I believed in Chris Roberts because of Freelancer and backed it on Kickstarter, and have watched from the shadows as the story has unfolded. I occasionally dipped my toes in to see how it was coming along, but the performance was awful on midline hardware so I put it back down and waited. Now that the turmoil at the top has come out and people are leaving, I don’t hold much hope for the future of the game.
I think the reason it gets a ton of hate is that Roberts had gone and proven that Microsoft were absolutely right to take Freelancer away from him so it could get finished. They weren’t shackling a maverick genius, they were mitigating losses from his poor leadership.
Maybe check out Starsector by fractalsoftworks.com. It’s written in Java so it runs on basically anything, and it’s 2d top-down but the detail on the ships is great. I love this game very much because it scratches most of the itches I was hoping for from Star Citizen.
Came here to suggest it and here it is, the newest comment! The modding scene is insane, too, for such a relatively small and unknown game.
I love Starsector. I just wish it was written in something more performant than fuckin’ Java. But, if it were, there probably wouldn’t be the mods for it there are today.
One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing a quest line of my own. Honest.
Yes, it works fine on the Deck! I find the controls less convenient than kbm, but that might just be me; everything you need is mapped and it feels quite intuitive after a bit.
Accurate. In order for this to stop the punishment needs to be more than the cost of doing business. Thankfully, Valve seem to be hell bent on doing right by their customers, in most cases at least (just to leave room for scandals I haven’t heard about or forgot 😅)
If you think that an arbitration company isn’t going to end up sympathetic to the people signing their cheques after some amount of time in operation, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Even if the loser pays (and that’s not a guarantee, some companies foot the bill regardless to make it seem like the better option to the consumer), it’s still the company contracting the arbitrators and the consumer doesn’t get a look in on that, so future business is absolutely an incentive to put the thumb on the scale. “After all, both parties agreed to be bound and waive their right to trial, so what are consumers going to do?” is the logic. Most will drop it after losing arbitration, and there are savings on court costs there too.
I don’t assume arbitration wraps up in any arbitrary amount of time (🥁). I say it’s quicker than litigation because it is, every single time. Because it is quicker it is also cheaper, every single time. Small claims court is different again, and not at question here, just to head that off at the pass.
You however do assume a lot like my location and the location of the suit I brought though, based on my vernacular, and I’d recommend against that. “Mate’s rates” could put me in the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or even some places in South Africa and other former colonies. None of those would be accurate.
If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.
Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.
Yes, and at wholesale rates it’s a pretty good bang-for-your-buck, as an advertising scheme. Advertising is a numbers game about getting as many eyeballs as possible on the product, and I know I actively check for free games on the Epic launcher most weeks. Even if I don’t ever buy anything because of that specifically, it keeps the app on my computer and keeps me checking back in.
Edit: And I shit you not I just opened it to check 'cause I can’t remember if I looked at this week’s free game. Turns out it’s a good thing I did too, the Fallout collection is free right now!
Lol I think we were replying to the guy at the same time even - don’t worry, I gotchu (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
And no you right, about FromSoft and Sanderson - that guy’s a hero, in my book! I got my little sister into his work, she just finished the Mistborn/Alloy saga, so I gave her Stormlight to start on. So good.
I’ve gotten as far as generating an infinite procedural terrain for the stock Unreal doll to run around in, so I have some sense of what a feat it is to even get close to building a full game with art and sound and mechanics. Congratulations on hitting the point where you can show it off, and good luck with the release! 🙌
It’s so good for more reasons than just being able to use other mods safely! It’s really nice being able to transition between areas without having to resummon, how some progression/unlocks are shared, and that all connected players get to use Torrent and spirit ashes.