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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I absolutely hate always online DRM in single player games, so I get it. Personally, I’ll avoid games that use it. I was a huge fan of the Hitman series but haven’t played any of the new ones because of always online, live service, season pass, model they decided to go with. It’s a deal breaker for me, but I understand it isn’t for everyone else. I told my friends I wouldn’t be playing Helldivers 2 with them because of its use of kernel level anti-cheat and they just gave me a weird look.

    I’ll choose to support games that are developed in consumer friendly ways, but I also accept that not everyone sees it as a big deal. If a company decides they need kernel level anti-cheat, then that’s on them. They won’t get my money, but I’m not about to start a petition to legally ban the use of kernel level anti-cheat and call anyone who won’t sign it an industry shill and bootlicker.

    Want to stop games you buy from being killed? Don’t buy games that can be. Does this mean you’ll be sitting out while all your friends have fun playing the latest hit game? Probably. Does it mean 10 years later when the game no longer works you can smugly tell them “heh, looks like you guys got scammed.” Also yes. Just don’t be surprised that they think you’re weird.


  • From the initiative:

    This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

    Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

    The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

    This is all that the initiative states on the matter. How it would actually work in practice is anyone’s guess because the wording is so vague. Supporters seem to be under the impression that companies have a “server.exe” file they purposefully don’t provide players because they’re evil and hate you. They could also be contracting out matchmaking services to a third party and don’t actually do it in-house. Software development is complex and building something that will be used by 100,000 people simultaneously isn’t easy.

    There’s a reason comedic videos like Microservices, where an engineer explains why it’s impossible to show the user it is their birthday based on an overly complex network of microservices, and Fireship’s overengineering a website exist. Big software is known to be difficult to maintain and update. Huge multiplayer games aren’t any different. It’s likely there isn’t actually a “reasonable” way for them to continue to work. Supporters are hopeful this initiative would cause the industry to change how game software is developed, but that hope gets real close to outright naivety.








  • My understanding is that “China” is special because they’re a founding member of the UN and have special powers due to that. After the civil war, neither Taiwan or China wanted to lose that power, so neither side wanted to be recognized as anything other than “China”. I’ve heard that the younger generation in Taiwan are more open to being recognized as Taiwan but China has kind of made that impossible now by threatening any country that doesn’t respect the “one China” policy.


  • I don’t think there’s any moment that truly blows your mind. It’s a very slow burn. I found every run I learned something new that made me want to revisit old rooms and search out new ones. It definitely helps to take notes which is also fun in its own way.

    Sometimes solving a puzzle just gives you some lore but that was also neat too. There’s one note I found that stuck with me regarding following traditions. It doesn’t have anything to do with the game but it was great writing!


  • why don’t they program them

    AI models aren’t programmed traditionally. They’re generated by machine learning. Essentially the model is given test prompts and then given a rating on its answer. The model’s calculations will be adjusted so that its answer to the test prompt will be closer to the expected answer. You repeat this a few billion times with a few billion prompts and you will have generated a model that scores very high on all test prompts.

    Then someone asks it how many R’s are in strawberry and it gets the wrong answer. The only way to fix this is to add that as a test prompt and redo the machine learning process which takes an enormous amount of time and computational power each time it’s done, only for people to once again quickly find some kind of prompt it doesn’t answer well.

    There are already AI models that play chess incredibly well. Using machine learning to solve a complexe problem isn’t the issue. It’s trying to get one model to be good at absolutely everything.






  • I have a friend who has worked for 3 companies over 6 years. She has never once released a game as they were all cancelled before release. She found out she lost her job at one company after reading an interview about a bunch of studios being shut down. One of them was the place she worked. Even her boss apparently didn’t know.

    The studio she works at now initially hired her for completely remote work, but they’ve since changed their minds and now she has to drive over 100km to work every day. She was going to quit but she’s sticking with it for now in the hopes of finishing at least one game.