Not sure why we’re arguing this quote with the same two games over and over. Nms and cyberpunk are great games, but they’re a rarity.
Game Dev crunch is a plague in th industry, we suffer as consumers who cop bad releases on release. The whole industry could learn from its roots and delay things for a better initial product.
Defending the current practice of redevelopment in post is almost consumer gaslighting.
Seriously, we need to return to pre-internet console mentality. You put out an N64 game, it better be goddamn finished. Companies rely way too much on “ehh can just patch it”.
I mean, modern games are many times more complex so the idea of putting out a “finished” game these days is more like “this is an acceptable level of bugs/most players won’t hit this.” The problem is that the acceptable level has shifted way too fucking far in the wrong direction to the point where in some cases we’re barely getting an alpha, much less a beta. In general, I have no problem with companies putting out good games that get better, like tuning for performance so you get better FPS, it’s player on lower spec machines, etc. I don’t like the idea of paying to be a beta tester for two years, and not getting the good game until way later.
I’m not arguing in favor of companies putting out shoddy gamesor the practice of games needing patches to fix glaring issues, but suggesting that the 90s and early 2000s were the days of totally flawless games seems like a result of survivorship bias.
We remember the great games from those days, but there were mountains of shovelware games releasing with all the problems we see today.
Even many good or great games from those days have problems that either remain unfixed, or have only been fixed years later by fans.
Both Destiny and Destiny 2 had really poor launches. Then they cleaned up their act and we’re very successful and had thriving playerbases. Light fall and this past year notwithstanding…
I fucking loved the Forsaken expansion and felt that it was worth the money. I got Black Armory not realizing it wasn’t an expansion like Forsaken and was so fucking disappointed. I eventually quit because they kept making the game worse.
I would even say NMS is a good example of this sentiment. The game has been good for years now and has had tons of free updates. There’s a lot of people out there who just don’t care and you can see this in forums whenever the game makes news. People still show up to decry the game for how terrible the release was.
Public sentiment on the game and the studio is still pretty mixed
The fact that it’s only the same two games is more of an argument against than for, honestly. With all of the awful launches people can think of two games that were redeemed.
I’m not defending the need for post-launch patches to fix glaring issues and I’m not defending crunch, but suggesting that buggy releases and crunch haven’t been with gaming since the earliest days of the industry seems like putting on rose colored glasses. There is a lot to damn about the current industry, but painting the root days of the industry as free of those same issues just to make the comparison seems unrealistic.
they should just go with perfectly circular, with different sizes for different applications. imagine a 20mm unit - high power/bandwidth hoses with a satisfying locking mechanism that magnetically seals the connection.
and makes the proton pack sound. and rgb fuck nevermind go back this was a bad idea
We could have a compact version, say 3.5mm, with different segments to carry different signal types. More segments can be added to allow for additional features. It could work with audio, video, power, and other data transfer. That would fit ideally into a phone.
USB required to have a stable connexion, as it’s a digital signal and not an analog as jack ports, which just sends curent through it. Rotating the connector could maybe introduce issues for signal integrity.
The usb connector has much more connectors than a jack port. It would take a very long hole to fit them all. (usb 3+, usb C…)
Size constraint. USB C is flat, a round port is not. So it’s bigger in 1 way, but smaller in the other, and so creates more design challenges.
Round is not round, that is, there’s a difference between the likes of cinch and DIN (-style) connectors. Cinch can be rotated once inserted which indeed isn’t ideal, but DIN are perfectly adequate signal-wise and you can rotate them into place, just like finding the begging of a thread when inserting a screw.
Keyboards used five-pole DIN for the longest time and mice D-Sub (because serial), both changed to Mini-DIN 6, aka “PS/2 connectors”. And never, ever, did anyone complain about getting the orientation wrong with DIN connectors.
D-Sub are a bit iffy but at least you really do have a 50/50 chance as they don’t jam like USB-A does. They also aren’t actually rectangular and you can feel the matching angles on both female and male ends.
Really, connectors went downhill with USB. HDMI and DisplayPort aren’t really any better as you can’t feel the shape of the socket, either. OTOH, one really nasty connector becomes rarer and rarer: Molex. Also you can’t fry your motherboard by connecting the main power connection in the wrong way, any more (remember: Black to black).
And never, ever, did anyone complain about getting the orientation wrong with DIN connectors.
Hah! Hardly. I have plenty of memories of endlessly rotating mouse and keyboard connectors as I reached behind a computer trying to insert it blindly, and somehow having to try half a dozen times before it finally found just the right orientation.
There’s also the issue on the older, large DIN connectors of pins getting bent or broken.
We moved on from those things for darn good reason, and I for one have no interest in going back.
I never bent a pin and as said, you can just turn them and at some point they’ll align.
The main downfall of DIN was foreign hifi companies standardising on cinch and SCART and German hifi manufacturers then switching over. You’ll still see them in niche applications, though, probably the most common is MIDI.
Nah that’s XLR. More sturdy, they lock, and usually carry balanced signals. It’s a pro audio thing and I’ve never seen it used for digital signals, DIN back in the day was in used for consumer stuff just as cinch is now. You probably also couldn’t send as much phantom power over DIN.
Both 3-pin XLR and 3-pin DIN are mono, but in DIN’s case that’s input/output, not balanced audio. From a consumer perspective that’s very nice: Connecting a cassette player/recorder to the amp only uses a single 5-pin DIN cable.
Back in 2013 or so, Microsoft launched the Windows Store alongside Windows 8, and was making some noises that sounded a lot like shutting out independent software stores like Steam and requiring everything on Windows to be sold through the Windows Store.
Valve reacted to this by saying “Welp I guess it’s time to start investing in gaming on Linux” and launched Steam Machines, little PCs designed to be connected to a television to bring the Steam experience to the living room couch. They ran a modified version of Debian Linux along with their own tweaked version of Wine that could run some Windows games alongside several (including Valve’s own library) that shipped Linux native versions.
The project itself was a bit of a flop; they relied on other companies to make Steam Machines, like Alienware and such. But a lot of things came from it.
Valve demonstrated they had the wherewithal to take the gaming market with them if Microsoft got too greedy.
Big Picture Mode, Steam Link, and the beginnings of Proton among others came from the Steam Machine project.
The Steam Controller came from this project, which I’ve heard GabeN talk about as a major learning experience they drew on during the design of the Steam Deck, aka why the Steam Deck has perfectly conventional controls.
They spent most of the 20teens adding steady improvements for Linux gaming to the point that we switched from having a list of games that ran on Linux, to a list of games that don’t run on Linux because that became easier to manage. Then they launched the Steam Deck, an unqualified successful Linux gaming platform. Then I came here, and then it was now, and then I don’t know what happened.
Valve tried selling Linux boxes for gaming back in 2013, but noone wanted to sell/make/buy them b/c the library wasn’t there and it’s a hard sell when Windows is already baked into OEM hardware pricing anyways (so it wasn’t any cheaper to buy a pre-made Steam Machine than it was a similar-spec windows box).
Isn’t Android very heavily based on Linux too (even if a lot of it is hidden at the surface level)? I can’t think of anything more mainstream than that.
I’m old enough to remember the Phantom Console bringing PC gaming to the masses too. Safe to say the Steam Deck is quite a lot more successful than that, given the only part they ended up making was a keyboard and mouse you could use from the sofa.
Android is Linux. It’s funny because this is the rare case where Stallman’s pedantry comes in handy. Android is absolutely not GNU/Linux, the OS family known as ‘Linux’, but the kernel is the Linux kernel.
If people don’t see Android as bringing Linux to the masses (which I don’t), then it’s dubious SteamOS would either. If it’s just a container for Steam, it’s not really the same thing as Linux adoption. ChromeOS actually is GNU/Linux, but I doubt many would count that either.
Even so, more consumer products with Linux inside means more improvements that benefit everyone.
Give them handicaps and they’ll wear them like badges of honor. They kicked so much ass, their bullets do half as much damage… and they still have even odds to win. Or make their accuracy garbage. Or slow down their movement. Or make them visible from anywhere on the map. That last one even teaches newbies about prediction.
Team-based modes are simpler: pile on more newbs. Unbalance the shit out of those teams. Give the tryhards an opportunity to say a pair of them took on ten guys, and won. Even if they roll the other team, it’s hard to say the loss feels cheap, if you outnumber them so drastically.
Engineer a response that goes ‘fuck, that guy is good’ instead of just ‘fuck that guy.’
Bullets do quarter damage, they get 1 HP, if they get hit they go into last stand until someone heals them or someone from the other team graciously double taps them. Only 2 pro members to a team, the rest are all bots with no med packs and accuracy that would make even the worst storm trooper look like a sniper. Oh and FF is on for them, that includes their bot team mates, so they have to constantly worry about being in their team mates line of sight and getting fragged… or just a stray bullet as they goof around launching bullets in every direction.
This, I already never play anything online because it’s not fun to suck, either constantly getting killed in competitive matches or being a drag on my team in coops. And I don’t have the time or energy at the end of the day to do that, but I do like playing games with others
I do feel for the folks that are very good and have to wait long times because that ruins the game for them but is it really an enjoyable competition if you’re just annihilating everyone every match, does that not get boring? Handicapping can keep it interesting for everyone it just needs to be scaled properly
Give an option in the menu to add levels of handicap to artificially drop your skill rating an appropriate amount. Then, during the match, display what handicap that player is using with a cool badge, or a flaming skull, or something.
Are you new to Bethesda games or it has just been a while? 🙂
I remember starting Skyrim for the first time and making it as far as the character selection screen (well, after spending a few hours fixing the no-voices bug) at which point I went wtf is this crap and went looking for mods.
The original vanilla Skyrim was pretty terrible. Don’t get me wrong it was playable but it was a very forgettable and unimpressive game. The low quality assets, the bugs, the half-assed talent trees, the uninspired and unfinished quest lines, the dumb AI, the barren ugly towns and landscapes, the bad UI etc. Just think about all the things you have to fix nowadays with mods to play it properly, nevermind adding new stuff.
But it is facts In talking about. Nobody in their right mind will pretend there weren’t bugs, or that the quests or talent trees or crafting or alchemy were well made, or that the AI was good etc.
All you’re saying is that you liked the game in spite of all that — either that or you can’t even remember how bad it was before the mods.
Skyrim’s greatest virtue will always be how moddable it is. But that still doesn’t mean that Bethesda put out a great game in 2011.
Someone yesterday said they don’t buy Bethesda games because they’re good at launch, instead they buy them because the modding community is so prolific.
Paying $60-70 for a game that requires teams of unpaid volunteers to make it playable after launch.
Mods exist now and have since day one. They’ve already made the game much better, but you are right they arent great yet cause they dont have the GECK. I do like to have a sort of “vanilla” playthrough before super mods. I didn’t clarify that.
Yeah kinda. I bought it to play the stock game with a few tweaks. But when creation kit comes out I’ll be back. And then again. And again.
People have thousands of hours into skyrim. You think that game has more than 100 hours of content? It’s years of going back and enjoying mods and the community surrounding them.
Yeah Bethesda profits off it. But you’d be surprised how many people pirated the game, eventually just buying the “goty” edition on sale.
Tbf vanilla Skyrim had more than 100 hours of content, just not story driven. Back when it came out I played well over that on PS3 in a single save with no mods. I explored every dragon shrine and collected all the priest masks in that playthrough. I did loot every damm vase though and inventory mgmt was slow. I got crafting up to 100 naturally, etc. Then made new characters eventually. Im sure I spent more than 300 hours over the years before I went to PC and installed mods
Modders generally only make mods for games that they are enthausiastic for. Its not a given that Starfield will have a modding scene on par with Skyrim.
No, not a given you are right. But regardless whether its on par with skyrim I’m interested in what they do the same way I was with fallout 4 despite not thinking that game was particularly good myself.
How did you get around how empty the game is? I played a few hours but it is just so empty. Being in a city just means either quick travelling or walking through 100s of meters without any interesting npc or anything at all. I felt skyrim did it much better.
Most people have talked about how empty things are by talking about the planets. I feel like that part feels too full if anything. They aren’t empty enough to give it character. The same goes for almost every other locations. They’re so full of junk that they’re empty of character.
I am waiting for official mod support to make it into a real game. There are so many awesome mods and I’ve tried a few but I’m too lazy to manually install them. Also I’m so not going to go through the storyline amount 9 times…
Factorio has a mod manager built in. It can browse, download, install mods all right there. It even syncs mods to save files and checks for updates. Factorio mods have better support than most games do. I really wish some other developers would put that kind of effort into mods. Just think of what, say, Minecraft could be if it had that.
Likewise the Paradox launcher has pretty good mod support. I think you have to add mods externally, but you can create profiles and things where one profile could be for The World of Darkness games and another could be for Game of Thrones, or whatever. You can easily swap between them without any trouble.
Somewhere in the vast chasm between “these are the best gameplay element ever conceived” and “this crap cannot be enjoyable with these left in” lies the actual description of their impact for a normal person.
They are perhaps marginally tedious. It bothered one modder enough that he modded them out with a mod that has about 7600 unique downloads. It bothered millions of others so little that they…just played the game anyway.
They’re not wrong but the real reason publishers are against modding is because
It extends the lifetime of a game and the existence of “overhaul” or enhancement mods especially goes against their interest in selling sequels and remasters.
If everyone was comfortable with modding it would be pretty hard to sell cosmetic items the same way they do now.
They were but they are considered Superior with the PlayStation versions due to having a superior frame rate and sound quality, although they sold rather poorly at the time as Resident Evil the remake kind of raised the standard for what a remake should be up so high, that no re-release has been able to match it in quality. Not even the other remakes in the same series.
In many respects the remakes of 2 and 3 are a measurable downgrade, and are more accurate to a retelling than a remake, which is why I would want enhanced ports of the GameCube versions
That makes sense! I never picked them up as a kid cause I already had 2 on n64 and 3 on PS1. I might have to check out those versions. Are the backgrounds higher resolution too? That’s the hardest part about replaying them on an hdtv, it’s just so blurry!
The Legendary edition of the Mass Effect Trilogy was a lot worse that the modded original games.
They never fixed the FOV issues or even made it work on Ultrawide monitors. Same bugs, less texture fidelity, and no more ass shots. The remaster was a joke.
I heard they censored shit too. Sadly I feel like that’s just a staple of re-releases nowadays “Remember back in the 90’s and 2000’s when we thought politically correct was a dirty word? You know what’s a better idea? The opposite extreme where anything even slightly vulgar or sexual must be censored or they’ll corrupt the poor innocent 30-50 Target Demographic…”
More like standard capitalism. The usb c connectors are not slower then the lightning connectors so its not like they made it worse. They simply refused to make it better.
A bit like Nvidia continuing to maken better gpu chips but refusing to have them release with a more VRAM.
If course in a way, all for profit-companies are malicious. Extracting surplus value from workers and such.
So lightning cables offer transfer rates of 480Mb/s - USB 2.0 offers 625Mb/s. You are cross that they swapped out Lightning for USB on the main models and use USB 3 as a differentiator in the Pro models. Fair enough, but that's not 'malicious'. It's not even malicious compliance.
Lightning connectors are definitely worse than USB-C, but when they were introduced the alternative was micro USB which is objectively worse than Lightning cables.
Of course, with wireless charging I haven't used an actual cable in five years so it doesn't matter that much to me.
And probably have a separate controller? I’m not very technical at all but I’d assume it’s much easier to fit a separate one on a large surface like the iPad has
Edit: google confirms the iPads have a separate USB3 controller
I had a very quick check and I think iPads use an external chip for USB 3 - and there may just not have been space on the iPhone’s logic board for that. I think you’d have to judge it next year - since the base models seem to be using last year’s pro chips - if the base model doesn’t support 3.1 speeds then, something fishy is happening
Apple does a lot of BS stuff, but are you trying to claim the controller in iPads and iPhones is the same, or comparable because of age? Because that’s like claiming the screens are the same, or comparable.
If the aim of a company is to maximize profits then every company in Apple’s stead would do the same thing. Not defending it but that’s the world we created.
I assume even if it was over LAN it would include multiple copies of the game talking to each other. That means that the game allows you to upload skins from your game to other people. Which rases security concerns for me.
Since you’ve already been corrected on the assumption that players used/saw the nude mod, I’ll just point out: Fighting game tournaments almost never use “lan”. Two players sit in front of one console and one monitor, and plug in their own controllers. Super high budget tournaments like EVO might use dual-console setups for finals day, but when you’re chewing through an open bracket it’s just silly to double the required amount of hardware per station.
Honestly, good. Should have given them more time instead of Hollywood celebrities that, frankly, seemed embarrassed to be there. People watch the game awards to hear about gaming, not listen to Simu Liu, Matthew McConaughey, and Jordan Peele monologue with awkward jokes.
I wanna listen to the people I voted for talk about the projects they love and worked so hard on. That was a huge moment for the winners, and they were just shooed offstage like they were randos no one cared about. What a way to sour their moment.
The zelda sequel lured me away for a little while and spider man 2 for a lesser extent, but I spend more time on my deck than anything else. Hey that reminds me, I should dust my consoles.
That TotK runs at all on the Switch is nothing short of a miracle. That’s Xbox 360 era GPU power, running a massive game at 30fps for the most part. Super stable as well, especially after a playthrough of the very crashy, other GOTY contender, BG3.
Sadly this is not applicable in my country. If you want to get a Steam Deck unfortunately you’ll need to shell out more money compared to buying a PS5 or an Xbox Series X.
Imagine that you start a game project (which will cost you years and a lot of $$$ to develop) and at any point Unity just arbitrarilly changes the conditions (which can be of any kind, not just extra charges) that apply to your game, after you’re too far into development to feasibly replace Unity, and do it retroactivelly, so after your game is already out it can still get impacted by it.
Suddenly a totally viable project might become unviable or, worse, an active drain on your company’s finances or even your own (i.e. your company and, depending on how you structured it, even you yourself can go bankrupt), and all of that based on the fickle wishes of a higher up in Unity.
At this point it makes no business sense whatsoever to choose Unity: there is way, WAY, WAY too much risk involved by choosing it (new charges that apply retroactivelly as this one can literally kill your company) and at the same times there are viable alternatives out there without such risks.
For any project not yet deeply tied to Unity, from the day they came up with a retroactive change to their pricing, the obvious, clear as day, choice from a business point of view became to not use anything from Unity, even for shitty shit asset-flipping “near zero investment” projects.
Can you quickly tell me what’s the applicable jurisdition for this if say, a gamedev company based in Uruguay sells a game made with Unity (HQ US) via Apple Store (HQ US) to a user in China who installs it 3 times?
At the very least it will cost you quite some legal fees to merelly figure out the jurisdiction because there are multiple legal angles to go after this (contract law, intellectual property) which might yield different jurisdictions (maybe it’s contract law and then maybe its the US, maybe Uruguay, or maybe it’s IP law and it’s the copy of the game to the device local storage i.e. the installation - that is treated as requiring licensing of the Unity IP, and it defines the jurisdiction as China because that’s were the user did it … or maybe the US because that’s what the IP owner is).
This “cleared up”, next you’ll have to figure out if it such retroactive pricing changes were legal there or not: maybe you’re lucky, maybe you’re screwed.
For new projects I don’t think it’s worth it for a small gamedev company to spend time and money pursuing the “let’s clear the legal status every way Unity can screw me in the future so that I can use Unity” option rather than the “let’s use something else” option.
It’s really only worth checking it for companies with existing or advanced projects on top of Unity were the income/potential-income from those projects justifies it (vs the options of just pulling the project out from distribution or redo it with another framework).
I mean, sure, eventually somebody will have paid the legal costs of this and maybe the legal decision is broad enough and in the right jurisdiction for your company and it’s applicable … and then Unity just goes and comes up with some other shit that somebody has to take through the legal rigmarole to figure out if they can. Also, unless its illegal everywhere, some companies will be affected.
Meanwhile “Don’t use Unity on any future projects” is a pretty straighforward way to minimize your project risks…
Can you quickly tell me what’s the applicable jurisdition for this if say, a gamedev company based in Uruguay sells a game made with Unity (HQ US) via Apple Store (HQ US) to a user in China who installs it 3 times?
Then Urugauay, since the contract for Unity is between Unity and the game studio in Uruguay, and is the game studio that must pay Unity, not the Chinese buyer (not sure if applicable by Uruguay’s law). In every country where you sell something, you need to follow the law applicable to the buyer, not the seller.
If you change Uruguay with Italy (where I live) then it is illegal, for example no matter where the seller has the HQ and no matter where I sell the game. And I suspect in most of EU. If you sell me something then we have a contract, then both of us cannot change it retroactively unilaterally, I am not even sure if it is legal if both of us agree. Many US based company tried and failed.
If Unity pull a stunt like this on an Italian game studio, the studio can simply avoid to pay and if Unity kill the current license agreeement the studio can sue them. Sure, Unity can then refuse to sell new or renew licenses to the studio, but that is another thing, the old license is still valid.
At the very least it will cost you quite some legal fees to merelly figure out the jurisdiction because there are multiple legal angles to go after this (contract law, intellectual property) which might yield different jurisdictions (maybe it’s contract law and then maybe its the US, maybe Uruguay, or maybe it’s IP law and it’s the copy of the game to the device local storage i.e. the installation - that is treated as requiring licensing of the Unity IP, and it defines the jurisdiction as China because that’s were the user did it … or maybe the US because that’s what the IP owner is).
True, but that is the cost of doing business in a foreign country. Why did you think Apple (US based) put the USB-C on the new IPhone ? To be nice ? Or because EU imposed it ? Is not this a price for Apple ?
This “cleared up”, next you’ll have to figure out if it such retroactive pricing changes were legal there or not: maybe you’re lucky, maybe you’re screwed.
That is another problem and, at least in Europe, Unity is on very thin ice. From the game studio perpective is a problem only if their local law allow for a retroactive change in a contract, else the new terms are void and Unity can say what they want.
In Europe, if Unity can track retroactively the installations, then they tracked the users and if they (or the game studio ) did not notified the user it is a direct violation of the GDPR and all it need to is just one user that sue them. And before you say something, it is already happened before. The fines are pretty interesting btw…
For new projects I don’t think it’s worth it for a small gamedev company to spend time and money pursuing the “let’s clear the legal status every way Unity can screw me in the future so that I can use Unity” option rather than the “let’s use something else” option.
Completely agree on this.
It’s really only worth checking it for companies with existing or advanced projects on top of Unity were the income/potential-income from those projects justifies it (vs the options of just pulling the project out from distribution or redo it with another framework).
Again, nope. If it is illegal in the studio HQ country, then is not worth checking: the term cannot be changed.
What can happen, in Italy, is that Unity can change unilaterally the contract for the future and in this case the game studio can simply modify the selling price of an already released game or put a adeguate price tag in any future game in a too advanced development stage to be redone with another game engine. And of course change the game engine for all the other projects.
But there is no way that Unity can monetize past installation of a game based on a contract with certain conditions.
Because if there’s one thing I learned from my own contact with the Law (not being a lawyer myself) is that sometimes it is indeed exactly as it makes logical sense (in which case it would basically be as you describe) and sometimes it’s not and depending in the jurisdiction you might even have to end up in Court to figure it out.
I don’t know about you, but I won’t stake my company’s future on presuming the applicable Law matches common sense, even with the assurances from a non-lawyer on the Internet.
My point being that we won’t be sure until somebody gets legal clarification on this, maybe even gets their day in Court over this, and after that then all of us to whom that legal clarification does apply (and me being in the EU also, it would probably apply to my country as it does to Italy) can rest easy (or not, depending on what the clarification says) … until Unity tries something else.
Meanwhile I’ll keep on slowly decoupling the code from its Unity dependencies on the project I have and trying out Godot and the Unreal Engine, just in case and because I have to, as I pointed out, protect myself from the risk of them pulling some other bullshit in the future.
Even this does get reversed (or shown illegal in the applicable juridiction) and I do end up shipping the project with Unity, I’ll always keep on “looking over my shoulder” with them and this has definitelly made it more likely that I will end up using Godot or Unreal on my next projects, if only because it has pushed me to properly put time aside to seriously try both out and I’m pretty sure they’ll be better than Unity at least for some kinds of game.
Having been in the business of software since the 90s and following what’s been done under the cover of IP Law (which would apply here given that the installation of software has been deemed a copy of copyrighted material), I’ve seen a lot of shit that would seem not to make legal sense be accepted by courts (notice how EULAs in shrinkwrapped software are deemed “an attempt at changing the implicity contract of a sale after the sale” in jurisdictions like Germany ut in others like some US states they’ve been found to be legally enforceable) so all this stuff has to be legally clarified in an iron clad way before it can be trusted.
I mean, even open source software with the most well written and ironclad license has been shown to have problems because of Patents (another bit of IP Law heavilly abused in the last 3 decades).
Nope, but I know my rights. And as a buyer I have rights.
Because if there’s one thing I learned from my own contact with the Law (not being a lawyer myself) is that sometimes it is indeed exactly as it makes logical sense (in which case it would basically be as you describe) and sometimes it’s not and depending in the jurisdiction you might even have to end up in Court to figure it out.
I know, and I agree. But on this thing I am pretty sure for a couple of reasons:
I had to interact with a lawyers for something similar both while working and in private matters
In Italy there are precedents, and with big companies (true, maybe the process is a little slower than what it should be)
If you think about it, it anyone can change retroactively the contract, then contracts are useless garbage and no business could be done.
I don’t know about you, but I won’t stake my company’s future on presuming the applicable Law matches common sense, even with the assurances from a non-lawyer on the Internet.
My point being that we won’t be sure until somebody gets legal clarification on this, maybe even gets their day in Court over this, and after that then all of us to whom that legal clarification does apply (and me being in the EU also, it would probably apply to my country as it does to Italy) can rest easy (or not, depending on what the clarification says) … until Unity tries something else.
Me neither, but I know what the law say in my country and I know that if I sign a contract, the seller cannot alter it after.
I know for a fact that if we agree that you sell me something at 1 euro/month, you cannot decide in 2024 that the charge for 2023 is 2 euro/month. You can ask 2 euro/month for 2024 and sign a new contract, but 2023 it a done deal. And if you put a clause in the contract that state “the seller can change retroactively the charge and pretend the difference on arrears” the clause is automatically void since it is a vexatious terms that are forbidden by law by default.
Maybe Unity can pull the trick in the US where, given the prohibitely high costs of the justice system, a small indie studio would pay and a big corporation can discuss, but in EU I don’t think Unity can really pull the trick. Or any of these kind of tricks.
Meanwhile I’ll keep on slowly decoupling the code from its Unity dependencies on the project I have and trying out Godot and the Unreal Engine, just in case and because I have to, as I pointed out, protect myself from the risk of them pulling some other bullshit in the future.
Even this does get reversed (or shown illegal in the applicable juridiction) and I do end up shipping the project with Unity, I’ll always keep on “looking over my shoulder” with them and this has definitelly made it more likely that I will end up using Godot or Unreal on my next projects, if only because it has pushed me to properly put time aside to seriously try both out and I’m pretty sure they’ll be better than Unity at least for some kinds of game.
Yep, trust is way harder to gain and really easy to lose.
I would like to be a bit more certain that at point were the heavilly-rigged IP lLaw (with associated things like EULAs and “by using this software you accept it’s TOS”) crosses with Contract Law, obviously breaking of contract law with retroactive changes is laughed out of court even when the legal argument was made that the Unity Runtime is licensed separatelly from the Unity Editor and as the installation of a game that contains parts of the Unity Runtime is a copy of copyrighted material, then it’s up to Unity to determine the licensing conditions.
However after watching the complete legal shit show that’s been done around IP Law since at least the 90s (note how in almost 3 decades EULAs in software haven’t been clearly and definitivelly thrown out everywhere, given that they’re trying to “change the terms of the implicit contract which is a sale after the sale”), I’m not willing to risk my company until I’m sure.
I mean, if all this was for certainly ruled by Contract Law and only Contract Law, all you say makes perfect sense as that’s pretty mature even in cross-jurisdiction trade relations. However this stuff overlaps with IP Law (as I said, the installation of software in a computer is considered a copy of copyrighted material) and that one has been heavilly rigged and abused for decades, including in situations where Contract Law would seem to apply (EULAs in software being a pretty big one).
You seem to be going from the starting from the point that the Law makes sense and is fair, which understandable … if you aren’t well acquainted with any lawyers ;)
I would like to be a bit more certain that at point were the heavilly-rigged IP lLaw (with associated things like EULAs and “by using this software you accept it’s TOS”) crosses with Contract Law, obviously breaking of contract law with retroactive changes is laughed out of court even when the legal argument was made that the Unity Runtime is licensed separatelly from the Unity Editor and as the installation of a game that contains parts of the Unity Runtime is a copy of copyrighted material
Well, I obviously understand you and would say that it is the right thing to do.
And I only talk about my country and by extension think that maybe it is the same in all the EU even if I know that, while there should be an uniform law it is not always that way.
But even if the Unity Editor and the Unity Runtime are licensed separately, this just make 2 license so 2 contracts, nothing else. But both licenses must follow the law of the country they sell it.
then it’s up to Unity to determine the licensing conditions.
Which is true.
What I am saying is that what Unity cannot do is to do a retroactive change to the terms of the license.
However after watching the complete legal shit show that’s been done around IP Law since at least the 90s (note how in almost 3 decades EULAs in software haven’t been clearly and definitivelly thrown out everywhere, given that they’re trying to “change the terms of the implicit contract which is a sale after the sale”), I’m not willing to risk my company until I’m sure.
I mean, if all this was for certainly ruled by Contract Law and only Contract Law, all you say makes perfect sense as that’s pretty mature even in cross-jurisdiction trade relations. However this stuff overlaps with IP Law (as I said, the installation of software in a computer is considered a copy of copyrighted material) and that one has been heavilly rigged and abused for decades, including in situations where Contract Law would seem to apply (EULAs in software being a pretty big one).
I am pretty sure that the EULA in Italy and EU is different from the one in US and the one in other countries.
So probably the EULA I accept is legal in my country and if there is some illegal terms they are void.
You seem to be going from the starting from the point that the Law makes sense and is fair, which understandable … if you aren’t well acquainted with any lawyers ;)
Let’s say that I had to interact with lawyers more than I’d liked to.
Kojima, the driving force of Metal Gear is gone. What is left is a corporate committee who through focus testing and guesswork try to keep the franchise on the road roughly in the same direction it has been going and avoid crashing into stuff.
They will make any new version look and feel as much as possible as the previous games, only deviating for committee-approved reasons of monetization, trend chasing, or marketing appeal.
What they will not and can not do is to strap a rocket to the roof of Metal Gear Solid, take a hard right and drive the car off the road and into the hills and launch it over Mount Everest. They don’t have the will, the auteur ability, or the trust of the fanbase.
Kojima could do that, which is what made the franchise what it is today.
MGS is dead, but Konami owns the pelt. What comes out next is just taxidermy with animatronics.
As far as I’m concerned the series is definitively over. 5 was the final. You don’t really need Kojima for remakes, just a team of good devs who love the series. But I also don’t trust Konami to pull that simple thing off. What is with the really bad “remake” ports from all the game companies in the last few years? Is it that hard to remake a game?
As someone who thinks Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is the best Metal Gear since Solid 1*, I really do wish it had become an ensemble world. Platinum doing Raiden/Grey Fox. Imagine IOI making an ACTUAL stealth game set in that world. Hell, I could even see a timeline where Arkane made a game where you play as The Cobras. Instead, we just kept going back to the Snake well and had ever increasing dissonance between cutscene, boss, and normal gameplay characterizations.
As for bad remasters/remakes: A lot of that is that this is The COVID Year in terms of releases. These are most of the games that would have had most of their dev cycle during lockdown and were heavily delayed or had massive scope changes to meet release windows. Sometimes that means we get truly amazing games (BG3) and sometimes that means we have shovelware that just needs to avoid sunken cost fallacies.
And the other aspect is that a LOT of studios, particularly Japanese ones, are in the process of upgrading their tech. I loved Like a Dragon: Ishin (and am so excited for Gaiden next week). But that was a VERY small scope/ambition game (a mostly beat for beat remake of one of the lesser PS2 games) that was pretty openly about exploring Unreal Engine. And there have been a lot of games that are less open about “Hey, we are mostly dicking around to see if this tech works for us”.
*: 3 was awesome but very much “Empire Strikes Back”… in a lot of ways including the conspiratorial “So did the Creator actually write this? Because a lot of signs point to ‘no’”. And 5 was an awesome sandbox with no plot or pacing to speak of
I played the main series and never played the side, PSP games like peace walker, so I was completely lost when playing 5. I was wondering what this setting and people were for a while, until I realized I had to go back and read up on peace walker.
Having played Portable Ops (fine), Peace Walker (fine), and Acid 1 and 2 (FUCK YEAH): 5 was still mostly nonsense.
All you get from PW/PO (since PW largely felt like a redo of PO and PW was a prototype for the format of TPP):
This random lesbian was in love with The Boss but ended up fucking Huey and is Otacon’s mom. And somehow that is the least problematic portion of her arc.
Paz is basically the jailbait version of EVA in that she is a spy who betrays you but also everyone wants to fuck her but her true love is, and always will be, Big Boss. And don’t ask how old she is because nobody wants to know that.
Chico is your loveable sidekick that you never really gave a shit about but he is like 12
Big Boss has either stopped or started using Big Boss as a title for the umpteenth time because we can’t play as someone not called “Snake” and has something that may or may not be Outer Heaven built on an oil rig.
Don’t think too hard about why Skullface is basically just Hot Coldman but more of an edgelord.
A friend summed it up perfectly: Ground Zeroes works a LOT better if you pretend that Peace Walker didn’t exist and this is just “the adventures of Naked Snake”. Similar to how we never really know what Solid and Otacon did as an NGO before they became international terrorists in MGS2.
I hate it when developers make what they say are side games in a series essential to canon, especially when they don’t tell you they’re doing it or when they go into the side game not planning to make it canon and then decide it’s canon during or after development.
Or I should say, I hate it when developers make the next main series game assuming you’ve played the essential “side” game and leave out or half-ass their catch-up for people who haven’t played it. I call it “Chain of Memories syndrome” after when Kingdom Hearts made Chain of Memories essential to fully understanding KH2.
What they need to do is take whoever the next director of the game is going to be, strap them to a chair Clockwork Orange style and mix the entire Criterion Collection and Evangelion for about a year or two.
Then just for good measure have them write a page of names and slap them anytime a name nears anything of normal.
Then, and only then, should they be allowed to start working.
try to keep the franchise on the road roughly in the same direction it has been going and avoid crashing into stuff.
Based on their last attempt they couldn’t even manage that. Have we already forgotten that as soon as Kojima left the company, Metal Gear Survive came out?
PS, Kojima has a really cool Instagram where he posts his thoughts and stuff he likes, if anyone is a big fan and wants to sub to him. Dude has some radical tastes lol
I bought it for less than that from a pawn shop during the peak hate. I remember the pawn guy being like “that ones got real bad reviews” and I said “I’ll try any game for $14”.
I tucked it away for a year or so and then loved it.
“Hey gonks! Remember that game we released and was dirty as hell but you all gave up the eddies because we told you it was preem. We finally have the game we should have released just 3 years later. Go ahead and flatline your 200hr characters and reboot.”
Same. But I have wanted to explore other characters. My current one I made a baseball bat wielding, hard punching, aggressive nomad punk with a heart of gold, with some sniper secondary skills. Basically what I imagined a nomad would be like, with the skills I thought they’d have.
I kind of want to see what it’s like as full stealth or a corpo hacker or a street samurai katana wielder or knife thrower.
If you got 200hours out of release then clear you got your moneys worth out of the game and enjoyed it, promises not kept or not.
Personally the game could’ve been better but I certainly enjoyed the one 120ish hour playthrough I did and had no major issues other than some texture bugs or weird physics, I had a capable PC though not a last gen console trying to play at being modern.
And don't circlejerk over the dead horse that this game is unsalvageable because it had a shitty release. People forgave No Man's Sky, but the internet won't let this one go.
Shitty games with shitty releases go into oblivion, the game is obviously good.
I’m not criticizing the game, I’m criticizing the company and the billionaries that preside it and decided people swallow it all up if they launched a game in the state they did.
I agree but I think it took about this long from Cyberpunk released till there was a better outlook on No Man’s Sky and I bought both at release, I enjoyed both, but I’d say at release Cyberpunk was a better game at launch (I didn’t have any bugs I got lucky). NMS did much more work on content in the following years to where it’s barely the same experience. Has been awhile since I restarted Cyberpunk will do for 2.0 though. Maybe I haven’t caught much newer content and they added it but it seemed updates were tweaks / fixes than content.
if there was a movie that was 200 hours long and you chose to stay for the entire duration and not walk out, then you either enjoyed the movie or you need to learn about the sunk-cost fallacy
I did a heavily modded 90hr playthrough and loved it. Dealt with a ton of crashes though 😅 I’m planning on playing this vanilla finally, or very lightly modded for UI and stuff.
Yea I played vanilla release over 100 hours, then some ui/qol mods. Looking forward to a vanilla 2.0 and dlc run then maybe see what some of these overhaul mods are doing a few months after that once they’ve been patched up
PC launch play was mostly fine. Only Console launch, mostly caused by massive delusion about min. spec.s, was f'd up completely. The PC issues were also the easiest to fix and even when they could fix the Console issues, they had to convince the Console store's Owners that the relaunch wouldn't be a shit show. But then I play on PC and so expect similar to last time, once I buy it after it launches.
I’m actually a fan of the game. I’m excited to play it. I just find it funny they are saying they have made it so much better that they recommend starting over. My point is that they are saying they finally got a lot of things “right” in 2.0 that we were playing an inferior game with quite a few quaility issues. Probably due to deadlines, etc. I’m happy devs continue to improve based on sales and feedback to make it better.
No it’s a good game. I like it even with the qc issues because it’s ambitious. But the devs are basically admitting that they worked on it for 3 years to fullfill the original vision and it’s so much better that it’s worth starting over.
We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.
Allow me to translate:
We’re now publishing the terms that we were actually going for from the very beginning. We’ve always known that the flaming bag of shit that we laid on your doorstep was unreasonable. If it worked, it worked, but if it didn’t, it can stand in contrast to the new less shit terms that you’re either supposed to agree to or rewrite your whole game. Not like our PR was great before this gambit. What have we to lose?
Correct. The right course of action would be to backtrack this per download idea completely, fire the person who thought of this, and add a clause on their ToS that such bullshit will never happen again, and that of they broke that agreement, they will refund everyone affected by it.
I mean, they have a lot to lose. There are strong alternatives. Unreal and Godot are at the doorstep. Godot doesn't take anything at all, Unreal takes, but in a reasonable manner and it's of course on 3D a lot more powerful and also offers an asset store.
The games already developed and deep into development are unlikely to jump, but future games will have a huge argument against Unity now. Unreal could completely snap their necks now by putting into writing that they never do such move.
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