Guy comes into the company and uses illegal, fraudulent methods to take it over. He then demoted the co-owners (and founders) to mere "employees" so they could be fired. The plan was to then sell the company to a big publisher and walk away with all the money.
There's a bunch of articles and videos that go over how it happened. It's not too different from what happened to Interplay back in the day. Here's one overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Xu4GvpN9U
Technical error? A computer glitch doesn’t create ads, someone wrote that code and the only error was that they weren’t planning on rolling it out yet.
Exactly. Ads were created, the tooling was written into the game, and only then could a ‘technical error’ be responsible for activating the ads at the wrong time.
The ad is intentional. When it appeared is the issue. I’ve seen similar ads in multiple games when at the title screen.
Halo will pop an ad for new content, battle pass sales, etc. Hitman had ads for new content. NHL 23 showed ads for new content… All on the opening screens before getting in-game. I imagine the bug here is that the popup was triggered by an overlay or menu transition without excluding it during gameplay.
Also, it’s not like it was an ad for Pepsi or something. It was an Assassin’s Creed game showing an ad for an Assassin’s Creed sale.
Please, please, please just make gambling-focused monetization models illegal. This shit literally just exists to prey on those with poor impulse control and should not have gotten away with existing as long as it has.
We need to get back to the old days, where you bought a game and that was that. I don’t mind paying additional for DLC later on, but only if it adds to the game. Not any of this loot box/character clothing/additional cars/shark card bullshit.
No, not really. I mean if you want to give me them as additional bonuses or whatever, without any real world cost, then no harm no foul. But it’ll be a cold day in hell when I spend real world money on virtual clothing for a character in a video game. Ditto with cars (excluding the game itself).
I mean, exactly how it use to function. Release a new game. If there is really enough content to warrant a paid product, just put that into the next title. Instead what we are getting is developers excluding content from the base game to release it a year later for a quick buck.
What is the difference, other than the pricing, between content being excluded from the base game and sold a year later as an expansion and content being excluded from the base game to be sold as a different game a year later? Why is one okay and not the other? Why is the one that is cheaper for consumers the bad one?
I am happy about the raise of popularity of the new handheld PC consoles, but still Windows on handheld device is a deal breaker for me.
I know Steam Deck is not perfect, but the proton compatibility layer, the OS and the console-like experience is something I would pay extra money for, if other manufacturers adopted it.
Yeah, I 100% agree, I have been an exclusive Linux gamer for a few years now. It helps that I do not really play online. Just the other day, it kind of blew my mind when I thought about how far gaming on Linux has come. I think most gamers could switch over to Linux and be just fine.
A device having Windows is a deal breaker? seems like an odd requirement to have set in stone couldn’t you plug in a USB stick with linux loaded on and install your linux distribution of choice onto these gadgets
You don’t exude an air of having experience, to say the least. Windows is a deal breaker for plenty of power users who have used it for 20+ years.
You just made a random assumption that Linux could literally work on anything. Yeah, it mostly can, but support is a good thing. I don’t want to be recompiling the kernel and troubleshooting driver issues.
It’s not just that Steam OS is Linux, is also that Steam OS has put lots of thought into working well on a handheld.
Desktop mode on the Steam Deck is usable, and being able to use Desktop Mode is great, but Game Mode is what makes the SD great.
Now you can do something similar with Windows (q.v. Big Picture mode), but from what I’ve heard about the Asus Ally, it’s a bit clunkier. Asus and Lenovo just don’t have the access to the OS to do a true Game Mode equivalent.
Considering that XBox is apparently “Windows without Windows” under the hood, I’m sure it could be done, it’s just not as easy.
Windows is ok on my desktop PC (even though I’m thinking of going Linux the next time I upgrade it), but it’s not very pleasant on handheld devices.
The Steam OS was created the way you can use it similar to PS or Xbox console. It’s focused on simply accessing and playing your games, with great UI, full controller support and no unnecessary bloat. You still have a desktop mode to use the device as a regular PC, so the option is there.
I dont want to deal with all the windows stuff on my handheld console, I just want to play games.
I think the implication is more of the fact that having a supported OS gaming handheld distribution is preferable to Windows. It’s so much smoother with controls being pre-configured for me and being able to suspend on the fly. I’m sure there’s loads of other things that I don’t even think about … I would imagine the optimizations.
SteamOS is the main reason why I like the SteamDeck. I would be quite happy if there’s another Linux distro or if there’s great Windows support. I think when if that happens, then the consumer adoption of these would skyrocket.
On the contrary, you should be paying less, since you don’t have to pay for a Windows 11 license. And while Steam can charge whatever they want for their Steam OS license, it shouldn’t be as much since they haven’t had to develop a full fledged OS.
Windows, ad delivered by OEM like Lenovo and Asus, comes with additional third party bloat/spyware that eat resources but gives extra money to the OEM. These money are used by OEM to either cut the price of the windows license key or cut the overall price to the customers if Microsoft has already a special agreement with the OEM to provide free keys.
Exactly. They’re maybe the minority but every one who played D2 and D3 with me along the years have given up on D4 after a month. They preferred going back to D2R.
I wonder what % of the player base has disappeared from the game since launch.
My gorlfriend pre-ordered the diablo 4 deluxe edition (don't ask) and she maybe played 6 hours. She also played like 60 hours of diablo 3 since. I never played diablo, so idk, i just watched her play the other day and one of her 30 something blizzard friends played diablo 4
I had a legitimately enjoyable time playing through the story. The open world (at that point) was fun to explore. Then the entire game fell off a cliff as soon as I finished the main story content and tried to get into the ‘end game’. It’s clear they had no real plan for what to do with it and many of the decisions made the felt ok while leveling, did not scale at all with an end game loop.
Considering the price of a 4070 vs the 7800XT, the 4070 makes a lot more sense where I live.
But yes, the way AMD makes their software open to use (FSR, FreeSync) and they put DisplayPort 2.1 on their cards, they create a lot of goodwill for me.
The only thing giving me pause about ATI cards is their ray tracing is allegedly visibly worse. They say next gen will be much better, but we shall see. I love my current non ray tracing card, an rx590, but she’s getting a bit long in the tooth for some games.
I would have been so jealous. Being able to click “3d acceleration” felt so good when I finally upgraded. But I was 12, so my dad was in charge of pc parts. Luckily he was kind of techy, so we got there. Being able to run Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II with max settings is a day I’ll never forget for some reason, lol.
Not since, oh before most of Lemmy was born. I’m old enough to remember when Nvidia were the anti-monopoly good guys fighting the evil Voodoo stranglehold on the industry. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
yeah, that’s pretty much why I stopped buying Nvidia after GTX 1080. Cuda was bad in terms of their practice, but not that impactful since OpenCL etc can still tune and work properly with similar performance, just software developer/researcher love free support/R&D/money to progress their goal. They are willing to be the minions which I can’t ask them to not take the free money. But RTX and then tensor core is where I draw the line, since their patent and implementation will have actual harm in computer graphic and AI research space but I guess it was a bit too late. We are already seeing the results and Nvidia is making banks with that advantage. They are essentially just applying the Intel playbook but doing it slightly different, they don’t buy the OEM vendors, they “invest” software developers/researcher to use their closed tech. Now everyone is paying the premium if you buy RTX/AI chips from Nvidia and the capital boom from AI will make the gap hard to close for AMD. After all, R&D requires lots of money.
only thing keeping me is CUDA and there’s no replacement for it. I know AMD has I-forgot-what-it’s-called but it is not a realistic option for many machine learning tasks.
I rather like what he said. It is completely reasonable in my opinion.
Here is his full response:
“Yes, no f**king shit, I make games for a living,” he said. “If I didn’t want to earn money from them I wouldn’t charge money for them. I like the business model of ‘I want money so I make something that I think is worth money, and you pay me that money and you get the thing, and we’re all happy’ That’s it. There’s nothing complicated or hidden here.”
“If you don’t think the things I make are worth the money I charge, that’s completely ok,” he added. “Don’t buy them, or wait for a deep sale, or go the sneaky route and get them for free or whatever, and please tell me that so I can adjust the prices for whatever I release next.”
I first learned about the patient gamer lifestyle in like 2017.
I’ve been through No Man Skies, through Fallout 76s. I been seen big budget AAA games take over TV and now aren’t even heard of again (Anthem, all those superhero games like Gotham Knights and Avengers, Babylon’s Fall). I’ve watched multiplayer games rise and fall.
And if I’m ever curious, I wait and pick up the best version of the game when it is at 90% off.
And best part of this patient gamer lifestyle - games like this, I never even have to bother with. Doesn’t even phase me.
Join one of the PatientGamer communities, usually a good way to find out interesting older games you may have missed in the current and/or previous hype cycles.
I’m in the same boat, and I have been for a loooong time. It’s awesome, because, half the time, I see a game get super cheap, and I’m like, I’ve been waiting for this moment for 5 years (eg, Skyrim.) Then, the other half the time, some amazing game will just fly by my head and I won’t even notice, like, huh, wtf is this, $5 and like 50,000 YouTube videos about it…? (Eg, Just Cause 2.)
I put hundreds of hours into both Skyrim and JC2, for a total of like $10.
I don’t mind the PlayStation Network as a patient gamer, it’s worth it for me since I find at least 2 or 3 games a month there to keep me occupied and make it worth it
I didn’t even LEARN about the patient gamer lifestyle, just fell into it. There’s too many games and not enough time.
Also discovered my local library system, which has pretty much every game. Just borrow and played resident evil 4 remake from the library and I already have a hold placed on Mario rpg, so even new games I can get there
I have that Spider-Man game on my steam wish list, have seen it. 30, 40 % off but it’s not getting off my list until it’s 70% off. I am patient. I have other things to play.
The problem is many multiplayer games are fun on release and for a few months and then die off. If I get my moneys worth during that time im willing to pay full price. But I usually buy the game after a few days/weeks. But for single player games I also go the patient route.
What happened to owning something you’ve paid for forever?
These companies need to realize if they keep fucking over their paying customer, it’ll be more convenient for people to just pirate their product. At least FitGirl won’t knock on my door and demand me to delete his repack off my hard disk just because I haven’t visited his site in a while
I’m generally too lazy to even download the fitgirl repack of UbiSoft stuff. It is that convenient to not engage with UbiSoft cookie cutter crap at all.
He is fortunately not in Russia and presumably had no plans to return any time soon. Not sure why the article only mentions this in the very last sentence.
To me, blackflag was fun because it was single player (my fav AC game by far) . If they made another single player pirate game I would play the shit out of it
I would do unspeakable things to get a Sid Meier’s: Pirates! Live the Life style game, but with Black Flag controls/graphics.
Honestly, I got a Ship-of-the-Line in that game once when I was like 13, and every game from then on I hunted for them trying to capture a whole fleet, but they were pretty rare.
I want that feeling of “I’m hunting for a specific ship and country/cargo” again. Black flag is still my all time favorite AC
Thats a million dollar idea right there, too bad the game would be too big for an indie company to produce and triple A studios are too dumb to invest on new ideas.
I think it’s one of those “it will be profitable, but not in a short enough time for it to boost my career” kind of games. There is plenty of interest, just not enough for big sales right out the Gate, which is what AAA companies want.
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