I am generally unwilling to pay extra for features I don’t need and didn’t ask for.

Depending on your SLA, 3 minutes can be a pretty big chunk of your monthly error budget.

Sometimes words aren’t enough.

Then you stop them and tell them this isn’t what I asked for. It’s not that hard.

If they’re not trimming enough - tell them to keep going. Until they hit the length you want. The job is done when you’re happy with it, not when they think they’re done.

Battlefield 2142 was ambitious. It included one of the most fun Battlefield game modes I’ve played (Titan), and in my opinion the main reason it bombed somewhat was that it came out way too quickly after Battlefield 2, which was still ragingly popular with PC gamers, and the player base didn’t have much appetite for changing over to a new game.

EA made games before pay to win loot boxes became a thing.

I didn’t think I needed the /s, but here goes:

/s

Ah c’mon, give them credit where it’s due. They didn’t try nothing - thoughts and prayers were tried in abundance.

If the choice is to starve or work for this company, then it’s pragmatic to work there. No, it’s not ethical. That being said, not everyone is in the fortunate position where they can let their ethics decide where they work, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

No shit. How have they not figured this out 15 years ago when every DVD had non-skippable anti-piracy messages?

What do you mean ‘enter’? Nintendo created one of the first handheld gaming devices that ever existed, and they’ve been known for handheld devices all the way through their history.

Apples and oranges comparison. The Steam Deck is PC-adjacent hardware that can access a back catalogue of thousands of games going back twenty years, well before the Steam Deck was even an idea.

The Switch is a game console with its own ecosystem, and it has existed for six years. Games have to be developed specifically for it. The only thing both have in common is that they’re handhelds.

Because governments and corporations all over the world are trying to hollow out privacy?

Do you mean dogwhistling? Whistleblowing is something else.

Maybe not the most unfun game I have ever played (I’ve played games since the late 90s), but certainly the most unfun I have played in recent years: Elex.

I liked Piranha Bytes’ old Gothic series a lot despite its weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. The Risen games weren’t that great, but the reviews for Elex were pretty promising. So I gave it a shot, and tried for about 16 hours to find the fun in it. I stopped playing when I realised:

• I couldn’t hold my own in almost any battle because I didn’t have good enough gear
• In order to get better gear, I had to join one of the game’s factions
• In order to join one of the factions, I had to perform a number of tasks for them
• The factions were all just dickheads, and I didn’t want to do anything for them, much less their dirty work

So yeah, no fun to be had with this one.