2023 Reddit Refugee
On Decentralization:
“We no longer have choice. We no longer have voice. And what is left when you have no choice and no voice? Exit.” - Andreas Antonopoulos
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Indeed. I’ve been radicalised by Ubisoft.
In 2012 I bought Splinter Cell Blacklist for Wii U. Loved it so much I paid for all the DLC, just like I did with Assassin’s Creed III also on Wii U. Not too long ago, Ubisoft announced they were terminating legacy activation servers, and multiplayer modes would no longer function. But this also meant that without those activation servers, I would lose access to the DLC I paid for (as Ubisoft disclosed) because the game phones their activation servers and authenticates if I own the DLC. With enough public gamer outrage and pushback, Ubisoft walked back this decision… for now.
I thought I was safe buying physical games like I always have. I thought I was safe if the DLC was downloaded to the console. If this legacy server decommissioning went through, I would never be able to legally play the stuff I paid for and should own. Lesson learned, and every last ounce of ever wanting to play a modern Ubisoft game died in about ~2020 when they announced this. I don’t trust them, and I’m glad to see their company is beginning to tank because they stopped innovating and making good games like they used to decades ago.
When I wanted to replay Blacklist recently, I pirated it. The pirated copy ran better than the copy I own on Steam and Uplay - no crashes every 30 minutes (seriously, look it up), no bugs, etc. I didn’t want to play the Wii U copy because it’s a very slow console and the loading times for levels is insane (10+ minutes to load in due to the archaic Wii U architecture, back when I first played it in 2012).
I’m receiving a better service from the pirates rather than Ubisoft. Not that I want to play any modern Ubisoft games, but this whole “ownership” thing has made me question every digital purchase I’ve made. Now, I rip all my Blu Rays to PC and archive them. I buy on GOG, and only buy on Steam if I can’t get it on GOG.
Sorry for long story, Ubisoft just really pisses me off and they destroyed the last thread of good will I had for them. I’ll just stick to playing Beyond Good and Evil on my GameCube if I get nostalgic for the games they made that had heart and innovation.
It’s good to see clips from Loops as the Fediverse is trying to get their competitor to TikTok and whatever the other competitors from Facebook and YouTube are called. Loops can be a good thing but it’s still very nascent, so I appreciate OP making posts for Loops content to try to inform others and spread awareness. But I’d rather see an occasional cat video or something, as on Lemmy I prefer reading over watching stuff. I’m not the target audience for short form videos.
The short clip summarises the About page of GOG. https://www.gog.com/about_gog
Cool to spread awareness for people that are on those platforms and enjoy swiping through short videos. But here? Nah we’re okay. Plus I speculate the majority on Lemmy knows the value of GOG compared to more public places like Reddit.
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So the camera is third person, but you of course experience the game through the eyes of Senua! You feel her courage, her fear, and her strength and grit as she pushes forward to solve her problem (no spoilers here).
While you play as Senua, you also get to hear Senua’s voices. Lots of voices, and it is an eerie and tough experience to get through. They will uplift you, praise you, beat you down, scare you, make you feel rotten. And it’s absolutely best to play this game with headphones - trust me.
I can’t praise this game enough. For me, it was about an 8.5/10. I only had a few nitpicks with gameplay, but the story beats, heartrending story, wonderful voice and motion-capture acting, musical score, art direction, etc is such an experience.
I’ve had no excitement for this game since Ubisoft is such a disappointment of mediocrity. I grew bitter to them back when they announced the controversial shutting down of their legacy activation servers: this would prevent gamers from passing the online checks to play their games. Suddenly, despite me possessing a physical disc of Splinter Cell Blacklist on Wii U, I learned I would lose access to the DLC I paid for and “owned”. Certain missions would also become unplayable since you need online co-op. Ubisoft backpedaled after significant backlash from gamers, but since then I hesitate whenever I see them attached to any project.
I miss old Ubisoft. I’m playing Beyond Good & Evil 2003 on my GameCube for the first time, and this game is spectacular! Wish Ubisoft didn’t become evil, but it was inevitable.
Gracias homie. My spouse and I had to play Jedi Fallen Order on two separate PCs. It’d be great if we could couch co-op the campaign but it’s all good. We played several of the Halo games, I think primarily 1, 2, and 3, so Titanfall I’m hoping will be something that my spouse will want to try out. Thank you!
Edit: Heh. I’m the ideal customer because I have to buy two copies of a game sometimes. “Publishers love me for this ONE simple trick.”
I think you’d be fine just repasting whatever card you go with. My spouse has an EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3, and I have an MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Z Trio. Both cards have been fantastic for us. If I stick with Nvidia, I might try a different brand but so far I’ve been very happy with MSI.
I have no experience with AMD cards, but I’ve heard that Sapphire is highly regarded, probably great like EVGA.
Intel I don’t trust yet, so I’ll wait before I consider their Arc cards.
Fair enough, megacorps certainly are amoral in their decisions, which generally leads to evil outcomes.
Have you considered what happens to indie game devs, which aren’t megacorps? They list games on Gamepass to increase exposure. Microsoft takes a cut of the monthly fee and the rest is dispersed to the publishers and then all the way down to the game devs getting a small slice of the monthly fee.
When OP issues a charge back, the game devs aren’t getting paid. Is that fair to indie game devs? They don’t get paid if Microsoft and the various publishers don’t get paid.
Granted, I’m not justifying subscriptions. I personally dislike Games-as-a-Service as I prefer to own my games. But using a paid service, and then charging back against the company? Especially when it’s smaller game devs on that platform, too, hoping to make it big one day.
I don’t think indie devs should eat your ass, or the original commenter’s ass. Frankly, they need money to eat and pay their bills just like us plebs.
Agreed. I guess it’s that value proposition: if you have the time to play, and you play their whole catalog and have a blast, that’s $16.99 well spent.
As for me I love owning my games (where possible due to licensing and DRM), so the value isn’t there. But my spouse and I certainly took advantage of the heavy discounts they offered like the $1 month. I planned it so that I could try as many games as I could during that period and ended up buying them on GOG or Steam if I really loved them.
If their whole catalog is refreshed and they have another heavily discounted offer for 1 month, I’ll pick up a month just to try those games. But I definitely would never be a long term customer, I’d be a parasite loss-leader lol.
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They were one of my favorites over 20 years ago. I played many of their games: Splinter Cell, Beyond Good & Evil, Child of Light, Assassin’s Creed. I never played Far Cry, Prince of Persia, or got heavily into Rayman, but they certainly did make many gems.
Then somewhere around 10-15 years ago, they enshittified.
Now they’re an evil and anti-consumer corporation. I don’t buy their games anymore, which is a shame because I’d love the Beyond Good & Evil remaster and the upcoming sequel. I’d love to play Immortals Fenyx Rising. But their track record shows they will only release games that are: “safe” copy-and-paste games, not innovative, unoriginal, loaded with micro transactions and predatory telemetry, and equipped with DRM and kill switches.
Why purchase and play Immortals Fenyx Rising when in 10 years they’ll just take it away from me? Such a shame. I won’t participate in Ubisoft games anymore unless they course correct (read: They will never course correct).
Some games have already been posted, so I’ll share two games that really stuck with me:
- Life is Strange
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
I could mention Persona 5 Royal, but it’s such a hugely popular game so there’s no need to elaborate.
Life is Strange took me on a mystery journey, and I felt such nostalgia for my early days as a teenager. It’s an old game, but I won’t spoil it here. I’ll give a small plot. You’re Max Caufield, and you’ve returned to Arcadia Bay and see your old best friend, Chloe Price, whom you haven’t spoken to in years. She gets into some crazy stuff and Chloe is about to be shot by another student, but Max intervenes and discovers she has the power to rewind time, allowing her to save Chloe’s life. There’s an underlying mystery in Arcadia Bay where another young girl mysteriously disappeared, and Max and Chloe team up to try to find her.
Hellblade allowed me to experience what psychosis is like, through the lens of the main character, Senua. This game is unforgettable. Senua needs to save her lover, without letting the rot that’s festering inside her to consume her. That’s all I’ll say about this gem.
I walked into this game not knowing much, and the simple premise hooked me. Played it and loved the time I spent with it. Absolute gem of a game. Story was good overall, the voice acting was fantastic, and the gameplay loop was short enough to allow me time to play it in short bursts when I had time.
Archive link to bypass the paywall: https://archive.is/wUSey
Totally agree with the modern gaming landscape. It’s exhausting dealing with all the predatory tracking, root kits, privacy invasion, heavy monetization, broken games with promises to “do better”, etc. Thankfully there are many games out there to enjoy that don’t do these things.
Personally I love the option of devs selling DLCs where the value is there: it has a reasonable price and it expands the game in a level that I’m comfortable paying for. I will happily buy DLC of games I love.
What I can’t stand, and absolutely am repulsed by, is games that have kill switches or can be taken away from me without my permission. If when I buy the game, if the button says “Buy”, then I should own it. If they’re going to have kill switches or activation server shutdowns that render my game unplayable, then they should change the button to “Temporarily pay to lease it for some time where we will later take this game from you without your permission”. I’d at least appreciate their honesty that way.
Ever since Ubisoft warned it would shut down activation servers for my Wii U copy of Splinter Cell Blacklist where I paid full price for all the DLC (since I loved that game so much), I discovered I wouldn’t be able to play my DLC. Thankfully due to significant complaints from gamers, Ubisoft backpedaled and decided not to… for now. But now that I’ve seen that, and continue to see this predatory behavior happening to this day (e.g., The Crew, Helldivers, etc.), I am much more hesitant when it comes to buying video games.
My favorite is the 3DS Era. I was a young adult then, and sure I could say I loved 16 bit, 64 bit eras because I was younger and had much more time to play video games. But I had so much fun with my 3DS.
Specifically - 3-D integration into certain video games introduced a new way to play them, and I enjoyed the new layer in puzzles for games like Mario 3D Land and especially A Link Between Worlds.
But what I miss the most about 3DS was StreetPass. How fun it was taking my 3DS everywhere and getting visitors in both my games plus in StreetPass Plaza! I loved the hell out of those mini games and would drive all over the place to different hotspots and collect visitors! Carrying it work and making friends over StreetPass was also such a nice bonus.
Gaming was so much fun in this era and on this console. Probably still my favorite console due to all these memories tied up with it. I could get in so many gaming sessions, and if I needed to handle something quickly I could just fold it shut and go about my day. The OG suspend lol.
P.S - Street Pass is of course officially dead along with many other features of the 3DS era. However, there are archival projects so you can at least get visitors to your console. It requires custom firmware, but look into StreetPass 2 for more details.
I bought one of these masks for the novelty, as well as the influence to buy it during the Great Lockdown when not much was known about Covid and we were wiping down our groceries. By the time the product launched, we already knew how Covid spread and had a vaccine. Despite the advertising saying that it has N95 filters, it was clear that this was not an N95 product. Razer generically stated that it is not a certified N95 mask, but the advertising and product pages were certainly misleading and the FTC’s fine is valid and justified to protect the health and safety of consumers. I would not have used the Zephyr in place of my actual certified N95 masks.
The Zephyr was heavy, but overall quite comfortable, but I never took it outside and wore it for something like a grocery trip (since I knew it was not an N95 mask, and masks were very divisive where I live in a Red State. The last thing I wanted was to potentially be attacked by an anti-vax/mask Freedom Lover). It was heavy, and the fans were loud - very loud. What was disappointing was that the production version did not come with the two features I wanted that were initially advertised: the sanitising case, and the voice amplifier. Imagine how much more fines Razer would face if they advertised an included UV case that came with blue lights rather than UV lights!
I didn’t end up keeping the Zephyr, although I wish I did just to keep a small, unique memory of an uncertain and dangerous time. I do wonder if they could have launched this product sooner and certified it as an N95 mask, if gaming culture could make wearing masks when you’re sick popular. Selfish people might put aside their “freedoms” if they could look cool with gamer RGB and get attention from others (the motivation for selfishness). Of course the Zephyr would need to go through several years of revisions until it became culture.
Ubisoft in 2031:
We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.
Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.
Gamers:
Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.
Uibsoft:
MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!
The different school in 8 months after Skull and Bones launch:
Our curriculum isn’t doing well. This is not the curriculum we wanted to deliver. Players expect better, yada yada yada, you know the usual school’s apology stuff. We need to lay off 100% of teachers so as to realign, synergize, refocus, retool, and remoney our money-making money curriculum disguised as a “game”. We will do better. We hear you loud and clear (kind of), and we probably learned a lesson of some kind.
User accidentally opens Uplay when trying to double-click Steam
A store banner ad shows ‘Skull and Bones’
User immediately frowns in disgust and tries to spam the X button to quit Uplay
Uplay privacy-invading telemetry captures an image of the user frowning via the webcam, and tracks the movement of the mouse cursor moving across the banner ad of ‘Skull and Bones’
Uplay closes, telemetry is uploaded to Ubisoft’s servers
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Well that’s nice to see!
I just switched to Linux Mint a few weeks ago, so hopefully I’m not banned! I’ll check later tonight and edit here if I am banned. Never played Rivals on Steam Deck so hoping they didn’t exclude other Linux users.
Edit: I checked and I’m not banned thankfully.