I got enough enjoyment out of it for what little I spent a lifetime ago. I go see whats new every couple years, which is usually quite a lot. The game is still a disaster, but it’s a strangely interesting disaster.

There have been some bad Humble Choice bundles in the past, but this was the first time I felt insulted by one.

For me, much of the fun is making progress. i never finished the first game because I kept getting lost and stuck and unable to progress for extended periods. In a From Software game I can spend weeks on a single boss and masochistically enjoy every moment because I know what I have to do. The problem I had with Hollow Knight was I kept finding myself completely at a loss about where to go or what to do. I would spend days retreading the same empty caverns looking for a clue or a new path and not finding any. When I knew what I had to do, I enjoyed it immensely, but progression was often too obscure and my interest slowly evaporated.

It shipped with Denuvo and I don’t pay for malware. It’s the first Civ game I haven’t bought at launch. I’m including the original.

There was a time I was okay with their DLC policy. It kept their games fresh for years for very reasonable prices, assuming you bought them as they came out or waited for deep discounted sales.

But then they got greedy. They raised prices, the quality fell through the floor and games got worse instead of better, and they kept trying to sell less and less for more while clearly cutting corners that should never be cut. It’s disappointing how far they’ve fallen. I hope someday they can recover their old magic, but I don’t expect that. Enshittification comes for everything under capitalism eventually.

You can download it and play it. “Released” is something of a misnomer when it comes to software.

I would also rather not play a game than pay money for something infected with Denuvo. I wish the Kazan developers would reckon that.

I’m still a sucker for Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3, but the HoI and Vicky followups have been stinkers. Their modern DLC pricing is also unhinged. I hope they will turn things around, but I don’t expect them.

No matter how you measure it, global sexually repressive puritanism always traces back to the US.

It has kernel level anti-cheat malware that does not work for it’s stated purpose and it requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0.

It is already very much fucked up.

Secure Boot and TPM were always about DRM. This is worse than Denuvo and we should not be okay with it.

So Valve says the processors - such as Stripe and PayPal - pressed the issue based on pressure from MasterCard (and possibly Visa). MasterCard says they had nothing to do with it. Itch says that Stripe was directly responsible in their case with a blanket ban on anything generally sexy, but that Stripe blamed their banking partners.

So Stripe, at least, is directly responsible but insists they are under outside pressure. This means the pressure is coming from one or more actual banks. Since we don’t have names, we have to do some research to find out who Stripe works with. The possibilities I was able to dig up on a quick search include:

• Citigroup
• Wells Fargo
• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• Evolve Bank & Trust

It seems clear that this has nothing to do with legality in any jurisdiction and that some powerful financial institution is forcing their twisted, puritanical morality on anyone they can at the behest of like-minded authoritarian terrorists. One or more of the above institutions are most likely at fault.

Unfortunately, the alternative is that they cease to exist almost instantly. This is what happens when we allow monopolies and trusts.

It wasn’t Itch.io’s fault, but the fact that payment processing has been globally monopolized and can force it’s own arbitrary will on anyone without recourse.

Blame Visa and MasterCard and the christofascist scum from Collective Shout, who is responsible for pressuring the processors into harming the stores and artists.

Outer Worlds reminded me of one of those cheap jewel-case-only games you’d find in a bargain bin at the Future Shop in the 90s. It was worth maybe $20 when it was new, as it was rather dull and obviously unfinished. Reducing their price to $70 USD (which is still mad) isn’t going to improve their pre-sales much. The first game doesn’t have a great reputation and neither does Microsoft. Anything over $50 is incredibly ambitious in this economy.

Steam has no power. They are beholden to a very particular monopoly that can get away with anything it wants and is currently being manipulated by unethical evangelical fascists.

Moral judgement or suppression of fiction/artistic expression is deeply and profoundly unethical. How you or I or anyone else feels about something that isn’t “real” is inconsequential. If you allow any line to be crossed in this, then every line can and will be crossed.

A story-based, immersive, first-person Hellraiser game? I am honestly speechless. I was expecting another cheap asymmetric PvPvE multiplayer game, not something that appears to have actual care and passion behind it.

It’s been evolving quite a bit, though it has stalled out the last few months. The developer recently wrote a blog that the next update will be enormous as it reworks almost everything in the game, hence the lack of incremental updates lately.

There are alternatives like Manor Lords that can scratch that itch. Ones that aren’t by a predatory, anti-consumer company and aren’t infected with Denuvo malware.

Icarus is a surprisingly great survival game. If you like the genre, it’s worth a shot, especially if it’s on sale.

Waning interest in Ubisoft. Everything they touch is painfully generic and uninteresting. On top of that, they infect the games with malware while charging top dollar. But sure, blame the consumers for your lack of vision, passion, business sense, and technical acumen. See how that pays off, Yves.

It’s still infected with Denuvo malware, so even if the gameplay weren’t a disaster the answer would still be “no.”

You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.

Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.

I don’t think you should be allowed to access your cars engine unless the manufacturer wants you in there.

You don’t buy a hamburger and remove the pickles or add extra ketchup.

One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less

Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.

Krafton has a history of misleading, lying to, and screwing over developers. Nothing they say is worth the bandwidth used to transmit it. Given the timing and other statements, it seems abundantly clear that this is nothing more than a brazen attempt to steal a quarter of a billion dollars from the developers.

This is a good policy. They destroy everything they touch, anyway, including their acquired studios.

The only Fallout games worth playing.

Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.

There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.

I also got a 9070 XT recently, but at MSRP. I’m done supporting NVidia.

While it’s great that they’re doing well on the only truly open gaming platform, it’s a shame that they’re being rewarded for infecting their games with anti-consumer malware. Any company that uses Denuvo lacks moral fibre and deserves to fail.

Both. Definitely both.

Or better yet, consider a SteamDeck instead of supporting Nintendo in any way, shape, or form.

Contractors never count in layoff numbers, so this number would be much, much worse if you included them. The actual job losses could easily be more than doubled.

Get a Steam Deck. The existence of Family Sharing alone makes it a much better choice for portable family gaming.

Nintendo has numerous major anti-consumer problems, from game ownership, to hardware quality and longevity, to their abusive behavior towards fans, consumers, and competitors. It’s not worth it, there are better options.

The maximum discount you get is dependent on how long you’ve been a subscriber. 20% requires one year or longer of membership.

I use it about once every two months. Most recently, Clair Obscur.

I want to respond in a rational, reasonable way, but this is so factually incorrect and utterly unhinged I am not sure where to even start. Ordinarily I’d be all about dumping on Bethesda, too.

Yes. They do it with the monthly subscriptions, too.