Persued 'live-service' games, using game engines that don't fit, constantly shifting direction of games in development, focusing on a generic streamlined cinematic experience then telling a good, character-driven story with impactful and controversial choices, use Denuvo, stop releasing modding tools, ...

If an independent studio does this stuff... Then they should look for better managers.

The first games that felt off to me where DA2 and ME3, but I played through them, they were still enjoyable. DA:I was bland and boring, so I dropped it, after that I didn't see a return to the studio that I remembered.

Okay, so if any proof or evidence came out that proves that the BioWare leadership or employees themselves did something bad or self destructive...

Whatever it is, without the direction of EA, then they take the blame for that. You haven't provided me any such evidence yet. Meanwhile, I'm sticking with what is known, and my conviction than any competent leadership could have prevented it, because it wasn't a natural disaster that happened here.

I'm sure that EA managers are payed enough so that they can take the blame, I will not subject the developers, that just lost they employment, to that. That seems like victim blaming.

Your argument isn't an argument, it is an assertion without any evidence, or even clear logical path.

Were you there in the talks between BioWare people and EA? Do you know what EA ask directly or indirectly through implication BioWare to do? How they should or shouldn't design their games? What they should integrate or not and what to focus on? What they should implement? What kind of stories BioWare is allowed to write? And the employees are treated? If they where given creative freedom, a good compensation?

I don't know any of these things. My argument comes more down on the proverb "The fish stinks from its head." And the observation that BioWare produced good games before ME3 and DA2. Then something must have happened, notable game designers left the company, and they produced bland games.

It could have been some BioWare manager that messed stuff up. But why didn't EA replace them, or why were they even placed into that position in the first place? I don't know... All I know is that someone at the top could have prevented it, if they wanted to. And at the top was EA people.

Okay, so without being what would Bioware have to do for you to blame Bioware for being shut down?

Now I have trouble parsing your question.

Didn't I just answer that?

If BioWare would be independent, or maybe under a hypothetical 'good guy EA', and produced bad, bland, uninspired games, or dig themselves into one massive, feature-creep game, which eats all their money, but never releases, then I would blame them. So, if their management sucks. BioWare had enough money to find and hire good designers, writers, artists and programmers. If they suddenly start creating niche games, without broad appeal, that would be fine to, in my book.

Trying desperately to appeal to a broad demographic, instead of playing to their strength, and their established fanbase, is what makes bland games.

I don't get your point...

My point is that if Bioware did that when independent, they where to blame. But they weren't independent when they did that.

Your point is that Bungie did that, when independent... So? Are people not blaming Bungie for doing live-services? If they don't then they should! And if they do, then I don't see the inconsistency.

From my POV, no games of Bungie had any interest. I guess Halo found some appeal to some, but this whole Destiny stuff... Maybe it was successful because of the novelty at that time. But I had no interest it that...

IDK, this all just left me confused. The bottle caps are for reducing plastic waste in nature, not carbon footprint, and its also not about personal responsibility, because it is law or regulation (at least in EU). If it was responsibility then that guy bought them, because they wanted to do it and wouldn't ask that way. And I also didn't get how that has anything to do with a electric stunt car decompressing air...

Maybe I'm just unfunny or obtuse, but I didn't get the joke... Only sense I can make of is how nonsense it is, and if that is the goal. Great... But what are they saying with that comic then?

I wouldn't miss the audio jack, if phones had two usb-c ports, one for charging and one for audio. But all adapter I tried that allowed charging the phone while listening to audio where very flimsy and/or unhandy.

I just would like not every device to have is own built-in or custom battery. Them being changeable is good, but I would also love if we start having a smaller set of standardized formats.

Do you mean the firmware blobs? If so, then be aware that the firmware doesn't run in the Linux kernel, and isn't part of it. They get uploaded to the peripheral devices, and run there. They are often encrypted and signed, so even if you reverse engineer them, and understand what they do, you also need the private keys of the vendor to sign and/or encrypt them before the peripheral hardware accepts them...

But isn't China state-captialism or party-state capitalism? They make immense profits but those aren't distributed to the population, state enterprises or non-state firms have them. I don't see how that is socialism....

CPC say themselves that they are in the 'primary stage of socialism' so they haven't reached that. And that stage to me doesn't look like socialism at all...

I only play single player games, but couldn't care less about achievements. It is all about exploration, story, game mechanics and modding for me.

People treat achievements as if they are a status symbol. I mean sure, if you don't know what else to do in a game, they can give you some goal, but IMO the game itself should encourage you to reach the goal, not some external badge. The experience doing the task should be the reward in of itself.

In german there is only one word for it, which is a gift for german speakers.

What I really like is that they double down on hackabilty by switching to metal torx screws, etc.

That, and a Linux system are IMO the main selling points of the SteamDeck, compared to any clones from Asus or Lenovo, etc.

True, private companies are generally more focused on customer satisfaction, but that can suddenly change, for instance when the owner dies, and the new owners don't share the same ideals.

Private companies have a certain single point of failure built-in by having often just one or sometimes a small number of owners.

Nobody really knows what will happen when Gabe dies.

I just hope that valve becomes a worker cooperative... That would be the most stable form of company that probaly stays focused on customer satisfaction long term, since workers tend to favor providing long-term profits via good service instead of short term gains, for high frequency traders.

Most wars aren't "won" anymore.

"Copying is theft" is the argument of corporations for ages, but if they want our data and information, to integrate into their business, then, suddenly they have the rights to it.

If copying is not theft, then we have the rights to copy their software and AI models, as well, since it is available on the open web.

They got themselves into quite a contradiction.

Because this is fiction, where there is good and evil, right and wrong, the good people are rewarded and the bad people punished, successful people earned it and the poor deserve it, and complex problems have simple answers. Where every argument only has a pro and a contra.

But we are living in reality, where most things are in shades of grey, and everything is more complex than it appears. People have to make decisions based on partial knowledge, to not get stuck in indecisiveness. Where even the middle ground solution might be wrong. And with so many distractions and propaganda.

Just be kind and understanding to other people with different ideas, the real world is a complex one, and easy to get lost. Sometimes people like to flee into their simple worlds of populism, maybe through talking and listening we can help them find their way again.

TBH, it is very difficult to me differentiating between the different flavors of authoritarians.

Maybe someone can make an easy to understand comparison matrix? You know, "Kills people because they have a different opinion.", "Suppresses minorities.", etc.

One notable software business professional interviewed by RBC thought that the West’s decision would “adversely affect the life of the developer community, mutual trust within it, and therefore the quality of the product.”

It was Russia and other autocracies etc. that diminished the trust by actually financing developers for multiple years to first earn trust and finally introduce backdoors into open source software, as demonstrated by the XZ utils backdoor.

In open source projects, maintainers need to have some initial trust into each contributor, and let this trust naturally grow with time and contributions. They cannot perform intensive background checks on everyone before accepting a patch.

While it is easier to uncover backdoors in open source software, there is no good way to defend and prevent against this kind of attack in this type of development process. All open source projects can do is trying to take away some trust from people within higher risk groups. This of course might lead to discrimination.

Every accusation of them is an admission of guilt.

So stop buying any US made hardware.

If a game offers multiplayer, they should also offer a dedicated server that people can setup for themselves.

For MMOs, they can make the servers optionally federated.