My daughter (4) is very into exploring cities, homes and villages in Skyrim, feeding aliens in No Man’s Sky, and cleaning houses in House Flipper. She gets annoyed in games like House Flipper because she can’t leave the property to explore all of the visible houses on the block. I’d like to find other PC games that are...
I don’t know what the rules of this community are regarding piracy or DRM, but I think backing your content up is generally protected, while sharing the content or encouraging people to copy something illegally is possibly not allowed.
Buying a CD/DVD was never ownership of the media that’s on it. It’s ownership of a piece of plastic and a license to play to the content on the plastic within certain limitations. If it was ownership, you would be allowed to project the DVD on a wall and charge patrons to view it, but legally you can’t, because you don’t own anything but the plastic. Buying a CD/DVD was always just a more convenient version of buying a ticket to a concert/theater to see the same thing. You’re paying for the experience of viewing their artwork.
So, as long as you also agree that sneaking into a concert/theater to view a show without paying also isn’t theft in any way, then I can’t argue.
Just want to highlight how unnecessarily antagonistic your response was. Not sure if that was your intention, but I don’t care to engage with it. Cheers.
When you buy a painting, do you only have a license to view it?
That’s a good question. My guess is that the rights to create prints of the painting usually remain with the artist. You own that painting, you probably even own the right to display it for an entry fee, but unless the artist has granted you a license to the artwork, I don’t think you can freely create copies.
You’d be surprised. There seem to be vanishingly few people here willing to honestly discuss the legal questions around piracy and copyright. The vast majority are just here to circle jerk about how much corporations suck, completely forgetting about the rights of artists they’re defending in the anti-AI circle jerk one thread over. I honestly think they spend more time flaming anything they disagree with than actually putting any thought into the matter. The dogmatism rivals that of conservative forums.
If I’ve said something false, let me know. As far as I’m aware, what I’ve said is how the law works (at least in the US). I understand if you don’t like those laws, but that doesn’t make them not exist, nor does it make them irrelevant when someone makes a reductive statement like “if buying isn’t ownership, then piracy isn’t stealing”. The fact is, in some cases, it is.
Yep, this is a valid point. The volatility of access seems to be a convenient side effect of modern streaming technology. I agree that there needs to be regulation around this as it’s currently too easy for a company to suddenly say “we’re pulling access to the thing you paid for right now, sorrynotsorry”.
It’s not reasonable to expect that they have to have servers available serving the content 24/7 indefinitely, but either govts need to force companies to clearly label access to digital media as some sort of “rental agreement” similarly to how renting a video on youtube or amazon works, and making it clear that the user will only be able to access the stream for a minimum of some specified amount of time, and/or they should be required to offer a download of the media for a certain amount of time.
“Fraud” would imply a crime. I’m always happy when some european country has a law on the book that enables people to hold a company accountable for their shitty behavior, but in the US, we have some work to do there.
“Enshittification” is a…surface-level description of what is happening. I’m more interested in the “how we got here” and “what needs to happen to prevent it”. Because no company has “make the experience objectively shittier” on their list of new features. Blaming “enshittification” holds as much weight to me as blaming “the deep state”. It’s not a real thing, it’s just how you perceive the emergent result of a system with certain rules and incentives. The real question is, which rules and incentives should we prioritize, and how can those changes most effectively be implemented.
although I could picture you wanting to be if that makes sense.
From my perspective, it sounds like you’re reading my posts with an unwarranted intention behind them. I have to assume this stems from you disagreeing with what I am saying, but to my knowledge, nothing I’ve said is incorrect. If you could point to something I’ve said that’s incorrect, I’d be glad to discuss it. Also, if you could refrain from the namecalling, that would also be appreciated.
I respectfully disagreed with the top level post, and stated facts about why. If that was interpreted as not in good faith, I’m sorry, and I’m open to any counter arguments. So far, two people have pointed out that physical media can’t remotely have their licenses revoked, and I agree, that is relevant to the discussion. If you have anything relevant you’d like to contribute, I’m all ears.
As we all know, Roblox is garbage tier gameplay structured around psychological cues to get children to fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money....
I wish someone had taught my friends and me how to play D&D when I was 10, but my parents were part of the “satanic panic” generation, and had zero interest in anything to do with fantasy or improv. Once you get out of highschool, finding a night that everyone can meet up for D&D gets exponentially harder, let alone finding someone who wants to put in the time to DM.
apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
CMV: if No Man’s Sky’s gameplay was identical to Starfield in 2016, people would have been even more disappointed than they were. The only reason people gave Starfield a pass in 2023 is because we’re so conditioned to being disappointed by Bethesda that fanboys shrugged it off, and everyone else just looked at them weird. I legitimately believe NMS when it first released was a better game than Starfield.
And I expect they were a very similar audience. So I don’t think the bar for what to expect was very different. If anything, the bar should have been much higher for the AAA game.
I would use EGS, but they don’t support Linux. Additionally they are deliberately building a walled-garden version of NFTs where you exchange “Vbucks” for emotes and skins that can work across UE games, thereby encouraging more devs to use their engine, and more customers to play games on their engine. That feels gross, centralized, and anti-consumer.
Steam lets devs use any engine, and enables players to use any OS via proton. Any DRM or anticheat present is up to the devs. Yeah, I have a library that is centralized on steam, and that’s not ideal, but it doesn’t feel like they’re exploiting that…yet. Epic doesn’t even have market share yet and it already feels like they’re exploiting everything they can.
Valve’s push on Linux is THE reason that Microsoft isn’t forcing Steam, EGS, EA Play, etc, to go through the Windows Store, which would allow msft to take 30% of all their sales. Both Valve and Epic are fighting the same battle, just valve is fighting with innovation and pro consumer options, and epic is fighting in court against the same kinds of walled gardens they’re building.
I don’t think “pro consumer” is mutually exclusive with “because of competition”. In fact, I would say the two necessarily overlap. If a company does something pro consumer that isn’t driven by competition, then it’s just charity, not “capitalistic” at all. The point I’m making is that, Epic often seems to be on the other side: taking actions that are driven by competition, but not good for consumers. As I stated above, the linux push by valve is the same fight that Epic is battling in courts vs Apple and Google; the difference is that consumers benefit from the linux push, whereas mostly just Epic benefits from their court battles (and maybe some other companies).
I don’t think steam refund was driven by EA offering refunds on EA-exclusives. It was in direct response to Early Access titles being posted that were just obvious scams, with no recourse once you’ve purchased the game (maybe you read EA as a motivator somewhere and assumed Electronic Arts rather than Early Access?)
I agree valve could afford to take a smaller cut. I do believe Epic is directly to thank for all the Sony exclusive ports to PC.
linux support is 100% motivated by valve’s business interests, but also, it’s good for consumers
I’d need to know specifics about reviews over the years. I don’t read reviews, but I know they have to make a deliberate effort to prevent review bombing. “Curators” are a waste of everyone’s time.
TBH I feel like the Steam UI changes at a glacier’s pace compared to almost any other UI. It’s really not that different from what it was 20 years ago.
Yeah, the key/lootbox stuff is a valid criticism. I don’t like any digital economy that’s clearly fishing for whales.
AFAIK, steam’s price parity policy only requires that free steam keys not be sold off the platform for less than what they’re sold for on the steam store. Which makes sense, as that would open the door to just freeloading your game on the platform. I could post my game on steam for $1,000,000, never sell any copies through steam, then generate free steam keys, and sell them over on my own site for $30, keeping 100% of the profits. If allowed, every dev would just do that, and no one would ever purchase through steam. But it sounds like their policy would allow for a game to be $50 on steam, and $40 on EGS.
Meanwhile, EGS is constantly signing exclusivity deals on their platform, preventing them from selling on any other platform at all, which is very clearly anti-consumer.
The fact that Valve can just charge 30% even if a developer didn’t use “any” steam feature
The fact that the Valve is facilitating streamlined distribution of the game (and any updates) to thousands, or millions of players at the same time alone means they are already taking advantage of steam’s features. That is a huge amount of bandwidth savings and complexity that the developer just doesn’t have to think about.
Yeah, I was aware of the case, but I’m confused because it does sound like Valve’s policy only explicitly restricts the sale of free keys for less. Obviously, I’m all for Valve being held accountable if they’re actually requiring the game be the same price on a completely different platform.
I don’t think there’s any difference between “justifiable” and “simply because they can”. If they can, then they can. Yeah, I do support developers, but I’d be lying if I said steam doesn’t add any value to my experience. If it wasn’t 30% worth of value, devs wouldn’t choose it. And I’m all for EGS undercutting them to attract developers, I think that’s the right way to combat it.
If there is any regulation that needs to happen to combat monopolies, then I think it’s the same regulation that needs to happen on all content distribution and streaming platforms, which is: there should be a standard API for accessing content in a cross-platform way so that open source front-ends can be trivially developed. If steam (or netflix, or spotify, or google, or whatever) has established too much power, it’s because they’ve locked their users into their user experience, and it’s inherently inconvenient to have to switch between different platforms and UIs. But if regulation forced a common API, and open source front-ends were developed, people wouldn’t be locked into a specific user experience. You could switch between EGS or Steam or GOG or whoever, and the only thing that would change are the games that show up in your front-end of choice. IMO that’s the real way to solve it.
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
When it comes to windows, the devs working on kernel-level anti-cheat systems are working closely with microsoft on the implementation. To the point that, if you were to try to reverse engineer it on your own machine, in all likelihood msft could convince a court that you are hacking their system, not the other way around.
I’m not smart enough to see a world where Linux and effective client side anti-cheat can cohabitate. Nothing can ever stop someone running a custom linux kernel that hides any nefarious code from the games they’re targeting. PC gaming can only head that direction to the degree that they take kernel-level control away from the user.
Lol I know it sounds like I’m treating it like a job, but it’s more like wanting to travel the world but knowing I’m not going to have time in my life to see everything (which is both a metaphor, and also a thing I would actually like to do that competes for time lol).
We have to prioritize some experiences in life over other experiences we also want to have, and that’s just how it is. So if they could just stop making new things for a while, that would really make my job easier 😝.
Like with any skill, the yt videos feature the 1% of the time when they get to show off progress. But of course the other 99% of the time is spent on the struggle bus. And like with any skill, if you can learn how to slog through the lows, the highs can be a very rewarding experience.
There’s really nothing like seeing someone play your game for the first time. I assume it’s similar to a musician showing off their music, or a director showing off their film. But that interactive element is very unique; getting to see how people interact and respond emotionally to this thing you built. Actually, maybe it’s like being a toy maker.
I think realistically, TotK is going to win the popularity aspect by a longshot. Even though BG3 is, IMO an objectively more impressive feat, and most of the novelty in TotK was already in BotW.
I’m not really interested in any MMOs these days which all deemphasize player interaction and prioritize content completion. I’m sure it appeals to the widest audience and thus is the easiest way to pay the bills, but it also makes for a braindead experience.
I’m reservedly optimistic given the wow vets involved, but if they do stuff like:
adding fast travel portals instead of reliance on player mages,
random dungeon finder,
random cross-realm interaction at the cost of fostering server communities,
and otherwise make a single player experience where other players might happen to appear,
then It’s not interesting to me. Also, I don’t think being a retail wow clone will be enough to dethrone retail wow.
RDF is useful if the goal is completing content, but not if the goal is interacting with other people, which I believe is a crucial part of the MMO acronym, even when I don’t have much time to game. If my goal is to complete content, there are more interesting single player games I can spend my limited amount of game time playing than WoW.
IMO modern WoW is designed to give you the sensation of completing content so rapidly that you mistake the resulting dopamine hits for the feeling of having fun. Meanwhile, anything that could interrupt that cycle of hits has been optimized out, which includes virtually any dependency on another player. (Vanilla has quests that require you to find another player to craft you an item! They never made that “mistake” again…)
I currently run a 10m “dad” guild in WotLK classic. We’re only on for 1 night a week for 3h to raid, and virtually every week at least 2 people can’t make it due to work, family, or other reasons. And it’s fine. Yeah, we progress slower, we still haven’t even fully cleared Ulduar which was 2 phases ago, but it makes for a more rewarding experience IMO. The goal isn’t completing content, it’s interacting with other people.
Meanwhile, when you queue in RDF, no one talks, everyone already knows all the fights, and if you don’t keep up you will be vote kicked. I don’t see the appeal. TBH I don’t even see anything “massively multiplayer” about WoW these days. Everyone else running around could be bots and I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. The hardcore WoW servers are probably where the most interesting multiplayer experiences are happening these days.
Disagree. The intention is for SC to be a space sim sandbox, so I’m surprised they’re only making you wait 10m.
When you take your car into the shop and have to wait a few hours for it to be repaired, you don’t think “the solution they want me to go with is to buy a second car for this moment”, right? But that’s the argument you’re making here. If this is the lens you see all games through, then it’s impossible for anyone to make a game that’s just literally normal life.
Conversely, I could argue that mobile games are built around instant dopamine rushes. Any 10m wait is explicitly accompanied with an option to pay the wait away immediately. Afaik, that’s not an option here, if you’re a new player, you have to wait that 10m no matter what. Correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s not a very good job at capitalizing on the wait time.
In spite of your short attention span, these are good questions. The point of a proper simulation isn’t to be fun, and game that wants to be fun is usually not a perfect simulation. A game that wants to be a fun simulation has to find the middle ground. I’ve heard it referred to as “the good suck”: It sucks to have to wait for something in a game to happen, but it contributes to a larger, sometimes desired feeling of immersion. But yeah, there’s always a line where the suck outweighs the fun.
In the case of SC, if the game literally makes you sit and do nothing for 10m, that’s one thing. But my guess is it doesn’t. My guess is you can do other things in the meantime. So it’s basically like any game: you can’t just do anything you want at any time, otherwise it’s not a game, it’s a skinner box.
Yeah, as someone who hasn’t played Starfield and has no interest in playing it, all their criticisms were just saying they didn’t care for the style starfield was going for. Which is fine, but that doesn’t make it a bad game.
It could be that “NASA punk” is boring to 99/100 people, but that doesn’t mean a game in that style is bad. I think we can all agree that games that are enthralling to a very niche set of people are a good thing, because we all want that game to be for us. We don’t want or expect every game to be equally enthralling to every person.
Yeah, Morrowind was mind blowing when it came out. Then I skipped Oblivion, and Skyrim, mechanically, wasn’t that much of a leap over Morrowind. Sure it looked better and had voice acting, but it still feels like a static world. I wouldn’t consider Witcher 3 to be quite the same genre as TES, but imo W3 raised the bar for my expectations from Bethesda. So far I think they still have not made a game as good as W3.
I’ve put a couple hundred hours into RimWorld (base game without expansions) and haven’t run into any bugs. The only bugs I’ve seen relate to the multiplayer mod.
Agreed, I would call CK3 or Rimworld “simulation” games not “strategy” games. When I think strategy I think turn based strategy like XCom, FF tactics, or Civ games. SC2 and C&C would be Real-Time Strategy, but from OP’s examples it didn’t sound like that’s what they’re looking for. Maybe they’d like Northgard though.
Seeking: Kid-friendly Adventure/Exploration Games (PC)
My daughter (4) is very into exploring cities, homes and villages in Skyrim, feeding aliens in No Man’s Sky, and cleaning houses in House Flipper. She gets annoyed in games like House Flipper because she can’t leave the property to explore all of the visible houses on the block. I’d like to find other PC games that are...
PSA To Rip Your Games If You Can. This Disc Is Borked. (lemmy.world)
I found this big chip on this copy of SSX3. I no longer consider it safe to use; don’t need it shattering inside my console and ruining that, too....
The Last Of Us Part II Actor Says Fans Threatened Her Son (kotaku.com) angielski
Walmart Reportedly Starting to Purge Physical Games Next Week (comicbook.com)
Specifically Xbox Games.
Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games (kotaku.com) angielski
Riven remake titled Riven: New Discoveries from the Lost D’ni Empire, first details and screenshots - Gematsu (www.gematsu.com)
I banned my kid from Roblox.... what next?
As we all know, Roblox is garbage tier gameplay structured around psychological cues to get children to fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money....
Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
Google Loses Antitrust Case Brought by Epic Games (archive.ph) angielski
Original (pay-walled): wsj.com/…/google-loses-antitrust-case-brought-by-…
GTA 6 Hacker Vows to Continue to Commit Crimes After Being Released From Jail - Insider Gaming (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Valve needs to step up on Anti-Cheat angielski
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1 (www.youtube.com) angielski
GTA VI won't launch on PC (www.businesswire.com) angielski
Grand Theft Auto VI is coming to PlayStation® 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems in 2025.
GTA 6 trailer coming Tuesday, Rockstar announces (www.eurogamer.net)
It's been 20 years, and The Simpsons Hit and Run developers are just as surprised as you that the cult open-world game hasn't got a sequel yet (www.gamesradar.com)
Game of the Year | Nominees (thegameawards.com)
Former WoW devs announce new studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle (twitter.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/13613260...
Star Engine Tech Demo (Star Citizen 4.0) No Commentary CitizenCon 2953 4K (youtu.be) angielski
Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.
Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Any strategy games which have low amount of bugs? angielski
I loved CK3 when it came out, but tons of time later they still haven’t fixed many common bugs which I experience nearly every single playthrough....