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Even if they tried I don’t think they have the leverage to make that work. What games or publishers are big enough that such a move would go worse for Twitch than it would for them? Most of the time indie games make for better content anyway. Twitch could just ban games that don’t include an unconditional free streaming license in their terms of service and not lose much of any popularity, while the game publishers trying to extort them would absolutely lose popularity.
Each server would likely have to utilize a payment service.
Yeah but that would mean each server has to take custody of funds, have their own individual contractual agreements with game companies, handle refunds, bear all the legal and tax burdens of this, and get people to trust they won’t scam them. It’s just too much of a burden, these are all things that benefit heavily from centralization and economies of scale, due to the legalistic nature of payments. You would end up with one dominant instance and unused federation, if there was even anyone willing to deal with all that stuff to begin with.
I feel like you could solve this stuff pretty well with crypto, having payment go directly to the game devs, and a no refund policy or something to simplify things, but crypto is too hated so that wouldn’t work right now.
Why don’t people? Because steam is just better
I am skeptical that this is the main reason (even though it’s true and is a reason). I think people don’t like the idea of having their games library split across multiple services, and don’t like using/learning software they aren’t familiar with, or that other people aren’t using.
My point is just that it doesn’t make sense to criticize the question for not reading the article if the article doesn’t answer the question, and what’s really needed to answer it is additional context. The broad scope of Riot’s statement could be construed to mean they could do more than just ban streamers for using hateful language.
Makes sense. I played Dota for some time and honestly that was one of the things I enjoyed about it, unreasonable people being furious with me while being totally helpless to do anything about it other than lose their shit. Although it’s a dirty sort of enjoyment and makes things extremely awkward; on an emotional level what you want out of the match is for your teammates to fail, but you’re obliged by the rules and a sense of sportsmanship not to throw, so even if you don’t want to be dishonest about what you’re doing it’s hard to play seriously.
I think it would be cool if there was a moba that somehow formalizes the adversarial relationship you have with your team. Maybe like a Survivor esque battle royale setup; in the beginning it’s 5v5, and you’ll be advantaged by the success of your team, but ultimately you are going to have to betray them to win, and also the losers will have an opportunity to influence the outcome.
Seems reasonable, at least it’s not a ban and probably won’t be
Itch.io hasn’t yet addressed that inquiry directly, but one possibility is simply that generative AI is already in widespread use: 31% of respondent to a GDC study published earlier this year said they’re personally using generative AI in their work, and 18% said they’re not using it themselves but have colleagues who are—though not necessarily to create anything players actually see. Given those numbers, and the fact that they’re inevitably going to grow, a straight up ban on generative AI may not be workable.
But I think the point is, the OP meme is wrong to try painting this as some kind of society-wide psychological pathology, when it’s rather business people coming up with simple reliable formulas to make money. The space of possible products people could want is large, and this choice isn’t only about what people want, but what will get attention. People will readily pay attention to and discuss with others something they already have a connection to in a way they wouldn’t with some new thing, even if they would rather have something new.
I have an Index also, one thing I find frustrating is that because the Quest has such a dominant marketshare and packages games differently, some smaller VR games and experiences I see seem to be only available as an apk file for Quest sideloading and there is no straightforward way for me to play them.
The main reason I don’t use it more though is I never got past the physical discomfort, I still feel nausea playing most games for more than a few minutes, and headaches from the pressure on my scalp/face if going longer than that, ie. trying to watch a movie with the headset. So that basically means I’m not going to just spend a lot of time passively chilling out in VR, it has to be some specific thing I want to do that feels worth it to push through the discomfort involved and can be gotten through relatively quickly. Mostly that ends up being just Beat Saber.
The listing notes that special operations troops “will use this capability to gather information from public online forums,” with no further explanation of how these artificial internet users will be used.
Any chance that’s the real reason and not just a flimsy excuse? What kind of information would you even need a fake identity to gather from a public forum?
it may be moral in some extreme examples
Are they extreme? Is bad censorship genuinely rare?
but there are means of doing that completely removed from the scope of microblogging on a corporate behemoth’s web platform. For example, there is an international organization who’s sole purpose is perusing human rights violations.
I think it’s relevant that tech platforms, and software more generally, has a sort of reach and influence that international organizations do not, especially when it comes to the flow of information. What is the limit you’re suggesting here on what may be done to oppose harmful censorship? That it be legitimized by some official consensus? That a “right to censor” exist and be enforced but be subject to some form of formalized regulation? That would exempt any tyranny of the most influential states.
I’m going to challenge your assertion that you’re not talking about
You can interpret my words how you want and I can’t stop you willfully misinterpreting me, but I am telling you explicitly about what I am saying and what I am not saying because I have something specific I want to communicate. When you argue that
I believe each country should get to have a say in what is permissible, and content deemed unacceptable should be blockable by region
In the given context, you are asserting that states have an apparently unconditional moral right to censor, and that this right means third parties have a duty to go along with it and not interfere. I think this is wrong as a general principle, independent of the specific example of Twitter vs Brazil. If the censorship is wrong, then it is ok to fight it.
Now you can argue that some censorship may be harmful because of its impact on society, such as the removal of books from school hampering fair and complete education or banning research texts that expose inconvenient truths.
Ok, but the question is, what can be done about it? Say a country is doing that. A web service defies that government by providing downloads of those books to its citizens. Are they morally bound to not do that? Should international regulations prevent what they are doing? I think no, it is ok and good to do, if the censorship is harmful.
Since my argument isn’t about what should be censored, I’m intentionally leaving the boundaries of “harmful censorship” open to interpretation, save the assertion that it exists and is widely practiced.
I also think that any service (twitter) refusing to abide by the laws of a country (Brazil) has no place in that country.
That could be true in a literal sense (the country successfully bans the use of the service), or not (the country isn’t willing or able to prevent its use). Morally though, I’d say you have a place wherever people need your help, whether or not their government wants them to be helped.
Before, players could use Apex Coins to grab each new pass, earning enough from previous passes to fund their next purchase. The new system for the battle royale game would require real money transactions in addition to doubling how many battle passes would be released per season.
I don’t play this kind of game and don’t understand what the controversy is. What does a “battle pass” buy you? I guess they made it so people can’t obtain it by just playing where before they could? Why is that something to be outraged about?
Really interesting article. The general idea seems to be that people having their access to banking shut down has been a real problem for a long time, and is most commonly imposed on marginalized groups, but people don’t realize it’s going on, and the people on the right making noise about this issue ignore where the bulk of the problem is.
This is sometimes how I feel when I appear on the ‘anti-mainstream’ ‘free thought’ media outlets. They want to hear about the financial censorship of the Freedom Convoy, but they don’t want to hear about restrictions on Aboriginal payments. This hints to a skew in their freedom of thought, and it’s certainly not open-minded. When they approach me, they’re trying to recruit that mercenary side of me who is nominally prepared to defend their narrow free thinking, but this poses an ethical dilemma, because their selective curation of what examples of payments censorship they’re prepared to ask about or listen to amounts to a silent form of censorship in itself. Selectively hearing, and amplifying, one set of injured voices - the Truckers - can be very similar to blocking another set out.
Firstly, yes, it’s very important to fight the general principle of payments censorship (and, by extension, to protect the cash system that provides a buffer agai nst it). Secondly, I must inform them that the actual chances of payments censorship being used against them is smaller than the chances of it being used against refugees, migrants, the homeless, or sex workers, who face recent real-world cases of financial censorship.
I think framing this as “refusing” to use AI is kind of weird. They believe in doing things the traditional way, great, I think games that use all hand-drawn nondigital art are also cool for going against the grain like that, and making a point of supporting artists is laudable, but it isn’t like anyone is trying to force them not to.
I like reading books, but with any other medium than games you are limited to a passive role. They can’t make a story your story the way a game can.