hedgehog

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

Paired with allowing people who own the original to upgrade for $10 (and I’m assuming something similar in the UK) when they’re charging $50 for the remaster if you don’t have the original, that makes sense. They’re just closing a loophole.

I’d much rather they double the existing game’s price than for them to charge $25-$30 for the upgrade or to even just not have one outright.

It sucks for anyone who’d been planning to play the original and who just hadn’t bought it yet, but used prices for discs should still be low, so only the subset of those people who have disc-less machines are really impacted.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

I read that Google Play was having payment processor issues, so for anyone experiencing this in the near future - that’s probably why.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

Google Play was having payment processor issues (see status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try buying it again.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

I’m just happy it wasn’t an Apple Arcade exclusive.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

Google Play was having payment processor issues (see status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try again.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

There is a project to convert the Steam app to a side-loadable mobile app (both for Android and iOS): github.com/blake502/balatro-mobile-maker

I haven’t tested that out myself and I have no idea how it compares to their official mobile release, but I’m super curious about how it was implemented (it’s the first time I saw a tool that could convert a game to an iOS app), so I’ll be looking into it at some point.

hedgehog, miesiąc temu

That makes sense, and that engine and some of the other games they feature look interesting.

Does that mean that Balatro (and presumably other LOVE 2D games) is packaged like Doom with its WAD files, where there’s an engine (a generic LOVE 2D one) that runs the game, interpreting the Lua game code, which is basically just packaged like an asset? Or is there a Balatro engine that needed to be built for each platform? I saw that BMM downloads a base IPA and an APK patcher, so I’m assuming it’s closer to the latter, but I could see it going either way.

hedgehog, 2 miesiące temu

Which system(s) are you playing on?

hedgehog, 7 miesięcy temu

For me the problem is that it just feels like a poor imitation of the way it’s done in Dark Souls / Bloodborne / Elden Ring.

hedgehog, rok temu

Totally solid option for some people, but not everyone. Depends on the game (some can’t be judged in two hours), your available time (can’t refund a game you bought a year ago that you only just now played), etc., and limits you to buying only from Steam. What if you’d rather buy from GOG or Humble Bundle?

hedgehog, rok temu

With intellectual property there is at least (by default) a direct link between the work necessary to create an item and its ownership. With physical items the initial ownership is necessarily predicated on having controlled a means of production.

I can create an IP and I do not need to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to do so. But I cannot create a substantial physical item without paying the people who own the materials and the factories for the privilege of doing so. Why is previous ownership such a critical factor in ownership of new items, separate from the work to create them?

Intellectual property laws have their own issues but at least with regard to them conceptually, intellectual property is more “pure” than physical property.

hedgehog, rok temu (edited rok temu)

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.

hedgehog, rok temu

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.

hedgehog, rok temu

Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?

hedgehog, rok temu

Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?

hedgehog, rok temu

Your best sources are a tweet by a competitor and a 2.5 year old lawsuit filed because of that tweet? Excuse me for maintaining my skepticism.

hedgehog, rok temu

it’s a real thing, they have a duty to grow infinitely or the sroxk price will crash

This isn’t a thing.

Here’s another article explaining why and how it isn’t a thing, and also why people like you think it is.

hedgehog, rok temu

All of that is true, but it doesn’t contradict my point. Fiduciary duty isn’t a duty to maximize shareholder value.

hedgehog, rok temu

“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.

hedgehog, rok temu

Yes, that’s much more credible - thank you for sharing that. This part in particular is concerning:

The ruling makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.

I wasn’t able to find any instances of Steam actually de-listing a game because it was listed cheaper elsewhere, but a credible threat to do so is almost as bad (possibly worse, really, since such a threat hints that Steam might have used other underhanded tactics when dealing with game devs). I wasn’t able to find any more recent news on the case, but hopefully we’ll learn if the issue was that particular Account Manager + lack of oversight or something more.

hedgehog, rok temu

Thanks for sharing that!

Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:

• Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
• You sell keys from your own site for $50
• You sell your game directly from your site for $40

and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?

That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.

The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):

Wolfire’s David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to “remove [Wolfire’s game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.”

However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?

I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.

@Kecessa shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.

The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.

Hopefully we’ll hear more about that soon.

hedgehog, rok temu

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
• Completely disregards that fiduciary duty to a company includes several other stakeholders: employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, the environment

hedgehog, rok temu

Are there any mods that add voiceovers to dialog?

hedgehog, rok temu

This is the first I’ve heard of that, and after searching the most I found was “This was alleged on 4chan but that’s it,” without even a link to the archived 4chan conversation. It’s kinda hard to take a complaint seriously when 4chan is the primary source. Can you share anything more substantive?

Basically every complaint about him that I’ve read is summarized at …shoutwiki.com/…/Ctrl%2BAlt%2BDel, or on (choose your reddit mirror): r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3v3uau/what_exactly_did_tim_buckley_do_besides_make_a/ and tbh that should be enough on its own for most people to stop reading his webcomics

hedgehog, rok temu

I agree with you, generally - so many people need to internalize “It’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a jerk about the things you don’t like.”

With Buckley in particular, much of the criticism is like that, but I think that due to particular things he’s allegedly done - the above sexual assault of a child, for one; the more verifiable (not that I’ve verified them, but I’m sure other people have) claims about him banning people from his own forums for various reasons, like providing (allegedly) constructive criticism of his comics; his generally being rude to many of his fans and critics, etc. - that almost everyone is less likely to defend someone from criticism they’d otherwise speak up about when that person has already earned their ire in some other way. As a result it kinda snowballs and you get pages like that one with almost nobody willing to speak in his defense.

hedgehog, rok temu

It isn’t retroactive in the sense that it applies to installs before that date, but rather in the sense that it applies to games made with Unity before the announcement.

hedgehog, rok temu

For something like cheating and streaming your exploits on Twitch, it makes sense for a suit like this. Bungie’s reputation would suffer even more due to his audience being much more likely to seek out cheating tools, to associate the game with cheating, and to spread both those pieces of information themselves.

In a case where the damages are real and not contrived, copyright feels a bit more legit.

$500k feels extreme, though, even in this case. Is this based off real sales, stock prices, or back of the napkin math? Maybe mark it down to his scale of income. So they have $100 million in annual ebitda (and excluding any funny business like stock buybacks) and he makes $50k before taxes but after living expenses. That $500k is worth 1/600th of their annual income and so should be 1/600th of his: $250. Multiply that by as much as 10 due to the severity of his actions (or divide by as much as 10) and you’ve got $2500 in damages. Much more reasonable.

Bit rough going the opposite way, but fair’s fair.

hedgehog, rok temu

This is so much better.

The first paragraph of the OP article is obviously a poorly rewritten version of the first paragraph of this one (the “I’m nearly as old as an actual gargoyle” line actually makes sense in yours), and it looks like that’s true for the rest of it. Yeesh.

hedgehog, rok temu

This article repeatedly says that the game is running in 1440p, but I thought that the PS5 didn’t support 1440p. TIL they added it.

hedgehog, rok temu

Pressing unfinished games is a trade-off and a lesser evil than instead choosing to distribute games digital only. One alternative would be to delay all launches until multiple months after the game is considered “ready,” but that would likely impact revenue streams in a way that the people making those decisions would never agree to. It would also upset the 80% of the market who buy games digitally - why should their release be delayed?

Would you prefer for physical releases to not be available until 3-6 months after the digital release (and more frequently, for there to be no physical release at all)?

hedgehog, rok temu

For less than 100 USD ($90 - I just checked) there are several well-reviewed 2230 form factor 1 TB NVME drives on Amazon - specifically, the Corsair MP600 Mini, the Teamgroup MP44S, and the Inland TN446. And though I don’t have one of those drives (I have the 2 TB version of the Sabrent Rocket instead) I speak from experience when I say that the install process is straightforward.

hedgehog, rok temu

And BitTorrent is already used to distribute games! Blizzard uses BitTorrent to distribute WoW, for example.

Small correction, though - BitTorrent wasn’t released until 2001.

hedgehog, rok temu

If they have dedicated servers per region that handle payment processing, and they would need to be upgraded in order to be compatible with currently supported OSes, yes. Or if just maintenance costs for keeping them online are high enough.

Or if they have to pay an annual fee to continue selling (but not distributing) the games.

Or if the annual base costs for the payment provider exceed their revenue.