bin.pol.social

anamethatisnt, do games w Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo?

Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2

toxicbubble, (edited )

this is the definitive list.

path of exile is most popular but has optional mtx(?)

titan quest and Torchlight are on multiple consoles. titan quest has a sequel in production

grim dawn is by the titan quest team, has a small file size, and runs well on older pcs.

glitches_brew,

Does Last Epoch belong on this list too?

toxicbubble,

I’ve only heard good things but haven’t tried it yet, probably does belong!

glitches_brew,

Ive had a ton of fun playing it!

PlantJam,

Yes it absolutely does belong! It’s officially launching on February 21, but it’s currently available in beta/early access.

Thorry84,

Yes! As a die hard Grim Dawn fan I can say Last Epoch is awesome. Grim Dawn is still better imho, but Last Epoch comes close. Both are excellent games one could easily put 100+ hours in and have a blast.

Croquette,

I just wish that I could start at a higher difficulty on Grim Dawn with the appropriate scaling. I don’t want to do the campaign 3 times just like old days.

Ketram,

Didn’t they just change the game with the last patch (still being updated, my God the devs are GOATed) so they you can play to 100 in any difficulty? I still imagine you get pasted in elite and ultimate if that’s your issue though.

Croquette,

I don’t know, haven’t played with that feature. The campaign with expansion is long enough that it was a pain to go through it to get to endgame.

It’s a good thing that you can skip that.

Ketram,

Yeah I’m hoping so as well, haven’t played since that patch. I got really burnt out spamming the story over and over too.

darth_helmet,

Path of exile charges for inventory QoL and with the ludicrous amount of different stuff that drops, it’s arguably kind of mandatory if you’re trying to complete seasonal objectives

bisby,

Its also free to play.

Or as some streamers say: its a $60 game with an incredibly generous free trial.

sadbehr,
@sadbehr@lemmy.nz avatar

For PoE you consider 30gb installed (on PS5 mind you) a large file size? Yes it has mtx, but it is not once pushed or advertised to you, and none of it is required for anything. They does improve the QoL of the game however.

CoD + WZ is around 240gb I think. Most modern AAA games are usually 90gb minimum.

toxicbubble,

true, I thought it was larger for some reason

sadbehr,
@sadbehr@lemmy.nz avatar

Some years ago they pretty much rewrote the entire base game code (or some parts of it) and tidied it up, reducing the overall size. It may be larger installed on PC (I’m on PS5) but I can’t imagine there being too much of a difference.

TheLugal,
@TheLugal@lemmy.world avatar

The MTX for PoE are within the “nice” ones. There’s extra stash tabs, but you don’t need to consider that until after the campaign. And then there’s cosmetics. No pay to win. And the MTX are on your account, so they will be on PoE2 as well.

GraniteM,

How is the couch co-op for Titan Quest? My SO and I spent a ton of time on Diablo 3 together and I might consider trying that again.

anamethatisnt,

No couch coop on PC, so I don’t know.
There is 2 player local coop for Playstation, XBox and Nintendo though
www.co-optimus.com/game/334/pc/titan-quest.html

shneancy, do games w First they came for steam, then they came for itch.io .

gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn’t going to end on niche porn games

Mk23simp,

Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.

Katana314,

Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.

One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.

pupbiru, (edited )

visa have similar restrictions… the issue is that payment processor, merchant, card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank (and a few more) are all different layers to facilitating a transaction… there are very few card networks in the world, and essentially people pay online using mostly either just visa or mastercard

technically you could probably run a site that only accepts amex, diners club, jcb, discover, etc but it really wouldn’t go well: people want to whip out their card (often their only method of online payment) and just pay and go

you’d also need to find a payment processor that would be comfortable taking on the risk of facilitating transactions around mastercard and visa… they might just cut them off from access to their network. sounds like extortion? yeah welcome to the world of banking, where in any other industry it’d be called a cartel

making things even more difficult is that by law in the US payment processors must offer at least 3 (i think? it might be 2?) “routes” (these things aren’t always straight forward - sometimes there are multiple card networks involved), so you probably have to have a pretty mature payment processor because they’d have to accept several of the alternative card networks

oh and you have to push various stats to the federal reserve which is a massive back and forth bureaucratic challenge even above the technical challenge of interfacing with some pretty awful systems. it often takes over a year to get things sorted unless you’re a “too big to fail” type customer

there are a buuuuunch of other spanners that get thrown into the works, but i’m not sure where the NDA line hits so i’m gonna just leave it there and say trust me, payment processing (distinct from payment gateway) is an absolute nightmare mess

Cocodapuf, (edited )

I’m not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:

A. Risk facing the wrath of the gamers, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.

B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% overnight, over time some users will seek alternative payment methods, possibly resulting in only 50% less revenue than expected…

While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.

Those numbers are of course only speculation, but that’s my best guess.

Mk23simp,

I meant pressing the payment processors, like those prude activists are.

skulblaka,
@skulblaka@sh.itjust.works avatar

I find it offensive that the only effective way to combat this is to fight fire with fire and also make a big bitchy noise about this like the conservatives love to do. I have better things I would rather be doing with my life. But such are the times we live in I suppose.

Mk23simp,

In the short term, I think that collectively being Karens about it would be able to reverse the pressure, by steering the monopolists away from oppressing us. Because they are mainly motivated by money.

In the long term, take away their monopoly power.

MITM0,
@MITM0@lemmy.world avatar

Any games with even mild nudity is next (like Nier)

ssroxnak,

Yep, then lgbtq games, then games with guns, then games with blood, so on and so on

XeroxCool,

Are you sure gun and violence culture is on the chopping block? In the American market?

hibsen,

It absolutely is. We only encourage gun and violence culture in real life, especially by authoritarian figures and their representatives. Allowing such in virtual spaces where no one can actually be hurt or killed runs counter to our patriotic ideals.

ssroxnak,

The big payment processors won’t let you buy firearm parts

troglodyke,
@troglodyke@lemmy.federate.cc avatar

It absolutely is, it’s naive to think these puritans will just decide to stop here

Xande,

GUNS are you nuts… Murican “morale” apostles might have infuenced the media worldwide, but if you take away guns… you lose Murica!

ssroxnak,

Collective Shout is Australian.

Xande,

Doesn’t matter… No guns… Murican outcry! 😁

Or they mope about you not wanting their “culture” and offer to bring their democrazy…

ArchmageAzor,
@ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world avatar

Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc. would never let that happen.

DeLacue,

It’s already expanded. It started as going after “rape and incest” but now it’s all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.

Gloomy,
@Gloomy@mander.xyz avatar

Shit. Would you provide a source please?

shneancy,

i don’t know if any source has caught up yet, but a few days ago it was indeed just taboo kink games that were being targeted, now it seems all of itch.ios NSFW games are disappearing

RandomVideos,

Isnt that addressed in the post?

NikkiDimes, (edited )

I think all games being hit is a temporary measure while they get some sort of new process in place. We’ll see where things land.

Either way, card processing companies shouldn’t be dictating what kind of art consumers can consume, even if I don’t personally agree with the content of some of the worst offenders. If it’s not outright illegal, they can fuck off.

chunes,

You’re being too gracious. These companies could have given itch.io enough time to classify the games properly, but they didn’t.

NikkiDimes,

Oh for sure, fuck these companies. I’m just saying don’t take it out on Itch.io and their current scorched earth approach, their hands are tied.

belluck,

Here’s one example I came across on Bluesky

belluck,

Direct link to the game because the creator restricted who can view their posts on Bsky. Only viewable via a link or from their profile now, searching the name only returns a bunch of other dress-up games, but not this one, presumably because of the „Transgender“ tag.

Gloomy,
@Gloomy@mander.xyz avatar

Thanks for the context. Might have been caught up in the crossfire, but very worrying indeed.

ArchmageAzor,
@ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world avatar

It’s gonna stop once they hit a category that includes big AAA games. Once they start cutting into the revenue of Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed the big developers should take a stance.

Baylahoo,

I’ve already seen a pretty big YouTuber cover that they are targeting GTA 6 now. It was either moistcritical or mudahar

SharkAttak,
@SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org avatar

How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it's only MY fucking business?

shneancy,

buy a horse dildo with bitcoin and flaunt how they didn’t get any money from your transaction? idk man, i’m good at vague ideas, specifics are harder

Mustakrakish,

Neighbors being kidnapped: I sleep

Taking my fetish games: Real Shit

shneancy,

most of the world isn’t american. we can’t do anything about your government

Mustakrakish,

Capitalism is a global problem, its not contained to america. Replace neighbors being kidnapped with which ever country you’re in supporting a genocide and it still fits, and is likely accurate unless you’re like in Yemen.

Grimy, do games w Lara Croft is a Sociopath
TheAlbatross, do gaming w I'm still in full denial, personally.

Oh no I no longer can play the incredibly toxic matchmaking multi-player games and instead have to enjoy the automation, exploration, story, management and strategy games I’ve always loved

IDew,

Factorio, my beloved

capuccino,
@capuccino@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah. Now I only have like 3 hours to play by day and I’m not gonna waste them in losing.

Physnrd,

I’m the same way. I know some like the feeling of beating a hard boss after trying for hours, but I just don’t have that time.

ech,

The secret is they like the process of beating them too. It’s not all about “winning”.

FordBeeblebrox,

Hmm should I try different party combos in BG3 to see how the dialogue changes or run around a COD map getting shot in the back of the head every 9 seconds while ads for mtx strobe flash my corneas?

saltesc,

Feel kind of lucky. They weren’t so toxic when I was good. The only place to really find that was from the notorious Xbox Live kids experimenting with their first ever swear words.

It was when gaming reached a broader audience and wasn’t just for “nerds” that toxicity became commonplace. Went from making friends with strangers all the time to just default muting mics and avoiding communities.

Nowadays, the less reflex-deoendent, the more you’ll be surrounded by players from those days and the less toxicity. Compare HLL to MW, for example.

sp3ctr4l,

As always, the closer a game gets to being a full blown simulator, the older the playerbase tends to be.

Almost like arcady bs with autoaim and automatchmaking and very short game round times and superhuman movement capabilities appeal to people with poor impulse control.

… of course you can then go way, way too far into fullblown sim territory and end up with actual geriatrics and/or turboautists, lol.

(I say this lovingly as a turboautist who has spent probably an unhealthy amount of time in various niche sim communities, lol)

saltesc,

Kind of. Growing up playing Counter-Strike and Battlefield titles, toxicity was still a much rarer thing than these days. Hell, smacktalk wasn’t even a thing unless playing with friends and joking around.

sp3ctr4l,

Hrm, I encountered plenty of toxic assholes back on CS and BF/42/Vietnam/2, to the point that I had to explicitly seek out better communities, and then landed at Project Reality, being an alpha/beta tester / gameplay design concept discussion enthusiast (lol) with them for years.

Maybe I just had worse luck back then, or maybe its just way, way worse now with modern casual shooters.

Could be a bit of both.

I still remember the final test before PR 0.5 was released.

DBzao had written the first iteration of the injected python script that was to govern how you could request which kits depending on which squad you were in, who had what kits in your squad, how many kits were available to your whole team, etc.

Problem was… sometimes, for a completely indiscernible reason… some players just couldn’t use the system at all.

We spent 3 hours in TS … or maybe it was Ventrilo?.. we spent hours trying everything we could think of, could not identify any pattern.

As the session was being wound down, as we had basically given up… I had a realization.

I pulled up the in game scoreboard… many times.

I then started barking orders at various remaining players to see who could and could not use the kit system.

If a non alphanumeric character was in your username, you could not use the kit system.

DBzao didn’t believe this at first, pulled up his code, and then screamed.

… yep, he hadn’t properly handled strings or string conversions or special characters at some stage of the code.

We’d been stuck on this for almost 2 weeks, and 6 hours later, it was fixed and released.

sp3ctr4l, (edited )

Or you can graduate to milsims.

The controls and game mechanics tend to be so complicated that… well, people tend to have more realistic expectations from their teammates, and if you find a decent community, people tend to be more mature and friendly.

It actually requires a part time job level of commitment to be an exceptional shooter or tanker or pilot or even medic if you’re playing with a sufficiently complex health simulation… so, somewhat true to life, people tend to specialize and thus have much, much more incentive for decent communication standards.

Downside: Also true to life, a lot of games will end up feeling like 90% camping/hiking/road trip, punctuated, often essentially randomly, by 10% sheer terror.

You are not authorized for retirement unless you want a dishonorable discharge, soldier! If you need a wrist splint and vertical ergonomic mouse to continue your duties, check the nearest supply depot! Dismissed!

lol

IncogCyberspaceUser,

What milsims would you recommend?

sp3ctr4l, (edited )

Well, you got Arma 3 or Arma Reforger…

Those are pretty much the most commonly played milsims, with tons of available mods and dlc, huge expansive maps, players have their own inventories, can customize your whole load out and such…

SQUAD is sort of a milsim lite, maybe? It evolved out of Project Reality for Battlefield 2, they eventually made their whole own game in Unreal.

It retains the round based, class base core concept, but greatly expands on the more arcady nature of the Battlefield series with many more realistic gameplay concepts, much of them revolving around playing a role in a squad.

The maps aren’t as big as Arma, but you can still end up with a whole game session taking an hour or two.

There are also other games that basically aim for what SQUAD does, but not in a modern combat setting, Hell Let Loose for WW2 as an example.

I think Gray Zone Warfare is trying to be a new sort of milsim on the block, but so far I’ve heard roughly mixed reviews of it… and there are tons of ‘tactical shooters’… but they tend to be smaller in scope and usually lack vehicles, or don’t include near as many, or simulate them as extensively… and a whole lot of them tend to be developed by basically people who vastly overestimate their ability to make a game, and can be very toxic / in denial about this… so be careful with those, haha, probably check youtube for some reviews before diving in.

There’s also Gunner Heat PC if you want a very tank oriented tank sim, and DCS if you want an excruciatingly detailed, combat oriented flight sim, and you also hate money, lol.

Oh right, for basically most of these, you’re probably going to want to try and find and join some kind of larger community on discord or something like that… usually they’ll have guides, tutorials, plan matches/games on a schedule, maybe even offer some kind of psuedo boot camp / training for enthusiastic noobs, hehe.

IncogCyberspaceUser,

Thank you so much for the detailed response, a upvote wouldn’t be enough. <3

sp3ctr4l,

I threw in some more details after I made the comment, more context and hopefully more useful info =D

lorty,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

On the other hand, sims tend to get a lot of guys that are a bit too into it.

sp3ctr4l,

Yep, thats also true lol.

Quoting myself from another comment in this thread:

… of course you can then go way, way too far into fullblown sim territory and end up with actual geriatrics and/or turboautists, lol.

(I say this lovingly as a turboautist who has spent probably an unhealthy amount of time in various niche sim communities, lol)

RightHandOfIkaros, do games w UK petition of "Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state" just got thrown back to the Government

This is honestly pretty funny. Even another government agency recognized how bad the response was. That was literally like someone asking how old you are, and you respond by telling them the definition of age.

Sanctus, do games w Begun the kernel wars have
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Games dont belong in the kernel. Shit should have stayed in userspace. No, I dont care how many billions are on the line, games are not that important.

mavu,

alternative: Games do not belong on computers that do non-game things.

Anyway, this is going to be resolved as soon as north korea finds out who many people have important stuff on PC they game on, and hack some hapless devs source to install a rootkit on 100m PCs via steam.

ms_lane,

I guess only Nintendo is allowed to release games then.

Sony can’t, Playstation has a web browser and therefore games do not belong on it.

mavu,

I mean, i expected some comments on this, but that ? really?
very weak. back to the drawing board.

Wispy2891,
@Wispy2891@lemmy.world avatar

Checkmate, the playstation 5 doesn’t have a web browser

ulterno,

Neither did Playstation from what I remember

Wispy2891,
@Wispy2891@lemmy.world avatar

Playstation 2, 3 and 4 could run a web browser (although in all cases it was netfront, worse than Microsoft explorer 6)

Korhaka,

Yes they do. If I want games and non games on my PC then that is up to me, I am the fucking admin.

mavu,

Yes they do. If I want malware and non malware on my PC then that is up to me, I am the fucking admin.

Fixed your post, and yes you are the admin, you can do what you want.

Euphoma,

Do you think every videogame is malware?

Xatolos,
@Xatolos@reddthat.com avatar

That was one hell of a leap in (il)logical thinking…

Charzard4261,
@Charzard4261@programming.dev avatar

Bait used to be believable.

reddit_sux,

I don’t think you understand people don’t have money to buy one computer to work, one to play, or a console to play. People are cheap that way, when it comes to food or a gaming console they choose food.

kittenzrulz123,
Electricd,

Those are not games but anticheats

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

True, your wording was my intention.

Electricd,

But is your intention my wording?

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar
pycorax, do games w Reminder if you're leaving Discord for this Revolt server ( Linux + Steam Deck devs / creators)

If Discord is going to be abandoned by people, I wish we’d go back to proper forums that’s much more accessible and searchable. Continuing down this road is just going to lead to the continued burying of useful information behind these services.

vividspecter,

I think there’s room for both, as in the old days there was typically an IRC channel along side forums that was typically a secondary channel (but not always).

But yeah, forums would be ideal, preferably with federation support so there is no need to make an account with every single one.

PassingThrough,

Well, you see IRC and forums went together because they filled two different needs and we understood that back in the day.

IRC was for chatting, short, quick real time communication that would be lost to the ether as soon as you signed off, unless you had a bouncer or log bot.

Forums were for long information, be that long posts or posts that needed to endure for a long time. Sure you’d get some one liner responses to those posts, but forums were not at all instant like IRC. Though the information did stay much longer, and was much more searchable and organized.

Discord has spoiled us, being quick and chatty while also allowing for longer posts and being searchable. At least within the Discord client. Shoot they even added those “forum” channels to replicate the old forum feel. But real time.

acosmichippo,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

i wouldn’t say discord “spoiled” us by trying to reinvent forums, i’d say it unnecessarily blurred the lines. classic case of feature creep.

libra00,
@libra00@lemmy.world avatar

Forums are just not great for real-time interaction like discord chat is, not to mention the integration of voice chat, video streaming, etc is just too convenient to give up without replacing it with something similar. I too wish discord/whatever replacement gets attention was more searchable and kept stuff long-term, but… if you want to post info that lasts, post it on lemme and link it on discord or whatever.

Hyphlosion, (edited )

True, but I can’t help having nostalgia for ye olde forum days.

Edit: Not sure why I keep being downvoted. I never said forums would replace anything. I was merely acknowledging my nostalgia for old forum boards from a now bygone era. Didn’t realize having fond memories of a time period on the Internet was a bad thing. Jesus.

eronth,

Reasonable, but you’d be fooling yourself to act as if forums will meaningfully replace Discord for most users.

libra00,
@libra00@lemmy.world avatar

Fair enough.

I kinda don’t though. I quite enjoy real-time chat and voice and video with friends. It’s not like forums don’t exist at all anymore tho - you’re on one right now. I get my forum experience from places like reddit or lemmy, and I use them for very different things, so I’m glad both exist.

Pika,
@Pika@sh.itjust.works avatar

discord is not a forum (even if they want it to be with the forum channels), its never been a good location to store information. That being said, its amazing for real time communication unlike forums. I hate that devs use it for FAQ and bug forms and stuff. I stopped reporting bugs if it requires me to join a discord.

Korhaka,

Discord is more of a chat room than a forum though, lemmy is a federated alternative to forums.

SW42,

Amen! I remember the good old days of speciality community forums based on VB or even phpBB or in some cases Woltlab. I miss the simpler times.

criss_cross,

I think we just need to split roles again.

Discord did there best to be an all in one solution and we just need a return to real time chat and voice along with asynchronous communication like forums

mic_check_one_two,

We need both for different purposes. Discord is amazing for voice, video, and IM chatting. All things that happen in real-time. But forums are intended for a vastly different use case. Forums are play-by-post. They’re asynchronous. They’re meant for responding at your earliest convenience, not for talking to someone right now. The fact that so many people began using Discord as a forum replacement is a travesty, because Discord is a fucking atrocious medium for forums… Not due to any fault of Discord’s, but because they’re completely different use cases.

randomblock1,

You’re on a forum right now, no? I think a lot of Discords have accompanying Reddits and vice versa, hopefully they start using Lemmy. But forums are still popular. Just not Ye Olde BBS

pycorax,

Not nearly enough of them. Too many frameworks or libraries have their QnAs on Discord instead of a dedicated forum.

jedibob5, (edited ) do games w Game wikis just aren't as popular anymore?

I wonder how much it has to do with how much of a shithole the Fandom network is. Between the godawful UX, aggressive SEO to bury competing wikis in search results, and scummy business practices that effectively prevent wiki admins from migrating to other hosts, the idea of maintaining a game wiki probably isn’t all that appealing these days.

I miss Wikia…

Illecors,

Would you care to elaborate on what’s preventing wiki admins from migrating?

jedibob5, (edited )

They don’t actually let admins shut down their wikis or remove content from them. They can leave and start a new wiki, but they have to leave the old one in place (for which Fandom could potentially just find new admins), and they can only link to the new wiki from the Fandom wiki for a period of two weeks. With Fandom’s SEO, there’s a good chance the Fandom wiki will still be ahead of search results of a new wiki even after migration. Source

ono,

I wonder if this could be mitigated (or even nullified) by a cooperative game developer, through DMCA takedown notices sent to Fandom. There is a lot of art on these wikis, after all, and I imagine the copyright holder has some say in who is allowed to distribute it.

Illecors,

Thank you. I’ve been dabbling with the idea of establishing a non-profit for my lemmy instance. I’m not a user of game/movie/etc wikis, but I do love looking after my servers. I wonder if a non-profit owned wiki site bear any weight over time.

DrQuint,

Man this was an issue already some 10 years ago when touhou wiki went self-hosted. It took a whole year for google to get memo and link the new one above the old.

Nowadays I assume it’s pretty much impossible to reverse the flow unless if your game is huge and highly sought after.

EnglishMobster,

What are they going to do? Ban them?

Honestly if I was migrating away from Fandom I’d do everything I can to burn every bridge. Go through and edit every page to have every link redirect to the better wiki. Ignore their 2-week period, and don’t inform the Fandom overlords that the wiki is being shut down (it’s not like they’re going to check without being prompted).

I’d make them ban me, and then good luck finding an admin.

jedibob5,

It’s not too hard to roll back changes on a wiki. Any attempts at sabotage wouldn’t be very difficult to undo.

AlexWIWA,

I am forever grateful that halopedia rolled their own wiki and was spared from the fandom plague.

deranger,

Another stark comparison is UESP vs. Fandom for elder scrolls lore. Fandom is absolute cancer, poor UX even with an adblocker.

AlexWIWA,

Yeah I find it completely unusable. I can’t use wookiepedia anymore because it is just awful to use. Like you said, it’s awful even with an ad blocker

bionicjoey,

UESP is such a gem

GrammatonCleric,
@GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Wikidot was the shit for Dark Souls games 😙👌

setsneedtofeed, do games w What games are just objective masterpieces?
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

objective

MEDIA APPRECIATION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, GOOD NIGHT!

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8863b680-575d-42f6-be41-79d084a6a334.jpeg

pelerinli, do games w What are y'all buying on the steam sale?

Zero. I’ve too much already unplayed and unfortunately working now (sucks to be adult).

ColeSloth,

Buying a steam deck significantly increased by gaming time. The ability to immediately suspend and resume my gameplay, and not have to go over to my desktop helped a lot. I’ve played more this past year than I have in the last 3 years combined.

TwinTusks,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

unfortunately working now

Try also have some kids

thorbot,

No thanks

Gabu,

I’m not a masochist, why would I do that?

TwinTusks,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

Good thinking, I love my kids but they suck your time/energy and money like a blackhole.

skisnow, do games w The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact

“curtail developer choice” is such a weak argument because you could equally apply it to literally every piece of regulation ever passed. Of course it curtails choice, that’s almost the dictionary definition of an industry regulation.

maxwells_daemon, do games w Thank you, Thor! 🥳

Absolute fucking clown. He’s just scared of open sourcing old games because everyone will see how shitty his code is…

AlolanYoda,

That’s completely misguided, because people can see his code anyway (in his streams), and also because he will never finish or release his game

fartsparkles,

Probably little incentive to do so given how much money they’re making from Twitch, YouTube, etc.

lobut,

I mean, he’s said before that shitty code doesn’t make for a good or bad game. He gave examples of lots of successful games that have “bad” code and that it doesn’t matter and people should just make games.

SkaveRat,

Not sure if it’s still the case, but the code of balatro was a single giant file with if cases for every card

Bad code can make great games. But it will also make them very hard to maintain

Ghoelian,

It can alsoake fes that perform way worse than they have anything to. See yandere simulator for example

Feathercrown,

Undertale also has really bad code and it’s a great game

null,

But that’s not even what Stop Killing Games is about…

maxwells_daemon,

It’s one possible solution for one of the problems under the same umbrella. If you can’t or don’t want to run the servers for your online game (eg: Echo VR), just open source the server’s code and let the community keep the game running.

Goodeye8,

But even then it's astronomically unlikely to be retroactively enforced. Old games will be grandfathered in and it would apply only to future game releases.

Ledivin,

But even then it’s astronomically unlikely to be retroactively enforced

It’s not unlikely, it’s literally impossible.

null,

You don’t need to open source the code to release the server binaries.

SaharaMaleikuhm,

But you could open source it and have the community figure it out themselves

null,

Of course, but the point is that it isn’t a factor in Thor’s decision.

JokeDeity, do gaming w Rant: Valve's new Steam Deck screws speak volumes about their ethos.

When Gaben dies there will be fucking riots.

Onihikage,
@Onihikage@beehaw.org avatar

I really hope he’s cultivating at least one successor within the company to carry on his vision.

cRazi_man, do games w Signatures skyrocket for **Stop Killing Games** campaign after big youtubers take up the cause, resulting in 100k signatures in 48 hours. (Details on how to help in text body of post)
@cRazi_man@europe.pub avatar

Don’t Give Up. You Can Cuss The Whole Time Just Don’t Give Up.

ProdigalFrog,

Hell yeah! We can do this!

Lemjukes, (edited ) do games w What's going on with Borderlands 2? Steam is giving it for free, but the game has 23% positive recent reviews.
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar
  • Did the EULA change? ✅
  • Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌
  • Do Take Two games contain code to report telemetry and user information(including application/system activity) to a home server? ✅
  • Is this EULA change extraordinary and particularly egregious in comparison to others that most people have probably already agreed to? ❌(IMO)
  • Are people riled up because e a YouTube video went a little viral and now they’re all playing telephone to the point where it’s now gotten to the point of random dumdums are review booming a 13 year old game claiming it’s turned into literal spyware? ✅(again, IMO)
  • Should you be surprised by any of this if you’ve been even remotely paying attention for any period of the last 30-40 years? ❌
  • Do we need more than just angry idiots in the battle against corpatocracy? ✅

We should be done coddling the late comers at this point. Yes welcome them and accept them, but at a certain point your level of ignorance became a detriment to your community and you should be made aware of that fact.

Mustakrakish,
BlindFrog,

Precise location information? Wtf for?

Lemjukes, (edited )
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

Hyper Localized Advertising. Welcome to the future :(

Couldbealeotard,
@Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world avatar

I just saw an advertisement for a custom T-shirt:
“That’s right, I’m a December dad, who lives at 62a, with size 10 feet and prescription glasses…”

/S

BlindFrog,

“By scrolling past, you agree to sharing with us (and our affiliates) the following collected data types: …”

outhouseperilous,

Oh honey, what’s any of it for?

NIB,

They use the same terms of service for mobile games and they just dont bother to change it for pc games.

BlindFrog,

This mistake makes sense to make as a mistake. But also, that’s fuckin asinine

QuoVadisHomines,

It isn’t a mistake. Writing different EULA for each game costs more money than writing an overly aggressive one that covers most cases.

NotASharkInAManSuit,

So that they can have a back door to as many private computers as possible.

Lemjukes, (edited )
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

A bit more than what, not really sure what your point here is? All of those bullet points are similar if not identical to terms in other EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru.

I’ll say it again, if you think this is anything new you haven’t been paying attention. I’m all for calling this fuckery out and pushing for something better. But like where yall been?

Still no actual answers from anyone on how this is ‘more’ than what I described in my op. Sure it’s a more detailed list, but it’s really not the “gotcha” everyone seems to think it is. That is, if youve been paying attention.

MummysLittleBloodSlut,

Let’s ride the wave. Turn this into a huge controversy known industry-wide. Then, next game that comes out with EULA like this, we say “THIS GAME HAS A BORDERLANDS-STYLE EULA”. Pretend it’s new to exploit the shock value and get the gamers riled up. Then, the industry gets better.

Tell the frog that the pot wasn’t always this hot.

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

Thank you for an actually constructive response. You’ve honestly brought me around a bit with this.

emeralddawn45,

What point are you trying to make? You say you’re “all for calling this kind of fuckery out” but then you’re criticizing people for calling it out? And who cares what other EULAs might say? The point is that the license agreement for this game and others owned by this company didn’t say this shit before, and now they do. The company is actively making their user agreement more hostile to the users which is what people are pissed about.

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

That it takes more critical thinking to accomplish the organized action needed for real change than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.

I never once said ‘other company’s do it so just deal with it.’ Fuckawhataboutism. I said “if you think this is new, you haven’t been paying attention.” What I shouldn’t have left unsaid was ‘the review is a nice start and show of intention. but we need a lot more dedicated, well organized action, to actually accomplish any change.’

But people read into things what they want to hear.

FauxLiving,

The point is that the license agreement for this game and others owned by this company didn’t say this shit before, and now they do.

That’s just not true.

Here’s a Reddit user trying the same kind out outrage farming 7 years ago using Take 2’s TOS and implying it allows spyware: www.reddit.com/…/take_two_a_spyware_apocalypse/

If you look at Valve’s TOS or any other game developer who has games with an online component, you will see the exact same language regarding data collection. The language being added is to comply with laws, like the GDPR, which requires specific language indicating what data is collected and how it is used.

The data that is being collected is the same as it was 10 years ago. There’s nothing new here, just a YT video that got a lot of views and social media being full of people who don’t fact check anything.

Don_alForno,

Some people will always find an excuse to change nothing.

It doesn’t matter how many similar EULA’s people have already accepted. The best moment to not eat it anymore would have been the first time it happened, the second best time is right now.

Also, retroactively amending an EULA is a different quality, since people have already paid for the game and would be locked out after the fact if they didn’t accept.

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

I’m sad you read this as an admission of defeat and an attempt to deter others from fighting. Was hoping for more of a ‘you’re late, you have a bunch of homework to catch up on’ vibe but I’m not great at communicating all the time.

Cataphract,

It seems like you’re giving of a “victim” vibe with this by stating you wished for only a particular type of “positive response” when you’ve posted a misleading comment and doubled-down with “EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru” which you have no way of knowing.

Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌

10.2. Updates, Modifications, and Sunset. We may provide patches, updates, or upgrades to the Services, Virtual Items, Content, or your Account that may be required for you to continue using the Services, including automatic or “in the background” updates without notice to you.

“Was hoping for more of a ‘you’re late, you have a bunch of homework to catch up on’” You’re expecting others to hold your hand and inform you of every event or action taken by every company. I guess I’ll do my part since I have been trying to let other people know for a while now,

StormGate - Privacy Policy and End User Agreement. Is this just the new industry standard to avoid? (post made by me 10 months ago)

Why don’t you see it more?

Steam Discussion deleted after questioning the “EULA” of Stormgate, another post by me after I tried to inform others and was suppressed, meaning the reviews is the only course of action that most have at their disposal. Even posting on their official subreddit did no good with the exact same type of response you’ve presented here,

Why am I consenting to have my “Medical Information”, “Browser/Search History”, “Social Security/Drivers License number”, “Geolocation and movements”, and more collected to play Stormgate? (22k members, only 122 upvotes)

(the responses)

  • They didn’t collect such information (they technically couldn’t), they are giving examples of such types of personally identifiable information.
  • Yeah, it’s excessive, they don’t need half of this. However, writing it this way makes it near impossible for them to screw up by accident. If you play games, you probably agreed to a handful of ELUA’s like that by now.
  • This keeps getting brought up in every controversial game these days and the answer is always the same: They aren’t.
  • Most of this is not out of the ordinary.
  • Imagine thinking all of this information about you isn’t already owned by several corporations lol.
  • Some of these stuffs are required in X countries not yours, stop thinking the entire world is all about you buddy.

You’ve officially become part of the problem and an ally to the very same reason why we can’t “accomplish the organized action needed for real change (than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.)”

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

Man I’m tired.

Semjaza,

If more folks are waking up and shaking a stick at it or doing something but blindly click through (thus legally unenforceable) EULAs I’m all for it.

Better late than never.

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

I get that and agree, this is just a crappy and kinda dumb stick to be wasting the energy on because it makes the side opposing the injustice look like petulant children instead of enabling effective action.

Vespair,

I see this kind of comment before and I will never understand it - “other companies do it so just bend over and let us do it to you too!”

People say this all the time about Denuvo too: “Other games already have Denuvo, why are you crying about it here when you’re playing other games?”

And see, that’s the problem - we aren’t playing those other Denuvo games. And same thing applies here, guess what, a lot of us aren’t buying games from gross companies like EA with these shit terms. So when a company we are doing business with suddenly changes their terms to be shit, that’s a valid complaint. Some of us have already been boycotting bad business practices in the industry, so the idea of company changing terms towards the boycott after we’ve already invested in the game feels like a betrayal because it is.

So maybe stop focusing on what you assume the rest of audience is doing and instead go back to focusing on what the people at the goddamn podium are trying to pull?

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

Why does everyone insist on adding the ‘so just bend over and take’ part whenever someone points out another source of wrongdoing? Like what do yall always take it to mean that the speaker is implying a whataboutism argument? And not maybe as ‘oh shit this has been going on longer than just this maybe we should learn about that too and we might figure out why it hasn’t been stopped yet.’

Vespair,

If “everyone” keeps reading a sentiment you did not intend out of your message, perhaps it is time to consider that you are doing a poor job of communicating your point.

Or you’re being disingenuous and just don’t like being calling on your hissy fit.

I dunno, take your pick.

Lemjukes, (edited )
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

It’s the first one, I’m terrible at effectively communicating nuanced points.

And I mean yall could interrogate the statement instead of reaching a conclusion and then responding but I get it.

But also, fuck that. Do more work as the reader.

Also, piss off with your infantilizing ‘hissy fit’ bullshit.

LainTrain,

I don’t click thru any EULAs. I see bad EULA - I pirate. Then if it makes any network traffic i just block that shit.

Lemjukes,
@Lemjukes@lemm.ee avatar

yo ho

pulsewidth,

Would it shock you to know that ALL of these are in the Steam terms of service also?

The only really sus one to me is the forced arbitration clause, and Steam also had that til they were pressured to remove it by multiple legal cases, including a class action brought to them by Steam users just last September. It is only sus because it’s outdated - companies are generally removing them now rather than adding them. legal.io/…/Valve-Removes-Mandatory-Arbitration-fr…

RE: remaining top 5 bullet points, 3 of the remaining 4 bullet points are uncontroversial bullet points about anticheat. The fourth is banning modding, which is also just a heavy handed anticheat attempt, and not uncommon for online games to add to their ToS to allow banning at their discretion. Either way its clumsy at the least as some mods can be harmless eg HUD mods for colourblind people and deserves some negativity - but not to this level, given everything else is just so boilerplate.

Collected data types: these are all for if you buy stuff with a credit card / paypal / etc off 2k/parent company Take 2. Remember, they sell games with in-game purchases. They also have an app which has location permissions option which is what the precise location is about.

So yes - again, as OP said, this is nothing controversial if you have paid attention to ToS meaning and content over the past 20 years.

Aside from the forced arbitration crap - which Steam, Microsoft, Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Google, AT&T - and hundreds of other major companies all snuck into their ToS over the years, and many have now been legally pressured to remove by consumer rights group. That is stupid because it shows their legal team is behind the times, companies are mostly removing their forced arbitration clauses nowadays because it has been the cause of many lost class actions.

JasonDJ,

So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?

RetroGoblet79,

They know I use Linux and that means they know too much

MentalEdge,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Not a lot. Even when it isn’t a flatpak windows software running on linux won’t be able to interact with the system anywhere near as much as on windows.

They’ll be able to tell it’s linux, though.

Squizzy,

New to linux…are flatpaks like sandboxed?

iknowitwheniseeit,

Sort of. They can be, but are not always.

Nilz,

They are somewhat isolated but not sandboxed.

domi,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

You can install an application like Flatseal (flathub.org/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) to inspect the permissions for a flatpak.

How locked down a flatpak is depends entirely on the developer and what permissions they request. By default, they can’t really see much. For example, they can’t even see the processes running on your host or your user and system files.

Flatpak does not do anything about network access though, it can only do no access or full access, no in between. The data they can collect on Linux in a Flatpak is very limited but it does not prevent them from calling home.

FauxLiving, (edited )

So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?

Without using exploits to escape the container, not much. A very empty Windows environment with a single game installed, your network interfaces and any directories that the Flatpak has access to (usually just the SteamLibrary directories).

The TOS (www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/) changes are mostly related to data that they collect via their interfacing with Steam and through their website. This idea that they’re requiring you to agree to a root level access or installing a spyware rootkit is just nonsense.

sp3ctr4l, (edited )

Pretty much nailed it, yep.

A youtuber named Hellfire has been on a spree, basically discovering how fucked up EULAs have been in games for the past 20ish years… well this is all brand new news to him and and his Zoomer / Gen A followers.

There is, as of right now, literally zero evidence that Borderlands 2 has been updated with a rootkit, with kernel level anti cheat, anything like that.

The last update to its game files was 2 years ago.

This is almost certainly them updating the EULA everywhere, the precise timing of this being for some specific arcane legal and business reasons… TakeTwo runs a whole bunch more games than juat Borderlands… namely GTA V…

Is this EULA bad? Yes.

Is it much worse than it was before, or what other large gaming companies EULAs have, and have had for… a decade+?

Maybe by a bit, but not really, no.

Is Randy Pitchford a dumb idiot asshole?

Oh absolutely yes, but that shouldn’t give people the liscense to make completely unevidenced claims about other things.

The game does not have a kernel level AC or some kind of rootkit DRM, as many, many people are currently saying it does.

I guess gamer attention span can really hold onto a few keywords and phrases at a time.

… I say this all as person who is vehemently against kernel level AC, who has been pointing out for 4 years, that almost all existing anti cheat systems currently have at least one game that implements their AC, on linux, without using kernel level anything… it is entirely possible to do AC without kernel level shit, even on linux, and has been for at least 4 years. EAC and BattleEye have supported linux for 4 years, but nearly no game that uses them has actually used this feature/available and offered support.

I am glad that this level of hate is finally being directed at shitty EULAs, but lets at least get our facts straight, or actually provide some hitherto unseen evidence that Borderlands has had some kind of sleeper malware in it for at least the past two years, just waiting to be activated by a TOS update to every single Take Two game.

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