Lvxferre [he/him]
I have two chimps within, Laziness and Hyperactivity. They smoke cigs, drink yerba, fling shit at each other, and devour the face of anyone who gets close to either.
They also devour my dreams.
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From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.
Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:
Installation takes 5-12 minutes (depending on your system, mostly on your drive speed – the game has more than 49000 small files, Paradox never learn from their mistakes)
I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.
Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:
- to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
- to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine
FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.
And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)
Tagging @[email protected], as it addresses what they said too.
Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs
- do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
- give no flying fucks about players, who might have really slow connections.
And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”
It’s possible. For example, the quality assurance department finds 9001 critical bugs, but whoever is in charge says “ship it lol” regardless of those bugs. In fact I think this might be the problem with CS2, I wouldn’t be surprised if Paradox was the one doing the QA for Colossal Order.
Still a bad QA matter, though. And it’ll get worse.
Relevant to note the publisher (Paradox Interactive) is also known for extremely poor in-house QA. Both game and DLC releases are known to be extremely buggy.
[Hallikainen] We’re confident that the franchise will continue to thrive under Paradox’s leadership
That’s corpo speech for “we lost the franchise, PI has it under its direct control now”. Note Iceflake Studios is “part of Paradox Interactive”.
The series is dead. Nothing to see here. Move on, gentle folks.
Yup, that’s part of the deal: cat shit is preferable over elephant shit. The other part is that cat shit is still shit, and it’s still undesirable.
Now look at the discussion in this thread. Gabe Newell is cat shit; some comments are trying to defend him as not shit, some trying to pretend his behaviour is exactly as bad as elephant shit (your typical billionaire). Between a billionaire like Newell spending money on a research yacht versus one like Musk fuelling some random dictatorship, Newell is preferable. And he’s still undesirable as any of those money-hoarding psychopaths.
I’m not the only one, either. I think the only people left are those who see Nintendo as video-game iPhones and autopilot into a purchase, and the diehards who have dedicated Amiibo rooms.
And even those might suffer some causalities, depending on how things go:
- the ones treating games like luxury goods are a bit too susceptible towards popular attitude. If Nintendo goes from “wow, you got a Nintendo!” to “you got a Nintendo? Cringe. Even Twilight is a better love story.”, they’ll be quick to ditch it too.
- diehard fans tolerate more abuse than reasonable fans, but that amount if not infinite. And Nintendo has been rather abusive when it comes to the Switch 2, including remote bricking it for spurious reasons.
Some things never end. For example, CEOs’ propensity towards dishonesty / idiocy / disingenuousness. Or my disdain towards straw men, I hope it outlives me, like a meme.
EDIT: my point is, that those CEOs are consistently distorting what SKG is about: from “don’t design games to be unplayable once support ends” (fairly reasonable) into “u think gaems shuld live 4ever lol but ackshyually nuffin does lmao XD”. This is a fucking straw man; it’s the bottom of the barrel when it comes to irrationality.
And they’re doing it to discourage people from supporting SKG. And in this specific case what the article is calling “vibing” is just part of a diversion tactic - to avoid having people calling him out for his dishonesty / idiocy / disingenuousness. Say something filthy, then distract the audience with mental masturbation, it works!
Good marketing and luck do play their roles, but aren’t enough by themselves. With those two but without pulling your emotional strings, SV wouldn’t be seen nowadays as a “spiritual successor” to Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons, but rather as a “cheap knock-off”.
Doubly so for an indie game - indie devs don’t have enough money to make shit look like ambrosia, unlike AAA studios.
Also note HM/SoS did not start as a corporate-run series. The formula was already there in the SNES game, developed by a rather unknown studio (Amccus). Apparently Yasuhiro Wada came up with the idea because he wanted to try something different, and he’s from a rural background.
Corporate is kind of lucky the formula is enough - to make someone feel proud of their farm (like in Ech’s answer) or relate to the characters (interacting with them often, giving them gifts, seeing cutscenes etc.), otherwise it would’ve ruined it with “more graphics! 9001 love interests! 9001 crops! …what do you mean, the characters aren’t relatable?”.
You can save scum and she’ll be back, but one of the characters highlights it:
Clever. Verrrryyy clever. You think you’re really smart, don’t you? In this world, it’s kill or be killed. So you were able to play by your own rules. You spared the life of a single person. Hee hee hee…
But don’t act so cocky. I know what you did. You murdered her. And then you went back, because you regretted it. Ha ha ha ha…
And the whole game is full of situations like this. Highlighting that your actions actually have some impact, even if you can reload or start a new game.
Even in your case, it’s still about feelings—although different ones: you’re expressing yourself through your farm, instead of focusing on the romance. “See, myself, this is what I built! Good job, me.” and the likes.
Neither is the “right” or “wrong” emotion, mind you. But a game needs to trigger at least some within you, to be a good game. And that’s what corporations don’t get: they’re chasing mensurable things. More graphics, presence/absence of a mechanic, even gameplay length can be measured; but you can’t really measure someone’s emotional experience.
They also miss really bad why those games become popular on first place.
For example, the text mentions Minecraft, and all that “crafting” trend. What made Minecraft great was not crafting - it was the feeling that you’re free to express yourself, the way you want, through interactions with the ingame world. If you want to build a huge castle, recreate a wonder you love, or a clever contraption to bend the world’s rules to do your bidding, you can.
Or, let’s pick Undertale. It’s all about the mood, the game pulls strings with your emotions. Right at the start the game shows you Toriel, she’s a really nice lady, taking care of you as if she was your child. And being overprotective. Then the game tries to make you kill her, and your first playthrough you’ll probably do it. And you’ll feel like shit. Then you load the save back, and… the game still remembers. You’re still feeling like shit because you killed Toriel.
Stardew Valley? At a certain point of the game, you start to genuinely care about the characters. Not just as in-game characters, but as virtual people with their own backstories, goals, dreams. You relate to them.
It’s all about feelings. But corporations are as soulless as their “art”; and game corporations are no exception. Individual humans get it.
Can I post a potentially controversial opinion?
NO, YOU CAN’T. (just kidding.)
Serious now: if I got it right, this game bar is an overlay showing FPS, CPU/GPU usage, screenshots/recording, stuff like this. It doesn’t look too hard to implement in Linux, and apparently there’s a GNOME extension in the makes for that. (If it’s compatible with Cinnamon I’ll be a happy camper. I’d rather not touch GNOME directly with a 3m pole, but the tools for GNOME are sometimes OK.)
The catch is that Intel will pay the tariffs either way.
Currently they can’t simply rely on the local industry for the semiconductors used in the hardware they sell, so they’re paying tariffs for them.
And, even if they eventually are able to rely solely on the local industry, the tariffs are inducing a supply shock - so even the price of locally produced alternatives will raise as a consequence.
Others are also paying the tariffs, but unlike Intel, they have a bit more wiggling room to deal with lower profits.
(I’m watching the video now, I swear! I know I shouldn’t comment on the topic before watching it, but…)
I did not watch the full video, so this might be potentially mentioned somewhere, but: Trump’s tariffs are definitively not helping Intel at all.
Intel needs things produced in countries that were heavily tariffed, like Taiwan. It can’t produce them at home, those chips aren’t maize tortilla chips dammit. This additional cost needs to be paid by someone - whom? If Intel (price stays the same), now their margin of profit is smaller. If the customer (price is raised accordingly), now the demand drops, and Intel is selling less CPUs. Either way Intel loses money.
I’ll go further: AMD and nVidia are not safe. Once the AI bubble bursts, nVidia will crash really bad. And AMD is also paying the same tariffs as Intel, so while it might feast on Intel’s carcass - much like a vulture - eventually it’ll kick the bucket too.
No load of hard cash is large enough to allow a company to systematically screw things up; specially not under an economic system that equates “stable profits” with “failure to grow”.
And Nintendo’s actions aren’t the result of [metaphorical] brain damage; there’s a consistent pattern here of exploiting brand value for short-term profit.
I worded it in a dumb/certain/silly way but, unless drastic changes happen, I do find it likely to happen.
Look at how often Nintendo is surfacing negatively on the news:
- harassing a small dev studio over patents,
- trying to kill emulation while profiting off it,
- bricking hardware already sold to customers,
- demanding unreasonable prices for new games,
- dictating if you shall be allowed to feature one of its games in a speedrunning event…
Nintendo stopped being seen as a company that enables your fun, to become one that gatekeeps it. That’s brand damage - and really bad for Nintendo’s console sales; people are only willing to invest in a console if they’re reasonably certain they can have fun with it.
And at the same time, there are voices within and around Nintendo pushing the company towards the mobile market. Remember Pokémon Go? Or Ishihara saying the Switch 1 would flop, because of smartphones? If Nintendo console sales decline meaningfully, those voices will become louder and louder. Eventually Nintendo will focus primarily on the mobile market.
However people don’t typically buy mobile games; the monetisation strategy is completely different - microtransactions, gacha, lootboxes, all that crap. Most players (the “minnows”) won’t drop a penny on the game, but huge spenders (the “whales”) compensate for that, so it works.
The minnows aren’t just freeloaders, mind you; they’re required to keep the game alive. So mobile game companies need to fine-tune the pressure in their games - it should be just enough to encourage people to spend some money on the game, but not enough to shoo the minnows away.
But we’re talking about Nintendo here. A company willing to damage its own brand for a few additional pennies. Nintendo would not be able to see all those minnows and say “hey, that’s cool”, it would go full “ARE THOSE FREELOADERS STUPID? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BUY STUFF?”. It would tune the pressure way up, and ruin its mobile market, after it ruined its console market.
…perhaps it should go back to selling playing cards.
Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
Did they even have the option not to go nuclear?
Yes: hide only the games tagged “adult” (subset tag), instead of all games tagged “nsfw” (superset tag), to reduce the disruption. And then work swiftly to relist the adult games with content not being targeted by the payment mafia. Even if itch.io showed one or two false negatives, it would already be a clear sign of good will towards the mafia.
I’m glad the people working there did not do this though. I hope itch io lets the disruption stays on, for as long as possible; preferably affecting as many non-adult games as possible.
I criticised how apologetic itch.io’s statement was towards the payment mafia, but credits where it’s due:
Going nuclear was the smart move. I seriously doubt this censorship wave would’ve gathered so much attention if itch.io only delisted games with the content the mafia is currently going against. It helps to avoid that slippery slope, where people turn a blind eye to small violations of their agency until it’s on something that personally matters to them.
It’s also sensible to look for alternatives, so it doesn’t need to rely on the mafia on first place. A bit too late, but better late than never.
To add to that: my ship-of-Theseus computer is probably older than quite a few adult Lemmy users.
All current pieces are relatively new, as last year I felt like splurging and had money to do so. Except the hard disk - it’s a few years old, I think.
I remember when I installed the predecessor of my current GPU. I put the computer on the floor, and my nephew was crawling in the way, curious. Nowadays my nephew has a stubby beard, and he’s taller than me.
My old case was even older. It had a hole, where I glued cardboard. That hole used to hold a 3½ floppy disk drive. It saw the predecessor of that GPU I mentioned above, that I bought in 2004.
I had to websearch this so might as well share it here: 6DOF = six degrees of freedom. You can move and rotate in all three dimensions.
Accurate for Descent. I played this game as a kid. At the start I hated it, because unlike Doom you need to aim vertically (Doom has three degrees of freedom: X axis, Y axis, rotation). But eventually it grew on me, it’s like going from stale bread to a buttered toast - harder but nicer.
What’s profitable about losing sales of adult games?
From Visa/MC’s PoV the situation looks like this:
- force itch.io - lose sales associated with that content
- leave itch.io alone - lose sales associated with anyone who takes Collective Shout’s noise seriously, while Collective Shout starts smearing shit on Visa/MC by saying “they finance rape!”
Visa/MC likely determined #2 to be more than #1. In other words it’s more profitable to do #1 instead.
Also, what leverage do these groups have over banks and payment processors? […] I just don’t get it. Some random group in Australia has leverage over Visa and MasterCard - American companies - is that what we’re saying here?
It’s mostly their ability to cause brand damage (reasons people avoid your brand because they see it negatively - like #2).
Visa and MC know that, when it comes to sex, people become really irrational. They take insane troll logic seriously, even if they wouldn’t otherwise; and those religious groups like Collective Shout are really good at weaponising that irrationality. The way those alt right groups work is that you don’t even need to know about the group to repeat their talking points, and spread support to those talking points.
I think you might have too much faith in government.
I don’t. I’m picking the lesser of two evils here: a government is less worse than those megacorporations.
But ironically, I think YouTube and many other platforms quietly accept that if we want to live in a somewhat harmonious society, we can’t leave it to the government to make all the rules. (eg. YouTube banning vaccine misinformation and disinformation during a public health emergency.)
They didn’t ban vaccine misinformation “because it’s misinformation” or “because society would be better without it” (even if both things are true). Truth and morality doesn’t matter for those platforms; what matters is brand damage.
but there’s a lot of lawful content that is really undesirable (scams, spam, deepfakes, hate speech, etc.)
- scam - AFAIK already illegal in most of the world.
- spam - should be illegal, at least in the most egregious forms.
- deepfakes - it depends a lot on what is being done with the deepfake in question; plenty of them (like non-consensual sexualisation of someone) are either illegal or should be.
- hate speech - it targets the dignity, well-being and often the lives of marginalised groups. Should be illegal.
Are you noticing the pattern? Those are things that should be handled by a government in defence of the public interest of everyone, not by a platform in defence of private interest of its shareholders. Even if a population has weak control over its government, it’s more than it has over a corporation.
The law isn’t fast or flexible enough to keep up and every country has different (or laughable) definitions of some of these things.
This problem is not a good reason to create an even bigger problem. Like the one we’re seeing - private interest dictating what should be allowed or not in the public sphere.
And, seriously, if the problem was just porn who would give a fuck. (Okay, some people would, some wouldn’t.) The problem is that those corporations will happily target any group, any interest, any person, as soon as they deem profitable; because they have the power to do so, so porn is in this context only the canary of the mine. And this power needs to be curtailed.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that implementing such a wide law would be unviable. Well, focus on financial service providers then - banks, payment processors, and the likes. Problem solved.
When “the right thing to do” enters in conflict with “what maximises profits”, businesses almost always pick the later.
It’s a matter of relative power.