Take it up with Steam, I guess. Ten seconds on Google could have answered the question before you bought the game. If you feel this strongly about it, maybe you should be checking for each game you buy before you buy them.

Pick Your Path: Character creation is just the beginning. The Nameless One can change his class, alignment, and even gain new abilities based on your choices.

It says nothing about Gender, and it specifically refers to ‘his’. This perfectly describes what you can do, so it certainly belongs in the ‘Features’ section. It also doesn’t mention Race or Species; I’d much rather play as a non-human, but I’m not winging about it, because nowhere did the game tell me I could play as a non-human. I’m not going to keep arguing with you about it, because clearly neither of us are making any headway.

Drag is angry about false advertising.

It would only be false advertising if Steam said you could choose your gender when you can’t, which they don’t.

The games clearly aren’t the same, but the premise of Planescape: Torment is that the game is telling you a predefined story about a specific character. That character happens to have lived many, many unique lives. You aren’t deciding who he is on a fundamental level, just what his skillset is right now, similar to spending ability points in Witcher. Unlike e.g. Baldur’s Gate, where you are a Bhaalspawn but you get to decide the specifics, Torment’s protagonist is largely predefined.

Well, since you’ve invited us to argue…

Drag is absolutely fine if a game has a male protagonist you can’t customise. The Master Chief is fine. Geralt is fine. But when drag is supposed to create a character and put part of dragself into the character, drag doesn’t want to do that with a man.

The Nameless One is not much different from The Master Chief or Geralt. The game is telling the story of a specific character. In this case, that character is a man. The fact that it’s based on D&D is kind of irrelevant; it sounds like you made an assumption that wasn’t stated anywhere, and are now trying to finagle a refund far outside of the refund window as a result.

While I certainly understand and sympathize with not wanting to play a character that doesn’t match your gender, it strikes me as kind of hypocritical to be okay with doing so for some games but not others. Personally I’d say, don’t play it if you feel strongly about it, but it’s not grounds for a refund.

Refund policy is pretty clear. They make exceptions sometimes but certainly not after 8 months. Maybe just accept that you shouldn’t have sat on it for 8 months before installing it if you weren’t sure you were going to like it and were going to want a refund otherwise?

I really hope they do complain, because that’d be great confirmation for anyone considering adding this shit that it does in fact impact sales.

Same reason as why Bethesda slapped Prey on Arcane’s spooky space station imsim

This was the weirdest choice. I actually dismissed the new Prey entirely for a very long time because I didn’t enjoy the old one, when the new one was actually a very different, very good game.

Which begs the question, why use the IP in the first place?

It’s especially weird because they just recently gave the green light for the Aleph One developers to release the originals on Steam, so it’s probably more well-known now than ever before. Even though it’s still relatively obscure, why do that now? It just doesn’t make sense.

if you have a more effective metric in mind, I’d love to hear it instead of just pointing out flaws

I mean, isn’t the whole point of this comment section to discuss the merits and flaws of the proposal you’ve made? If we’re not discussing the downsides, too, what’s even the point?

That said, an ideal system would be a measure of the quality of content, not the quantity of content so, as another user has suggested, some measure involving net upvotes might be more effective. Yes, obviously a user can create multiple accounts to upvote everything and fuck with that metric, but I kind of doubt many folks would go to the trouble.

Maybe some combination of PCM and the average number of votes divided by the number of active users could generate some sort of quality metric. At the very least it might be a measure of engagement.

Spam Resistance: Creating multiple accounts to inflate MAU is easy. Generating meaningful posts and comments is harder.

Isn’t this actually just spam encouragement? A community with a bot that posts 50 low-value posts every day will have a much higher PCM as a result, and that behavior is more obnoxious to users and moderators who have to see it and deal with it, vs. someone creating a bunch of accounts, which is largely invisible to everyone else.

The geography is also a huge contributor. To protest something on a national scale needs significantly greater buy-in from the country as a whole than protesting something on a national scale in a European country. We have a huge amount of land area over here and with the exception of major cities, we’re very spread out.

Spain is one of the larger European countries, and is about 500k sq. km, as an example. The US is about 9.1 million sq. km.

Protests happen on local scales but they don’t make national news, only the really massive ones do, and those require a lot of coordination and time investment from the participants just to show up.

It’s all just framing, no? You could frame all of your examples of protesting to “improve something” as protesting against something, and vice versa.

Protesting for improved living conditions is just protesting against poor living conditions. Protesting for higher wages is protesting against low wages. Protesting for lower tuition costs is protesting against high tuition.

Protests by definition are an action objecting to a thing. What are you seeing happen in other countries that’s so different to what’s happening here, when you don’t selectively frame it as “for” a cause rather than “against” a thing?

This patent was first submitted in late July 2024 and granted the following month, after Nintendo and The Pokemon Company asked for an accelerated review process.

What the fuck - so, they’re claiming infringement on a work that was released before they ever submitted their patent? How is that allowed? Are you telling me a company can wait until another company releases a similar product, then apply for a patent for something they used, then claim infringement? I knew patents were fucked, but I didn’t realize they were that fucked.

Hi - I’m a Linux newbie.

I don’t tell other Linux users that I use linux because it almost always leads to a bunch of questions that I don’t know the answer to. So let me assure you, that awkwardness is on both sides of that conversation you’re describing.

Seriously, I’d say there’s a zero percent chance this takes off, but luxury fashion is baffling to me, so who knows. If people will spend $500+ for a zip tie, maybe they’ll spend it for this, too.

I took a ~1200 mile bus trip about 20 years ago; it had multiple layovers and took about 36 hours total so it sounds very similar to the trip you’re taking. Frankly I would not do it again. This is from a trip up the east coast of the US so my experience might not apply in the country you’re going to.

I’d have to wait between 3 and 5 hours to board the next bus. Optimist me says great! I could go sightseeing, but with a large and heavy backpack this might not be a good idea…

If you’re using bus terminals in big cities, don’t expect to be able to get anywhere interesting and back again in that time. Large bus terminals are crowded (basically like a small airport) and sprawling and you’ll likely be fairly overwhelmed just trying to get to where you need to go to. They’re also generally not located in the middle of metropolitan areas; you’d most likely need to take a taxi to get to wherever you wanted to sight-see. It would not be a pleasant experience. If you’re considering this, check a map of the area around the terminal first and see if it’s even an option; don’t just wing it, and plan to need more time when getting back to the terminal than you think you should, especially if it’s a non-English speaking country.

Then there’s food, which at bus stations or in tourists areas is neither good nor cheap no matter where you are, personal hygiene, pickpocketing… I’d be traveling solo.

Expect to pay more than you otherwise would. Consider bringing food with you if you’re concerned about that. The only real hygiene option is the sink in the bathroom in the terminal; you’ll probably just be throwing on some deodorant and hoping for the best.

are travelers allowed to eat in the bus? Am I allowed to bring my own food?

Yes, and yes, at least for the US-based busses I’ve ridden on. They’re pretty chill. Don’t expect to have a tray table or anything, though; don’t bring messy things. Something like a bagged sandwich, or snack items, though, should be fine.

The busses themselves were fairly comfortable, much moreso than a plane - the seats are well cushioned, you have room to move around. The ride itself was not bad. However, the layovers are killer. None of the legs of the trip were long enough to really sleep, either during them or between them. It’s hard to sleep on a bus (for me, anyway) - they’re not the smoothest rides, and it ended up being a bunch of short, unsatisfying naps rather than any real sleep. Sleeping at the terminals didn’t seem wise. I was a bit stressed about either missing my connection or someone nicking my stuff, though, so that added stress definitely made the trip worse than it could have been. I felt pretty awful by the time I reached my destination and just could not wait to be off that bus. Thirty six hours is a lot longer in practice than it sounds like when you’re planning things.

The community averages less than 1 post per day; it’s not like it’s being overrun with animal identification requests, and there’s certainly not enough to warrant a separate community. Maybe just ask for spoiler tags on spiders instead?

Game is Arco.

I haven’t ever heard of it; maybe they should focus more on ‘How do we market this’…

What’s even your point here? You’re suggesting the person you’re originally replying to is part of the demographic that seems to enjoy a game, so their enjoyment of that game is cheapened in some way? If anything that makes them more qualified to talk about it than you are.

Seriously, just let people enjoy things.