Un-sarcastic answer, it’s actually in a really good spot. The backend changes they put in over the past year have boosted the per-server player counts like crazy, they churned through most of their ship backlog, and they’ve been running a bunch of story events. Performance is way up, especially for client fps in high-population areas (15 fps this time last year if you were in a crowd, 35+ now).
PCG has been super negative on SC for years. Sometimes very justifiably, but many times not.
I haven’t had any elevator issues in a while, though I know some people have with the freight elevators. Guild chat isn’t something I care about, since every guild/clan/alliance I’ve been a part of has always used mumble/TS/discord.
It’s not really that buggy now, and I don’t know what you mean by “game loops don’t consistently work”?
People who aren’t having issues don’t go online to post about it. Since we know the daily player count hovers around 29,000, those hundreds of complaints can still be a very small portion of players, who are experiencing issues.
Edit: Off my phone, so I can type more easily.
The other side to this is that differences between patches can be huge, so reports of a bug that everyone is having could be irrelevant a week later when the new patch drops, but unless you’re checking every post’s date and patch number, you could falsely conclude the bug is still present, or view those bugs as cumulative with bugs that are in the current patch.
The 4.3.x patches are some of the most stable, bug-free patches I’ve played. If you’re insistent on finding faults with anything, you can, and lord knows there are plenty of things to find fault with in SC, but bringing up issues like the ‘deadly’ elevators and doors from last year or older, is an unserious criticism.
[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @no_goblins. The tweet says: “Ladies if you go to a man’s house and the only games he has are COD and 2k DON’T SLEEP WITH HIM! You deserve someone who plays open world RPGs”.]
This is not a good argument for unnecessary exposition though, this is just an argument for shorter, bite-sized narratives, or even what some games already do (like The Witcher 3) where they recap where you are in the loading screen. If anything, unnecessary exposition just wastes what little time you have to play, or forces you to skip the dialogue entirely.
A good story can be (and usually is) told with minimal exposition. AAA games being exposition-fests is a result of game executives and writers infantilising players in the name of “widest audience appeal”.
This group in particular (Collective Shout) is Australian, and they’re anti-gun, it’s just not a key part of their advocacy. They have claimed that GTA is responsible for mass shootings.
Or is it just the ‘humans fighting giant machines’ part that they’re likening to Shadow of the Colossus Metal Gear Solid Horizon Zero Dawn?
Jokes aside, the standard of “could confuse consumers into mistaking one for another” was meant to prevent things like essentially typo-squatting in product names, e.g. going and making Orao cookies, instead of Oreo (which is why Oreo was able to copy Hydrox).
It wasn’t meant to just be about aping a concept or art style. No one would actually mistake “Light of Motiram” for “Horizon: Zero Dawn”.
If this sticks, expect every conservative group in the US to start trying this. Pressure Visa/ MC/ PayPal not to accept charges from Planned Parenthood, or from LGBT-friendly businesses, or from book publishers they don’t like, etc. This is just censorship by other means.
We’d be in the same place. It’s not any better or worse for a private versus a public entity to do harm.
Also, the government is already part of this. If the DOJ told Visa, “hey, stop fucking around with that, you don’t need to be trying to control legal agreements between parties, that’s our purview” (or if they even thought the DOJ might), they’d drop this behavior in an instant. They are doing this in large part because they believe it is in line with the government’s ideology. Preemptive compliance.
Every company is headquartered somewhere, or has some market that it cannot afford to withdraw from, and that makes them all ultimately subject to said governments. No business decision is made free from pressure when it comes to governments.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
That is not the issue. That may be the subset of the issue that you have a problem with, but the actual issue is a payment provider setting purchase restrictions period. That it is happening in the US is not uniquely bad; it would be equally bad happening anywhere else.
Interpreting the international impact to be “the issue” would mean that if this were only affecting Americans, this would be fine, which is absolutely not the case.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country.
To set up and sell in that country, they then have to comply with the local payment providers. Which shouldn’t be deciding whether people can purchase something, just as Visa shouldn’t be.
Is this a criticism of the quote, or a response to it?
Once again, you’re not actually just stating your issue, and your responses are ambiguous enough that they could be interpreted either as an objection to people treating Hunter Schafer in a way that you perceive as negative, or an objection to Hunter Schafer.
I didn’t check Kinetic, but Larian’s is good. This is the full termination section of the EULA:
TERMINATION
This Pact shall remain in effect for as long as you use, operate or run the Game.
You may terminate the Pact at any time and for any reason by notifying Larian Studios that you intend to terminate the agreement. Upon termination all licenses granted to you in this Pact shall immediately terminate and you must immediately and permanently remove the Game from your device and destroy all copies of the Game in your possession.
You understand and agree that certain Services connected to the Game, and the support and access to such Services are provided by Larian Studios at its discretion and may be terminated or otherwise discontinued by Larian Studios at any time, for any reason or no reason, in its sole and absolute discretion.
The first block is termination by the user, and specifies removal of the game if the user chooses to terminate the agreement.
The second block is termination by Larian, and only covers “certain Services”… “provided by Larian Studios” (so likely multiplayer matchmaking), not termination of the full agreement, and no game removal.
The places in the EULA where Larian lays out their prerogative to terminate your license to the game is based on behavior (i.e. banning you).
Yes, but by definition all of them are also playing the game, and given that this is mostly a novelty feature (and also based on how shockingly little use the user-facing chatbots I’ve seen in professional settings are utilized), I personally doubt that the chatbot energy usage will top the game’s.
My guess is there will be 90% of people who use the feature once or twice before ignoring it forever, 9% who will use it occasionally for e.g. video creation purposes, and 1% or less who will actually sit there and use it a bunch just to talk to. That would about match up with ChatGPT’s general usage trends.
Every time I see someone say that most people haven’t swung a sword/ shot a gun/ been in a fight/ been in an accident, etc, I always wonder if I’m the one in the bubble or if they are.
I’m a huge open world and/or sandbox nut. Non-linearity is my jam. Kenshi, Rimworld, AssOdyssey/Shadows, Project Zomboid, Witcher 3, X4…
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good story, but story takes many shapes, and not all stories are pre-written; plenty are emergent. I grew up playing with Legos (and still do), and me making whatever story I wanted (or that emerged along the way) was part of the appeal.
Honestly, apart from FF8 and TW3, and now Expedition 33, I haven’t found many games with written stories that grabbed me. I read books when I want that fulfillingly-crafted linearity.
I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it’s always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you’re wrong when you’re predicting something will fail....
R* sucks. Their asshole-simulator games-turned-live-service-cashgrabs have never represented anything but the worst of the games industry. GTA6 getting canceled would be an excellent opportunity for millions of people who would’ve bought it to spend their time playing something better.
I don’t think they’ll do that for already-released games, but I wouldn’t put the big 3 (Sony, MS, Nintendon’t) from doing the barest ‘remasters’, and replacing their digital versions of those games with the ‘remasters’.
Yes and no. Most of the cost-reductions in hardware manufacturing lifecycles come from minimizing materials loss and optimizing design efficiency. The components don’t actually just get cheaper to produce over time on their own, from a material perspective. That means that material shortages are much more likely to have a big impact on cost (up or down) than new manufacturing technology, for the same chip.
This is the incident that made me cancel my WoW sub, and close my Battle.net account. Never again trusting them, even under Microsoft (or rather, especially now under MS).
I spent well over a month talking to investors to get the actual data behind what’s happening to the games industry. I was going to say “enjoy!” but it’s, uh, not great.
Oh man, 2011… I’m a millennial, and even I was already out of college in 2011. My ‘kid’ games were $80 USD in the 90s. Here’s an articlefrom 2014 that someone made about how insane N64 game prices were.
Star Fox 64 – $79.95 (Source: GamePro #106) - 1997
Big question: Why have alienated young men, especially in America, found their home in the populist political right? Part of the answer is that the populist right takes video games seriously....
I think you’re misunderstanding what “taking games seriously” means in this instance.
The Right takes the political power of games seriously. They understand that games can be tactically used as an access route to young men, to influence their politics. They know that it is just another medium like TV or movies or books, and don’t eschew interacting with them for political purposes like Democrats traditionally have.
That’s why it was such a big deal when AOC played Among Us (and later, her and Walz streaming various games). It was a politician on the Left actually ‘deigning’ to interact with young people in a platform that they inhabit, and not belittling it.
The closest equivalent person we have on the Left to people like JonTron or other YTers who mix Right-wing talking points with games to draw young men into their pipeline, is Hasan, and Democrats treat him like he’s practically Ted Kaczynski in waiting.
It’s so frustrating to see so many comments doing exactly what the post is pointing out, either deriding games as a medium, or “gamers” as some monolithic group of disaffected young men.
Games are a medium, same as books, movies, or tv. They can convey any message, and yes, many games do have Progressive (or even Leftist, see Disco Elysium) themes. But unlike TV, books, and movies, where there is a constant stream of political interaction from both Left and Right wings’ political apparatuses, there aren’t really a lot of Leftist political entities attempting to reach young men via videogames.
Name one Left-wing gaming influencer apart from Hasanbi (who it should be pointed out, many Democrats tend to hate on). I can list off at least 3 different right-wing ones off the top of my head (JonTron, Asmongold, Dr Disrespect), and I don’t inhabit those spaces, so I’m only going off the biggest names. And that’s not even beginning to get into the gaming-adjacent Rightwing influencers who those gaming influencers direct their fans to.
It’s a pipeline, and we don’t have one on the Left.
I remember the first time AOC played Among Us, and it was a huge deal for us on the Left, because it was possibly the very first time we’d seen a Democratic politician actually engage with games publicly.
Gaming is literally the largest entertainment medium now by a large margin (yes, larger than movies and tv), but we don’t see politicians putting out lists of games to play like they do books or movies. Instead, most times we see an article about a Democratic politician somewhere like Kotaku, it’s often because they’re trying to blame video games for something.
So instead we have largely ceded the gaming sphere (not the games themselves, but the areas of discussion around gaming) to the Right. They pull in disaffected young men, tell them women and ‘wokies’ are the reason for their problems, and then hand them off to overtly political folks who transform that general disaffection into right-wing political capital.
they saw “woke” as a reason for why games or movies turned out bad
This only became a thing after the pipeline was established. This rhetoric is what the pipeline feeds them.
I remember seeing JonTron videos back in 2011, well before the 2015 gamergate era. Even back then he’d make offhand remarks about how tough it was being White, how badly women treat men, etc. Gamergate in 2015 largely caught the notice of the Right’s political apparatus, and they saw the opportunity to convert the casual misogyny and racism into feeders for their political machine. “Woke” didn’t really become a right-wing attack in the gaming and movie spheres until pretty recently.
I think you’ve mixed up the timeline in my comment.
Pre-gamergate era (2010-2014): channer-esque misogynists like JonTron are heavily popular on YT, but there is no political pipeline established. They are just voicing their own shitty thoughts, and their audience is almost exclusively young white males.
Gamergate (2015): Right-wing politicians and shock pundits like Shapiro take notice of the large amount of misogynistic content that a lot of gaming YTers are spouting as GG gets national attentions, and think, “hey, those sound like people I can capture”.
Early Alt-right pipeline (2015-2019): figures like Shapiro and Yiannopoulos start making content intended to target gamers, usually ‘shock’ videos with gamer-derived terms like “own” (the libs), and/or are interviewing right-wing-aligned gamer influencers, and the gamer->conservative voter pipeline is developing.
Late Alt-right pipeline (2020-onwards): there are tons of right wing YTers, streamers, and talk-shows that target young white males, especially gamers, telling them that everything they dislike is due to ‘wokeism’, ‘DEI’, etc… you know the rest.
Even before that, there was this whole corporate wokeness marketing trope that really drove the concept into the ground
You’re using ‘woke’ unironically, in the way that the Right does. Neither of those things you posted are Woke, they’re just pandering. Woke means aware of the systemic biases in our social institutions. Your examples aren’t “wokeness”, they’re Feminist Capitalism (and Rainbow Capitalism also gets called ‘woke’ by the Right).
It’s like kids all running with this popular meme, only for parents to sudden adopt it and it’s not cool any more. So, right-wing spheres to pick it off of the ground, dust it off, and just carry that energy forward, which is unfortunately what they are good at.
No, that was never what wokeness was (and none of those companies ever called themselves that), it’s just that right-wingers started calling anything they didn’t like “woke”, despite their examples having nothing to do with wokeness.
Leftists are shit at messaging. Like, really really shit at messaging.
Leftists have great messaging. If you think messaging is a Leftist problem, I think you’ve confused Liberal, Progressive, and Leftist.
So, it’s not successful, but it could be. So they were in fact correct that it’s not successful.
I use fdroid, so I know exactly how badly administered it is compared to Play. There are apps that haven’t gotten updated in months or years, despite the app on Play or Github being much newer. There are typo-squatting apps, and apps uploaded by people who do not own or manage those programs. It’s a wild west experience, and the average android phone user isn’t going to know enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Valve would be better off doing their own android offshoot OS.
I recently got a job after finishing university, all is good. However, after 5 full days of being behind desk job, I feel a bit exhausted of being behind desk....
I don’t burn out on screens. I can enjoy a game for 4 hours to unwind from 6 hours of work.
If you’re just starting out working, I wager to say you’re still… unoptimized. Putting in a lot more effort than necessary. New jobs are always stressful. Working for the first time even worse. Give it 10 years of working, and you’ll (hopefully) find your groove where you don’t let work drain your entire battery, and you still have energy left for relaxation.
How did this all happen? After first touching base with our team and ensuring our interest, the team at Gunzilla Games secured the rights to Game Informer. From the start, the new owners insisted on the idea of Game Informer remaining an independent editorial outlet; they felt just as strongly as our team did that the only path...
It was the game news source in print media, for many years. It often used to come with demos on a CD in the back of the magazine, so it was also the best way to try games for yourself.
I don’t think they’ll ever get back there, if only because honestly having a magazine to read was better than a website, imo, but I’m always tentatively hopeful to have another reputable news source in the gaming space.
I was going to mention GameStop (I think most of us got it for ‘free’ with our GameStop trade-in subscription thing), but I couldn’t remember if it was always owned by them, or if they just bought it after it was big.
so if Mewt made up Ivalice does that mean that Ramza’s whole story… is a footnote in history for a world that only existed as background for a bunch of kids who can barely play snowballs??? those kids made up Cúchulainn the Tainted King because nobody splained about death properly to Mewt who is like 9??? I can’t BELIEVE...
Been playing Avowed, and enjoying it a lot. It’s a really good AA rpg in the POE universe, and the worldspace is probably the prettiest I’ve seen in the past couple years. I think the last time a game really 'wow’ed me with visuals, to the point that sometimes I just stopped to appreciate the view, was TW3.
Also played some Avorion, which scraches my Eve Online itch without having to actually play that, and Mabinogi (Frieren crossover event), which was the first game my partner and I played together 15 years ago. It’s gotten so many QoL updates in that time that there’s almost no ‘grind’ anymore, and it’s so much more laid back than other MMOs, and has so much content.
There’s a difference between having a monopoly and abusing it
Sure, but whether Valve fits the definition is debatable. Being highly dominant does not automatically make something a monopoly. At best you could call it an imperfect monopoly/ imperfect competition, because substitutes absolutely do exist, but they’re not mostly close enough to be truly competitive. It’s also important to factor in that 4/5 of the largest games on PC are not even on Steam at all: Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and League of Legends. PUBG is the only one of the top-5 that’s on Steam.
Star Citizen fans sigh deeply, rub their foreheads as developer casts doubt on Squadron 42's 2026 release: 'I don't know if we're going to make it' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Nintendo now has a US patent on summoning characters and making them battle for you | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
have some standards (beehaw.org) angielski
[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @no_goblins. The tweet says: “Ladies if you go to a man’s house and the only games he has are COD and 2k DON’T SLEEP WITH HIM! You deserve someone who plays open world RPGs”.]
To the dismay of sweaty 'movement kids,' Battlefield 6 is nerfing Call of Duty sliding and jumping to maintain a 'traditional Battlefield experience' (www.pcgamer.com)
DICE is yet to give clarity on map sizes, comment section is the usual dumpster fire.
We can't keep making videogame stories for players who aren't paying attention to them (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
I’ve noticed a trend—particularly in some recent RPGs—of, well, let’s call it ‘Netflixiness’....
Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material | RPS (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Sony sues Tencent over Horizon Zero Dawn ‘rip-off’ (www.polygon.com) angielski
Waypoint Writers Quit Over Removal Of Articles Related To New Steam Policy [Update] - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy. angielski
https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/3d4d3bb4-67c7-40fd-9458-238f50f665f2.jpeg...
Nintendo’s Zelda movie has found its princess and hero of time [Bo Bragason and Benjamin Evan] (www.theverge.com) angielski
No, Ubisoft's EULA clause ordering you to destroy your games isn't new, nor is it unique (www.thegamer.com) angielski
deleted_by_author
Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible [VGC] (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
PS5’s three best-selling digital games in April 2025 were all Microsoft titles [VGC] (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Open World Games: yay or nay? angielski
As I get older, I notice that the open world formula is tiring! I much prefer a linear game told well than the same game with add-ons....
GTA 6's delay doesn't mean the games industry's in trouble - it's already dead (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it’s always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you’re wrong when you’re predicting something will fail....
Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday - IGN (www.ign.com)
After Years of Struggle, Blizzard Has Found Itself in Uncharted Territory: Overwatch Players Are Having Fun Again (www.ign.com) angielski
The games industry is screwed. [26:11] (youtu.be) angielski
I spent well over a month talking to investors to get the actual data behind what’s happening to the games industry. I was going to say “enjoy!” but it’s, uh, not great.
From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right (www.videogamesindustrymemo.com) angielski
Big question: Why have alienated young men, especially in America, found their home in the populist political right? Part of the answer is that the populist right takes video games seriously....
Why doesn't Steam support Android? angielski
Steam revenue estimated 2024: $10.8B...
Adult gamers of Lemmy how do you find time to game without being exhausted of the screen?
I recently got a job after finishing university, all is good. However, after 5 full days of being behind desk job, I feel a bit exhausted of being behind desk....
Game Informer Is Back (www.gameinformer.com) angielski
How did this all happen? After first touching base with our team and ensuring our interest, the team at Gunzilla Games secured the rights to Game Informer. From the start, the new owners insisted on the idea of Game Informer remaining an independent editorial outlet; they felt just as strongly as our team did that the only path...
still can't believe Mewt made the whole thing up (beehaw.org) angielski
so if Mewt made up Ivalice does that mean that Ramza’s whole story… is a footnote in history for a world that only existed as background for a bunch of kids who can barely play snowballs??? those kids made up Cúchulainn the Tainted King because nobody splained about death properly to Mewt who is like 9??? I can’t BELIEVE...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of Feb 16th
Whatcha all been playing?...
Avowed Review Thread
Game Information...
Why Steam can be considered a monopolistic platform? angielski
^^^