IANAL, and this is oversimplifying. Copyright protects the creative elements of a game, including the specific way that a game is coded (so you cannot decompile a game, modify all the art assets, change the code a little, and then sell it), and possibly aspects of the gameplay required to give it a specific “feel”.

If you want a solid legal defense for cloning, you could have one team that describes the original game in a way that removes the creative elements, and a second team that works from that description to make a new work. This works for other works, too; I can write my own “book about an orphan that learns he has magical powers, goes to a school to learn to use those, and ultimately battles and defeats the powerful dark wizard that killed his parents”, but can’t sit down following the story elements of Harry Potter for my new Barry Cotter book series.

Ultimately the line is what you can convince a judge and/or jury is “different enough”.

At least in the US, government policy has meant that getting a drug to market is an extremely high bar. This means that funding the wrong drug can waste a billion dollars or more of time, material, trained researchers and lab space, etc.

Funding drugs by popular attention, private donation, kickstarter, or anything like that is likely to produce a bunch of scams and even more waste.

Funding drugs by having the government select which ones to study is likely to produce several gigantic financial boondoggles that are dragged on because some Senator wants the jobs wasting the money creates to remain in his state, or something.

If we want more drugs to come out, the best thing to do would be to reduce the cost of making a drug legal to sell, like by lowering the proof required for efficacy, or by alleviating the doctor shortage by permanently increasing the number of medicare funded residency slots.

When a monopoly is faced with a smaller, more efficient competitor, they cut prices to keep people from switching, or buy the new competitor, make themselves more efficient, and increase profits.

When Steam was faced with smaller competition that charged lower prices, they did - nothing. They’re not the leader because of a trick, or clever marketing, but because they give both publishers and gamers a huge stack of things they want.

I wanted to know how important this really would be. Human reaction times among gamers are on the order of 150-300 ms, and professional gamers mostly manage 150-200 ms. A view refreshing 700 times per second gives a new frame every 1.4 ms, while a view refreshing 60 times per second gives a new frame every 16.6 ms.

In a reaction timing heavy game, this would not be enough to bridge the gap between the fastest in the world and the slowest professionals, but it’s on the right order of magnitude to make a difference in professional level play, up against a 60 Hz display. On the other hand, it’s only a marginal step up from a 240 Hz display, and the loss in resolution must have an effect at some point.

There’s probably games where this is better, but only when the difference is small, or the other display is handicapped.

Inflation is wild. Just a few decades ago, you could get this kind of thing for just an arm and a leg.

The quote of him in the article doesn’t sound like it’s a complaint. I think only the headline is pushing that angle. 200 pounds sounds pretty reasonable, given it has to be worth his time to get to the recording, listen to any feedback/change requests, etc.

I consistently don’t buy games that aren’t ready by being a patient shopper, and watching reviews or gameplay before spending money. If you consistently jump on the hype train, buy a copy before knowing anything about the state of the game, and then “complain” to fix it, I have news:

10/10 AAA publishers would rather have $60 and a complaint than $0.

Due diligence is the solution, publishers are now very practiced at weathering criticism.