Same. I think i could have enjoyed the gameplay but the horror aspect and overall vibe was too offputting.

My personal experience with buyouts from private equity investors is that they will milk every single cent out of the company as they crush its soul. They’re looking to make a huge profit, relatively quickly. Yes, the stock market is also looking to profit, and big share-holders have a lot of sway, but publicly traded companies don’t have to answer to a small number of ultra wealthy puppeteers in quite the same way private equity held companies do. Also, there are certain employee protections, particularly around layoffs, that apply to publicly traded companies but don’t apply to privately held companies. This seems to be one of the key strategies in the PE playbook:

1. Buy the company / take it private
2. Slash costs everywhere, including yearly layoffs.
3. Push the remaining employees to adopt a “lean” or “customer first” mindset, which really means “do more work, faster, for less reward”.
4. Profit?

As much as I dislike Ubisoft, I don’t dislike anyone enough to wish that process upon them.

I don’t give a shit about RuneScape. But being vocal is how people give their feedback. For the players, it’s better to give feedback before the price changes, in hopes of making a difference.

I never understood the hardcore gamer mentality. Not that I care if someone else enjoys grinding or developing their skills. Good for them if that’s what they like. But it’s not what I like. I don’t play games to get gud. I play games to fantasize and relax. There’s gotta be some challenge, but I’m fine with it adjusting to meet my (generally low) skill level.

I didn’t know DayZ had PvE servers. I like to watch DayZ streamers sometimes, but I could never play it PvP. That kind of thing is too stressful for me. I might have to check out PvE.

Thief, Power Wash Simulator, Dead Cells, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Car Mechanic Simulator 2021.

I’m not sure I understand. As recently as a few years ago, it was common to find high quality long-form articles on just about any subject linked from your favorite subreddits/tweeters/etc. Now, it seems like the majority of “news” articles I come across are vapid, two paragraph, summaries of a Reddit post or Twitter thread, that don’t anything substantive of their own. I mean, yeah you could find a lot of that 5 years ago too, but now it’s hard to find anything else. It wasn’t that long ago that we had newspapers and magazines, both online and offline, that were actually known for hard-hitting, in-depth journalism. Then they all got sold to companies like Meredith and Conde Nast and have become nothing but thinly veiled advertising. I guess my point is that it hasn’t always been that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way now.

Um, yes.

Thank you for eloquently saying what I often struggle to convey. I’m saving this comment for later reference.

I won’t lie, they pulled the wool over my eyes with Starfield. I kept waiting for that moment where they brought it all together and suddenly it would be a great game. I was shook when the credits rolled and I hadn’t yet found the fun part.