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Cake day: Jun 18, 2023

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Sort of the point though. If they take a small creator to court, they can just bankrupt them through expensive legal proceedings, and because they do have the patents the judge is unlikely to throw the case out


Yeah it’s just generally still way higher powered than the switch 2. But Nintendo has always sold underpowered hardware because of their monopoly on their properties

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/handheld-gaming-pcs/switch-2-versus-steam-deck/


When I was in college studying Comp Sci I did a whois on Woz’s domain and sent an email to the registered email (this was generally before the days of free whois protection), not expecting a response, just mentioning how cool his work on the Apple I & II was among others, and how as a CS student was exciting to see where technology had gotten to, asking him what he was up to.

I got a response a day later, thanking me for my email, talking about how he loved hearing from students, telling me about his current dancing with the stars stuff (this was in late 2009), among some other quips and such.

Felt incredibly down to earth and casual, and while I know it only took him maybe 5 minutes to write that email, or maybe it was even copied and pasted, it was super cool to get a response from such a tech icon.



^ Pretty much the goal of capitalism. “Once we achieve infinite growth we will generate unlimited wealth with no effort. The line will go straight up forever!”


Love how the bottom of the page is like

We are an independent registered charity with no affiliation to religious or political institutions.

Meanwhile, the founder

In 2007, she published Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics[7], to a conservative journal called The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly before being republished by Spinifex press.

The journal is periodically published by a conservative think tank called The National Catholic Bioethics Center.

In 2009, Tankard Reist spoke at a forum called, “Event: Inspiring Christians Series” in the Belconnen Baptist Church on behalf of Sheridan Voysey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist

She’s all about women. As long as they produce children regardless of how they were impregnated and are wives in Catholic marriages.


Makes sense, wasn’t untrue and I wasn’t criticizing, just wanted to make sure everyone remembers that the problem goes up the chain due to capitalism.

Various companies/games were mentioned in the comments, but I think a good example is Hello Games. Clearly fumbled their game launch and were over ambitious with No Man’s Sky.

But it’s gotten an incredible amount of things that were promised, and many things that weren’t, all as free updates. Sure, they’re still making money, that’s the point, but instead of Micro-transactions, overpriced DLC, fucking over the devs, shutting things down, they just keep rolling. I’m sure they’ve gotten offers of acquisition that were probably very lucrative, but they didn’t take them, and have continued their slow roll of making gamers happy.


It’s a canon event for any game company that achieves moderate success gets acquired by investors

Very much not exclusive to the game industry


Yeah had to swap out a steam deck joystick and scooped one up from iFixit and it was wonderfully easy to swap. That being said, being able to switch them out on my dualsense edge without a screwdriver and just having a switch on the back of the controller is really neat. Definitely my favorite controller I’ve owned, I just wish more PC games supported the haptics.


Yeah the original was released Nov 2019 for PlayStation exclusively and then a PC port was released July 2020.

So potentially 8 months after the DS2 PlayStation release before a PC port, if they’re following the same schedule


Great read, thanks for sharing. The specific permalink for those confused arriving at a page of links:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-others


Join our discord

It’s so weird to fight for digital ownership of one thing and then put all the organizing work and discussion into another closed corporate ecosystem that could shut down or charge per head at any time



lol who the fuck downvoted this. This is objectively a good thing in pretty much any way you spin it


lol sure for now, all of those “we’ll control this buyout” lasts for like a year until the org is dissolved or whatever because the majority shareholder has changed the deal



Can’t argue with that, it would be nice for GOG to have:

  • Cloud saves
  • A controller pass through with configuration as you described

Those are really steam’s best features, and if GOG had those I’d likely stop buying steam games


I doubt it, if you are concerned if I’m the person you’re thinking of you should tag me, or go through my post history.

That being said, Gabe owns 50.1% of the company. If he dies, and transfers that to one person, it doesn’t matter what his employees think, public or private, unless the bylaws for the corporation (yes, a private company like steam is still a corporation) state otherwise, the majority shareholder can vote on future direction and win.

Additionally, you underestimate tech employees and their willingness to exit on the right terms. If valve becomes valued at 100 billion dollars, and they can exit with their 1 percent stock at 45 years old, neither them or their family will ever need to work a day again and they can exit the global firestorm and live on an island somewhere.

You’re putting far too much altruism on everyone.


I really hope Gabe lives for another 20+ years. Steam has its issues but they are few and far between in comparison to the alternatives. And I’m afraid that when he passes, whoever takes up the mantle will go public, or sell, enshittifing the platform.


In my experience the majority of tech workers don’t give a fuck about the moral implications of their work. They often justify it with “if I don’t do it someone else will.”

Source: am tech worker, see it all the time


Makes sense, that’s probably why the highest quality cutscenes are the ones from the PS1 port (retaliation) of the counterstrike and aftermath expansions, since the roms are so well preserved. A good example of how game preservation can help both the gaming community and the companies that make said games


Totally makes sense, considering the remaster was perfect. It was just “multiplayer works, we redid the sprites and audio and tweaked the engine to get rid of some of the bugs. Also hit space for original graphics” or whatever the button was. It was everything an OG C&C remaster needed IMO. I would love to see the same with some of these titles, but now that they’re open source it gives the opportunity for better fan made forks, so I’m all for it.

Edit: and forgot to mention the best part, EA didn’t force their launcher with the remaster or steam editions. They are purely steam games, which is a huge win


Im now just happy that it’s far more likely for a clean 60fps mod that’s not locked behind someone’s patreon


This feels more like some o.g. Command and conquer devs who have worked at EA for a long time that are passionate about the franchise. There was no big PR release, no product tie in or announcement, no media campaign.

Recovering and restoring the source code for these titles was made possible through the combined efforts of EA technical director Brian Barnes, Respawn producer Jim Vessella, and Luke Feenan, a long-standing member of the C&C community who was involved in the development of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection.

https://www.polygon.com/news/531365/command-and-conquer-open-source-code-ea


Yeah satisfactory spent 5 years in early access. Good dev takes time


Simplified: capitalism made these studios shitty, just as it’s done for gestures broadly


Yup, any “never” decision under modern capitalism should be treated at “within this quarter.” All that matters is quarterly growth, and all company decisions will change every quarter



My guess is the parent comment didn’t have markdown list formatting and improper newline formatting at first, so it appeared as on line for a bit before the commenter edited it, but he just responded snarkily instead of being like “hey your markdown formatting borked here”


I was a GM for a long running RED game for awhile, it was a blast. And I got a few pieces of excellence from our tech along the way:


Make sure to link their actual site to since those all exist as redirect pages:

https://www.domainthenet.com/en/

This registrar is such hot garbage that it stinks of just one individual or group controlling the whole thing from the registrar level to the few domains they provide. Their contact form page won’t even load for me.

continues to poke around

Oh what do you know, the registrar and “BrandShield” are run by the same guy

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/david-fridman

Sounds like the reports should go directly to ICANN for ignoring reports about domains on their registration list

Edit:

I would be remiss if I didn’t include the other founders

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yoav-keren

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yuval-zantkeren

Who, again, all founded “Brandshield” at the same time they bought the rights from ICANN to make their own registrar, which appears to purely operate as a byproduct of “Brandshield”


I can’t tell if this is just part of the meme or not


Ah that’s disappointing to hear. And also probably extends my point that now warhorse has grown, and their execs are making bad calls that I’m sure the devs would choose not to make


Agreed, I’m always saddened by quotes like “well the devs should have” when it’s almost certainly “the execs should have.” Unless a studio is owned by its devs, or they make up some of its leadership, which are few and far between, the devs don’t have the say on the shitty things that happen to the product they’re working on, and often when the devs have more say you end up with like Kingdom Come Deliverance from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhorse_Studios. One of my favorite games, was supported by the studio for long after it came out, and now they’re working on a promising sequel


Agreed, things like DLSS are the right kind of application of AI to games, same with frame generation. The wrong kind is trying to figure out how to replace developers, artists of every kind, actors, etc in the production process with AI. That being said though, companies like Nvidia absolutely can and will profit off making sure that a game cannot run well on anything but the latest hardware that they sell, so the whole “you need to buy our stuff to play games because it has the good ai and now all games require the good ai” is capitalist bullshit


This is an incredible game I highly recommend, but I had to downvote because rules


Yeah I’m for new games and hopefully people love it but “hero shooter” and “moba” definitely aren’t categories I’m looking for in new games, the market is flooded with them. Hopefully valve can stand out