“I’m a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I’m talking about”

Should we call it a fallacious call to authority, meme on it for being a “how do you do, fellow gamers” moment, or simply mock the guy for whoring himself out in favor of daddy corporate? I could write an essay on the ways this is an absurd statement.

Gamers hate Denuvo because it doesn’t “simply work”. It limits paying customers from accessing their content, bogs down mid-range machines that are already overtaxxed by poor optimization and, in admittedly uncommon cases, full on breaks some games until patches and fixes roll out. Stop pretending that “gamers” are out here rioting because they’re too cheap and immoral to pay for content. Quit your fuckin’ lying.

I immediately opt out of any platform that aggressively tries to decide what content I consume.

Fantastic article.

I’ve got nothing against cosplay, but these right-wing nut jobs pretending to be Roman conqueror’s just take it too far.

It kinda gets different when you’re talking about a series of actors intermingling in an environment designed by the seller. There are certain expectations for the experience that was sold to you, and another customer disregarding the social contract of what the expected environment is supposed to be like is problematic.

It’s like buying a ticket to go to a theatre. You expect the people around you to also use the product and environment in a way similiar to you. Someone on their phone, screaming at the movie, throwing their feet up on your chair, etc, isn’t okay, and the people who defend their selfishness with “I paid to be here, I can do what I want” deserve to be kicked out. Cheating on an online, competitive game is no different, and I expect such players to be kicked out so the rest of us can have the experience we were promised when we made our purchase.

Does this mean the game in question should have full control over the code you’re running on your machine? I mean absolutely not, no one is strip searching you at the entrance of the theatre, but there need to be some degree of limitations on how individuals interact with the shared environment that consumers are being offered. The theatre doesn’t allow you to take videos, and doesn’t give you access to a copy of the film to clip, or edit to your hearts content, and the notion that the consumer should have such rights seems insane. But taking an online game, editing the files, and then connecting to everyone else’s shared experience and forcing your version on others should be protected, because the code is running on your machine? To be clear, I don’t think you’re seriously suggesting that is the case, but therein lies the problem: there’s a lot of weird nuance when it comes to multiple consumers being provided a digital product like this. How they interact together is inherently a part of the sold product, so giving consumers free reign to do what they want once the product is in their hands doesn’t work the way it does with single player games, end user software, or physical products.

The real problem is the laziness of devs not hosting their own server environments, so I hear you there. But that is, unfortunately, a problem seperate from whether hackers should be held accountable for ruining a product for others.

So, AI that is strictly incapabale of generating new ideas is going to be fed decades of police reports as it’s database, and use that data to discern that makes a good police report?

Surely this won’t replicate decade old systematic problems with racial profiling. I mean, all these police reports are certainly objective, with no hint of bias to be found in the officers writing.

Sick. I’ve had Rollerdrome on my wishlist for a while now, but have never seen a good sale, nor found myself with the free time and desire to play it on the spot to demand a full price purchase. I will gladly pirate and experience this now.

I mean, fuck Take2, I’d rather be able to hand these people money for a good game, but in lieu of being able to do so, I am happy to oblige their request.

The point of treating companies like people is so no one in those companies can be held accountable. The worst case for them that the intangible “coorporation” did something wrong and now it has to go away, so the entire board moves to a new company under a new name that owns the same properties and has the same practices. Only now they have practice obfuscating their crimes.

What ends lives and careers for people are just a minor inconvinience to coorporations.

“Fuck them, I’ve got mine” pro-capitalist mindset in the wild.

Downloaded a game which Windows Defender flagged as high-threat for containing “Cracked game content” the other day. Why yes, my cracked copy of this game IS cracked, thank you for noticing.

I regularly use ChatGPT to generate questions for junior high worksheets. You would be surprised how easily it fucks up “generate 20 multiple choice and 10 short answer questions”. Most frequently at about 12-13 multiple choice it gives up and moves on. When I point out its flaw and ask it to finish generating the multiple choice, it continues to find new and unique ways to fuck up coming up with the remaining questions.

I would say it gives me simple count and recall errors in about 60% of my attempts to use it.

On a related note, I’m very glad I pirated Starfield.

Sony has always been an industry leader in consumer abuse.

Listen, I get that we’re collectively enjoying the schaudenfreude of watching the poor mooks who bought into this trend suffer the consequences of their actions. But why defend con artists? These are people who seek out and prey on said mooks, taking advantage of addiction and poor impulse control to make millions, all while contributing nothing to society. They did lie, cheat and steal their way to millions, and no one “deserves” to be on the losing end of that.

Idiots with money will literally always exist. Assholes offering no value to the world will always try to abuse them. The law is supposed to step in and do its best to force said assholes to play by rules that force them to be productive. Let’s not turn up our nose at the one time it might serve it’s purpose, just so we can feel smug and superior.

I hope this case finds its way through the courts, and I hope it costs these con artists millions.

Listen, I get that you’re collectively enjoying the schaudenfreude of watching the poor mooks who bought into this trend suffer the consequences of their actions. But why defend con artists? These are people who seek out and prey on said mooks, taking advantage of addiction and poor impulse control to make millions, all while contributing nothing to society. They did lie, cheat and steal their way to millions.

Idiots with money will literally always exist. Assholes offering no value to the world will always try to abuse them. The law is supposed to step in and do its best to force said assholes to play by rules that force them to be productive. Let’s not turn up our nose at the one time it might serve it’s purpose, just so we can feel smug and superior.

I hope this case finds its way through the courts, and I hope it costs these con artists millions.

Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers

“everyone else is treating their customers like garbage, so they don’y hold it against us”.

Yes, we can.

I didn’t block when you had 5 second ads. I didn’t block when you had 15 second ads. I started blocking when you’d play 2+ unskippable 15 second ads back-to-back. I didn’t mind sitting through an ad when I appreciate the service you offered. Now, you’re just being greedy, and I will go to great lengths to damage your bottom line as notably as I can.

Also using Jerboa, also not feeling it. Also, I keeps randomly logging me out, but treating me like I am logged in until I try to do something and then reminding me I have to log in. So I do, except it doesn’t recognize it right away, and oh look it just did now where did that thread even go?

It’s just messy and uncomfortable right now. Here’s hoping it improves or a better app comes along.