Shill has primarily been used as an insult for the past 50 years in the way I’m defining it here. I don’t believe you’ve never heard it used to mean that.

one who acts as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler)

Literally on that same page.

a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/shill

a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/shill

someone who helps another person to persuade people to buy something, especially by pretending to be a satisfied customer

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/shill?q=shill

shill n informal, US (person planted to lure customers)

https://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=shill

A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

If someone starts off saying “this is a sponsores stream” then yes, that is correct. It’s illegal to not disclose when media is an advertisement in most of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s against the TOS of most streaming sites, too.

A shill doesn’t disclose that they’re being paid to promote a product. The secrecy is what makes them a shill

Yes, someone who promotes a product while hiding the fact that they’ve been paid to promote the product. Streamers generally say “this is a sponsored stream” to avoid lawsuits.

Plenty do, yeah. Though to the marketing team, all streamers are influencers

Sponsoring streams isn’t even close to the same thing as hiring shills

“doesn’t have to be downloaded” is a basic requirement of a game for you in 2025?

More like the show he was playing had free entry and these guys came to the bar specifically to complain that they don’t like his music.

The streamer wasn’t “using a megaphone” - these losers weren’t yelling back at a guy on the street , they were *going out of their way" looking for people playing the game so they could join and bitch about the existence of black people.

Gaming websites are soooo bad about that. It should be a rule for all gaming news communities that the title must include the game name.

I’d like to read about cool upcoming games but I will never click a headline like this.

Shit like this is why people pirate. Not saying you should do that but IMO it’s a legitimate reason.

I’m already paying you money for a SINGLE PLAYER game and you want me to pay MORE with my data? Fuck off, Ubisoft

You can absolutely make amazing builds but pretty much everything is rectangular. I am NOT knocking Satisfactory at all, it’s one of my favorite games… Valheim is just way more flexible

Satisfactory building didn’t frustrate me by any means but it’s a far cry from Valheim in terms of flexibility.

That said, I don’t think it needs to be. You’re building rigid, utilitarian factories and can basically fly - no need for fancy staircases or angled walls!

Man now I just really want to play Valheim again

After valheim, every base building game I’ve played feels so bad and limiting!

I’ve never been to blizzcon so I can’t comment there. I didn’t start playing until the very end of BFA so I didn’t play it much but I heard it was also a shit expansion. Personally I couldn’t care less about the story in an MMO (I’m playing for m+ and raids) but both expansions since have a much better story than Shadowlands did.

It’s still not a perfect game but there’s been a LOT of QoL changes this expansion especially. Reputation is account-wide, campaign quests can be largely skipped on alts, and there’s a shared bank. Almost everything is cross-faction and cross-server now, too. There’s a lot more ways to gear up now, no rep grinds, and the only real time gating is at the beginning of each patch.

Anyway, don’t mean to sound like a shill here. I swore off WoW after a few months of Shadowlands but got talked into coming back and don’t regret it. Blizzard addressed most of my problems with the game so I’m happy to say it’s a good game now

I gave up on their other IPs (it seems so did they lol) but they crushed it with the two last WoW expansions after the disaster that was Shadowlands

I got that game when it came out and could never get it to run right. Starting the game gave me an invisible character running around on a gray square. I was very sad

I read the whole thing and nowhere does it defend that title. This game/movie does NOT make the climate apocalypse look good, why the hell did they write that?

Jeez you’re really stretching to make this funny little story into something negative.

Farmville also got a ton of middle-aged women into games at a time when gaming was primary seen as an industry for teenage boys

Ugh, greedy Valve making you spend $0 to buy the base game

[Edit] ok I read the article after making that joke and I see that it applies to several other valve games, not all of which are free to play

Absolutely. Fuck EA.

I think that’s the point? The base game is going to have a ton of shit that EA charges $10-20 for

Yes! I avoided all trailers knowing I’d be playing it anyway but I was really impressed with everything about it. I couldn’t figure out how they’d possibly continue the story from the first game…but damn, they nailed it.

It’s the only game(s) that I look forward to reading. I didn’t 100% it (just 100% of the puzzles) but I went out of my way for all the bits of lore when I could

Great series. I highly recommend both of them

You’re right but I was assuming NFT dorks would pull up their NFT wallet (?) and click them

Hell yeah let’s burn down the planet for fuckin skins in video games! /s

It’s an apt comparison but NFTs are sooo much worse than skins. At least there’s an opportunity to “enjoy” skins as well as show them off during an activity you’re doing anyway.

With an NFT it’s just “look at this picture I own!” and nothing else

Loved the gameplay, though!

I really liked the story and world aesthetic but the bobblehead character design is sooo off-putting to me. Zidane always reminded me a blond Chucky doll

You can use both :)

Individual Steam reviews may be trash but the average rating is valuable and usually pretty reliable. The biggest downside of the system is that it isn’t quick to “respond” to updates but the separate “Recent” rating helps a lot.

The point you’re responding to is that C:S 2 was praised by reviewers at launch despite it having TONS of issues and missing features. The Steam ratings were a way more accurate picture of the game.

Online should be free.

And yeesh, 30fps as the goal…

His worst demeanor of the first term is the his new status quo…he’s speed running destruction now. The overton window is shifting so far right, his first term is going to look dead center

I wasn’t interested in one at the time so I didn’t know any of this, I thought they just stopped making watches. I’ve been reconsidering getting one and probably wouldn’t have looked into the history of each company so I appreciate the rant.

I’ve got a few of those. I’m planning to backup my friend’s Twitter page and all our interactions since his account is private and I don’t want to login ever again (after archiving)

“This”

Companies love when people cheat in their competitive games. It makes more people want to play their games

Yes, now picture the enemy team’s models with lines extending 10 meters in all directions.

Gamers mad because tight wing influencers were complaining that Nexus removed a Trump model and not mentioning that they removed ALL models of politicians.