Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam,...
MasterCard is so big they don’t even know what all their departments are doing. The PR department probably asked a couple of the top level execs if they were pushing for this and they said no so they claimed it didn’t happen.
tldr: Australian pressure group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the recent Itch.io and Steam developments that have seen the platforms change how they deal with - and in some cases remove - NSFW games and content from their respective platforms....
There are lots of people poking at them with sticks. Every time someone does it they post who’s doing it and show it as proof that they’re being oppressed.
The anonymous complaint system aids whistleblowers.
But it also means that the complaints can come from less than reputable sources.
The upshot of this is that the complaint doesn’t get as much traction and is vetted more closely.
This complaint amounts to the condiment on a nothingburger.
Trying to stop the petition based on a technicality that someone is working too hard seems a bit unhinged. Anyone that stands to be hurt enough by the movement would have had lawyers on retainer to handle things like this.
It’s also possible that someone supporting the movement used it as a false flag to get more attention, but there’s 1.4+ million eyes on it. I don’t see that being an advantageous path either.
Either way, the complaint is bunk and will end up being ignored with a moment’s scrutiny.
As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there’s been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it’s fine to disagree, I’m finding it suspicious that there weren’t comments like this posted a week or 2 ago
There are a handful of concerns from insiders are that somewhat valid, more or less things to be careful about when trying to sort out how to make this fair and reasonable to both sides.
You can ponder how long from shutdown of an online server until the companies IP is no longer worth anything because they have to give up keys to playing it without subs. Same goes for anti-piracy. If A goes under and is bought up by B, how long is that timer before the assets aren’t worth anything anymore.
But all those concepts get thrown the hell out the window when CEOS stick their fingers in their ears and start stamping their feet and shouting “nothing is written in stone” “at some point the service may be discontinued” “Nothing is eternal” when in fact all those problems can be solved. Fucking tone-deaf asshats. Costs you money, sorry nothing is eternal. Costs them money, ohhh noooo can’t do that it might cost money.
When you launch a title with online requirements, you have to escrow or insure the servers for X months and escrow code. When you sell or fold, you then have X months to work out a new buyer or maintainer. At the end of X months. you either keep the game online through other means (sales) or provide server binaries, serverless binaries, or details/code to keep the game running indefinitely.
JFC, you know, I can see some problems arising from games/companies changing hands and shit going dark here and there on a game for a bit… but bullshit like this… this is the reason we can’t have nice things.
Studios get gobbled up, mass layoff, explode and reform month by month.
Game engines. Nobody is going to even try to reinvent that wheel. Unreal and Unity make a fuckton of cash whether a game does or not. Yeah I hear you, but but but they have income limits, studios release one good ish title, they’re expected to pay like it’ll always happen.
Stores. At least until recently there was not even a slight challenge against the stores control. Now with Apple versus Epic, everybody’s dying to funnel people into their own payment system, But honestly, stores are still making all the money, there’s still the primary method of advertising that works and they still hold all the cards for making sure you show up in their “searches”.
If you manage to bottle lightning the studio makes a fuck ton of money, assuming you haven’t already sold your soul to venture capital. (Hint, If it’s more than two guys in a garage, they’ve already all sold their sole adventure capital)
I’m honestly surprised that movie theaters even exist still. Motion picture groups basically starve the theaters to the point where they can only survive off of concessions. The places are almost universally dirty and understaffed. Most of the mom and pop shops died off decades ago.
They really need to. I haven’t looked at them in quite a while now last time I looked I was hoping to move some Unity stuff over there, But it seem like anything other than Android was a significant hurdle.
It’s messy. Making a balanced law around it is sketchy. Consumers deserve to own the games they buy, straight up. Businesses deserve to be able to sell their assets when they fold and have them continue to be worth something so they can live on to make new games and their old games can go to new companies to keep development rolling.
There’s obviously low-hanging fruit. If your game is single-player and you’re just doing an online piracy check, and you go out of business, you leave the check servers running in a trust for like five years with the code to remove the check from escrow. Tick Tock, you either relight the game in time somewhere, or it becomes free to play.
But when you have something like Clash of Clans, where you need battle servers. Those assets are useless once you open that code and 100% support a community-run game. The game could otherwise be passed to another studio, and development could continue. Selling and moving games to other companies and publishers with breaks in the middle happens a lot. How long after a game collapses should they wait for it to become worthless to the market? The obvious answer to the consumer is immediately, because they bought it, they own it. Maybe you have to keep a certain amount of money from the proceeds and use it to refund the users. It still sucks for the you don’t own it anymore concept.
Developers and publishers aren’t fair to consumers without guardrails (and there are none), but those rails should also be reasonable to companies.
If the commission does nothing, it’ll probably be wrapped around this clusterfuck.
I do have a worry that the studios will just stop selling games and everything will go subscription if they are required to provide servers and source on game shutdown. It’ll just push more piracy, less sales, less games and everyone loses.
I really wish companies would just have pride in their stuff and be fair to their users and users could just bear a fair price for good games.
For wanting to own the living room, they never tried particularly hard. PS3 was a damned successful blueray player. They just needed to give you a nice, curated experience and ease of use. There were literally people buying PS3’s because they were cheaper than blueray players at the time
Can any of the leading games in the last decade do that?
Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere project, Factorio, Minecraft, Dreamlight Valley
Arcade games were great because it’s what we had. Sit a kid in front a Q-Bert now and try to get 1000 hours out of it.
Stuff is getting too big, there’s too much emphasis on making it pretty to sell it rather than making it fun, but I don’t know that we could go back to arcade games. I fear our nostalgia is a half-dose of Stockholm’s syndrome.
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
That helps. We are heading that way. But as a whole we’re just chasing the prettiest most expensive graphics. Nobody gives a damn how the game plays or how it performs. Or demanding huge worlds, Hi-Rez, high refresh rate, and then bitching about it.
Yup, they changed their minds. Bluetooth, Titles on mobile. It’s this mish-mash of bullheadedness for the sake of being bullheaded, then the try like a decade later.
Here, step into this 200GB repo with about 50 third party plugins and someone else’s game engine and find all the states that aren’t exactly like they are on the design docs, and do it at scale, across a cluster of servers that all have to interact.
20 years ago, i’d be right there with you.
It’s actually hard for a big game to do those things. The people making the cheats are as good as the developers and only need to find one nick it the armor every time.
FWIW, I’m against kernel-level anticheat, and I didn’t downvote you :)
Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Yeah, the repack of that store requires some calls home and fake accounts.
I’ve honestly seen all I really need two of the game by watching a couple of people play it on YouTube. It’s pretty, it’s neat. If it would have came out on steam back in the day I would have bought it without a question.
'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
[Update: Valve Responds] Mastercard Denies Pressuring Steam To Censor 'NSFW' Games (kotaku.com) angielski
Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam,...
Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
"We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond" - Australian pressure group Collective Shout claims responsibility for Steam and Itch.io NSFW game removal (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
tldr: Australian pressure group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the recent Itch.io and Steam developments that have seen the platforms change how they deal with - and in some cases remove - NSFW games and content from their respective platforms....
The industry filed false claims against the "Stop Killing Games" initiative | Accursed Farms (www.youtube.com) angielski
Does anyone else find it suspicious that there wasn't any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures? angielski
As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there’s been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it’s fine to disagree, I’m finding it suspicious that there weren’t comments like this posted a week or 2 ago
Ubisoft EULA demanding consumers destroy delisted games adds fuel to Stop Killing Games movement (www.notebookcheck.net) angielski
The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact angielski
Founder of Arkane Studios: "I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade"; impacts sales angielski
https://i.imgur.com/qEsdvgq.png...
The EU initiative for Stop Killing Games has reached the goal of 1 million signatures!! angielski
The page seems to be not working at the moment but keep on signing eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
'Xbox Hardware Is Dead,' Says Founding Team Member, 'It Looks Like Xbox Has No Desire — Or Literally Can't — Ship Hardware Anymore' - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
‘Doom: The Dark Ages’ DRM Is Locking Out Linux Users Who Bought the Game (www.404media.co) angielski
Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
The audacity! (lemmy.world) angielski
After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal (www.androidauthority.com) angielski
Everyone's favorite AAA company might be facing bankruptcy (lemmy.world) angielski
Is it time to start a campaign against kernel-level anticheat? angielski
Now that Stop Killing Games is actually being taken seriously - maybe we need to take a look at Stop Fucking Around In Our Kernels...
NBC News Does Entire Piece Trying To Link CEO Shooting To ‘Violent Video Game’ (www.techdirt.com) angielski
Funko gets community noted (lemmy.world) angielski
I hate when a PC game is ONLY available on Epic Games store (lemmy.world) angielski
Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.