top notch exploration, and the story was just the right amount.

lol

Is there really any other reaction?

I read that to mean it’s a digital download only and not a physical copy in stores, but didn’t put much thought into it.

I didn’t dig too much into it, but my guess would be no.

Even if you could verify, it’s still an ethical grey area as it’s taking works they paid photographers to generate new works potentially without crediting the original photographers? Their own website tells people they have to credit the original photographer, and I’d be surprised if the AI lists all the works it used to create it.

arguably no?

Though Getty did introduce their new AI today that was only trained on images they own the copyright to. Arguably, still not ethical, but at least it’s things they own the data for.

Ahh, Google’s tried and true method of throwing a million half-baked features to people before promptly cancelling them all. This will definitely work for them.

Great list - these are all worth checking out. Some of these games I spent way too much time playing.

I think Ultima 7 is probably one of the best RPGs of the 90s. Ultima 6 might have been the first to ‘clutter your entire world with junk’ game, but was both beautiful and massive for its time (though 7 did everything better).

It’s hard to go wrong with most of the classic Sierra games, though the text entry ones are in a special difficulty level of their own. King’s Quest series. Conquests of Camelot was enjoyable. Colonel’s bequest. Space quest series.

The Kyrandia games were enjoyable but I played them not too long ago.

I remember enjoy star trek 25th anniversary.

Just a guess, but I would suspect it’s because it’s one of the few game genre’s that has a nationality tied to it and it probably feels like a box they can’t escape – just because of where they’re from.

To them, it’s just their own spin on an RPG. No matter how much they change to make it appeal to a broader audience, they’re always going to be a JRPG, which feels very limiting. It’s always going to be “it’s an amazing RPG if you like JRPGs”, which to someone making the game probably makes you feel less than. No other country has that.

It’s similar to splitting k-pop or even j-pop out. TO people making the music, they probably just want to be considered on a world stage as great pop music. Not just K-pop album of the year.

Even if people here don’t mean it negatively, doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like a shitty box to people. We rarely apply the same sort of boxes to things from other countries. You don’t hear Abba or Robyn are the best S-pop artists of the last 50 years.

This isn’t that strange for a number of open source projects. I don’t know Godot’s specifics, but lots of folks are willing to toss a few bucks via patreon or other sources. They keep a list of donors who don’t mind being named in the source code, and it includes a few companies that make monthly donations. I’m sure they get a number of grants like this one from Epic.

There’s a number of mastodon servers where people pay donate monthly to them.

Thanks! I updated the post and title.

That’s a decent start, but you need a browser that’s resistant to fingerprinting through some plugins and something like ublock origin that will block all embedded content. At some point, it may require you to use a phone number, and at that point you may have a problem. If you avoid that, one of the biggest threats are the facebook and related meta content placed on other pages around the internet. The pixel is one aspect, but almost any facebook content can still track you across sites. These are easily blocked with a decent adblocker and probably privacybadger too.

I know lots of folks will disagree, but I’d care less about Facebook tracking you as they mostly only care about serving you ads and making content suggestions to keep you on the platform to view more ads. Facebook has never served me a relevant ad, and even with a lot of use still can’t recommend things I’m interested in. Data leaks and sharing is a concern, but that’s a concern with every site. I think when it comes to privacy, there’s far bigger concerns.

Yes-- same with bluetooth or ordering groceries for delivery and giving your home address. There’s always ways to leak data and make it no longer anonymous. However, from my knowledge of how some of these datasets work, they aren’t putting in a lot of effort into truly trying to make sure the joins are 100% accurate because it rarely matters. They generally don’t give a shit about you as an individual. The most common uses of the data are for advertising and mistargeting doesn’t cost enough to justify the time to verify the data.

Paying in cash though can make it anonymous, or by using virtual cards that mask your card id.

Sure, but you can usually register with fake info though. I’ve never seen one really verify much of any information.

Just use one of those email forwarding services that generates unique addresses.

everyone can sign up as “JP Morgan” at “555 Fuckoff Lane”. I’m guessing it might be better if we all standardize to make it harder to connect the sold datasets. If they have address checking we should find some tiny town with 200 people from google maps.

Protip: Many grocery stores allow you to just grab cards without signing up (in the US at least). You can tell them you’ll send it in later.

Then, you can use whatever the fuck info you want and still get the “rewards” so it’s not attached to you. If you use the apps on your phone, make sure they don’t have bluetooth access.

They’ve run out of scenarios, but the brand must go on.

Oh yeah, they’re probably not waiting months for something to come back. Companies know what’s popular, so they tend to stagger those. So people will not cancel if they know next month or the month after is going to be something they want to play.

If you’re only interested in one or two games, you’ll just buy those (until they stop letting us buy games and force us to rent them).

You should care, but it’s maybe more of a question about how much and about what specific things. There are some easy-to-do things, and then there’s others that get exhausting

Some of this depends on why you care about privacy and where you live. It’s a lot of work, and in some places, like the US, there’s a lot of data being sold anyway (credit/debit cards, tvs, streaming services, and stores can almost all sell some of your data and it can be difficult to stop them). Keeping Bluetooth on also enables you to be tracked going in and out of stores and other various locations.

It can be a lot of work, but some things are more worthwhile than others. There are likely some things you’re just going to have to live with.

Yeah, people definitely wait. Don’t have any stats, but I hear people talking about it all the time with regards to streaming services.

THe service does pay for on-loan games, but that’s not a reason to rotate. They’re paying regardless. THey rotate to try and keep things fresh so people don’t cancel.

I don’t think this benefits anyone but Ubisoft.

I think the CMA was concerned about microsoft cornering the cloud gaming market with the acquisition, so granting Ubisoft rights to stream these games alleviated their concerns.

I’m not sure why this was their concern though

that’s part of every subscription business plan, sadly. The rotation helps keep subscriptions up longer as people have to wait for things to cycle back around.