Nice avatar

I suggest you look at someone else for reviews because this review is both inaccurate and somehow also blindingly stupid.

Yes, that is what a fork is.

UE5 by default uses a lot of flashy tech that is supposed to improve performance, but a lot of it only does so in scenarios that are already extremely unoptimized. Using more traditional methods tends to achieve the same fidelity at a fraction of the performance cost. But there’s no time for optimization, and these fancy options “just work”, so there ya go.

The end result is a poorly running blurry mess of a game, but at least it’s out on schedule I guess.

It’s poorly optimized UE5 slop. Looks like shit, plays like shit.

Hard pass.

It may surprise you to know that people produced music before IP laws existed.

If you have an ASRock mobo, update the bios. Otherwise, you should be fine.

That’s fair but I personally wouldn’t recommend 4chan to kids either.

Roblox uses children as unpaid labour to produce content for their platform, as well as the risk your kid runs into nazis or pedophiles on the platform. That used to be rampant, not sure if they’ve managed to get a grip on that now.

There’s a handful of people out there cracking Denuvo games.

Machine learning doesn’t necessarily require a centralized cluster. Usually running those kinds of models is pretty cheap, it’s not an LLM basically. They usually do better than human moderators as well, able to pick up on very minute ‘tells’ these cheats have.

I understand your point about edge cases, but that’s not something the average player cares about much. E-sports is a pretty niche part of any game, especially the higher ranks. You just want to filter out the hackers shooting everyone each game that truly ruin the enjoyment. Someone cheating to rank gold instead of silver or whatever isn’t ruining game experiences; they’re usually detectable too, but if you get a false negative on that it’s not the end of the world. A smurf account of a very highly ranked player probably has a bigger impact on players’ enjoyment.

Didn’t Microsoft stop this in a recent-ish update? I remember trying it on a machine without TPM and it just didn’t work.

Bazzite worked fine though (after some headaches setting it up).

These tricks may make it indistinguishable to a human moderator, but machine learning is actually really good at detecting that. But most companies don’t have the expertise, resources or training data to build a proper model for it.

5 days is the period for a no-questions-asked reversal. It’s a consumer right, SDD isn’t just B2B. Banks do in fact offer a “magic money back” button for SDDs.

SDDs are what happens when you for example purchase an item (regular SDD) or a subscription (recurring SDD) online and provide your IBAN to the company providing it. The company then taking funds from your account with nothing but that IBAN is done through SDD. And yes, your bank will let you reverse that within 5 days, no questions asked (precisely because only an IBAN is required).

After 5 days, it’s still possible (eg through MOI) but that’s not guaranteed. I know this stuff because I deal with it professionally on a daily basis.

Banks can and absolutely do honor chargeback requests, though the terminology is usually different, even in the EU. But these are usually always honored (eg SDD Reversal or MOIs).

Sepa Direct Debits work in basically every SWIFT-connected country too, so that’s most of the world.

Might depend on the market. The Finnish market is not even a third of the Dutch market, so perhaps it’s just a business decision whether they support it or not. They do support iDEAL without needing to enable anything.

Most do, Steam accepts a fair few regional ones like the Dutch iDEAL. But it barely matters if a lot of people pay with Visa/MasterCard instead.

Steam choosing what to host on their platform is fine. A random payment processor forcing their hand due to mild pressure from a fringe Christian group in Australia is not. Because those loonies will classify anything outside of a married couple having missionary sex as obscene and harmful.

This article is overly sensationalist/alarmist and doesn’t match the study behind it.

This is the study they’re referencing: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/5/3/388

It primarily focuses on internet addiction and video game addiction. Pornography is mostly mentioned in passing as “likely similar”.

In it, they review evidence that these things can be addictive, and that people experience pleasure doing them (this is the whole “same-areas-as-coke-and-meth” thing btw; the brain is happy playing video games, and it is also happy doing coke). However, they distinctly mention that behavioral addiction is not necessarily the same as substance addiction:

Together with studies on Internet addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder we see strong evidence for considering addictive Internet behaviors as behavioral addiction. Future research needs to address whether or not there are specific differences between substance and behavioral addiction

The exact quote about areas of the brain thing:

Georgiadis and Kringelbach concluded, “it is clear that the networks involved in human sexual behavior are remarkably similar to the networks involved in processing other rewards”

The brain rewards sexual behaviour. Makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view, so not exactly a shocking conclusion.

And regarding the “brain-altering” thing, the study also directly mentions that this is simply what happens when the brain is activated through its reward systems. This “altering” happens for everything that triggers some kind of dopamine hit. It’s not the case that porn does something special here; a model train hobby for example would do the same to enthusiasts for example.

I remember this study actually, I’ve seen it before. It is frequently misquoted or represented in an extremely alarmist way, mostly by people with a dislike for pornography. But the study doesn’t back up their assertions that porn is anything special when compared to any other behavioral addiction, it actually expressly doesn’t.

The inability to distinguish between selection and socialization means there’s no evidence for a causal link. At best, it suggests that people who commit sexual aggression generally like porn featuring it more, but even that is apparently a weak correlation apparently.

The meta analysis addresses porn in general. That includes fetishized content like violent or “taboo” pornography. It states there’s no evidence that it makes sexual aggression more prevalent, and that population studies show that it’s at least correlated with a reduction instead.

We can nitpick the wording all day long, but ultimately I think the takeaway is that there’s no evidence that it has negative effects, and there’s at least some evidence that suggests it has positive effects.

We don’t have a specific cordoned off section for meth and cocaine in our brains. Many things trigger those areas of the brain, including some pretty innocuous stuff.

Porn isn’t physically addictive like meth and cocaine. It can be psychologically addictive though, but that goes for a lot of things out there.

Stuff like meth and cocaine can actually alter your brain, porn does not.

Anyone can develop an unhealthy relationship with porn, but that goes for just about anything out there.

This is not contradictory.

The meta-study says that pornography contributing to sexual aggression is not proven. Meaning, it doesn’t make it worse.

Meanwhile the population study seems to suggest porn usage reduces sexual aggression, or is at least correlated with it.

There is a clear power disparity between a father and a daughter. It’s debatable if the daughter could even realistically consent in that case.

But a depiction of it in porn is in my view not inherently unethical. I can disapprove of it personally, but that doesn’t mean we should start banning it based on feelings of inappropriateness.

We depict murder and violence in movies and video games too. Actual murder is of course not exactly ethical, but we have no problem accepting it in a movie, because nobody is actually being murdered. You might not like to watch a movie like Saw or something (I personally don’t), but it doesn’t make the movie itself unethical. To me, porn is no different. There’s a clear separation between fiction and reality.

Where imo a line is crossed, is if said media actually makes a clear effort to promote these acts IRL. But that’s not the case here.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32691692/

Population studies suggested that increased availability of pornography is associated with reduced sexual aggression at the population level

Does he actually have a diagnosis or are you making that up or assuming things?

Porn made with the willing consent of all parties involved, where everyone is compensated appropriately. No harm = no ethical problems as far as I’m concerned. Most big studios these days make sure of this. But there have also been pioneers that push the bar further up (e.g. Lustery, Ersties or Erika Lust).

I can think it’s a messed up fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it should immediately be banned by a payment processor.

Regardless, there are tons of studies showing that consuming this kind of porn actually helps prevent people from acting on these fantasies. The net result is likely less sexual abuse, not more. Because it’s fantasy media, it likely is able to keep the fantasy a fantasy, it gives people an outlet.

“Porn” is extremely broad. There’s plenty of perfectly ethical porn around. Most major producers have pretty strong standards these days. It’s not the same industry as it was 10 years ago.

But in this specific case they went after a porn game, not featuring real people. There’s basically no real harm here. People occasionally argue that porn addiction is a problem, but that’s mostly an addiction problem, which goes for most addictions. The thing addicted too isn’t the problem, it’s the very nature of being addicted that’s causing the issue.

It’s fine of course to dislike porn, but to effectively ban people from producing and consuming it is an entirely different matter. That does seem like a massive encroachment on individual rights to me.

Chargebacks are incredibly expensive, yes.

According to Krafton’s statement the remaining employees are getting their bonus though.

Valve didn’t decide to pull it, and the game is still downloadable if you purchased it before.

Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply.

The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don’t sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return.

The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn’t too high in the first place.

What? That wording isn’t even relevant to the case. That’s just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes on Steam. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations). It’s similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense.

Wolfire’s case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam).

Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.

But that is what the policy is about. Steam doesn’t have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.

It is true. Valve does not enforce price parity for non Steam keys. Here is an example where the dev says that they are offering a better price on EGS because of the better cut:

https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/

Pretty clear example of the same game having a lower base price on Epic than on Steam.

Wolfire claiming Valve does this is something different from Valve actually doing it, and that’s where the dispute lies. According to Valve, Wolfire’s explanation of the price parity policy is incorrect.

Here’s the policy itself: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3

You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. **

The policy is pretty leanient regarding the “worse deal” aspect. You’re allowed to have a sale on one platform but not on Steam, as long as you offer “something similar” at a different moment to Steam users too.

It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

Even if you violate this policy, Valve will still sell your game, they may just stop providing you with Steam keys to sell.

I don’t see Wolfire winning this tbh.

I think they did briefly mentioned they improved the sticks, but they never clarified what exactly.

Never really noticed a difference tbh, I think it’s mostly similar.

Good point, I block all ads so I never noticed.