I absolutely hate always online DRM in single player games, so I get it. Personally, I’ll avoid games that use it. I was a huge fan of the Hitman series but haven’t played any of the new ones because of always online, live service, season pass, model they decided to go with. It’s a deal breaker for me, but I understand it isn’t for everyone else. I told my friends I wouldn’t be playing Helldivers 2 with them because of its use of kernel level anti-cheat and they just gave me a weird look.

I’ll choose to support games that are developed in consumer friendly ways, but I also accept that not everyone sees it as a big deal. If a company decides they need kernel level anti-cheat, then that’s on them. They won’t get my money, but I’m not about to start a petition to legally ban the use of kernel level anti-cheat and call anyone who won’t sign it an industry shill and bootlicker.

Want to stop games you buy from being killed? Don’t buy games that can be. Does this mean you’ll be sitting out while all your friends have fun playing the latest hit game? Probably. Does it mean 10 years later when the game no longer works you can smugly tell them “heh, looks like you guys got scammed.” Also yes. Just don’t be surprised that they think you’re weird.

From the initiative:

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

This is all that the initiative states on the matter. How it would actually work in practice is anyone’s guess because the wording is so vague. Supporters seem to be under the impression that companies have a “server.exe” file they purposefully don’t provide players because they’re evil and hate you. They could also be contracting out matchmaking services to a third party and don’t actually do it in-house. Software development is complex and building something that will be used by 100,000 people simultaneously isn’t easy.

There’s a reason comedic videos like Microservices, where an engineer explains why it’s impossible to show the user it is their birthday based on an overly complex network of microservices, and Fireship’s overengineering a website exist. Big software is known to be difficult to maintain and update. Huge multiplayer games aren’t any different. It’s likely there isn’t actually a “reasonable” way for them to continue to work. Supporters are hopeful this initiative would cause the industry to change how game software is developed, but that hope gets real close to outright naivety.

He should get tips from the Yakuza team

It’s a video game. It’s all CG.

Is it because he’s a westaboo?

“We record with other actors in a studio in Los Angeles, so it’s a bit of a problem if they don’t have native-level English skills”, he said.

Yep.

Is that a Boarder Collie?

Wes Anderson vibes

US law allows companies to enforce essentially any terms of service or end user licence agreement they want when selling products or services and rewriting laws to add an exception for video games is never going to happen.

Stop Killing Games believe existing EU laws don’t allow this and are alleging some TOS and EULA of game companies are in violation. They want the EU parliament to review that and hopefully clarify the laws to ensure game companies aren’t “depriving citizens of property”.

From the petition:

We wish to invoke Article 17 §1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [EUR-Lex - 12012P/TXT - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)] – “No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss.” – This practice deprives European citizens of their property by making it so that they lose access to their product an indeterminate/arbitrary amount of time after the point of sale. We wish to see this remedied, at the core of this Initiative.

The hope is that companies won’t make two versions of their games. One that complies with EU law and one that doesn’t. No idea where that comes from. GDPR is EU law and many companies created two versions of their service to avoid needing to follow it for everyone. Some companies, including game studios, even dropped their EU customers entirely instead of complying.

It’s also become YouTuber drama bait at this point and is an easy way smaller channels can get extra views.

Ah 2024, great year!

Why have lot company when few company do trick?

This is a fetish thing isn’t it?

These are the vests we have: TechNiche CoolPax. They’re okay. I find the ice packs melt quickly and freeze slowly but they’re good for temporary relief. My company initially bought these to be worn under hot PPE like hazmat suits, but even just having a bunch of ice packs in a freezer you can take out on the floor to hold onto could work.

You’re not alone! I worked 12 hours in 37°C (99°F), 47% humidity yesterday. However, we get essentially unlimited breaks in an air conditioned break room, have cooling vests filled with ice packs we can wear on the floor, and are supplied with sports drinks and feeezies. Your work can’t really make the world less hot, but they can work with you to avoid development of heat related illnesses!

I did watch the video. Half of it is blaming the PirateSoftware video for tanking the entire campaign. Ross literally blamed one guy for the failure. That’s cope.

Lol what a bunch of cope. One guy made a youtube video and that’s the only reason why world governments aren’t changing laws? The video has less views than his Inscryption playthrough. Is he the sole reason for Inscryption’s success too? Is Thor actually a god who can make things happen just by leveraging the power of his 2 million subscribers!?

This failed because the average person does not care about “saving video games”. Nintendo announced they can revoke your access to play games you paid $80 for on the Switch 2 and it’s setting sales records.

A Canadian scored a hat trick in the Cup final. He just plays for Florida.

Gay (kernel) panic

3 legendary programmers and Bill Gates.

I just finished playing the remaster of this game! I was also pretty confused by it and can see why it got a lot of criticism.

Her defense is that players end up feeling similar to the character in a meta kind of way. Players probably didn’t agree with the way the story was going, but pressed on anyways because they want a conclusion to the story, and that conclusion ends up being terribly unsatisfying. You could have stopped playing, just as the character could have stopped pressing on, but you didn’t. Now both you and the character have to deal with the crappy ending.

It’s definitely a unique way to tell a story, but I’m not sure it’s a story that needed to be told. “All of that stuff you did was pointless”. Yeah, I know! I knew that at the start!

She also brings up the “Abby Spectrum” which is more of an interesting idea. Trying to avoid spoilers, Abby is presented to the player at the start of the game doing something absolutely evil. She’s essentially the big bad villain. Later on you get her tragic backstory and see her do lots of nice things. The idea is basically, everyone hates her at the start, but how do you feel about her at the end? Are her backstory and good deeds enough to change your opinion of her? Where do you fall on the “Abby Spectrum”?

Maybe the story would have been better if it focused more on this question instead of purposefully setting out to be unsatisfying as a meta way to explain why endless violence, fighting, and revenge is bad. Though I suppose there are a lot of people who might actually need that to be explained.