theyarecomingforyou wrote on Feb 16, 2013, 09:36:

Optional Nickname! wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 23:46:
I leave the inferences and implications to your capabilities, Gentle Reader.

EA's boycott of Steam is "actively working against my interests"; releasing it on Steam is not. And if Crysis 3 does get released on Steam then me buying it would send a message to EA that they can't ignore the platform. My point was perfectly clear.

Krovven wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 15:35:

Flatline wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 14:35:
Dude. Splitting the single player campaign into 3 separate entities...

Dude. As has been pointed out countless times...SC2 WoL has as many missions (with 1 race) as all of the original SC missions combined (across all 3 races). Actually it has more, if you count the Challenge mission maps.

SC2 was a $60 game, HoS is $40...$40 has been the Blizzard standard expansion pack price for about the last 10 years.

Dev wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 06:04:
BTW, if anyone has a remote interest in TF2, log in in the next 2 weeks from linux:

Through the end of the month, play the Free-To- Play Team Fortress 2 on Linux and get a free Tux item in-game.

I think its similar to how they gave away earbuds for mac logins when they first released that client. Easy enough to do it without changing your current OS, give a live USB drive a try, or install the free virtual box and setup a virtual linux install.

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 11:41:
Ugh Dorner talk. You have to be a psycho to go out shooting people for perceived injustice, it's like some bizarro repulsive far right revenge fantasy. It reminded me of watching Law Abiding Citizen which should have been marketed as a comedy. Let's not drag that bullshit into this discussion which has legit implications, it just muddies the water and makes it easier for people to dismiss concerns.

Beamer wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:57:

RollinThundr wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:46:

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:24:

xXBatmanXx wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:04:

Here’s the drone the county sheriff wants to fly over your backyard.

I have no problem with this. The law says you have no expectation of privacy outside of your cartilage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage) - anything outside of the walls of your home is considered NOT PRIVATE. Anyone at anytime can "walk through your yard"....yea, those NO TRESPASSING signs....yea about those....

What the law says and what will happen when someone does that are two very different things. Also I don't want CCTVs and an overhead drone fleet watching my every movement, if that doesn't scream governmental abuse then I don't know what will. Instruments of control need to be applied very carefully on society as a whole, less is more.

The locals here priced it out to 8k a unit for the drones they wanted (which apparently have some form of rudimentary IR mapping) and did some "creative" budgeting to make it work, thankfully the town shut down the funding.

Now if people want to deploy drones for surgical strikes on patent trolls, that's something I can get behind

This ^ It's not like cops follow laws all the time either, just look at that Chris Dorner incident. There's no reason to have drones patrolling US skies, 1984 here we come, won't be long now, they just need to succeed in taking all the guns away first.

What did they do wrong there?
I mean, other than the shooting random people in pickup trucks, and pretty much everything else. But what, did they do that wouldn't hold up in court had they taken Dorner alive?

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:24:

xXBatmanXx wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 10:04:

Here’s the drone the county sheriff wants to fly over your backyard.

I have no problem with this. The law says you have no expectation of privacy outside of your cartilage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage) - anything outside of the walls of your home is considered NOT PRIVATE. Anyone at anytime can "walk through your yard"....yea, those NO TRESPASSING signs....yea about those....

What the law says and what will happen when someone does that are two very different things. Also I don't want CCTVs and an overhead drone fleet watching my every movement, if that doesn't scream governmental abuse then I don't know what will. Instruments of control need to be applied very carefully on society as a whole, less is more.

The locals here priced it out to 8k a unit for the drones they wanted (which apparently have some form of rudimentary IR mapping) and did some "creative" budgeting to make it work, thankfully the town shut down the funding.

Now if people want to deploy drones for surgical strikes on patent trolls, that's something I can get behind

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 09:55:
Generals was a great RTS, nice mix of arcadey feel with traditional RTS mechanics. I loved that game, you could be such an asshole in MP, it was a grand time

Optional nickname wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 09:26:
Blues, can we please get news on the status of Generals2? I don't like how news of that epic sequel is in the dark around here. I've blacklisted Blizzard.

Saboth wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 18:39:
I love all these politicians pushing for video game studies. Not only does scientific studies thus far support no link between long term violence and video games, but anecdotal evidence (and common sense) does not support it either. With sales in the billions, and 60-70% of Americans playing video games, wouldn't we be dealing with hundreds of mass shootings on a daily basis? Wouldn't Japan have hundreds of thousands of people dying on a daily basis? Why is no one pushing for gun studies? Interestingly enough, when the government started doing studies based on gun violence, by the CDC, the results were pretty telling. So incriminating, that the NRA instantly pushed for politicians to cut funding for those studies and basically for over 10 years now, our government has been forbidden to do studies on gun violence.

Beamer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 14:41:

ASeven wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:48:

Beamer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:17:
Captain negative. Companies never let people go unless something is wrong!

For one, Jason wasn't the head of steam, he was the head of business development. Yes, this put Steam deals on his plate. It also put engine licensing on his plate.
If you're looking for an issue, Steam isn't signing companies up very quickly these days. They're somewhat saturated, and larger companies are trending towards leaving and opening their own store.
Then there was the WarZ failure.
And how successful has engine licensing been?

There are reasons you can find other than "OMG VALVE IS FALLING APART!"

Captain apologist. Go back to basic school and learn how to read!

I said something is very wrong, I didn't say Valve is falling apart. Go back to basic school and learn to read a message before you reply to it.

And yes, there's a lot of reasons for Jason to be fired, still news of firing at Valve are relatively unheard of. There may be something wrong at Valve, there may be not, however Valve is far from falling apart.

Yes, I'm mocking you. You've been trumpeting the industry collapse for like 3 years.
So I'm mocking "very wrong." It's very early to say this is a sign of things being "very wrong." We know Valve is valued at over a billion dollars. If they actually accepted a buyout, especially at less than that, things would be "very wrong."

Go back to school and understand being made fun of. Well, my guess is that happened to you plenty at school, so you probably do understand.

But my point was that it's so ridiculously premature to sit here and say "clearly something is very wrong." It isn't clear at all. In fact, there's plenty of discussion in this very thread about how it may not imply things being even kind of wrong, let alone very wrong.


Tell me, though, what the hell am I apologizing for that you call me an apologist? Especially weird that you call me a corporate apologist and backing you is RollinThundr, who calls me a bleeding heart liberal. Those two are diametrically opposite, so you two should get some kind of conference and decide which I am.

Yakubs wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 14:40:

RollinThundr wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 13:41:
Again how are they getting all this revenue to buy up devs? Aside from World of Tanks and World of Warplanes I have never heard of any of the titles they've published.

You're making the assumption that GPG is actually worth something. Remember, this is a company that was desperate for some kind of cash infusion as recently as last week. As it stands, the only value GPG has is its IP which is offset by its payroll liabilities.

Meanwhile, Wargaming is probably fairly cash rich on an ongoing basis and running at a fairly high margin considering their revenue comes from a F2P title. Ongoing high margin revenue means the ability to easily add staff.

Wargaming probably bought GPG for a pittance and simply agreed to employ them (or at least some of them) and support some sort of future project. We're not talking a multi-million-dollar buyout here.

ASeven wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:48:

Beamer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:17:
Captain negative. Companies never let people go unless something is wrong!

For one, Jason wasn't the head of steam, he was the head of business development. Yes, this put Steam deals on his plate. It also put engine licensing on his plate.
If you're looking for an issue, Steam isn't signing companies up very quickly these days. They're somewhat saturated, and larger companies are trending towards leaving and opening their own store.
Then there was the WarZ failure.
And how successful has engine licensing been?

There are reasons you can find other than "OMG VALVE IS FALLING APART!"

Captain apologist. Go back to basic school and learn how to read!

I said something is very wrong, I didn't say Valve is falling apart. Go back to basic school and learn to read a message before you reply to it.

And yes, there's a lot of reasons for Jason to be fired, still news of firing at Valve are relatively unheard of. There may be something wrong at Valve, there may be not, however Valve is far from falling apart.

jdreyer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 13:04:
Here's a list of games they've published.

From the About on their site:

Founded as a privately held company in 1998, Wargaming has shipped more than 15 titles and employs over 1200 professionals across such key regions as North America, Europe, Russia, Asia and Australia.
Currently, Wargaming is focused on its team-based MMO war series dedicated to the mid-20th century warfare that will include the company's flagship armored MMO World of Tanks, launched in April 2011 and currently boasting 45 million players worldwide.

It will be interesting to see how they use GPG. I might start up a petition to petition them to finish Kings and Castles.

While I'm glad GPG got saved, I'm a bit worried about the fact that Wargaming is primarily MMO and also this part: "The acquisition will further bolster Wargaming's push into multiplatform expansion." I liked SupCom 2 (which was multiplatform), but it is inferior to SupCom 1 in many ways.

Cutter wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 11:51:
Doesn't matter these consoles will floip and they'll be the last ones anyway. EA is wasting their time and money investing in it and they're too stupid to see it.

Verno wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 14:48:
Homefront was really mediocre overall, I thought the MP was merely ok and didn't really offer much new to the genre. The SP campaign was a train wreck and very derivative, the story didn't have a lot punch with me but I've never read the book.

It's one of those things where if you paid $5 it might seem decent but if you paid $60 I'm sure it was a let down for most. People claim otherwise but money definitely affects expectations. I'm sure I'll think this game is a decent B-movie level romp in a few months when it's $5 on Steam but if I paid $60 I would expect a lot more for my money.

Beamer wrote on Feb 12, 2013, 15:55:
It was supposed to be a PS2 game, and that game was canceled with all work destroyed half a decade before Sega or Gearbox got involved.


This is why some think you troll - you seem to try to get every fact wrong.