It’s a very noticeable improvement in realism in games that do this. Quantic Dream games have also done this, even in Heavy Rain from 2010, and it really goes a long way in making a game into a story.
I love story based games, and the story is my favorite thing about a game, usually. Unfortunately, so many games try to tell you a story like a movie would or like a book would. They intersperse cutscenes between gameplay to tell you what you did or are doing. That’s… boring at best. Video games can tell stories in a unique way that other mediums can’t, because they’re interactive. DDLC is my favorite example, that game has a story that can only hit as hard as it does because you the player are an active participant in the story. Or Dark Souls, where the story exists for you to find, or not… everyone has a different understanding of what the story of that game is after their first playthrough, and the deeper you look the better your understanding is. Tell interesting stories in a way that uses the medium to the fullest and you’ll gain an audience. Recite a screenplay every 10 minutes between spurts of unrelated gameplay, and people won’t care about your story.
Freaking YES. Movies need to spoon-feed a bit and so does TV, but you have a whole medium that lets people be as confused or not and that’s a great thing. If a player doesn’t care, there are options to not dive deep, if they do they will. My first playthrough I was confused what the genophage was. I heard bits and pieces but was genuinely confused. You know what I did? I walked over to my crew mate who mentioned it and asked him! Why is that so hard, the unknowns al_are_ the suspense! It’s what keeps me playing.
Compare that to mass effect Andromeda where they introduce it by having two characters explain it at length in front of the player. This event that would be on par with WW2. So natural. “Hey friend, I was just thinking about WW2. You know, that war that involved the acid vs the allies fought between 1939 and 1945 in which we saw a fascist leader march across Europe?”. Jesus hell have some respect for your players, stop fucking spoon feeding us.
If you don’t understand an acronym the first time you see it, you should consider looking it up. I will save you the trouble though; I was referring to Doki Doki Literature Club, a popular indie game with a long title that is commonly abbreviated.
I’m sorry but I disagree. You’ve decided to use an acronym that most people wouldn’t know, so I’d like to think it’s basic politeness to write it entirely the first time to avoid any doubt.
Yeah I’m aware of the game, but there was no fucking way I’m going to get that. It’s just common courtesy to spell an acronym out in parentheses the first time you use it. Pay attention next time you read an article on a news site that includes acronyms.
Fair enough, I assumed the game was well known enough to not need that. I still stand by what I said though, If you don’t understand an acronym, you can Google it and save some time instead of passive aggressively chastising someone on the Internet
I didn’t think I was being passive aggressive, but I guess I was kind of annoyed so maybe it came through in the comment.
The thing about googling acronyms is that sometimes there are more than one. And yeah, I probably could have used context to figure out which one you meant, but I’m… just not going to do all that lol
I apologize, I’ve been responding more emotionally than I meant to. I read the initial response as rude, and that set me off a bit. Your feedback was good, I just got hung up on what I perceived as the tone.
The author of this article reflexively and illogically defends Steam (like usual):
But at least some of what Kaldaien complains about isn’t necessarily on Steam’s shoulders. It’s well within devs’ powers to provide players with access to older game versions on Steam (KOTOR 2, which I recently replayed, lets you access its pre-Aspyr version via a beta branch, for instance), but many of them elect not to. That strikes me as an issue with individual devs rather than Steam as a whole, and as for Steam Input? Well, again, if there’s a problem there it’s with developers electing to use that API over OS-native ones that’s the issue.
He literally completely misses the modder’s point. Steam itself will not run on the original machine you purchased KOTOR 2 on. You can buy a gaming machine, purchase a game through steam and 6 years later, one random day you’re suddenly no longer able to play your game, simply because Valve has decided that the version of Steam that you bought the game through is no longer ok and now you need to upgrade your hardware and OS to play the same game you’ve been playing for years.
This issue has multiple facets and the answer changes depending on the end result you want.
The author of the article sees the problem as “Old games you bought on steam are unplayable on modern hardware”. Kaldaien sees the problem as “Steam cannot run on older hardware anymore, even if the games I bought still work there”. Both people want the same thing (To be able to play the games they bought) but are looking at it from different angles.
Ultimately, Steam is a DRM tool that has a very good storefront attached to it. If you want true ownership of the software, buy the game in a way that will let you run the software by itself. Valve expects that the overwhelming majority of its users will keep up with semi-modern hardware (In this case, a machine capable of running windows 10/SteamOS) which I don’t feel is is an unreasonable ask. However, expecting Valve to retain support for an OS that hit end of life 20 years ago is unreasonable.
I agree with the opinions of the article’s author. It would be far better to ensure that support for the old titles you bought are available on modern hardware rather than making sure Steam is still accessible on a PC running windows 98. This is one of those corner-cases where piracy is acceptable. You already paid for the game, you just need to jump through some hoops to play it on your 30 year old PC.
Valve expects that the overwhelming majority of its users will keep up with semi-modern hardware (In this case, a machine capable of running windows 10/SteamOS) which I don’t feel is is an unreasonable ask.
Valve is forcing them to upgrade their software and hardware to keep playing games they already purchased, on the hardware they purchased it on.
However, expecting Valve to retain support for an OS that hit end of life 20 years ago is unreasonable.
It is very reasonable. No one forced Valve to build their business model this way, and they are one of the most profitable companies per employee, ever. It would not be onerous for them to continue supporting a couple of old versions of Windows, they would just have to hire a few more people to do it. Gabe would still be a billionaire.
It is very reasonable. No one forced Valve to build their business model this way, and they are one of the most profitable companies per employee, ever.
Literally every software company built their business model this way. Go open a support case with any software vendor complaining that their product won’t run on Windows 98 and see how many help you out beyond “Buy a computer from this millennium”
It would not be onerous for them to continue supporting a couple of old versions of Windows, they would just have to hire a few more people to do it.
You are failing to understand just how much has changed since Windows 98. It’s a completely different environment that requires specialized knowledge to develop for. They can’t just dust off some old source code and re-release the client. The entire back-end has changed. It would be a massive undertaking that would appease about 12 people total.
Gabe would still be a billionaire.
Sure, but I would argue that there are a lot of better things that Valve could be doing with those resources than supporting Windows 98
Literally. People miss the fact that Steam is still a 32-bit app just to support older games. The rest of the world has moved onto 64-bit operating systems and applications. It’s shocking they still support 32-bit in 2025. So the argument that they aren’t supporting older titles is a little misleading because that’s the whole reason they still run a 32-bit client.
Most operating systems are no longer even offered in a 32-bit variant, 64-bit only.
I haven’t had a device with 32-bit hardware in almost 15 years. The last device I can even think of that was still 32-bit within the last 15 years was a Google Nexus 6 in 2014. All the Pixel line have been 64-bit.
Steam is literally one of the last 32-bit holdouts. Everything else has moved on. Even Discord dropped 32-bit support last year.
EDIT: Also, for reference, since Windows 98 is heavily mentioned in the arguments, those operating systems included 16-bit code. We’re talking about dropping 32-bit code, 16-bit code is deader than a doornail. Windows 3.11 was the first introduction of 32-bit code. Windows XP seems to be where they dropped all 16-bit code in 2001. We’re talking over 30 years of hardware changes.
All versions of MS-DOS and the below versions of Windows had 16 bit code:
MS-DOS (all versions)
Windows 1.x/2.x/3.x (all versions)
Windows 4.x or 9x (Windows 95/98/Millennium Edition) (all versions)
They keep a bunch of 32-bit libraries for backwards compatibility with older games that they launch. You can find numerous discussions about this in the Steam forums as well as on sites like Hackernews.
If you want, I can give it to you from a Valve employee:
We will not drop support for the many games that have shipped on Steam with only 32-bit builds, so Steam will continue to deploy a 32-bit execution environment. To that end, it will continue to need some basic 32-bit support from the host distribution (a 32-bit glibc, ELF loader, and OpenGL driver library).
Whether the Steam client graphical interface component itself gets ported to 64-bit is a different question altogether, and is largely irrelevant as the need for the 32-bit execution environment would still be there because of the many 32-bit games to support.
Literally every software company built their business model this way. Go open a support case with any software vendor complaining that their product won’t run on Windows 98 and see how many help you out beyond “Buy a computer from this millennium”
No, they didn’t. I can install the software I bought back in the day on the computers I bought it for, using the license key provided. GoG also famously uses a model where GoG does not care what OS you’re using.
You are failing to understand just how much has changed since Windows 98. It’s a completely different environment that requires specialized knowledge to develop for. They can’t just dust off some old source code and re-release the client. The entire back-end has changed. It would be a massive undertaking that would appease about 12 people total.
Lol, I’m a software developer that started by writing legacy windows software, I know exactly how much (little) has changed.
Sure, but I would argue that there are a lot of better things that Valve could be doing with those resources than supporting Windows 98
I don’t care. They have the resources to support it.
Either strip the DRM out and pay whatever you have to to the publishers to do that, or keep supporting the systems you sold your software for.
The idea that Valve is blameless for shitty behaviour because other tech companies also do that shitty behaviour is nonsense. They have been the dominant platform forever, and have had an insane amount of resources available to them.
The GOG Preservation Program ensures classic games remain playable on modern systems, even after their developers stopped supporting them. By maintaining these iconic titles, GOG helps you protect and relive the memories that shaped you, DRM-free and with dedicated tech support.
The fact that their games are DRM free means that doesn’t matter one iota. If you buy a game from them on a set of hardware you’ll be able to play it on that hardware forever, regardless of whether their desktop client changes.
But if they keep it updated for modern systems that means as time goes on the files they are offering to install… won’t work on old hardware because they’ve been updated to the modern era.
Sure if you grab a file from them and never get a newer, more maintained version, it will play on exactly the hardware and software you had when you bought it… But if you lost the install file somehow and went to grab a new copy five years later the updated ones may no longer run on your old hardware
Sure if you grab a file from them snd never get a newer, more maintained version, it will play on exactly the hardware and software you had when you bought it…
That’s literally the entire point.
Also, they can still offer the olde versions of the file for download.
Lol, I'm a software developer that started by writing legacy windows software, I know exactly how much (little) has changed.
It is this perspective that exposes your bias and colors your perception.
We live in a post-Heartbleed world. We live in a post-UAC world. We constantly find new bugs and vulnerabilities, and they cannot always be patched without massive changes to the architecture. We cannot forever maintain old systems that cultivated bad habits in it's users.
Not all change is good, but all change is inevitable.
No that perspective is what makes me understand that when corporations talk about obsceleting things for security reasons, it’s almost always not actually because of security, because it would be a little less profitable to continue support.
And Valve didnt have to build a business around always checking in DRM if they didn’t want to support old clients, and they have more than enough resources to continue support.
Can I hold you to the decisions you made 20 years ago? I bought that program you built decades ago, that means I'm entitled to your continued support. And don't you even think about getting paid, your support should be free. You shouldn't have built and sold the software if you can't support it...
Yes, they can have their software continue to support Windows by simply not breaking the version that works for windows, without having to provide full customer support and service for it.
Literally any game sold that didn’t include always checking in DRM through a particular desktop client. i.e. virtually every single PC game not sold through steam.
Lots. Do you know how much corporate software is still of that vintage?
Literally like half of AutoCAD’s products still use the graphics and windowing APIs from that era as one example. The WinForms API are clunky by modern standards but also relatively trivial for a programmer to pick up and code with.
I mean, there is still an industry of Cobol engineers maintaining mainframe code for banks from the 80s.
No. The question at hand is whether you expect any company, or any person, to indefinitely fix and maintain legacy systems. And yes, your argument is indefinite support because you want the purchasing machine to be granted use of the software in perpetuity, you want it to never lose access to the software. You provided no deadline by which anyone is allowed to stop fixing things that broke. And yes, things break naturally as a function of time.
And yes, things break naturally as a function of time.
Why don’t you go ahead and explain the exact mechanism that causes software to change and would cause a computer to interpret it differently over time, without a human intervening and updating it to break it.
I am aware that some corporate infrastructure is hopelessly tangled up in legacy systems. But we are talking about consumer support here, which I know you know is very different.
This seems like the wisest option for the long term. I just recently decided that any games that are available on both and don’t make use of Steam-exclusive features I will buy from GOG instead. Up until that point I had been buying games on Steam by default when they had sales, but GOG has equivalent sales at the same time. Unless the game takes advantage of some Steam-exclusive feature, there seems to be no good reason to buy it from Steam instead of from GOG.
I like Steam, but they are catering to a certain audience that doesn't care as much about game preservation. Now that GoG is doing the opposite... it is the optimal place to buy those old games you want to keep forever. Seems simple to me. It's healthy to have two different markets anyway.
I agree with you, but I started thinking about this not even from a game preservation perspective but from a DRM perspective. This article was a timely reminder that if I buy any media with DRM, no matter how purportedly lenient and user-friendly it is, the DRM controls when and where I’m allowed to use that media in perpetuity unless I break the DRM, which I understand is illegal in some jurisdictions. Imagine having to jump through hoops or even break the law just to keep using the media that you “bought” with your hard-earned cash.
I do the exact same, but I also buy multiplayer and VR games on Steam, because I run Linux, and GOG Galaxy isn’t out on Linux (yet). I really don’t want to faff about getting all of that working on each individual game. I bought Rain World and FTL on GOG, but Star Wars: Battlefront 2 on Steam.
I didn’t really point much out. I only know that multiplayer games use either Steam or GOG Galaxy to log in and that there aren’t many more OpenXR runtimes besides SteamVR on Linux (I know of WiVRn, but I had an Nvidia GPU and couldn’t figure out how to compile the Vulkan extensions required). I find it tedious to manually set up save file synchronization for my GOG games, so I really can’t be arsed to go so far when Steam just does it all for me.
Thanks again. I’m not doing VR yet, but plan to eventually. I can totally see where multiplayer could be an issue too, especially if friends own the games on Steam instead.
In my opinion, that’s not on Steam to support their client on a long past EOL operating system. Not withstanding the added development workload and costs, there is also significantly more risk associated with supporting an OS that isn’t receiving security patches.
Not to mention the modder’s example Windows fucking 98. Steam still supports Windows 7, which was released in 2009. Your 6 year old PC will be fine.
In my opinion, that’s not on Steam to support their client on a long past EOL operating system.
It is on them since they “sold” you a game. They didn’t have to build a business model that popularized always checking in DRM, that meant that they were deceiving you when they sold you a game, but it was more profitable for them to do so.
I’m not sure valve deceived you. It’s not fair that we can’t run purchased old games on the OS they were built for. they could really show instructions on how to make them run on that OS, maybe even make a simple but official lightweight client that can download it for you, on that old OS.
but if you are on windows 10, what can they do with a game they sold you that won’t work correctly on anything beyond XP?
yes, the above things they could, and should. but even today you are not locked out: copy the game files to USB, drop in the goldberg emu, and play the game on your XP machine. It’s a single file, not eben needs internet.
if the game had DRM? I am not sure that’s the fault of valve. didn’t the devs put it there?
and if you accept the “solution” to drop steam, and start renting your games? you won’t be able to do even this (edit: because they have real drm, not measly steamdrm that’s easily stripped out). you are literally locked out both if you stop paying, and if the service stops making that game available because their license expired, politics, or whatever. and you literally can do nothing about that.
I’ve been running steam on an unsupported OS (osx 10.13.6) for almost a year and a half now, and the only issue is a banner at the stop claiming that steam will stop working in 0 days.
I don’t remember what if anything I did to make this happen, but I’ve had no trouble buying, downloading, or playing games in that time.
And what was his “merit” again (since that’s how they like to frame it)? Oh right, fooling people into voting for him. Just PR and courting big shots for campaign money.
Oh damn. I’ve spent $30,359.76 on Steam in the 17 years I’ve had an account. And I just passed 4,000 games in my Steam library within the last month. That checks out.
I really like video games. And I’m retired young(ish), so I have all the time in the world to game now.
Plus, I have a (relatively new) blog dedicated to introducing games to people, which encourages me to play through a variety of games in my library. It’s basically just archiving my “Random Screenshots of my Games” posts in !games.
And according to the SteamDB, I’ve played 26% of my games. The last time I checked, it was at 38%, but that was maybe 2,000 games ago. I need to keep working through my library!
Damn, 26% is not too shabby. Thats just a lot of money for most people, but i guess other people buy figurines that they never do anything with at all, so it could be worse i guess. Well i hope you enjoy playing them :)
If you somehow dont have Metro 2033 yet, you can still add it to your library for free today.
Video games and collecting Sonic the Hedgehog comics are my two expensive hobbies; I don’t spend money on much else besides essentials (food, shelter), so I can afford to splurge a bit on these hobbies. I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but the US military took really good care of me for 20 years and continues to provide for me in retirement, so I’m able to live a pretty relaxed life now.
If you somehow dont have Metro 2033 yet, you can still add it to your library for free today.
I saw that it was free for 48 hours! I already have the whole Metro franchise, but I’ve informed my gaming friends about the deal this morning. Thanks for spreading the news!
One caveat to my Steam library is that I always try to wait for deals before I buy; I rarely buy anything at full price. I don’t want to think about how much money I might’ve spent if I bought everything at full price! 😱
I’m not quite sure why they’re so concerned. I suspect they’re actually not and this is just things “analysts” say.
I suspect that the release of GTA VI is going to be lukewarm compared to the release of GTA V, because everyone remembered what Rockstar did to GTA V. People are going to wait around and see how they handle GTA online because they need to do better than last time because last time was ridiculous.
I’m certainly not all that interested in getting it day one and I know a lot of other people aren’t either.
I don’t know. Gamers have very short memory and are driven by FOMO and social media coverage.
Just look at the whole Cyberpunk situation. Or, more recently, the Sparking Zero drama. Everyone pre-ordered the 120$ edition to play earlier, just because of shiny graphics ™️. Then, when the honey moon phase was over, the subreddit turned into a shithole full of frustration and complaints. The playercount numbers dropped. All you can see now is reports of bugs, glitches and so on. But still, most of these folks are already considering the purchase of SZ2, cause they are sure devs will definitely fix the issues.
Just watch GTA 6 pre-orders skyrocket as soon as Rockstar drops the 2nd trailer, next year.
There’s absolutely zero reason to pre-order the bonuses you get are never worth it and it’s not like they’re going to run out. Hell I didn’t pre-order GTA V and I got it day one on both PS3 and Xbox 360 but just walking into a store on lunch time. And that was a physical media now everything’s gone digital is even less reason to pre-order.
So I’ll not be pre-ordering regardless, but I wouldn’t be pre-ordering anyway because I don’t trust Rockstar anymore. I’m not saying that the game will be bad I’m just saying I don’t trust Rockstar fully anymore. I also don’t trust CDPR anymore because of cyberpunk. Yeah they fixed it but so what, I don’t want to be encouraging that kind of release strategy. Same thing with hello games, If they want people to go back to buying their games by default, these companies have to release some whoppers with zero issues day one to get back their reputation.
The older gemers may remember but there is a whole generation that has spung up since.
Edit: a quick look shows there were 1.7 billion people born between 1995 and 2007 i.e. born in the period that would have trurned 18 between 2013 and 2025… This corresponds to 20% of the global population.
Used to work at Rebellion on their IT team. Genuinely a fantastic place to work and the owners seemed to always be super chill. Had a full suit of armour in one of their offices and so many weapons lying around (likely blunt replicas but still really cool).
I wasn’t on the game dev team so can’t speak for them but I was personally never pushed to work harder and often explicitly told to take breaks.
We also used to have large Unreal Tournament matches at lunch.
So EA put way too high of a sales target on the game, obviously held it back from becoming what it could be, and now are blaming the studio with layoffs, ensuring the next game will flop.
I don’t care what their “numbers” and “projections” were. The game was on the top 10 list in Steam. Even if it wasn’t an A+ game I’d say it looked like it at least hit Assassin’s Creed numbers, I’d hardly call that a failure. Sounds more like a failure to accurately predict, maybe they should fire their business analysts instead of the people who you know, make the games.
But the business analysts are the most profitable group, anywhere! If you don’t believe me just hire a business analyst to analyze things and they’ll prove it to you!
As a Data Analyst / Business Analyst, let me assure you: Not all of us are stupid (some are, for sure), but there’s only so much you can do about stupid managers. If they decide that a certain measure is key, it can be really hard to explain why it isn’t that important or where a certain distortion comes from. To compound this, some managers genuinely don’t understand their business processes and are unwilling to have it explained to them. They’ll make assumptions about how things work, then base their demands on those.
For an entirely made up example, consider a department manager looking to monitor a software development team’s workload. That workload, to them, consists of bug tickets and feature implementations. Not counted here are feature requests because, apparently, fielding them and discussing their feasibility isn’t actual development work. That’s management work, which is the Product Manager’s job… Except the Product Manager can’t unilaterally decide whether something is feasible without consulting those actually familiar with the code, taking up the developer’s time. On the other hand, since it’s an internally developed tool for other units, they can’t just say No to every request or else they risk people calling their team’s funding into question.
Now, you have the choice between frustrating yourself and annoying the manager by trying to explain all that, or gritting your teeth and just giving them the stupid chart on bugs closed and feature implementations completed over time. Guess which one is healthier for your employment prospects?
And we haven’t even started talking about the variance in effort of bug fixes or about non-feature work for code stability or QA. Eventually, we’ll reach the point where the measure becomes a target and you have to start reframing bug fixes as features and splitting features up into smaller features just to make the figures look nicer.
What I’m getting at is this: Sometimes, the analysts aren’t to blame, but the managers making decisions.
That’s not to say there aren’t absolutely shitty business analysts out there that will gladly figure out ways to polish the figures and then cash the check for making the figures look better.
Thank you for that perspective. It seems to be somewhat similar and thankless to when I get tasked with taking microbio samples from the machines to check for contamination and then get grumpy department leads because the analysis results show over and over again that their cleaning procedure is inefficient.
What, can’t you just… idk, check better to see how clean it actually is? That can’t be right, you probably got your samples contaminated. Were those really from that machine? Maybe you got them mixed up. Well you’re really itching to find contaminants, aren’t you? Of course you’ll find something if you look hard enough…
I don’t know how your business works, so I’m trying to project the managers I know onto it - am I so far off that I look like a manager?
Hahaha the production lead actually suggested that I might have been sick and coughed germs onto the sample sponge or that the sponges themselves were already contaminated during manufacturing, because every single sample showed high counts of pseudomonas.
Maybe instead she should start listening to us when we tell her that production equipment from 1970 might not be sufficient to run a food production with the hygiene requirements of today. But no, replacing that would cost more money than just taking samples over and over until the results are low enough (probably because by the 37th swab I cleaned the surface better than the production workers)
Couldn’t you just add up the germs found in successive swabs to the total and increase the total count with each test?
(I assume you have certain testing and evaluation standards you’re bound to, so that’s a “No”, but I like the idea of the results getting worse rather than better)
What would newer equipment do differently to make it less prone to hygiene issues?
If you follow the links, they refer to copy pasta’s of hatefull stuff including swastikas but no breakdown of what is counted, the use of the happy merchant (a meme with an antisemitic origin used to convey greed) and the use of pepe the frog in profile pics (pepe is a symbol of hate according to the ADL).
The issue I have with the whole here is that I don’t subscribe to the premise on which the analysis is based.
IF you assume pepe is a hate symbol, then each case it is used is an expression of hate and furtherance of that hate. I however reject the premise that pepe is a symbol of hate.
The use of the happy merchant is a bit more of a problem, because I see the antisemitic message it has. However I also see a lot of stupid people that don’t… and have seen the image used (probably in antisemitic context referring to greed) but people associate it with greed primarily… so this one is an issue, I think I refuse part of the premise, namely that the antisemitism part is a dominant factor when the image is used.
These are the 2 main examples, a lot more in the report that have similar caveats.
Pepe to me seems like the opposite of the Confederate flag.
Pepe is an internet meme that is in some cases used by racist and hateful people to carry their message, but the primary function is internet nonsense.
The Confederate flag is a symbol or hate and oppression that in some situations is used to express country & westerns ideals of freedom and roaming the country with not a care in the world… without the racist subtext… however you cannot deny the basis of its use and thus should not use it.
Some cases is an understatement. Ever since The_Donald and Kekistan, Pepe has become a hate symbol due to the wide adoption by far right trolls. Pepe might've never meant to be that, but neither was the Swastika or the roman salute, or other symbols that the Nazis adopted for themselves. The more pressing issue is that you should really not give people on Steam the benefit of the doubt of arguing in good faith. The whole gamergate movement is alive and well there.
As I said before I reject your premise about pepe and it’s use. And the swatsticka is a false equivalence.
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims. I consider both camps equally fringe.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics… at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy. The alt right does the same… we co-opt the meme and tell people they are one of us… because we meme the same we must be the same… or something…
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims.
I don't care for American institutions, I simply speak out of personal experience on that matter of what I experienced and seen firsthand in many places.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics.. at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ah, yes. They're only racist because I called them racist. That's the typical bullshit excuse racists use, claiming that the other side pushed them to become racist.
Here we see that you are also arguing in bad faith, and not just out of ignorance.
Could the first point on anecdotal evidence be that you see very specific instances. And/or confirmation bias? I’m not saying your observations are invalid… Just maybe not representative for the bulk of use cases… pepe is in reaction emojis on discord… in gifs on keyboards… and he is just silly. Does that mean all people that use them are aware of what the dogwistle to some might be… I’d argue … they are not.
And I think that in regards to calling people racist for doing innocuous things does have the potential to alienate people from your stance and that void is something the alt right gladly fills. And I think that is a danger that should be acknowledged. And I don’t mean be kind to open Nazis… I more mean “don’t ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence”.
Discord is equally full of racist gamergate incels. Not sure what keyboards you're referring to that have any sort of gifs, but I also fail to see how any of that is prove of it not being used by those people.
And if you think crying about black NPCs in video games, or other anti-woke shit, is not being racist / hateful, then you're just part of the same problem.
There you go again… creating this distance and making me out as a bad guy… I’m wondering what your end game is?
So is discord a Nazi bar? Is that what you are saying? Because I’ve found myself in plenty of discords of games that have fun low key communities with an image of peppe holding a cool sign amongst all the other game and internet nonsense…
And yes the radicalization pipeline is freaking scary. But keep in mind that constantly alienating people like what you seem to be doing… creates the vacuum to be filled.
Years ago when Rogan was still a rube interviewing deer hunters, taxidermists, astronauts and other real people… I Nopee out when the peterson, Jones lineup became common… I saw the swing happening… it was vicious… and I’ll bet they took a whole swath of his audience with them.
The left needs to provide a narrative, something that people can latch on to and aspire to… to pull them in, because the policies and goals are what we all need. At this moment screetching, calling everyone a Nazi and alienating people is not helping anyone…
I don't alienate anyone other than those who clearly are hateful and toxic in nature, including trolls arguing in bad faith, such as you who loves to put words into my mouth. And I'm not a "screeching" libtard or whatever your US centric green hair memes are.
Rogan has always been a far right pundit btw. That's kinda the point I'm trying to make here. Radicalization happens not by telling people to swing the Nazi flag, but subtly through stupid memes and how woke culture is going to ruin their lives.
That’s why these conversations are so cool. It helps all of us give words to some of the things we cannot express properly. Why I also enjoy reading co tributuins by others… especially if they challenge my preconceptions.
Iirc, when the ADP put out their guidance on Pepe, it was during the 2016 election when Pepe was being actively coopted by alt-rightera and neo Nazis. One of those "take something innocuous and poison it by using it as a pseudo secret signal to other bigots.
I vaguely recall them saying that Pepe was a hate symbol only insofar as it was being used for that purpose. I wonder if that changed, or if this investigation is ignoring that nuance to hamfist a “hate speech” argument.
I fear it is the latter. Nuance seems to get lost over time. It’s maybe the opposite of black people in the US using the N word amongst themselves in an attempt to take it back… I don’t think that this was successful by any measure as it just caused the racist to point at it and say… see they even say it about themselves because only hoodlums (what a word) use it…
If you look at the same section of the ADL website that Pepe is in, you’ll see the first page is just full of simple numbers (symbols are listed alphabetically). I don’t see anyone doing a similar study to the one posted here, but with “100%” instead of Pepe.
Also, side note, ADL lists “ACAB” as a hate symbol because some skinheads are racist and use the phrase. They have a similar disclaimer in the Pepe listing that context is an important consideration.
I didn’t follow everything he’s been doing but I don’t understand the negative sentiment. Populous and Black & White were fantastic games IMO. But these games are old so maybe this view of him as a liar is more recent development.
Also many decades ago now. He went on to make massive promises for the Fable series - and while I enjoyed them, they absolutely did not meet what he had described. Hence his reputation these days of over promising and under delivering
He definitely got worse over time. It’s sad, really. Despite always exaggerating and overpromising he still used to reliably put out good, fun games. I remember Bullfrog used to be a venerable company, the first Fable was a solid game (despite not being what he promised it would be) and Dungeon Keeper was a classic. And yeah, Black & White were great.
One of his first gigs was when a software company mistakenly contacted his business to make a program of sorts, and rather than explaining the situation, he was like “Who? Oh yeah, sure, we are definitely that company you were looking for, we totally know the thing you’re talking about, we’ll do it!”. He was a liar from the very start, it just took some time, and a handful of overhyped (by him) games for people to catch on. If I had to point to an specific event for the decline in his public image, it’d be the Project Milo presentation for the Kinect (just revealed as Project Natal).
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the other game that ruined his reputation for me is Godus. He funded it with a kickstarter with the promise it would be a successor to the God-Sim genre like Populous. It turned out to have all of the dark patterns of mobile games (time-gating with micro-transactions), but in a PC game.
The title is wrong. It’s not about proving that the owner is dead (which is easy, you get a death certificate when a relative dies).
It’s about proving that the person requesting access of the dead person account is actually the person legally receiving the dead person’s possessions (or GOG account specifically).
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