You see, if you pirate a couple textbooks in college because you don't have resources, but you want to earn your right to participate in society and not starve, it's called theft.

But if one of the top 10 companies in the world does the same with thousands of books just to get even richer, it's called fair use.

Simple, really.

mid 90s to mid 2000s style was the peak I won't hear otherwise

The tradeoff kinda made sense at the dawn of streaming, when the transaction was basically trading quality for better pricing and convenience.

Nowadays? Yeaaaaah I don't know about that chief

Crazy to think that we lost all the advantages that streaming offered, kept all the disadvantages, piled on a few more disadvantages on top of that, and people went "sure that makes sense 24 bucks a month worth it bro"

because every additional layer of abstraction disrupts communication with the Machine Spirit even further

To paraphrase Churchill "Never was so much owed by so many to a single man", NTP has been a critical aspect of XXIst century, from making highly complex clusterized systems work reliably to saving you the pain of adjusting the clock in your smartphone. If you have used even a single networked electronic device for a millisecond in your life, you owe the man some thanks.

Reject the idea of an absolute GOTY, normalize a Mt. Rushmore style "Best of the Year" selection.

Games can be great in so many different ways, many of which are somewhat exclusive with each other, that I've never understood the concept of saying that one was absolutely better than the rest.

hey, it also has one of the best boss themes ever made, in which the fucking boss himself does the lyrics, give them some credit

Oooof that's unfortunate, it was the platform for reasonably priced VR systems that weren't made by Facebook (I refuse to acknowledge their rebrand), even if it wasn't the best software...

This is basically another step towards a situation in which your only VR options are either high end Valve offerings or buying into the Facebook ecosystem.

The paradox of homogeneization... The more the industry trends towards chasing what's considered to work and be safe, the more room it leaves for the truly bold like these guys to be successful by doing what's considered to not work anymore.
Always beautiful to see.

I'm not surprised about this. The game was developed entirely around what it would have rather than around what the player would do and you can tell.

I can imagine the initial pitch meetings, with everyone going "whoaaa it will have hundreds of solar systems and biomes whoaaah" and no one going "ok, but what does the player do in them". A few other guys enthusiastically saying "There will be spaceship building and you will get a crew and explore with it" and not a soul in the room thinking of "ok, but how will we make space travel work within our current systems and technology? Can we make it substantial?". And this way of thinking probably permeated every second of development for the first few years.

The game is chockful of vestigial systems that they had obviously intended to be more significant and in depth, but ultimately decided not to develop further, yet still maintained in the game in a manner that only harms the game. The fuel "system", the contraband "system"... So many examples of stuff that doesn't add anything to the game, yet was still maintained because man-hours and money went into it I guess, and because the "and it will have that and that" mentality tool a priority over player experience, player agency, and actual game design.

If I can circlejerk for a bit, this is one of the reasons why Baldurs Gate 3's release and success is so timely. How many areas, how many biomes, how many systems, how many quests and how many square kilometers does that game have versus Starfield? 30 times less? 50 times less? Yet it had an overwhelmingly positive reception where Starfield didn't because its elements put player experience first. Yes it has less quests, but most are super modular and super reactive and not afraid to let you solve them in janky or silly ways that go out of the suggested solutions; yes it has fewer areas smaller in size, but you are constantly coming across stuff to do. Etc etc etc.

I'm really hoping that that contrast changes design philosophies just a tad in the future. Start with how a normal hour for your player looks like. Confirm that your technology can deliver your vision before committing to it, experience be damned. Don't reach for the stars, because contrary to what they say, it won't at least get you the moon, it will just leave you stranded in the middle of bumfucknowhere in space.

And, as we saw in Starfield, that means you get yet another annoying load cutscene.

I mean, now that the video streaming industry has shown us how the endgame looks like for subscription models, you'd have to be crazy to want that for the videogame industry.

Whatever short-term gains you can get in convenience or price by buying into their penetration stage are not worth contributing to leading the hobby down that road even an iota.

Because you have wasted like 5 opportunities that NVIDIA has given you to penetrate the market on a silver platter

The 7000 series could have been so successful if they would have been willing to undercut NVIDIA significantly, it was the perfect time to strike at a time when there was a lot of discontent with NVIDIAS ridiculous pricing and VRAM offerings. But AMD would rather sell two cards at 1000 each than take the bet of trying to sell four at 750.

At least in the past you could argue that they were not in a position to take huge bets in the graphics market but they've been doing too well as a company for that excuse to hold any value anymore. The last two generations can only be explained with complacency and lack of ambition.

At this point AMD kinda deserves to give up their position to Intel in the graphics market, let's see if the new player is willing to penetrate aggressively because the old player two is clearly ok with where they are at.

Nah, not so much a failure on your part as a failure on the part of a society that elects to glorify people that "move ball good" or "say line funny" over the people that have built the pillars without which our modern society literally would not exist in the same manner.

goddammit even the silliest memes become real, I'm done with this reality

Non-goals [...] Enforce or interfere with browser functionality, including plugins and extensions. [...]

But guys they gave their pinky promise it's totally fine

let's just allow them to irreversibly make this change so that there is nothing preventing them from applying this totally Non-Goals in the future what could happen

The fact that the same user reinstalling the game counts as 2 installs makes this doubly absurd. The decision is already baffling by itself but the idea that you could take a financial hit for an install that didn't net you any additional income is... Jesus.

Great, so no more Saints Row 2 fix for PC I’m guessing, just great.

Which would be kinda fucking wild considering it was literally someone's dying wish and something they passionately worked on even while they were dying... That project not coming to fruition due to financial quarter this, franchise expectations... that would be absolutely ghoulish.

I really wanna hear what the proposal is for removing "unqualified" jobs en masse without implementing universal basic income.

The low pay and bad conditions of "unqualified" jobs often gets excused because they, allegedly, are "stepping stones", a means of sustaining oneself while working towards more specialized careers.

If you destroy a significant amount of those positions, where does that leave those people? Are we so drunk on cyberpunk-esque lust of AI evolution that we are fine eliminating the means of entry to society for so many?

I've seen worse timing than this from swiss watches

I just hope that these companies don't have the gall to complain about a lack of manpower or expertise availability a few years down the line. Because by coordinating all these layoffs, they are currently creating a vacuum in which a lot of professionals in the industry won't have any chance to acquire experience and develop their skills, and many will probably have to change their career trajectory significantly just to ensure their economic well-being. And once they see how greener the grass is outside the videogame industry, let me assure you, they won't be coming back.

If you are not willing to stick with your professionals through your thin, you don't deserve their availability and effort through your thick.