I don’t disagree that the whole thing is over the top, but they weren’t just selling bypass devices. They also admitted running a service that provided pirated game downloads. I think that’s where they fucked up, because even a lot of less restrictive countries would’ve popped them for directly supplying pirated games (even if the country didn’t have an issue with the DRM bypass).
Bowser also admits he and TeamXecuter “created and supported ROM libraries” for its customers to use through websites like MaxConsole.com and rom-bank.com.
As for why they didn’t go after anyone else, I don’t know. It could be laziness, it could be that others did a better job covering their tracks and the government doesn’t think they’ll get a conviction, or it could be those individuals are in countries that won’t extradite / prosecute even if there is evidence.
As I said, I think the sentences are bullshit, but I’m not sure Bowser got singled out. He just happened to be in a country that actually extradited him.
Exclusivity is bullshit. I had to wait ~7 years (IIRC) before I could play Borderlands 2, because it was Steam exclusive. I refuse to spend money on any game that’s not available on at least two launchers. (Or, ideally, doesn’t require a launcher at all.)
Why the fuck didn’t the launchers just have a standard API so that every game is available on every launcher? That would have been best for consumers, as it would’ve made exclusivity impossible for every launcher. Instead we have this awful system where it feels like 90% of games are exclusive either because of greed or laziness.
Most people seem to be at least aware of this fact, but they seem to be okay with it because it’s (at least not publicly known to be) paid exclusivity on Steam.
I always thought this was the strangest viewpoint. As a consumer, I’m inconvenienced by exclusivity exactly the same whether someone was paid or not. I’m really surprised that any consumer would care whether it’s paid. In my mind, if a consumer goes to their local store specifically to buy Product Y, and they find that the store doesn’t stock Product Y, they’re disappointed / upset no matter the reason it’s not stocked at that store. But apparently there are consumers out there who would withhold their opinion until they went home, did some research, and established whether the manufacturer of Product Y was paid to exclusively sell the product at another store. Only at that point would they be upset. If they learned that Product Y simply wasn’t stocked because the manufacturer refused to stock it in their local store, these consumers (apparently) remain happy that the system “works as intended.”
Also, most/all of the launchers encourage exclusivity by encouraging developers to make their games rely on a proprietary API. This encourages technical lock-in, and it’s basically a fee (in terms of development hours required) the developer needs to pay to launch the product on additional platforms. Consumers are apparently okay with this too, and I also find this strange.
Anyway, my opinion is that consumer view on launchers is wrong, obviously. Nearly all of them have features about them that encourage exclusivity, and they’re pretty much all bad for that reason.
It does feel crazy, but there are a surprising number of remasters that are only 5-6 years newer than the original. Bioshock 2 was remastered around 6 years after it came out. Arkham City was remastered 5 years after it came out. Darksiders was remastered about 5 years after it first came out.
I’m assuming this Fortnite release is probably on an updated engine (compared to the original) and maybe has updated models or something? In that sense I guess it’s just another remaster that’s only about 6 years newer than the original.
This seems counter to Microsoft’s gaming accessibility push though, doesn’t it? Now if some niche manufacturer wants to make a controller designed for use by people with some rare mobility condition, the manufacturer will have to go through extra hoops to get this license bullshit out of the way.
Nice job, Microsoft. We all know the ticket to accessibility is more hurdles.
I guess Samsung is still bad at this. I hope they’ve at least improved, though. Years ago, the Tizen code was declared to be “the worst code I’ve ever seen” by a security auditor.
No attempts against the Pixel are scheduled. That sure makes it sound like Samsung’s customized Android is less secure than the standard Android.
At least there’s hope that you can buy movies and shows physically so that can get something resembling proper ownership.
The PC games market is properly fucked. Ever since digital distribution took over, even if you buy a physical game, it’s just a fucking digital code (i.e. a rental).
I still think it was a bit stupid that consumers all jumped aboard the digital distribution train without demanding a less stupid system first.
Not every game has been cracked, though, so you can’t always remove the DRM.
My point, though, is more about what people want to buy. The games industry could’ve made digital games more resemble “real” ownership, where you could give the games to your kids, etc. Instead, we got games that aren’t legally transferable at all, and we decided that piracy groups should be instrumental to preservation. It just feels ridiculous. Would this system actually be any consumer’s top choice?
I think it depends on what client devices you have. Last time I checked, some content (like HDR) won’t play on Apple TV via Jellyfin unless you spring for a relatively expensive paid client (like Infuse). The open source client won’t work.
I’m only interested in one-time purchases, so I just saw the $75 and decided it was too expensive. It’s also just a hurdle to get over. Right now, my Apple account doesn’t even have a payment method associated with it, because I generally just use free / FOSS apps.
Is there more to the thread? It’s just showing me the one message linked, and it doesn’t say anything there about reaching out to Epic / not hearing back.
So we also don’t know if the developer had reached out to Epic besides this post? Isn’t it possible, then, that this is the first Epic has heard of this as well?
I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have an account on Twitter, but literally the only Tweet it shows me is the one linked, where she says that she hasn’t gotten royalties. It says this:
btw I’ve got no royalty payment for Hatoful Boyfriend from Epic since they acquired Mediatonic back in spring 2021. I don’t think the sales have been zero for two years?🤔
I noticed people in the comments saying that Epic didn’t respond to her, but I didn’t understand why people were saying that – from the only Tweet I can see, shown above, there’s nothing saying that she reached out to / didn’t get a response from Epic.
So, I asked here in this thread if there are more Tweets, thinking that there must be more but Twitter just doesn’t show them to me. Because otherwise it makes no sense to assume that she reached out to Epic / didn’t get a response, based just on the Tweet linked. So, I posted,
Is there more to the thread? It’s just showing me the one message linked, and it doesn’t say anything there about reaching out to Epic / not hearing back.
Then I got a reply, from you, that opened with “No.” I read that as you saying that aren’t any more Tweets, and so I asked why everyone was assuming she’d reached out to Epic / hadn’t gotten a response. Because that’s not a logical assumption to make based on the text contained in the single Tweet linked here.
Now you’re telling me there are more Tweets. I still cannot see them and do not know what they say, though, which is why I was asking in the first place.
(Edit: I see there is now an image of the thread in this post. That was not there when I asked the initial question about if there were most posts.)
Maybe it was reverse psychology. Epic is trying to destroy the competition by giving them money. Then, paranoid gamers will refuse to use or support Godot, because there’s a connection to Epic.
I think Epic definitely fucked some things up, but I really think the takeaway is that, if anyone has any hope for competing, they are absolutely going to need exclusives. This has been studied in the economics literature. In order for a newcomer to compete, you need exclusives. The dominant platform will automatically get the big titles, and players aren’t going to switch platforms to get the same titles they could’ve gotten without switching.
How did Valve get gamers to switch from physical boxed games to Steam? Exclusives. There was actually a digital distribution platform that predated Steam (run by Stardock), and it was more feature complete than Steam when Steam came out. But it didn’t have any exclusives, so it died out in favor of the (at the time) more spartan Steam platform.
Love or hate exclusives, nobody ever gets anywhere in the marketplace without them.
There have been multiple games, mostly in the past now, that announced launching on certain platforms, including Steam, then had to backtrack and reveal that Epic bought their exclusivity and that gamers that were already expecting to get the game from one platform, now wouldn’t be able to.
Valve did a similar thing to this. I don’t know if you remember the original state of Half-Life and Counter Strike, but they originally didn’t require any launcher. Then, one release, Valve announced that the old version was going to be shutdown and they would require Steam for now on. People had already purchased the game and been playing it outside of Steam, so they were pretty pissed that all the sudden they needed this launcher / account to keep playing a game that didn’t require one out of the box. I was especially pissed, because I think I was the only one in my group of friends that realized that they had unilaterally removed the option to resell / give away your game, and that seemed like bullshit to me, because I occasionally gave my old games to my friends when I was tired of them. The boxed copies of Half-Life and CS allowed for resell/transfer of the game, but they forced everyone over to Steam with an update and the Steam terms removed the option to transfer the game to someone else. Plus, Steam was an absolute awful piece of software at the time, and that made everything worse.
I’m guessing this also happened to other games as well. There was a period there where people would pre-order a game assuming it would work as a traditional, standalone boxed game. But then they’d get the game and it would unexpectedly require Steam, and the buyers would be pissed. Nowadays you just assume a launcher will be required, but it came as a shock / infuriated / disappointed people back when it first started being a thing that PC games were tied to launchers / accounts (and people hated Steam / launchers). Lots of people felt duped.
Anyway, I’m of the opinion that it’s bad for software to ever require or be tied to any launcher, even worse if it’s a third party launcher. It makes the future of games access muddy (What if Steam shuts down? What if there’s a court injunction against Steam requiring it to cease operations? What if my country blocks access to Steam?) and also adds extra layers of insecurity (last time I looked, there was at least one security issue in Steam that remained unpatched since around 2012).
So, to me, switching from Steam to EGS just meant consumers were getting punched in the nuts by a different company. I’d be happy if they weren’t getting punched in the nuts at all.
I’d say of the current players, GOG is among my favorites since they make the launcher component optional.
In general, I’ve just been disappointed that all the launchers have taken off. I get the convenience factor, but consumers also had some rights that were taken away with the move to launchers. Plus the fact that some of the launchers have terrible security practices, as I mentioned, and that makes it so even a game with great security has unnecessarily increased attack surfaces. And launchers also screw over people with limited internet access, which is admittedly fewer people throughout the world every day, but there are still military personnel, etc. that just cannot reasonably be expected to access the internet on the whim of a launcher.
I suspect we’ll see the same thing happen with Epic that happened with Steam, where people end up forgetting all about the early fucked up stuff and, in the end, just rolling with it. Some years down the line, people won’t even remember how much people were pissed off about the early days of Epic. As an example, any time I mention that I’m not a huge fan of Steam, based partly on remembering the forced move of existing / new games in the early days, people just shrug it off and act like it was fine for Valve to do that since, years later, we got the current, well liked iteration of Steam.
And that’s kinda how I feel about Epic. If Steam can ultimately get a pass for completely ruining the experience of a few games by forcing people to use it against their will in the early days, why shouldn’t Epic get a chance at a pass in the end too? Maybe it turns out to be great years down the line? The only reason we have the Steam that’s well liked today is because consumers put up with it in the early days. Would we be better off if Steam failed early on? If consumers had held their ground when they hated it and forced it to close down? I kinda doubt it. I hate launchers, but, if Valve didn’t make the dominant one, someone else would’ve, and I probably wouldn’t be any happier with it.
Maybe in 20 years EGS will be fucking amazing, and when you tell someone you don’t like it because of what they did with Metro, etc., they’ll look at you the way people look at me when I talk about Steam now, lol.
The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
Is there a reliable way to detect the presence of AI content in games? I’m guessing that if you submitted a game to Steam with some AI generated content mixed in, nobody would ever know, so a rule against it would be effectively pointless anyway.
That will only get you OS updates, though. Vendor updates sometimes include security patches or bug fixes for the modem, etc., and you won’t get those.
Most people don’t care, but it’s something to keep in mind about the security of EOL devices, even when they’re running a different ROM.
I am looking at getting one as my next phone when my Pixel 7 reaches EOL. Hopefully the Fairphones are still around by then and hopefully they get more support from custom ROMs. I know CalyxOS supports the Fairphone 4
Regarding updating software on the Pixel after EOL, keep in mind that those updates might still result in unpatched vulnerabilities. After EOL, Google will no longer release patches for anything SoC-related, and using a third party ROM will only get you fixes for OS issues. (That’s why Graphene isn’t supporting the Pixel 3 anymore – they’re not considered secure.)
There are various models of wired headphones with easily replaced cabling. E.g., Sennheiser, Audio Technica, and Bose all make (or have in recent memory made) over / on-ear headphones with detachable / replaceable cables that just use a detachable connector at both ends instead of being permanently attached.
Sony and others make in-ear earbuds with detachable cables as well.
The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months....
The alternative was to not use a launcher, which is what most people wanted at the time. Gabe even came out and said, after the Steam launch of Half-Life 2, that the Steam situation was bad. Some reviews of HL2 went as far as to deduct points from their reviews based on the fact that Steam made the experience of playing the game worse than it would have been if you could have just installed and played the game without a launcher.
Also, there was a launcher that predated Steam and was more mature and polished than Steam at the time. It was Stardock’s Stardock Central, which came out in 2001(about three years before Steam) and began offering third party games for sale in 2004.
There were better alternatives when Steam launched, though. Stardock Central was more mature and feature complete (it launched ~3 years earlier than Steam), but, even so, many people actually preferred to not have a launcher at all at that time. The thing that really got people using Steam was that there were big name games requiring it, but people didn’t like it. When Half-Life 2 launched and required Steam, almost every PC gaming magazine ran a story about how Steam made the experience worse than it would have been if the game didn’t require a launcher at all.
I’m not comparing the current state of EGS to the state of Steam from 2004.
My point is this. Steam came out in 2004. At the time, consumers thought it sucked. A lot. Gamers filled forums with posts about how they were avoiding it, hoped it would die off, etc. Gaming magazines like CGW wrote articles about how it made the experience of installing and playing games worse than the old way of installing and playing games. Even so, consumers kept using it, and Steam eventually improved and won people over.
EGS came out in 2018. At the time, consumers thought it sucked. A lot. Gamers filled forums with posts about how they were avoiding it, hoped it would die off, etc. Gaming websites wrote articles about how it made the experience of installing and playing games worse than the old way of installing and playing games. Even so, will consumers keep using it and will it eventually improve and win people over? Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
Installing games from disc was extremely popular when Steam launched, though, and, even though it was what consumers said they preferred, it eventually got replaced by Steam once enough games required Steam. The reality was that consumers, even if they didn’t like Steam and preferred the old way, weren’t willing to give up on PC gaming in order to avoid it.
If Epic can get enough games to require EGS, I really think the same thing could happen a second time. Consumers will be pissed off, but they’re not going to give up on PC games. They’ll just go along with it.
At no point did I say Epic should get a pass. I’m saying that, just because people don’t like it and want it to go away, that doesn’t mean it will. Steam received the same negative reception and ended up being the dominant force. Gamers don’t like Windows 11, but they’ll use it when it’s required. Gamers didn’t like Windows 10. They used that too.
I’m not trying to excuse Epic in any way. What I’m saying is that the idea that consumers will refuse to use or support EGS just because it sucks is a pipedream. Consumers have always, and probably will always, give in and use services that are required to play the games they want to play. They used Steam back when they hated it. They’re using EGS even when they hate it. They use UPlay, Origin, and whatever else when it’s required.
EGS may well end up being the dominant force in PC gaming. Being hated or shitty is not guaranteed to stop that. That’s what I’m saying. If being hated or shitty early on were something that stopped a platform’s success, Steam would not have been successful.
But its launch was anything but smooth. I HATED steam when it launched as a requirement for HL2. I had dialup and the experience was utter shit. I recall being so upset at what a pain it was.
Nothing about epic has ever been as frustrating as the early life of steam.
This is exactly what I think of when people argue that EGS shouldn’t be supported or will definitely fail. These days, most gamers agree that Steam is good. They like Steam. Early on, though, Steam was really bad, and gamers really hated it.
Should gamers have avoided Steam early on, when it sucked and they hated it, so that it would have failed? Or was it better to support it early on so that we ultimately got the Steam that we have now? I dislike both EGS and Steam, but the reality is that the marketplace will probably be better for everyone if EGS survives and actually has a substantial market share to compete with Valve’s market share.
I know everybody hates the exclusives thing, but it’s actually probably necessary and is based on market studies of the games market. There was an economics journal paper years ago that basically argued that exclusives are an equalizer of sorts. That is, if you’re the dominant player in the market, you don’t need to buy exclusives. You’re, as the dominant player, going to get the big games anyway. As a smaller player, though, nothing is guaranteed, and, in general, nobody is ever going to switch platforms just to play the same games on the newer, smaller platform that they were already playing on the older, bigger platform. You’ll need exclusives to get people to switch, even if your platform is as good or better than the dominant one. (I’m not saying EGS is as good – but I’m saying people wouldn’t switch anyway.)
Why are landlords worse than, say, water utility companies? They also monetize basic human necessities.
I think the reality is that basic necessities are going to be monetized. People are going to own land and houses, and they’re going to try to monetize them when they own them. Even people who are owner-occupants often make decisions based on increasing the value of their homes, and that makes it harder for the next person to be able to buy a house.
OnePlus does not do a good job keeping up with security updates, though.
Sure, a custom ROM can fix some of that (for security issues that are part of Android), but the bigger problem is that there are hardware-specific security issues that can’t be patched in a timely manner unless the vendor bothers to do so.
I guess the question is how long is “long-term”? It would probably be okay if they’re talking 100 years. I’m assuming these accounts are non-transferrable, just like accounts on Steam and other services, so it would usually be safe to delete a 100 year old account, as the original owner is likely dead by that point. It’s pretty unlikely they mean 100 years, though…
Also, I absolutely hate that accounts aren’t transferrable. As far as these digital services are concerned, you’re not even allowed to leave your games to your children!
Utterly insane (lemmy.world)
Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable (kotaku.com)
Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite’s history with over 44.7 MILLION players jumping in and 102 MILLION hours of play. (twitter.com)
People thinking Fortnite is dying are in shambles right now
Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'
Samsung Galaxy S23 hacked two more times at Pwn2Own Toronto (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Samsung and Other Manufacturers Disable Phones Bought on Gray Markets: A Consumer Nightmare (nomadscrolls.net)
Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase. (lemmy.world)
We are contacting you regarding a past Prime Video purchase(s). The below content is no longer playable on Prime Video....
Netflix is planning to raise prices… again (www.theverge.com)
Hatoful Boyfriend dev has not received any royalty payments from Epic games since Spring 2021 (twitter.com)
Report: Fall Guys dev Mediatonic "decimated" by Epic layoffs (www.gamedeveloper.com)
Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp (kotaku.com)
Dusk Developer David Szymanski: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly (twitter.com)
If I’m honest, I don’t disagree....
Trump may have violated copyright law by selling mugshot merchandise (nypost.com)
The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
Tim Sweeney says Epic Games Store is open to devs using generative AI (www.gamedeveloper.com)
Google Pixel 8 series could get a big price hike in Europe (www.androidpolice.com)
Leaks suggest that the Pixel 8 prices in Europe would be as follows (23% VAT included):...
Does anyone here have a Fairphone? How has your experience been?
I am looking at getting one as my next phone when my Pixel 7 reaches EOL. Hopefully the Fairphones are still around by then and hopefully they get more support from custom ROMs. I know CalyxOS supports the Fairphone 4
Epic Games Store is offering developers 100% of revenue for six months of exclusivity (www.videogameschronicle.com)
The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months....
Backblaze increases storage costs to 0.6ct/GB or 6$/TB, but offers free downloads
I’ve just received this E-Mail from Backblaze, announcing a slight increase in storage cost....
No one really understands our struggle (lemmy.world)
OnePlus just fixed a phone screen problem not even Apple or Samsung have solved (www.techradar.com)
ASUS is apparently killing the ability to root present and future Zenfone, Updated (www.androidauthority.com)
Update from Asus...
Recommendations for IP camera without proprietary app to setup?
I am looking for an IP PoE camera. The thing is, it must work out of the box with something like ONVIF or at least give video stream right away....
Ubisoft reportedly deleting customer accounts with purchased games if they have been inactive for too long (twitter.com)
Michael @LegacyKillaHD...