While absolutely too many things are charged for in gaming today (exp boosts? skip potions? cheat armor that was already fully developed at launch? all ways to get your company on my high seas list)… in the specific case where (1) new content is continuously being developed AND (2) the game is not asking for mandatory spending to continue playing (e.g. no expansion pack to purchase, no subscription fees), I don’t think the concept of charging for in-game content at all is abusive.

If I buy once and then a year later some optional paid cosmetics or other goodies are added, I think that’s permissible. And if I’m in a free to play live service game, I recognize the ongoing dev costs need to get covered somewhere.

I do vastly prefer those companies that give their games TLC and updates for free, and I’m not saying the standard pricing for optional purchases in the modern market are reasonable. But I think the existence of in-game purchases, if not their current state, can make sense sometimes.

I don’t think the fediverse has this, but I’m a bit confused why so many of these comments are puzzled at why you would want it. We have fediverse twitter, fediverse insta, fediverse reddit, fediverse discord, etc – why not fediverse facebook/myspace/carrd? Where users could just have small personal (or corporate) pages about themselves that aren’t as blog/news focused on the main(user) page.

I don’t even think it would be a huge stretch to implement: a big focus on user page customization with a small microblog interface taking up a portion of the screen would do it. (Disclaimer: not saying easy to create, just not that far out of reach vs everything else the fediverse has).

Corrected archive link - OP’s is missing a character so it’s not working

Can't believe you forgot the usage limits on how many tweets you can view and how many DMs you can send. I think some of those might have been walked back, but I know people who were holding back from discord because twitter DMs were enough that now rarely go there.

Also all sorts of API functionality has been killed off - embeds, RSS, bots, etc

Mhm, that's one of the "very recent additions" I meant. The other being Memoria, but that's a sidequest.

Bit of a sensationalized headline, then. They're almost there, but not "entirely."

Article only mentions dungeons. Did they add it for story trials too? As far as I know that's only available for early 4-player trials and a couple of very recent additions. The Chrysalis, Steps of Faith, etc can still wipe a group of human players easily if their mechanics are ignored.

I suspect patient gamers have held off on this one given its relatively high system requirements, need for patches to improve performance, and super recent expansion. I’m sure you’re right, but speaking for myself, it’s not on my to-play list for at least another year. (Only mentioning it since you seem surprised)

The fact that they even tried to pretend it wasn’t retroactive because they didn’t charge for old install counts. Like, does it charge games that were released under different terms? Yes? Then it’s retroactive!

It’s pretty much all he does unless he finds an Obra Dinn-tier darling.

Except for Gollum, he was weirdly defensive of that for a game that pulled every AAA anti-consumer trick in the book without at least the decency to be bland.

1.0 release means going from “we hope this works, but if not, be patient because we’re still working on it and let us know so we can try to fix it” to “we’re pretty confident this works as intended well enough to make it an official feature with announcements and PR.”

This goes for all software.

It’s weird to call it misleading. Yes, it might have worked, but it was a testing relationship, not an official one.

the black spots you get in clothes when you leave them in a wet pile for too long

We call that mold or mildew.

Oh, I’m positive yours is by far the more common experience - I haven’t met anyone who agreed with me about it, haha. (But starting with “unpopular opinion, but…” is so tainted by popular opinions seeking attention that I couldn’t bring myself to say it)

And yeah, the puzzles were simple, but the world was cool enough (until the ending loljk’d it all) that I enjoyed spending time in it even doing the simple stuff.

This is a hard question to answer, because the really unfun ones either get dropped so fast I forget I ever played them unless someone jogs my memory by naming them directly, or I’m willing to just shrug and say “this is probably great to some people, but it’s not a genre I like.” I guess for this category, I would point to The Witness. I heard so many recommendations for it, but aside from the occasional “oh, neat” when I saw how a puzzle was placed in the world instead of on a board, I couldn’t tolerate it for nearly as long as it wanted me to keep doing the thing.

The game I memorably should have enjoyed - that I had the highest hopes for (and the biggest subsequent disappointment for) was Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

At first, I loved the deeply disturbed main character and grim Norse fantasy world being crafted around me, but the combat felt so disjointed from the story (on purpose) that it felt like there was one guy on the dev team who liked combat who everyone was afraid to piss off, so they had to make concessions and put one token immersion-wrecking battle in every so often. And it’s mad that Senua has two entire character traits - “psychotic” and “warrior” - and one of them managed to feel immersion breaking.

Then the ending destroyed the bits of the game I DID like and made me feel like a tool for ever having bought into the grim fantasy world to begin with. That shit is everyone’s most hated ending trope, and I walked away from the game feeling like I’d wasted my time.

At least it was short.

I didn’t say they don’t make good games. I said they drink the koolaid.

Context matters, and in the context of this thread (whether or not Bethesda games often have Denuvo) that means the anti-piracy “DRM is neat” koolaid (vs them avoiding DRM for self-developed games so they can be modded extensively).

Bethesda the publisher does things differently than Bethesda the developer.

As a dev, they know their modding communities keep their games alive long, long past their expiration dates and will fuck with them as little as they possibly can - this takes them from games to household names to legends that everyone knows.

As a publisher pushing products that aren’t intended to be modded, they drink the koolaid.

You have to understand that most accounting departments treat month-end with the same gravity as year-end. My job’s accounts payable department starts sending month end deadline reminders on the 15th. It’s absurd how much they focus on it.

(This is not an excuse for their abhorrent treatment of an employee, mind you, but it might help explain the twisted logic behind “end of July” possibly working against her.)

Wow, that’s a kind of dismissal that only those who have no idea how bad it gets can wield. Reading glasses help with clarity, but clarity is not the only issue with old eyes and other visual impairment. Sometimes you just plain need things bigger.

One day you’ll look back on this exchange and cringe at the kind of person you used to be. Be better. Accessibility is important.

Signed, someone who’s needed full-time prescription glasses for 35+ years and only recently started having to read small print on food and medicine containers with the zoom on my phone camera.

I agree removing the character entirely seems too far. The characters are designed differently enough that you would be leaving a reasonable number of people without their favorite playstyle entirely without a suitable replacement.

I get people not being able to look past the history, but I’m not sure there’s any more reasonable course of action that can be taken. The name was the homage, not the kit, art, or lines. And now that name is gone.

I think those who are still upset about it would have to accept they fall under “Don’t like? Don’t engage” rather than calling for further action.

Because they don’t want to be held to the new standard, obviously. They’re comfortable and are preemptively taking offense at the idea of having to do more in the future. Like the normal kids who want to punch down the one overachiever who reminds the teacher to assign homework.

But this isn’t a homework assignment; these are businesses competing for consumer dollars, and Larian is winning with their investment into a happy team and good product.

Well, we can agree on that! Make paying contributors the cheaper option.

I won’t hold my breath though. :')