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Epic doesn’t think its a problem. Epic treats bad performance in UE5 like Nintendo treats JoyCon drift. Except in this case, a lot of performance problems in UE5 come from dveelopers not changing the default values of a lot of technologies, or being lazy and using technologies they dont need to use but they are the default or are easier to use than the technology that is a better fit for their use case. Epic causes a lot of it throught their implementation in the engine, but developers absolutely could be doing more to mitigate it.
Like, sure it might be easier to use the handle of a saw to hammer in a nail because it is already in their hand, but if they would just reach over to the toolbox and grab the hammer, its going to be a much better tool for the job.
Gachapon and gambling might prey on the same psychological tendencies humans have, but they are not the same thing, which is the point of my comment.
I fail to see why saying “If you lack self-control, work on improving yourself” is a bad thing to say, or somehow wrong. If you cannot exercise self-control, then you will not have a happy life. You will find yourself constantly broke from impulse spending on things you don’t need or that give you no return on value other than “I might miss it.” You do not need a gacha game for that, as there are plenty of other things in real life that can do the same thing that people here wouldn’t be downvoting or commenting on, for example:
- attending a local farmer’s market
- attending live musician performances
- attending a live artist or author event
- eating promotional food items at restaurants
- attending hobby and art conventions
Everything has a time limit. Nothing exists for the span of eternity here, and thus everything has a chance to become, if it is not already, a time limited item or event that preys on FOMO for different personal interests. But if you have self-control, FOMO doesn’t have hardly any effect on you. Your do not HAVE to do X, or see Y, or buy Z. It is not a requirement of life. You aren’t going to ever be able to do, see, or buy everything you want. Its a fact of life. Self-control helps you realize this.
Saying no to yourself is powerful. You dont always have to say no, but self-control helps you to know when you should. And thus, it removes the power FOMO has over you. You stop caring about what other people think or say, and it gives you the power to stay financially responsible, and helps keep you mentally healthy.
Why is this bad? Even in the context of what I am talking about, if someone decides to play a gacha game, they should definitely have self-control. A person with no self-control will quickly find themselves peniless playing a gacha game, but they were probably going to be peniless eithout the gacha game too. Its not the fault of the game, it is the fault of the player.
Gachapon isn’t gambling, though I could see why one could be confused.
Gachapon (from which Gacha games get their name) is a Japanese word that essentially translates to “capsule toy.” It refers to the machine which you insert a coin and spin a knob, which causes the machine to drop a plastic (usually) capsule out of it. You know, like a gumball machine. Or those candy machines that were always full of banana hard candies near the exit at Ross or TJ Maxx.
With gachapon, you are paying for a capsule toy. You aren’t buying a specific capsule toy, you are buying a single capsule toy from the ones in the machine, and whichever one you get is random. However, you aren’t winning or losing, because you always “win the prize.” It might not be the one you want, but you always get what you pay for. Similar concept to blind-box toys.
With gambling, you spend money on a chance to win more money, usually. There is also a chance you win nothing and lose the money you spent. Gambling is when you spend money on something that can (and will often) give you nothing in return, which doesn’t happen with gachapon. With gachapon, you always “win,” but with gambling you very often lose. Gacha games always give you something valuable to the gameplay, even if you get duplicates of something you already have (makes the character more powerful, for example). Gambling often just takes your money and gives you absolutely nothing back except a sad, empty feeling.
Also, just don’t spend money if you don’t want to. It’s not hard. Nobody forces you to spend money on any game with a gun to your head (hopefully). Just have self-control, it’s easy. And if for some reason you don’t have self-control, work on it. Improve yourself.
Gacha games usually have enough free tickets built into it as rewards for playing the game that you can unlock almost everything you need to keep playing the game for free anyway. Just don’t expect to unlock everything in 3 hours.
It could. But modern developer:
A: need to change stuff just for the sake of changing it for job security (look, you need to keep me as a ux designer on the project because the old UI is outdated and old)
B: new developers dont like UI elements on the gameplay screen
Now, I will tell you that a UI element for a light meter would work perfectly fine and actually be preferred. I would also tell you that MGSV looked phenomenal for the time it came out, and still looks pretty good, and I dont have much of a problem with stealth or sneaking in that game. Now, it is less reliant on light and shadow for its stealth detection than Splinter Cell, but its not out of the realm of possibility that it could be done decently easily. Just use the data from game engine light probes and any baked shadow maps and its fine.
But nah, we gotta overcomplicate it by using dynamic lighting for statically lit levels because that is the easiest method of lighting a level without changing any default options.
Let it die, let it die, let it shrivel up and die.
I’m sure they will come crawling back to Destiny when Marathon finally bites it after its slow, agonizingly painful yet deserved death. Destiny 1 was pretty decent, but after learning how Jason Jones treated Joe Statens story treatments on Destiny, I won’t ever support him.
The SEGA Dreamcast had the Guinness World Record for Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in a Single Day.
For this record, set in 1999, it sold >225,100 units to generate $98.4 million USD in revenue. Since then, it has only been replaced by video game software and not consoles (from my research, the Dreamcast was replaced by GTA IV in 2008, and held the record for ~9 years though I dont have any books or historical site references prior to 2008 too verify).
Of course, everyone remembers the Dreamcast for how highly successful it was, and its massive sales numbers.
“Fastest selling console” is a meaningless title when more people buy video games every year compared to the previous year, so “fastest selling console” is always going to be next years console until the market crashes.
Police get a call about a person who has a gun, who already shot someone, and is threatening to kill himself. Logically speaking, a person that is erratic enough to report themselves like that isn’t likely far from the idea of deciding to shoot their neighbors or others in view too.
A person with a gun shooting even in the general direction of people, even if they don’t hit anything, is enough for me to say every officer in the area should be responding. If the first officers get there and become targets that are killed, more are showing up or are on the way. In a shooting situation it should be the goal of police to become the target being shot at instead of innocent civilians.
They can’t know if this kind of call is real or not, so they have to treat it like it is real. I would rather there be a few hours of chaos on a residential street for a false alarm by treating every report this seriously compared to something like the Ulvade school shooting happening again because police didn’t want to show up or were too scared to do their job.
If someone was shooting people, I would definitely want every officer in the local area to show up. The police can’t possibly know if its real or not until they show up, and even if they talked with the home owner before they arrive they still have to check to make sure.
While I sure wish they could just believe you if you said you weren’t a criminal or something, that’s exactly what a criminal would say. So they gotta treat it as real even if its fake. Truly a shame so many awful people have led to this, but it will only get worse as time goes on.
Whoever did this needs to be charged with attempted murder. You can’t expect that police get a report of a threat at a residence (like a bomb threat or a murder threat) and they show up without weapons. Shame police time and resources had to be wasted ruining this poor old woman’s Minecraft night.
I guess on the up side, not many 82 year olds can tell their friends that they are important enough to have so many people show up to their house so late at night.
EDIT: Early news reports say that police received a call that said her grandson shot her (the 82 year old grandmother) and was threatening to kill himself. Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
EDIT2: Apparently the police may have been able to catch it as SWATting early by confirming with the grandson himself? The way he seemed to talk, the police were cordial and weren’t aggressive, as if their guard was down maybe? They cleared the home to make sure the threat was fake, but I guess they were apologetic to grammcrackers, and she seemed in good spirits about it at least.
“We assess concepts at every stage of development,” said Wizards of the Coast in a statement. “While we decided not to pursue an early concept from Giant Skull, we have great respect for Stig Asmussen and his team and value our ongoing relationship.” The company reportedly added t,” a spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast said, adding that it is still talking pitches from Giant Skull about new potential projects.
Rushing so fast to get the story out that you do not catch such obvious errors is embarrassing and an outward sign of a lack of journalistic integrity. I would tell them to do better, but they don’t care and won’t listen.
Xbox Live was $49.99 per year in 2002. The PS3 didnt release until 2006.
Xbox Live included extra services not included on the PS2’s attempt at networked play. On the PS2, developers had to manage their own game networking infrastructure via their own private servers. Nothing was built into the PS2 console, and it did not have support for anything that game developers did not implement into their own games themselves. This would ultimate result in each developer “reinventing the wheel” with their own implementation of basic online features.
With Xbox Live, Microsoft provided developers with a universal networking framework and API, including built in features like a friends list and DLC support. That extra infrastructure Microsoft provided costs money, so a subscription was introduced. You were paying for the extra features and infrastructure that PS2 developers and publishers handled on their own (and thus was baked into the cost of the game).
As a user of both when they were new, I will also add anecdotally that Xbox Live was significantly more stable than PS2 networking. Nintendo also had a free online service in the mid 2000s, and it was horrible. Very poor connection stability, very susceptible to cheating and immense latency as almost every game was basically P2P.
Why aren’t there more competitors in the Single Player, Open World, Fantasy, RPG niche?
Because it is hard to make them. They require a lot of assets, a lot of development time, a lot of writing, etc. Bethesda dominates the genre because nobody else wants to take the risk to pay developers to try for something that might be really expensive and bring back little return. And this particular genre is a nightmare for solo and indie developer teams.
Indie and solo developers want to make a game in this genre, but its unrealistic to expect any will be successful. Even I had deslusions of developing my own before I decided to switch to a slightly smaller genre for my own game project. I think all indie and solo developers at one point have had to come to the realization that its not realistic. Its just too much work.
Bethesda’s game engine, Creation Engine, actually helps them in this case, because it is purpose built for this genre. It is significantly easier for them to make another one because they already have most of the systems already in place. Compared to using generalist engines like Unity or Unreal, Creation Engine (I used to know it as NetImmerse) gives a huge leg up on creating that type of game, significantly reducing the time and money investment required.
Incredible.
I thought it was on purpose but now I think you might just genuinely not have read my comments, or wildly misunderstood them.
I will not be continuing this conversation with you, I have not the time nor desire. Feel free to double check my comments, or don’t. I don’t care to correct you again nor do I care to respond anymore. I have made my suggestion abundantly clear.
Absolutely incredible. Well done. Truly, you leave me utterly speechless.
What are you talking about? Is this a genuine “I love pancakes.” “Oh so you hate bicycles?” moment, or is this on purpose?
If the music license expires, the game cannot be sold with the music still in it. If the developers or publisher wants to keep selling the game, they need to either remove the music or renew the license.
If the developers decide to not sell the game anymore, they should still be allowed to update the game without having to remove the music. The game is no longer for sale, the people that already bought the game can keep the game that they bought, with the music they bought the game with. Fixing a security issue or a bug in the game should not come at the expense of removing licensed music just because the update is delivered after the music license has expired, as long as the game is no longer for sale.
Private servers and fan-made updates never even enter the equation.
I agree with you but it is not realistic to expect that. And SKG has the same take I do.
It is not realistic to expect the business to stop what they are doing and create this huge cost undoing the damage they did when it is much easier to convince lawmakers to just enforce it going forward. Its harder for the businesses to argue against it because they cannot claim such an immense cost fixing their old catalog. Do I wish they would fix everything? Yes of course. But in this world that was never going to happen. SKG has the best option we have right now.
A game can be updated after a music license expires AND after the game is no longer being sold. The update should not be forced to include music removal if the update happens after the expiry date of the music license, but only if the game is no longer for sale.
In other words, the publisher can push an update to people who already bought the game with no mandatory music removal. They just cannot continue to sell the game after the music license expires if they do not renew the license. License renewal should be forced to be at the same rate as originally set, and these licenses should be regulated to ensure fairness. Because it is immensely common for a music license to suddenly increased on license renewal for no apparent reason other than greed.
Considering how literally evil record label companies are, second only to Disney, in consideration of ruining copyright law, I would even say music piracy is practically a moral obligation at this point. The artists and song writers know how beneficial music piracy is to gaining a larger paying audience, but record label companies cannot help themselves bending over thousands to pick up tenths.
AFAIK, no, you cannot get an indefinite music license for synchronization. Game licenses for music are stupidly overcomplicated, but basically the terms usually amount to either a time expiry in years, or a units sold expiry. I have never heard of or seen a music license that is for more than 1 million units or is longer than 10 years, unless the record label company directly made or funded the game themselves maybe. And as video games continue to be morbidly profitable, that number will only go down, forcing more renewals.
“Oh, your game is popular and our song is in it and about to expire? Well now it costs you double and only lasts for 1 year this time. What are you going to do? Remove your song and deal with the backlash? You cant pin it on us, because we dont care and the players will say its a cop out. See you next year when we triple the license cost.”
The older a game is, the more work it would take to retroactively fix them. Its not realistic to expect this especially when some publisher catalogs span more than a decade. Getting the old server code to work and then verifying that it isnt going to delete system files when uninstalling it or something by accident takes time and money away from new development.
Instead, if they plan End of Life into the product from the beginning, the time and cost of doing it is drastically reduces to basically nothing. A few weeks of forethought and planning to avoid potential years of development work fixing old bromen games is a trade I am willing to accept.
Again, I wish they would release old server files and let us figure out how to get them running, but I understand there are limitations that prevent that.
They can’t legally keep it in the game if the license expired but these clauses should be retroactively altered such that this clause only applies to games that continue to be sold. Units that have already been sold previously should not receieve updates to remove the music just because the license is expired. Instead, if the game is no longer being sold by the publisher/developer, even if they choose to make updates to the game available, music removal should not be mandatory. The set amount of units are already sold. Whether the game is updated or supported beyond the music expiry license should not be part of the license agreement, and should be only based on whether it continues to be sold or not.
Should change it to apply to any and all games published after the bill is passed.
Realistically, its a big ask for publishers to retroactively apply to their older games, but I do think they should still legally be required to do so for old games they don’t sell anymore. Its not realistic to ask that though, so it is understandable that it wouldn’t be included.
Just slapping the Silent Hill name on a game doesn’t make it a Silent Hill game. Or even having the same music composer.
Silent Hill f doesn’t take place in Silent Hill, and places greater focus on combat than entries in the series prior to Homecoming. Also, Silent Hill is not “trauma exploration: the game series.” That was Silent Hill 2, and potentially the original plans for Silent Hill 3 before Konami forced major story rewrites. Silent Hill 1 and 4 do not have those themes at all, and instead they focus on the town itself, its history and events that took place there. Both Harry Mason and Henry Townshend are completely innocent protagonists with no inherent or implied trauma that is explored in the games narratives. Every Silent Hill game since Homecoming came out has tried to copy Silent Hill 2 2001, including its own remake, and failed by placing too much focus on combat due to the camera system and a shift in how the combat works.
Silent Hill f, if it didn’t have the name, would be easily called anything else. It isn’t a game that without the name is still clearly Silent Hill. Even Homecoming at least had the town of Silent Hill as the setting. f has nothing to connect it to the series except for the potentially white claudia reference, and just surface level similarities. Lake Haven on Steam isn’t a Silent Hill game just because it has fog, fixed camera controls, and a trauma exploring narrative. Even if it was called Silent Hill: Lake Haven.
I think Silent Hill f is okay as a game on its own. But its not a Silent Hill game. Silent Hill f is like calling Kuon (the FromSoftware survival horror game) “Resident Evil: Heian Period Japan Edition.” Or like calling Call of Duty Infinite “Halo.” There may be similarities, but the name does not apply.
PS5 or Nintendo Switch.
PS5: No games I want to play except Demons Souls Remake. Its the only PS5 game I own. Every other game I wanted to play I just play on PC instead.
Switch: Weak, underpowered “console.” Never left the dock, ever. Still had performance problems in first party titles, like Breath of the Wild chugging to 15fps or less in the Korok Forest when facing East for some reason. After I was disappointed with Breath of the Wild, I haven’t touched the 2014 midrange tablet “console” since. Only emulated the games for an immensely better experience.
Actually, some art styles are immensely easier to render.
Especially for something like a LEGO game. LEGO has very highly repetitive texture work while also having a lot of the object be fairly small on the screen. These objects don’t need such high resolutions being loaded all the time and thus this style can more aggresively use LODs to keep VRAM usage from high resolution textures low. Due to the very angular nature of LEGO, the game can also more aggresively reduce polygon counts than other art styles, lowering VRAM usage from vertices and meshes. With a few variations, a texture of weathering can be applied and randomized effectively so that can reduce disk storage requirements.
Compared to other art styles, LEGO is almost as forgiving as cel shading when it comes to texture work, and almost as forgiving as Minecraft when it comes to model work. So if the game is built properly, their VRAM budget should be well high enough to render thousands and thousands of models, with RayTracing, or to handle the small scenes one would generally expect from this kind of game with ultra raytracing settings.
Of course, it doesn’t take an expert to imagine they are probably just using Nanite and Lumen, probably at their default settings, which are just horrifically bad for performance.
Yeah, except all the parts to build even a midrange PC have become unaffordable.
I am still on my GTX 1080 Ti (an EVGA FTW3 which I actually got on discount for $400 about a year after it launched) waiting for hardware I can actually afford that gives an upgrade worth spending the money for it. Nearly $1000 USD for even just a 70 series card isn’t worth it at all.
I wonder if this is ever going to happen intentionally with some kind of “phone home” system to slap people with lawsuits. Has that ever been done before? I know similar things have happened with antipiracy measure but those usually only effect the actual game. It seems like something big companies would want to do.
To be fair, at this time the game was still being designed on CRTs (LCDs existed but everything except footprint size was a downgrade - and they still are if you ask me), so the intended way to play the game from the artists perspective is still at 1x on a CRT, which effectively masks pixels edges with the CRTs inherent picture softening.
The big 5 in DRAM chips manufacturers literally got fined by the FTC for price fixing in 2002. They admitted to price fixing from 1998-2002.
Verdun Oil and XLC Resources just got fined in 2025 for purposefully shutting down EPs crude oil drilling plans prior to a merger notification to antitrust authorities (called gun-jumping) which caused a massive crude oil supply shortage whcih was intentional to keep prices high.
Medical companies got fined this year for price fixing on insulin.
The prices were always going to go up regardless of the economy or the current US president, because the prices aren’t effected by those nearly as much as they are effected by shareholder greed and demand for short term profit at the expense of everything else.
Why wouldn’t they? Once a few start increasing their prices, others will either have to (such as small businesses when their suppliers increase prices), or will follow suit out of immense greed (GPU manufacturers already made huge net profit, they didn’t need more). All it takes is for a few businesses at the bottom to start turning the valves and the whole system falls apart, regardless of economy.
This is why when prices go up during a bad economy, once the economy is good the prices never ever go back to the amount they were before. Ever. The prices go up and always stay up.
Okay, lets be real. The companies were frothing at the mouth just looking for an easy scapegoat excuse whether it fits or not. They were going to increase the prices regardless of world conditions as they pull in record profits quarter after quarter. Its just easy for them to blame tariffs or other things to take the heat off of the reality that they are just immensely greedy.
If the tariffs were entirely cancelled tomorrow, prices would absolutely not come down to pre-tariff prices.
The animations of the original game were not “clunky,” many of them were actually motion captured which is insane technology for the 90s when Ocarina of Time was in development.
I don’t disagree with your dismay about “modern” remakes of classic games almost universally getting it wrong (and I personally really HATE Nintendo now), but the original Ocarina of Time did not have any “clunky” anything. It was nearly perfect, and still is. It became one of the leading influences on 3D games to this day, in everything from player movement to the camera system. Playing the unofficial PC port only exemplifies this more, as it runs at higher framerates (60+) with interpolated animations. It absolutely competes with modern games still.