My main interest in these is for watching movies. A review I was just looking at mentioned ‘spatially anchored movies’ using the mixed reality feature.
Like it or not Facebook is probably going to be the main company doing good standalone VR headsets for a while. HP and ByteDance aren’t any better.
subnautica is still the best planet exploration game I’ve played. piloting the sub into the depths feels more like space travel than actual space games
I understand he’s mad that he’s losing money of a thing he made but, I think he’s going about that the wrong way. I would see that as more of a challenge then a “wow I shouldn’t do this”, I expect any person doing stuff like this would look at it the same way, free cracks and exploits are rarely about the money, it’s generally about the challenge of doing something that isn’t supposed to be allowed. Adding “mines” to try and sabotage it I believe will just make someone more apt to try and crack it.
In Mirror’s Edge one of the jumps near the end of the game was programmed to be actually undoable. It slowed you down, just a little bit, so it was now impossible to complete the game.
Paying customers are footing the bill for that anti-theft
The guy is making over $500k off someone else’s product with a couple days’ work. I’m no Tankie, but you don’t have to be a high schooler or a pothead to have a problem with capitalism’s more toxic extremes. People have been conditioned to forget this, but piracy is a counter-leverage to prevent product pricing from going out of control. Just look at the average prices of Switch games vs PC games. The harder it is to pirate a product, the further the price of that product is from a value consensus.
These types of anti-thefts tend to false-fire for the paying customers (who footed the bill). This is especially true because he builds his mods against a closed-source product that behaves in ways he cannot always predict. Published modding interfaces are never perfect.
The real value of the “product” was done by (m/b)illion dollar investments by Nvidia and game companies facilitating support for FSR or alternate upscalers. His “product” takes a few days to implement and others are able to offer the same “product” for free.
He is making a ridiculous amount of money considering the amount of work required and feels like an insult to modders who actually spend hundreds of hours tinkering and publishing their work for free. He already makes more than he deserves on patreon, why is he so sensitive about others pirating it.
The moment you release a mod for free you list all privilege of making a paywall cause people will try even harder to get it for free than if it where paid to begin with
What a imputent salty child, “hidden mines” my butt, they gonna be removed by the couple of people still using htwir mods in 5 nanoseconds after release
I have no problem with someone getting paid for their work. In fact, I encourage people to get paid for their work. But if you decide to sabotage your own product for the sake of attacking people who refuse to pay for it, you just make your product worse for everyone who did pay for it and you do nothing to actually solve the piracy issue. In that case, you’re reaping what you sow.
The modder, PureDark is talking about putting in anti-theft mines into their mods. Exactly like the Mad Max game where you can’t win and it makes it impossibly difficult if you’re playing a cracked copy. Below is the quote from the article, emphasis mine.
PureDark also responded to how quickly the Starfield mod was cracked.
"It was expected since it was something I put together within a day or two, but I did get enough patrons so it’s done its job. So from now on I will place hidden mines in all my mods to make it harder for these people.
Wow a day or two of work and you earn probably 200k+ from it, crazy. Guess he is hurting for cash or he see’s the end of the cash train as other people start making equivalent mods. Or maybe he is afraid of bethesda/nividia/amd coming down on him.
It’s a day of work to implement the DRM, not the mod itself, which he did release day 1 for free on Nexus, only the frame gen version is behind the patreon wall, additionally he’s released many such DLSS+FG mods for various games (which all come with the sub) so he has a lot of experience implementing it and has clearly gotten it down pretty well.
Every game has its own challenges but Starfield was particularly easy (according to him) because of how FSR was implemented
That… is not at all specified what kind of “mine” it would be. You’re assuming it’s innocuous, everyone else is assuming it’s malicious. But we’re all making assumptions.
Which has never happened in the history of forever and I’m sure this will go just fine after he spent a whole two days implementing DRM in the first place.
Sorry, I dont mean to laugh, but where have you been?
The bulk of gamers only care about their instant gratification. If they actually were capable of taking a stand then there’d be a lot less awful companies pulling in billion dollar+ game releases.
Played some Heroes of the Storm with an online friend. I absolutely love this game, I only play it Vs AI, but it's the only MOBA I ever really got into, because I don't much enjoy competition and the AI is always there.
I never thought I'd get to this point with a competitive styled game, but I know all of the heroes, almost all of their abilities, I understand matchups or even possible talent choices and ideal or poor team comps. It helps that the game is locked in maintenance mode and I don't worry about an ever inflating hero pool and an ever evolving meta.
Gamers have gotten quite lucky so far that the company that has been in the position to turn the screws and establish a monopoly has been content to only make gobs of money, instead of trying to make all the money like pretty much every other entertainment industry.
Yeah, the reason why Valve can do that is that they are not a publicly traded company but a privately owned one. Gabe Newell doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to any shareholders, so they don’t have to squeeze every penny from their users or abuse their quasi monopoly.
The whole idea of investments always going up is an absurd idea that needs to go. At this point I infinitely prefer a private company over a publicly traded one.
It’s a bit of an inherent issue sadly, if your goal is to multiply money why would you invest in a company whose profits stay the same over one whose go up? And you have no reason to care if the company eventually dies as a result, you just move your money into the next one.
And most people investing money will be doing so with the only purpose of multiplying that money, as it’s mostly banks and similar institutions. In theory if the main investors of a company want it to prioritize user experience over profits, the companies’ duty to its shareholders would also be to ensure good user experience. But that’s never going to happen.
Multiplying your investments is the basis of capitalism. To speak to your point of it being an inherent issue - I find the idea of removing the profit motive from capitalist enterprise to hilariously reactionary. Not because I like capitalism, but because so many people that support capitalism want to “reform” it by ripping its heart out (one artery at a time, at least). I want to rip its heart out for the express intent of killing it - what strange allies we make!
If Gabe ever leaves Valve and the powers that be decide to go public I hope it’s done in a way that gives power to the users instead of faceless investment firms. I don’t even know what that would look like but I fear the day that Valve comes under control of an ex-AAA game company CEO or the like.
Perhaps a transition to a not-for-profit organization structure might be what folks would prefer? It seems like a potentially better alternative than going public, but I’m not sure how it might work in practice for something like a digital storefront.
In a weird way, one could almost argue that’s roughly how Valve’s been operating anyway, except I imagine they’ve been lining their pockets more than a not-for-profit organization’s owners/employees do.
I bet they make a shit ton of money but they certainly seem to reinvest enough of it too. There is a interesting concept called purpose companies here in Europe but it’s not especially wide spread or planned by regulators so the transition is extremly complicated and expensive. The search engine Ecosia is a relatively well known one, it’s basically a company in self ownership where no one from outside can become CEO and no one can sell or go public, they are obligated to their chosen purpose and that’s where their profits go (in the case of Ecosia that’s planting trees), not sure how it works exactly or if it’s doable in the USA at all tho.
I said this elsewhere but that’s not true. The idea that publicly traded companies have a duty to maximize shareholder value is a myth, and anyone privileged enough to sit on a board of directors likely knows this. See this article for an explanation. Every time a board squeezes a company for short term profits at the cost of long term good will, long term profits, etc., that is because they chose to do so.
Well the relation is wrong but it’s a real thing, they have a duty to grow infinitely or the sroxk price will crash and since that’s impossible to achive they essentially have to squeeze their users for short term gains to seem like they still grow sooner or later
“People like me” meaning “People who cite their sources and investigating claims before making them?” Yes, I can understand why you might find it difficult to convince “people like me” to believe something that’s trivially shown to be false.
The idea that publicly traded companies have a duty to maximize shareholder value is a myth, and anyone privileged enough to sit on a board of directors likely knows this. See this article for an explanation. Every time a board squeezes a company for short term profits at the cost of long term good will, long term profits, etc., that is because they chose to do so.
EDIT: See also This NY Times article. And note that I’m not saying that corporations, board members, etc., aren’t pressured or incentivized to maximize shareholder value - I’m saying that they do not have a legal duty to do so.
It’s not a myth, it’s called Fiduciary Duty. The board, officers, and executives of a public company have a legal responsibility to put the financial interests and well-being of the company above other personal interests. The article you linked doesn’t deny this, and it also isn’t discussing the legal definition of it. It’s discussing what you might call “toxic fiduciary duty”, or more or less the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. It’s the idea that profit is the primary motive and should always trump all other considerations.
Fiduciary duty is important to create a concrete stance against corruption and misuse of the company’s assets for personal gain. But when taken to an extreme, it becomes toxic and has negative consequences for the company. Employee wages are probably the most obvious example. There has to be a balance between underpaying and overpaying. If you chronically underpay, the best employees will seek more gainful employment elsewhere and the company will suffer from a poorly qualified workforce. If you overpay, like 100% revenue share with employees, the company will cease to make a profit and will be unable to function. A balance has to be struck to retain the best talent in order to drive success for the company; that is the point of the article you linked.
TL;DR extremism is always bad
(Please don’t mistake this for a pro-capitalism rant, there’s nuance to be had here)
It isn’t. If it were, that would mean that in practice, board members act to maximize shareholder value because they are legally obligated to do so, and that simply isn’t true.
In practice, board members and C-suite employees are incentivized to maximize shareholder value. They are not legally obligated to do so.
Fiduciary duty is a legal requirement, meaning that if you don’t fulfill your fiduciary duty, you’re liable. But nobody has been successfully sued for not maximizing shareholder value when their actions were in line with the business judgment rule (“made (1) in good faith, (2) with the care that a reasonably prudent person would use, and (3) with the reasonable belief that the director is acting in the best interests of the corporation”). Successful lawsuits regarding breach of fiduciary duty (in the context of corporate law) require the defendant to have acted with gross negligence, in bad faith, or to have had an undisclosed conflict of interest.
The closest instance of legal precedent that I know of (aside from “” of course) that eBay v. Newmark (Craigslist), which Max Kennerly took as meaning that corporations . In this case, Craigslist was found to have violated their fiduciary duties to eBay because Craigslist, in Max’s words, “tried to protect the frugal, community-centric corporate culture that was a hallmark for their success.”
Except, if you actually read the case notes, it’s clear that the issue wasn’t that Craigslist wasn’t maximizing their profits, but that they were diluting the percentage of stocked owned and flexibility of selling those stocks of other stockholders. The issue wasn’t that Craigslist wanted to spend half their profits supporting charities or anything like that - no, it was that they were trying to artificially limit, thus directly devaluing, the shares they had already sold. In other words, I agree that this was a case about minority shareholder oppression as opposed to being an edict to maximize profits / shareholder value.
And other than people threatening legal action, the most recent case we have (other than eBay v. NewMark) in favor of shareholder primacy is 124 years old - Dodge v. Ford. But the opposite is true:
Shareholder primacy is clearly unenforceable on its own term because the business judgment rule would defeat any claims based on a failure to maximize profit. 40 Corporate managers formulate business strategy. A rule‒sanction is antithetical to the core concept of the business judgment rule. In over one hundred years of corporate law, there is not a case where a state supreme court imposed liability for breach of fiduciary duty on the specific ground that the board, in managing operational matters, failed to maximize shareholder profit, though it made the decision informedly, disinterestedly, and in good faith.41 That case does not exist. In fact, many cases show just the opposite. Courts have held that shareholders cannot challenge a board’s decision on the specific grounds that, for example: the company paid its employees too much; 42 it failed to pursue a profit opportunity;43 it did not maximize the settlement amount in a negotiation;44 it failed to lawfully avoid taxes.45 There are classic textbook cases where courts have rejected attempts of shareholders to interfere with the board’s decisions on the argument that their views of business or strategy would have maximized shareholder value.46
The belief that a corporation is legally obligated to maximize shareholder value isn’t just wrong; it also:
Implies that no other model is feasible
Removes accountability for the negative effects of such policy from the people who are responsible for perpetuating them
Reinforces the fallacy that this should be resolved through legislation
One of the big reasons many companies go public is it’s naturally a really nice retirement package for the owners of the company. The owners of the company may have put so much time and money into building the company that they don’t have sufficient retirement savings, so by going public they turn a portion of their ownership into a boatload of cash as well as a boatload of wealth that can be leveraged, then simply elect a new CEO, retain their significant voting power on the board so they aren’t entirely abandoning their baby and then peace out
Square really the type of company to remake a game twice, only for one to be a little less than faithful (to say the least) and the other to be a gacha cashgrab.
Really wish they would update it to allow you to define the space boundaries with the headset on. With the Vive if you don’t start it a certain way then you have to redo the boundary setup.
Yikes that sounds annoying and yea they should definitely make it possible, this really shouldn’t be much of a challenge to code on their end.
I’ve only had to do this a handful of times because I moved the base stations or reinstalled. (Index)
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