Adalast

Adalast, 7 miesięcy temu

This is the central myth of “free speech” under the 1st Amendment.

The 1st Amendment only protects individuals exercising speech and expression from laws being passed or used to silence said speech or expression and from agents of the government abridging the rights. That is a lot, but it is also all. Private citizens are allowed to abridge each other’s speech as much as we like. Private companies can censor whatever they want. This is why the guy wrote a letter to Steam, because literally ANY larger action would have crossed the line.

Adalast, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

Factorio: 2344

Path of Exile: 2736

Rimworld: 2191

Kerbal Space Program: 1071

I have a bunch of honorable mentions in the several hundred hours ranges that are only not 1k+ because I have severe ADHD and something else became a hyperfocus before they hit that point:

Backpack Hero

Ark

The Last Spell

Timberborn

Factory Town

Dyson Sphere Program

Loop Hero

Brotato

Satisfactory

Path of Achra

Against the Storm

Desynced

Adalast, 7 miesięcy temu

Honestly, I had it all with line breaks, but it didn’t take. I will fix.

Adalast, 8 miesięcy temu

This. I was so pissed when I saw the EULA for KSP2. I love KSP more than probably any game that has ever been released, due in no small part to the vibrant modding community. The fact that they decided to abuse the very people who made KSP great is disgusting and short slighted.

Adalast, 8 miesięcy temu

Gabe heads a company which is successful because it respects its employees, customers, and suppliers instead of constantly trying to marginalize and abuse them. They are not perfect by any means, but they do fit into the definition of ethical capitalism, which should not be understated. They don’t employ anticompetitive tactics like bribing/coercing developers into exclusivity contracts. They don’t operate with a bunch of 1099 contractors so they can avoid providing benefits. Etc.

Adalast, 8 miesięcy temu

You can’t really say Blizzard has not raised prices when they have added microtrans and mental health costs to the game.

Adalast, 9 miesięcy temu

What, you don’t want to pay another 80 bucks for what could have been a content patch to last year’s game? Pshhh… You’re not a real fan.

Is what I would say if I were the type of guy who should take a long walk off a short pier.

Adalast, 9 miesięcy temu

Same. I initially had the sinking dread then I saw that they actually fixed the arbitration clause and I became quite elated.

Adalast, 9 miesięcy temu

Other way around. Require sales of licenses to games to be perpetual. The way you phrased it means that the license holders can charge way more.

Adalast, 9 miesięcy temu

This raises a rather sticky situation for the coming years. I have been seeing more and more posts about developers using GPT generated code in various projects. If a game is made and it is found that GPT was used for some parts of the core code, does the whole project lose its copyright?

Adalast, 9 miesięcy temu

Your idea is one of the specific reasons many companies try to label everyone as an “independent contractor”. Especially people like voice actors are not “employees”, and thus do not count as such for your idea.

Adalast, 11 miesięcy temu

That is actually intentional. They do it to restrict refunds on Steam and consoles.

Adalast, 11 miesięcy temu

It’s not. Thanks for the concern.

Adalast, 11 miesięcy temu

I play Rimworld and Factorio. Those are 200 hours per playthrough each and I do about 2 a year for them. My Steam Deck helps a lot with the latter though. The UI for the former unfortunately does not lend itself to the smaller screen even though the game plays well.

Adalast, rok temu

Why are we surprised? They were the ones who pioneered the DLC microtrans model. I would legitimately have been more surprised if this headline were the converse statement.

Adalast, rok temu

I am getting really tired of these all these chucklefucks being in charge of things they patently do not understand. Modders are the modern lifeline of gaming. They work for free, fix your fuck-ups, and breath life into games that are years and sometimes decades old. Rimworld and Factorio both started their crowd funding campaigns in 2013, and both are wildly popular 11 years later, still selling copies. Factorio is just now coming out with their first expansion, and Rimworld just came out with their 4th. Neither Ludeon Studios (Rimworld) nor Wube Software (Factorio) have had ANY financial need to produce any other projects besides these games. Why are they so wildly profitable and evergreen? They both have rabid modding communities that have been supported and cultivated by the developers constantly fixing and expanding modding support to allow for an infinite variety of new content to be created for their games. Hell, the Vanilla Expanded team of Rimworld modders have actually turned it into a primary income source via Patreon.

AAA devs need to just sit down and thank these modders for tirelessly working on their games after release for free. Ever since DoTA became more popular than Warcraft 3, they all have their panties in a bunch and keep trying to claim ownership over all mods. No, bad developers smacks on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. God, it pisses me off to no end.

Adalast, rok temu

I saw that line and immediately thought “oh ho ho, we have a loophole. This wasn’t a subjective review, it was entirely objective. The game is objectively shit.”

Adalast, rok temu

As far as I’m concerned the inclusion of the “anti-DoTA” clause in their EULA murdered it for me. I was so excited. KSP is one of my favorite games of all times, largely as a result of the vibrant and very technically advanced modding community. Same goes for essentially all of my favorites; Rimworld, Backpack Hero, Factorio. The free labor that expands the games in major ways extends the value of my money and let’s me have fun forever in them.

Putting in a clause in a EULA which automatically and irrevocably assumes all ownership and rights to any code or assets that are created for a game is just too far. Assuming rights at all is a huge issue for me, but I can accept that it is beneficial to assume royalty free licenses to the mods, I’ll even begrudgingly accept clauses that allow developers to gaffle features and optimizations from mods without giving remuneration or even acknowledgment. But wholesale ownership that revokes all rights and licenses for the independent 3rd party creator. Fuck that. I will never support a game that I find out is treating the people who keep games alive and relevant for decades for free like that.

Adalast, rok temu

I am actually working on something for the quest generation problem. It is still in the experimental phases, so who knows if it will bear fruit, but don’t sell the concept short.

Adalast, rok temu

But… But… I have Factorio and Rimworld…

Adalast, rok temu

😭😭😭😭😭

Lol.

Adalast, rok temu

Except you just compared them in saying they are both fruit. In fact, saying they are both fruit is finding a commonality between them when comparing. There are many metrics on which Apples and Oranges can be compared. They are different colors, have a different internal structures, and different juice content. These are negatively correlated comparisons. More positive correlations would be that they are both roughly spherical, provide vitamin C, and grow on trees.

I have always hated that expression. You can compare anything since comparison is just the act of identifying similarities and differences (positive and negative correlations). One can make meaningful comparisons between and apple and a suspension bridge if the situation calls for it.

Adalast, rok temu

While I don’t disagree with you in spirit, the use case for most instances of the expression are to dissuade the act of comparison at all because the two quantities are so dissimilar that the correlations are irrelevant.

It is an anti-intellectual statement because it presupposes that the person doing the comparing is not able to distinguish between meaningful comparisons and ones which are irrational but support their argument. It ranks up there with “big words” as far as I am concerned, saying more about the person they are being said by rather than the person they are being said to.

Adalast, rok temu

I do. That is a side effect of always standing on the hill. I am there when it matters, but also when it doesn’t. Such is the curse of my superpowers.

Captain Pedant AWAAAAYYYY!

Adalast, rok temu

I’m usually putting on indie game reviewers on YouTube while I work for background noise. Have found many amazing games that way. I cannot recommend Retromation, Splattercat, Nilaus, and ImKibitz enough if you are into their game preferences. I also watch Olexa and Real Civil Engineer, but more for the laughs. They have good first looks though. Nilaus and ImKibitz are more automation and city-building games, Retromation and Olexa do a lot of rogue likes, and Splattercat is kinda a catch all.

Adalast, rok temu

It is really hard to shoehorn Factorio into a survival genre.

Adalast, rok temu

Hahaha, that is great! I failed on that one.

Adalast, rok temu

You seem to know what you are talking about, so this is for those who don’t, the “illusion of competition” has become such a staple in the modern world. In the US (and much of the world as I understand it) eyeglass sellers are all owned by the same company. Pearl Vision, LensCrafters, and I think even the Walmart vision centers are all owned and operated by Luxottica. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

It is a vertical monopoly that controls everything from materials acquisition to sales, directly “competes” with itself, and lies to customers every day to make them think they are actually in control.

Then you have companies like 3M, or Nestle, who control most of the entire industries. A good 85% of all food on the shelves in the USA is produced by one of 4 or 5 companies that definitely collude to fix prices and use aggressive tactics to protect their position. They also follow the “compete with yourself” model to make you think you are actually making a decision with your money. You aren’t.

Then there is the big Ag companies. In Ohio they have actually gotten laws on the books that make it illegal to do Farm Shares, where you purchase a share of the crops they produce for the year and for about 8 months a year you get a big basket of fresh produce delivered to you. An ex and I got to do it for a year before we split and it was amazing. It was a ton of food and only cost us about $150 for the half-share we purchased. It would be amazing right now with prices and it would help local private farms, which is precisely why they pushed it out.

I can rant for hours… So I cut here. This whole topic just infuriates me to no end.

Adalast, rok temu

Wait, this is unpopular? Well shit, I’m right there with you. I was already not liking Epic for many reasons, but the Satisfactory exclusivity deal seared them to a cinder for me. At least Valve is not publicly traded and the owner never has any intent on doing so. He is able to base his decisions on what he wants and is able to treat employees, customers, and content creators more fairly, even if it hurts his bottom line. Honestly, that is all I need to know about the man. He could go public and make billions, but he doesn’t. He wants the control and wants the closed company. In the modern world it is rare and, to me, laudable.

Adalast, rok temu

This is quite true, though, unlike most of his cohort, he seems content with making more of them slowly over decades than trying to cash out asap.