Just your normal everyday casual software dev. Nothing to see here.
People can share differing opinions without immediately being on the reverse side. Avoid looking at things as black and white. You can like both waffles and pancakes, just like you can hate both waffles and pancakes.
been trying to lower my social presence on services as of late, may go inactive randomly as a result.
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While I fully agree with what you’re saying here, and that it should be stated, I personally believe that the only thing he’s done here is said the quiet part out loud.
Like other major projects of are stating that the main reason they don’t do a full AI ban is due to the fact that it’s increasingly difficult to be able to look at someone’s code contributions and say, yes, that’s AI versus that’s a human.
I recently made the swap-off of Sublime Text to Visual Studio Code because I was sick of the degradation in Sublime Text and there wasn’t any decent alternatives with the depreciation of atom a few years back.
I was amazed to find that OOtB visual code has a full on AI assisted coding setup with Ai assisted auto completion and suggestions and even has a chat box to talk with the model of choice. This setup by default doesn’t add any credits or attribution, and while isn’t anywhere near as intequate claude setup by default, it’s still AI assisted writing.
The only thing the public brigades are actually doing is making contributors hide that they are using it, which increases the problem like you mentioned.
A much better solution would be people stepping up to the plate and helping these projects, but it’s far easier to complain. I firmly understand why contributors have resorted to hiding the fact they use it, there’s far too much public outcry without enough support to not on most open sourced or publicly supported projects.
I read somewhere else that one of the suspected reasons for it was actually the rising cost of components. Microsoft and Sony are big companies, and have the swing to be able to acquire hardware way easier than the everyday consumer, so in a case of limited supply causing hardware prices to soar, they will get the parts first.
They don’t need to worry about prioritizing the PC market if the only new gamers around are going console due to affordability or availability.
Being said, I already have a 5, I got it a few years back and I lowkey regret it because as a sony fan all my life… it just had nothing for it. Everything I did on the 5 could have been done on the 4 and I don’t feel like the current releases are (or at this point are ever going to be) worth getting, which was likely a big reason for their push into the PC market in the first place.
With the supply and cost issues, that reason isn’t present anymore.
Just don’t buy Triple A titles.
The last “AAA” title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)
There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.
The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.
I’m waiting for some government to outlaw collecting the information in general outside of official government agencies. I would love to see big tech squirm as they try to figure out a valid way to harvest the data in one country, but prevent it in another.
Honestly it sounds like an amazing way to rack of fine money due to violation notices.
For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”
Just a few months ago they had a data leak which proved that they were indeed /not/ deleting documents and ID’s like they had been claiming.
Granted in that case it was mostly countries that force keeping that data but, I’m sick of companies lying and saying “lol yea we defo delete the data after”
IMO any type of touch control in a car shouldn’t be a thing. Drivers rely on tactile feedback on controls, when you replace them with touch buttons it takes more concentration and therefore decreases the drivers awareness of their surroundings.
Granted the argument is you shouldn’t be adjusting it while driving but, my response is why have it in the first place.
I think this is very likely the reason yea.
I’m also now finding out that they had to censor the coverart of the switch 2 edition a few weeks ago as well which I was unaware of. If it turns out they knew for awhile that it would be censored, and just chose not to tell anyone that is going to permanently damper my opinion of their studio. Like it’s one thing to be like “This was forced upon us last minute so we threw a solution together” it’s a whole different situation of knowing that it was going to happen, then refusing to tell the consumers about it since you knew it would lower sales.
Along with that, we asked for comment from AdHoc concerning the decision to censor Dispatch’s Deluxe Edition artwork on the Nintendo eShop as compared to the PC/PS5 release, and if that indicated any censorship in the game itself. We were told that “unfortunately, the studio cannot comment on the topic at this time.” Along with that, it was said that if AdHoc is able to discuss the matter down the road, their comment would be shared with us.
It sounds to me like they knew this change was going to be required at that point, but didn’t want to publicly announce that, which puts a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the intent of the studio.
This is likely it.
There is also the rumor that this wasn’t a choice by Nintendo, but a choice of the dev’s so they didn’t have to have two separate editions to be able to sell in Japan(like they already do for the playstation edition). If that’s the case this makes it even worse IMO since it wasn’t like a last minute “BTW this is a thing” they had plenty of time to tell buyers that the product was altered
The fact that they allow Resident Evil Village of all games on the Switch but don’t allow this animated nudity scene is insane to me. RE Village was one of the most graphic games I have ever seen.
edit: I Just realized Cyberpunk 2077 was released on it no censorship. How did dispatch get censored but that was allowed through lmao
Off the top of my head, the biggest one I can think of that had potential was Rumbleverse, which was an epic exclusive and got shut down. That one had a lot of potential just lacked visibility. just they didn’t get the player base.
But doing a quick google search also gave me quite a few more, such as Gigantic, which was a third-person hero shooter that used its own exclusive launcher along with the Windows Store.
There’s the Darwin Project, which launched as an Xbox Game Pass and did eventually go to Steam. However, by the time it hit Steam, the damage was done. They had lost all momentum.
There is Rocket Arena, which was an Origin Epics game title that eventually went free to play and then closed down later.
There was quite a few MMO-style live service games, but those have tentative life spans anyway, So I don’t think that it would be fully fair to list those.
There was Knockout City, which was exclusive to Origin and consoles and also had a lot of streamer support, and did eventually come to Steam(albeit mostly for their cdn system as stated by one of the devs of it)
Those are just a handful of games from a Google search, the reoccurring trait across all of them which was they were decent games that people enjoyed playing. They just lacked the user base. And by the time they made it to Steam(if they made it to Steam), it was already too late and they had already lost momentum.
It’s likely that if those games had just been released day one on Steam that they would have had the momentum required to continue going. But instead they intentionally excluded the Steam user base usually due to some form of exclusivity deal.
yea the only way I can see confidence being stored as a string would be if the key was meant for a GUI management interface that didn’t hardcode possible values(think for private investors or untrained engineers for sugar/cosmetic reasons). In an actual system this would almost always be a number or boolean not a string.
Being said, its entierly possible that it’s also using an LLM for processing the result, which would mean they could have something like “if its rated X or higher” do Y type deal, where the LLM would then process the string and then respond whether it is or not, but that would be so inefficient. I would hope that they wouldn’t layer like that.
yea looking into it, the steamworks policy doesn’t mention price parity outside of product keys via steam being sold on other storefronts, being said it does look like steam has submitted to the courts evidence of them communicating via email threatening studios that if they actually went through with it, that steam would just choose not to sell their game at all, this was uncovered during deposition during the Wolfire & Dark Catt’s U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Valve. They went on record admitting to the email and explaining that the steam key page was meant to be for all products as a whole. It sounds like it’s a situation where on paper they have it one way, but in practice it’s meant to be the other.
That would cause compliance issues on steam though publisher wise. They would need the title to be off steam since one of steams publisher terms is that the sale price of an item must be at least equal to the lowest price available on other platforms. Meaning that if you have a deal like described there, steam would be the higher price and it would violate their publisher terms.
edit: looking into this it looks like it might only be for steam keys, so actually they may be in the clear here.
I’ve said this in the past but I think it’s worth restating. I’m amazed that EGS is willing to even front the cost of these free games. Like I would expect some form of arbitrary restriction like requiring periodic actual money purchase to be eligible. They have posted income reports that state the free program just isn’t working. Sure it’s increasing numbers, but that isn’t very helpful when your revenue is still decreasing ontop of the cost of the program. I mean it does help that its a flat cost and not a cost per install for them, but still.
for perspective: my last purchase was void train in super early stages of the game (2021 I think?) and prior to that was satisfactory somewhere around 2018 or 19. Meanwhile I have collected a lot of decent games from the program. And I’m one of the better cases. I have /tons/ of friends who have zero intention of ever actually buying anything on the shop, they only use it as a log in, claim the weekly freebie, log out or play the freebie game. Heck, there are programs that are dedicated exclusivley to log in as you, and claim the weekly freebies so you never even have to log onto the storefront. It isn’t a sustainable model.
I feel like they would be better off forcing an annual payment history check on the platform, something stupid small like “if total paid is > 5$” or something cheap, or even like how steam does it where once you purchase something once everything unlocks. From a financial/business mindset, I don’t get their intent on the current program. It only encourages people to grab games and never actually spend money on the sinkhole.
Same TBF, I don’t really care if AI was used as long as it is an enjoyable game and the usage of it doesn’t contrast from the game itself.
Being said, most the time when generative AI is used, it comes out sloppy and unenjoyable so if there is the genAI flag on the store page I will definitely give it a more thorough once over.
Procedural or structural AI though I don’t even bat an eye on. It’s whatever at that point we have used tools like that for years anyway and it’s never been a problem.
I had this happen with the switch originally. Pre-ordered the lets go pikachu&eevee switch, they ended up receiving far less than the company expected. Employees were the first on the chopping block since they worked there. Absolute bullshit.
They did end up getting me one, I had first pick from the next shipment, but it made my blood boil.
It didn’t really mean much to have a confirmed next shipment, as I worked in the department selling them, and fully intended to go on an early lunch to buy one that shipment anyway since they can’t dictate what I did off the clock.
finetuning the lemonade stand analogy, both stands would need to be the same price, as the busy street has a sale price restriction for alternative stands. The lemonade vendor would need to decide whether it was worth losing the busy street as a whole in order to use the dark alley in order to keep the lower 1$ price
Developers and studios would need to be willing to leave steam (whos market share is estimated to be 75-80% of the PC third party gaming market) and either make their own(costs money + no userbase) or go to the next big thing which would likely be epic (who is at an appoximate 15% game share despite having a 12% cut vs 30 and releasing weekly free games)
My money is on the devs just raising their price to match steams new price and also allowing both markets to exist.
note: The percentages I gave are actually on the lower end by the way from the numbers I found. I saw some sites quoting steam to be in the 90’s for market share in third party PC gaming.
Without a doubt yes. They already do for the most part. Steam sales are the goal of the industry, thats why epic is having to go to the lengths that it is to try (and fail) to get customers.
steam already:
- restricts sale prices off platform
- limits what a publisher/dev can have as a discount price
- limits when a publisher/dev can change their price
- restricts access to free keys for games
- dictates the standard for revenue sharing
- forces steam to always be at least equal to the cheapest price around
- restricts putting an item on sale outside of the platform unless there is a planned sale on the steam page in the near future
Like I can say for certainty yes, due to even a handful of these restrictions, if steam decided to unilaterally apply an additional base fee of x% of the game cost (which they can do), devs would be forced to either abandon steam (again the largest PC gaming market out there) or raise every other storefront price.
There will be other options yes, but it would be like opening a lemonade stand in a dark alley vs at a busy crosswalk. Steam would need to raise the price significantly in order to convince a studio is who trying to make a profit to jump ship.
A literal monopoly is defined as that yea, but the definition used in legal would be a company with significant and durable market power and has the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.
In the cases that were being used as an example, they were already a monopoly going into the case due to their market standing, however at the end of the case it was also determined they were in violation of anti-trust laws as well.
it depends on your definition of monopoly. For example the US FTC classifies a monopoly as a company with significant and durable market power with the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.
Steam would definitely meet that criteria, if you aren’t on steam your game is very unlikely to go anywhere. Can it? for sure but it’s significantly less likely to be successful, and steam basically sets the standard for what should be on a storefront and pricing for deals.
Being said, the act of being a monopoly in the eyes of the FTC isn’t a bad thing either, as long as the position isn’t being abused, which Steam currently is not.
I’m surprised that fortnite was willing to front the liability of allowing third party micro-transactions. Especially gatcha or gambling mechanics based ones. That could get fortnite as a whole banned in a few countries.
Fortnites rating is Teen and their target demographic is mostly minors. Some countries have pretty big laws on allowing gambling mechanics with minors.
I’ll be interested as well, but I don’t think that it is a bad thing so to speak. Both CD PROJEKT and Michal have high values when it comes to DRM-Free and open gaming. Gog is mostly supported by it’s backers and game revenue, I don’t think that will change. I don’t see the co-founder who created both the studio and the storefront performing a pump and dump on GoG. If anything we may end up seeing a more heavy push into DRM free areas now that it’s detached from the game studio. Additionally CD Projekt’s reason seems fully valid. It makes sense they would rather focus more on making games than distributing. Distributing games is no easy task, let alone maintaining an entire storefront that most of the corporate world dislikes due to the core principles of the storefront (I.E the push towards support and DRM-Free).
It could be bad but, I’m not going to be super concerned until actual evidence ends up on the ground for it.
do you preorder games?
Nowadays? Not a chance. Preorders nowadays seem to be more of a incentive to allow a studio to just not have a decent final product because people have already bought in.
What about Early Access Games?
If I really like the concept, yes.
Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?
Early access is not pre-ordering, and as such is treated extremely differently. Preordering tells me that the product will be finished on release, EA means that it’s going to need a lot of work for a finished product.
If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?
I am extremly open to EA as it helps studios develop a product that otherwise may not be able to be created. Actual preordering is a strict closed door, there is very little reason in the digital world we live in to preorder a game.
How do you decide if a game qualifies?
I more likely will buy an early access game if I can open the page and not see:
- Major blockers:
- Lack of Linux support or compatibility
- Reviews talking about the game being dead
- Reviews talking about how the developer ignores the community
- Update history either showing no changes or minor changes stretching back for a few months(the longer the gap the less likely I am to support the studio)
- Opening the developer page and seeing they are actively working on a different game. (this is an instant deal breaker)
- Minor Blockers
- Developer responses in community pages saying “for support go to external site” usually discord. If you don’t want to support your game on the storefront, don’t use the storefront.
- Update logs saying that they are actively working on DLC for their early access game. (free DLC gets a partial pass… but paid DLC for an Early Access game is a huge red flag for me)
- No developer interactions in the community forums or an un-moderated community forum.
- Toxic community in discussion forums or support channels (I understand this is out of the devs control at times but it still dissuades me from wanting to spend money on the games)
I just played it, it was super cool concept! I died due to cold but, the enviroment felt really good. I spent most of the time just aimlessly wandering. My only complaint was that the game bogged itself down when toggling the lantern on and off but thats probally an issue on my end! Tell them well done for me 😸
Well this was a no brainer, I don’t know if anyone in the topic really believed game devs liked it, Executive and financing though? They love it.
But… “leadership and executive love DLSS 5” sounds worse than “Game Dev’s Love DLSS 5”.
The game devs position gives a false sense of security of “oh well maybe it isn’t actually a bad thing”… the other just sounds like cost saving.