Yeah, that tracks - it’s a business organisation first and foremost. And yeah, we definitely do.

It’s a group representing the biggest publishers in the industry, used as a front to pretend they’re able to self-regulate when it comes to consumer laws vs business wants. So no, not a governing body but more of a cartel or lobbying group, I guess? One with A LOT of money on the line and enough lobbying power to push against things like the Stop Killing Games campaign the moment they feel threatened.

Either way it’s pure speculation considering something truly massive would have to happen for Steam to even get to this point.

He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it’s hard to guess whether that’s still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn’t be unwelcome, that’s for sure.

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

• Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
• Canon Pence (Epic Games)
• Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
• Ian Mattingly (Activision)
• Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
• Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
• Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
• Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Matt Spencer (Take 2)
• Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
• Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
• Karine Parker (Square Enix)
• Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
• Felix Falk (game)
• Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
• David Verbruggen (VGFB)
• Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who “ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood” (direct quote from their website).

Fresh update video from Ross about the campaign.

TL;DW:

• There’s a chance many of the signatures for the EU petition aren’t real. Keep signing to build up a safety margin. Official suggestions are: 10% more minimum, 20% pretty OK, up to 40% more for an actual safety net.
• Some countries had problems with signing using the digital ID system - suggests to use the manual method (instructions on the campaign page) or try again later.
• Someone not related with the campaign released a SKG crypto. Don’t touch it, obviously.
• Ross heard about people harassing Pirate Software, asks to stop.
• He’s got a lot of messages to reply to, prioritises ones important to the campaign for now.
• UK petition cleared 100k signatures. Number is most likely more reliable than the EU one.
• Link about contacting UK MP’s for those who want to do more than just sign a petition.

That’s actually one of the most annoying parts about the whole thing. SKG campaign has been running for what, a year now? Barely anyone with an audience cared enough to even look into it, let alone spread the news. Now that things came close to failing suddenly everyone thinks it’s an important topic and scrambled to make videos/posts/whatever. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt but I just don’t have that in me any more…
We could’ve been in so much better place with awareness, petitions and general sentiment if people in the industry actually cared about these things from the start.

Better late than never, I guess. I just hope there’s enough time to push through the EU petition as well.

After Ross announced the campaign is dead a bunch of YouTubers (and media, I think?) picked up the topic and started spreading the word far and wide. This is the result.

He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.

It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it’s better than nothing. There’s still some time left.

You can try reporting the video but that probably won’t do much (doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try). The best you can do is treat it as free advertisement and hope it’ll encourage people to buy the game if they like it.

Remember that pirated copy does not equal lost sale, especially for an indie title most people won’t even hear about.

Edit: well, the double check by the other user makes this thing pretty sus. Either way, my comment still stands in case this really happens for someone.

I’ve started playing Final Fantasy XIV again. I was planning to do some fashion fun but then I remembered that as a free player my options are a bit limited (though not non-existent). Because of that I mostly focus on finishing the base story and grinding tailoring instead.

Not sure what I’ll do when I’m done with that but I’m having fun with that I have for now.

Does it though? I feel like there’s a difference between chatting with your mates and posting stuff aimed at your customers - especially things that might drive them to take actions that will affect your bottom line.

You already played the games, you enjoy them - it is what it is. There’s no point in beating yourself over (not) doing something without knowledge about the circumstances. No one is omnipotent and can avoid supporting every single shitty person out there. Just have fun with what you like and don’t support the guy in the future, that’s the best one can do in such situation in my opinion.

I want to say we all found out he was a piece of shit in the lead up to Ori 2?

Eh, not necessarily? I’m sure there are plenty of people who just play the games and aren’t in the know of any drama going on behind the scenes. Heck, I’m pretty tuned in into what’s going on in the industry and while I remember hearing some of this stuff back in the day most of it faded away since I wasn’t particularly interested in the series.

I think it’s better to remind folks about these situations than assume everyone is familiar with what’s going on.

He had more of similar comments throughout the years so… yeah. He’s also known for poor management and causing toxic work environment to the point Microsoft decided to cut ties with the studio.
Just in case someone thought these are just some out of context or one-time “jokes”/missteps.

Heck, here are some bonus links for good measure:

• Moon Studios Creative Director Thomas Mahler Criticizes Cancel Culture and Media Bias
• Despite its beautiful Ori games, Moon Studios is called an ‘oppressive’ place to work (this one is LONG)

I’m glad he found an extremely rare example of a game that doesn’t offend his delicate sensibilities, I guess? I’m sure it’s not easy being a REAL MEN’s MAN these days.

Sounds like another success for id. I’m curious how players (as in general public) who liked 2016 but didn’t vibe with Eternal feel about it in a few months to a year. I’ll guess I’ll keep an eye out on those discussions.

There’s truly nothing else like it on the market right now, especially in today’s overly sanitized, pussy ass snowflake-infested gaming landscape.

Bruh…

Seems to be going nicely so far. One thing I can suggest is to make sure not to expand too quickly. It’s tempting but can lead to serious issues down the line (just in general, not that you’re doing so).

Other than that, keep an eye on your public transport and change/improve as necessary - doing so will save you a lot of rebuilding. Traffic wise, a large central road with smaller streets branching out to various districts is usually the way to go. Also put your commercial and office zones near the bigger streets, housing on the smaller ones (can’t really see how it works in your map so this is just a general suggestion).

Oh! I haven’t played in a while and don’t remember if this is a thing but see if there’s an option to hide district policies before taking screenshots - all those icons add a lot of noise and make it harder to see the layout of certain spots.

Make sure to post again once that happens, either here or on one of the communities linked in this post. It’d be fun to see how it turned out.

This guide on transit is a really comprehensive resource about anything traffic related. It contains info about everything from basics to all types of public transport and pathways. Also lots of screenshots and diagrams to make things easily digestible.

I’m not gonna critique it based on efficiency and min-maxing as that’s something I couldn’t care less about. Design wise however, I like it. It’s has some more organic and interesting shapes than a basic “American city” that’s so easy to default to. Split between suburbs and the more urban centre is a nice touch (tough I would try to add some transition in the empty space between the two to make it look more natural).

You have a clear separation between residential and industrial areas which will prevent issues with health and happiness (as long as you keep it in check). You also remembered to dump the sewers downriver which is good.

I’m sure some CS pro could give you a bunch of pointers but it looks like a good start to me. Are you planning to share your progress in the future? I’d actually like to see what you’ll do with it.

I understand what you’re saying but we’re talking about a multi billion dollar company. At this point there is no excuse you can give for not fixing simple and easily identifiable issues with user experience - especially since all of this has been criticised for years. As much as I appreciate some of the recent additions, fixing this mess should be priority number one.

Ah, I see. I thought it was specifically related to TC2. Thanks for clarifying.

I haven’t played or owned TC but game preservation is an important topic for me so I also signed and tried to popularise it as much as possible. I don’t expect much but every attempt is important.

To be fair, the update itself was announced last year (here is a random IGN article about the announcement) after people started complaining about upcoming shutdown of the first game (which in turn spawned the Stop Killing Games initiative).

Not that this makes the filing irrelevant but it’s not some knee-jerk reaction thrown together on the spot. Besides, game built with online components in mind calling servers once a minute isn’t really that crazy (whether that should be a thing for a single player mode is a different matter).

It improved quite a bit since early days, it’s just the flat structure they used to run with led to a messy development and disjointed feature set.

Valve did make some changes in terms of organisation a few years ago so hopefully all the recent improvements will lead to a serious UI overhaul to tidy things up.

Yes please! Browsing Steam is such a stupid experience, it’s staggering they still can’t be bothered to fix it.

Soundtrack App

Bruh…

I actually thought about including this case in my original post but I have tendency to waffle way too much and in the end decided against it to keep things shorter. It is a useful example to mention so thanks for that.

Did they even shut them down back then? I might be thinking about a different situation but I remember one of the other remake mods (was it New Vegas on Fallout 4 engine?) where they simply told the team they can’t use the original audio. The cancellation of that mod happened months later and didn’t even have anything to with that issue, I believe.

Either way, this kind of scenario is something I skipped over in my initial question since banning reuse of assets in different engines is a legal thing. I mostly meant them blocking/killing projects for no “serious” reason.

Still, it was a good idea to mention these kind of issues as well.

Can it change? Sure. There’s just no reason to expect that based on Bethesda’s approach to modding until now. I’d rather base my expectations on their past actions rather than assume the worst just in case.

Exactly, which is why I don’t expect them to do anything hostile towards this project - both remakes have their own goals and approaches after all.

At the end of the day Virtuos are just a contractor - Bethesda are the ones with final say in the matter. Despite all their flaws they never really showed to be hostile towards these kind of projects (or at least I haven’t seen them act that way) so there’s no reason to automatically expect the worst. That’s just my opinion though.

If I recall correctly the team behind Skyblivion was (or still is) in contact with Bethesda throughout the development and had no problems with the latter in regards their work. Heck, Bethesda itself posted about the mod on their site in 2023.

They’ve been aware of Skyblivion for years and there’s no indication they’re interested in killing it.

Little time, little playing, short (?) post this time.

I mostly played two games: Colin McRae Rally 04 and Star Citizen (it technically counts as old, right?). Didn’t have time to try and fix NHL99 yet, maybe next week…

On another note, I’m having some craving to give The Sims (original one) another chance. I love the second game and will go back to it as soon as I can but there’s something special about the first title. I don’t know, maybe it has to do with me listening to its soundtrack lately or perhaps I want some of the less wacky atmosphere for a change - either way, the game is calling out to me.

I heard about the latter but never really thought about Steam Input like this, goes to show how easy it is to completely miss such stuff when you don’t need it. Also, in case someone’s confused BCI stands for Brain-Computer Interfaces.

I don’t think news about a single tool for developers is some kind of ploy to improve their PR - most people won’t even hear about it. It’s just a neat piece of news since Ubisoft has been pretty good about accessibility in their games for years now.

Giving props when deserved doesn’t mean you have to forgive and forget all the bad surrounding the company.

Right, forgot about that since I focused purely on software side of things. Good reminder!

As problematic as AAA publishers can be, their steps towards spreading accessibility within the industry as a whole are always nice to see and worth sharing, I think. Did anyone besides Ubi and EA did something like that?

Really solid write up!

As much as I love SimCity 4, there’s something about the look and feel of 3000 that makes it slightly more iconic for me (both are fantastic though). Maxis really knocked it out of the park with most of the series.

My short time in game wasn’t bad either, it’s just forcing myself through the initial unwillingness to and anxiety of interacting with people in such environment is a bit too much for me (especially since there’s so many other titles I can use as an excuse to not do that). As I said, it’s a “me” problem.

I’m glad you’re having fun! Old BF games and Project Reality were always a fun niche compared to titles focused solely on infantry combat so having it continue outside of DICE’s attempts is great.