haha yea I always check out the negative reviews first - either they quickly show that I’d be wasting my time with the game, or the negatives they highlight are actually neutral or positive for me, either way I generally find them better value/time than positive reviews. (Especially when a significant portion of positive reviews are memes, award-begging copypasta, or “best game ever” with no further details.)
I do the same. If the negative reviews highlight a consistent issue that I have an issue with and hasn’t been fixed, then I doubt I’ll be buying the product. Doesn’t have to be distinct to steam, either
I think Valve severely escalated the problem when they introduced the award system. Now people are extra motivated to cash in a quick laugh, or provoke outrage for the Clown awards. What boggles my mind the most is that hundreds of people give awards to the same copypaste comments that appear under every major game. I sometimes try to report the reviews of the spammiest accounts, but Valve is really hands-off with their moderation. At the end of the day they profit from the points system, and as always, user experience takes a firm second seat to profits :/
Goldeneye. Revolutionized the FPS genre at the time. Nigh unplayable now. Tried recently using both NSO and on an original N64, it just hasn’t aged well when compared to something modern.
I played Goldeneye at an arcade recently that had an N64 set up and actually had a great time. But people who hadn’t grown up with it and tried to join in found it pretty frustrating. So I can see that going either way tbh.
Yeah it already had inferior controls at the time if you were familiar with FPS gaming on computers. But it was still a ton of fun and when I went back to it some years ago I fell back into the n64 controller muscle memory no problem
Yeah you can use two controllers to mimic the more modern twin stick ones that have become standard, but I don’t think too many people figured that out back then. Still though, controller will never be as good as mouse + keyboard for FPS games.
Perfect Dark, on the other hand, totally still holds up today in my opinion, and there’s a decompilation project that works great on PC and Steam Deck.
Yeah, I felt that way about GoldenEye after getting used to PD. GoldenEye was one of the GOATs in its day, but that day passed pretty quickly. Halo then further improved on the controls and CoD improved on the multiplayer mechanics.
When that GoldenEye for PC project released some years ago, I was excited to download and install it (because PC port meant it would get PC controls, which have always been superior to console controls, even after Halo fixed them) but I think I only played one game before remembering that you start with nothing and have to find guns and the port was more crowded than the 2-4 player games back in the day where you could at least spawn away from the action and get a chance to arm up before others made their way to where you were.
I love love love perfect dark. But it’s uhhh it does not hold up. The campaign starts fairly strong and craters pretty quick. It really feels like they just weren’t able to really… Finish the game when it came out.
Also, like GoldenEye, a huge component of Perfect Dark was multiplayer.
With the N64, it helps if you can hook it up to a TV from around that era too. Games like Goldeneye look terrible on a modern LCD. I had that experience myself - “Man, I know I’m used to modern games now, but I don’t remember these games looking this shitty”. Then I dragged out my old CRT and hooked it up, and instantly it was “Now this is how I remember these games looking like”.
Man, I managed to completely forget about that. My dad was really, really into that game. Like, that’s about all he did for most of 4 years and ended up leaving my mom for someone he met in game.
I guess SL wasn’t really any worse about that than any other game, plenty of people meet and get married in MMOs, but I think the raging custom-content sex parties in SL probably didn’t help matters at the time.
Wonder how that game is doing these days. Cursory web search says it’s still alive. I probably would have found it to be pretty interesting if I wasn’t so turned away from it by my family experience.
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