Agent_Karyo

Agent_Karyo, 3 dni temu (edited 3 dni temu)

So Valve does not accept money from russian users directly (the roundabout methods are well known by russian users and Valve does nothing in this case even though it acts against similar methods when publishers make the call), so why would they even care what Roskomnadzor says? What can Roskomnadzor do to Valve?

I will note that Valve also does nothing about genocidal imperialist russian reviews on this DLC for support of Ukraine in Workers and Resources:

I’m from Donetsk. We have been bombarded since 2014 by the state in which I was born and lived. Declaring us enemies of the people. I am for the Russian SVO. Buy a dls only because of the Zaporizhia NPP, it is well made <3

You can check the number of civilians deaths in Donbas in 2014 vs 2022 to present and look at what happened to cities like Bahmut during the russian invasion. Not to mention the 1.5 million Ukrainians who had to leave just in 2014 (including my family members).

And yet we have to hear faux-libertarian polemics about alleged belief in “freedom of speech” and arrogant gibberish about “I am a free speech absolutist!” from individuals who know nothing about the value of free speech.

I said it before and I will say it again, American companies cannot be relied upon as a source of digital services. Both for systematic reasons (submission to the local oligarch/criminal regime) and philosophical reasons (a culture of ignorance and lack of desire to go beyond theatrical proclamations about freedom of this or freedom of that).

Let’s say you think I am being uncharitable in my attitude. Then tell me, why does Valve even read notices from Roskomnadzor (not to mention implementing their orders)? Russia is sanctioned and they are not supposed be able to make purchases at all. And yet Valve feels the need to follow orders from Roskomnadzor. What’s the logic here?

Agent_Karyo, 3 dni temu

What’s wrong with Steam getting blocked in Russia? It’s not like Valve allows direct purchases by russian users.

Russian users losing access to their libraries without VPN is their own problem. They are responsible for their government, no one else.

Agent_Karyo, 3 dni temu

I strongly disagree, the Workers & Resource DLC link can provide some insights on this; russian language reviews talk about “getting salo for the Ukrainians” and whataboutism about Palestine (like they care about Palestine, if anything most russians tend to support Israel). There is lots of anti-Ukrainian, pro-invasion russian language commentary on Steam.

We’ve lived in russia as an expat family for many years, we left as soon as our finances allowed us to (this was was before the russians invaded Georgia in 2008).

Then there is broader research on russian support for the full scale invasion; even using demographic splits (e.g. people aged 18 to 24, highly educated russians, high income russians), all demographic segments show at least majority support for the full scale invasion (with almost all segment groups showing at strong majority support and very commonly overwhelming majority support).

With respect to arguments that “people are afraid to show their true views”; there are multiple research pieces that specifically account for preference falsification. Some russians do hide their preferences, but this group is so small that even with preference falsification adjustments you have a strong majority support (65%+) for the full scale invasion. That’s specifically the full scale invasion (i.e. 2022), with respect to the annexation of Crimea, preference falsification was found to be not statistically significant with the respect to the baseline ~85% support for the annexation of Crimea.

Agent_Karyo, 3 dni temu

I respect your reasoning and I agree that it would massively increase piracy in russia, but remember, russia is sanctioned; Valve isn’t supposed to be selling to russians in the first place.

Disagree on impact on global piracy rates. Pirated games were widely available via public russia sources such as rutracker.org.

You don’t even need to know russian as all titles have english headings.

Here is a link to Vampire Bloodlines 2, originally release on October 21st, with consistent updates since then, last one being on November 18th:

rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6761118

You don’t need to speak russian to figure out what “magnet-ссылке” with a magnet icon refers to.

Agent_Karyo, 2 dni temu (edited 2 dni temu)

From the article:

For context, Steam currently doesn’t allow direct purchases by Russian players, in accordance with western sanctions, so Russian buyers have to make use of workarounds such as third-party key resellers.

Btw, I knew this before reading the article. Do a web search around how these workarounds operate (the example cited by RPS isn’t the only one).

Agent_Karyo, 2 dni temu

How does that contradict what I said?

You think living in Ukraine, I would be aware of the exact scope of sanctions against russia (and the massive loopholes)?

Agent_Karyo, 2 dni temu

When you use steam, do you mail Newell the cash?

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

I think this is due to the broader “move towards AI”, gaming was big around COVID, now it’s in a massive decline, at least in terms of employment and investment opportunities, if not actual revenues.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Microsoft is a criminal organisation that thrives on corruption (no real action being taken with respect to anti trust proceedings is still relevant today).

Crime isn’t only about someone stealing your phone, extracting many billion of dollars via oligopolistic methods of limiting competition and leaving people with no other option than to use their products (irrespective of price or feature considerations) is also criminal activity.

They are not going to fight the US administratorion on this.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

Cool art, but yeah this is spam.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

“Boomer shooter” refers to old school FPS/shooters in the sense of boomer = old? Never knew that.

I always thought it was because of the more fast paced styles of the older games and emphasis on explosive weapons.

Most people who played Doom / Unreal / Hexen when the games were released were early millenials or tail end “Gen X”. From memory, FPS games weren’t really that popular among people in their 30s and early 40s in the 90s. It was all young kids, teenagers and (I am assuming) university students.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

Have yet to play the remake. Played the original on PC in 99 or so. It was a very novel experience at that time (I had mostly played cRPGs, RTSs, city-builder/tycoons etc.). A lot of the puzzles were challenging for young brain though.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

Never heard about a zombie version of RDR.

Checked out the Wikipedia page and they even have a PC version.

Went to steam and found out that the game costs $50! That’s really too bad, but I will be on the lookout if it gets discounted.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

I think it should be less than $30 in my region (we get very good discounts).

I will just wait for a nice discount.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

He is done with releasing good games, he is not done releasing trash.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

He knew how to make good games back in the day, he doesn’t any more or simply doesn’t care.

Masters of Albion seems to be largely based on his previous game, Legacy, which was a crypto/NFT scam (selling virtual land based on speculative pitch that the tokens would make mad real world money).

I tried Legacy for an hour (just out of curiosity), it’s shit. Almost feels like a low effort game to justify the pump and dump in-game land sale.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

It’s unlikely that Masters of Albion will be his return to form.

It looks to be largely based on his previous “game”, Legacy, which was a crypto/NFT scam.

Agent_Karyo, miesiąc temu

I played Legacy for an hour purely out of curiosity. It was absolute shit. Boring, uninspired, “worst of mobile” gameplay, generic visuals, multiplayer tacked on in a way that doesn’t enhance the gameplay. I will speculate they simply repurposed the Legacy engine for Masters of Albion.

It’s almost certainly going to be terrible.

If you want a business sim, you would be far better of looking at the Capitalism series, Industry Giant 2 (it holds up pretty even after 20+ years) or perhaps Big Ambitions.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Older article, but I just read about the game/concept and I thought I would share since I couldn’t find anything about Blippo+ on this community.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

As weird as this sounds, the screenshots make me want to play the original FF7.

I tried it back in the day, but my frame of reference was FO1/2, Might and Magic, etc., so the general JRPG style seemed off.

I am willing to give it another go 25+ years later. There are also seem to be aot of good mods for FF7.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Cheers. I am actually looking for a KB+M experience for Final Fantasy 7, I know, a bit strange.

The 2012 PC version seems like the best bet. That being said, I have a modding guide bookmarked that seemed very comprehensive, need to just go for it.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

Moebius was what came to mind on first glance.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

On one hand this is big news, on the other hand, I don’t really see how this matters.

The last EA game that I bought was SimCity (2013) and that was comically bad. Just my experience, but it’s not like fans of their sports games will be looking for alternatives (irrespective of what EA does).

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

I don’t really see why public or private status matters in the picture. It will be still be the same culture (and leadership?). They try something new, but if will still be the same old IMO.

I could be wrong though, I don’t really have much interests in AAA outside of a few exceptions.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

Top screenshot looks really picturesque.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

This is on voyager/mobile, so on desktop I guess it would be the attach image, not the first body image.

I wasn’t refering to the fighting screenshot. :)

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Please post the video on games/pcgaming when you are done.

Soma is one of my favourite games of all time. Finished it two sittings (needed a break for sleep). I think it took me longer than most, but I was also exploring the world a lot.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

All this stuff sounds like Randy Pitchford building out his personal brand.

I wish anything involving Pitchford was not reported on (at all).