Unless I am missing something here... can't they just NOT agree to the terms and not use their service? There are other ways to distribute.

They will likely have a few good years, maybe more. It depends on how well the studio does after the purchase on their sells. Once the studio starts having slip-ups on expected sales numbers is when EA starts really budding into the business of these studios.

1badmf wrote on Jan 13, 2021, 01:08:

Braden wrote on Jan 12, 2021, 23:08:
With all the Tomb Raider and Uncharted games (et al) we've had in recent decades, I'll be curious to see what they come up with that isn't a knockoff of the games that already were - in a number of ways - knockoffs of Indiana Jones themselves.

TR and uncharted are too murdery for me. i'm hoping for something much more exploration oriented. something like The Dig graphic adventure from lucasarts back in the day.

Ooooooh. I like this thought.

Wooohooo gamebyro engine game with microtransactions. Looking forward to that whip DLC

jdreyer wrote on Jan 9, 2021, 19:45:

Wolfen wrote on Jan 9, 2021, 19:28:
Here is the whole video for reference on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTg1ynIPGls

You can take what you want from it. I don't see a comparison personally between her comments and Trumps though. Also I don't believe ALL the Trump supporters there really approved of what was happening at the capitol. I also think ANY person under any movement who causes violence or destruction should be dealt with equally and fairly under our justice system. Protesting is one thing. Violence is another.

Apparently 45% of Republicans approved of the storming of the Capitol.

Well... that's not all of them... is it?

Beamer wrote on Jan 9, 2021, 19:14:

JediPunisher wrote on Jan 9, 2021, 19:03:
Banning the current President of the United States from social media for supposedly inciting an angry mob is a bad idea.
Trump only has a few days left in office, and this sets a precedent that could come back to bite them very soon.

Soon-to-be President Harris (we all know Joe won't last long) praised those peaceful protests over the summer as the "New Coalition of Conscience" and even helped raise money to bail them out.

In August, Senator Kamala Harris spoke to former comedian Stephen Colbert about the riots that rocked the country throughout the summer. Harris gleefully said that "they're not gonna stop," come the election. "This is a movement, I'm telling you," she said.
Colbert noted that media just wasn't covering these riots by the end of August for some reason, and Harris seemed to think this was a problem.
Harris nodded, "Right, that's right," she said. "But they're not gonna stop. They're not gonna stop. This is a movement, I'm telling you. They're not gonna stop. And everyone BEWARE, because they're not gonna stop."
"They're not gonna stop before election day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after election day. And that should be–everyone should take note of that, on both levels.
They're not gonna let up," Harris said with pride, "and they should not. And we should not."
The August 30 interview came after 30 people were killed in the intensive rioting from May through August, and billions of dollars in property damage was reported.

https://channel411news.com/2021/01/07/flashback-kamala-harris-celebrated-blm-and-antifa-riots/

You do understand you come across as detached from reality. I'm sure you feel you're the only one "awake," and we're "sheeple," but the whole Harris comment is dramatically unhealthy.

Stop getting your news from wherever you're getting it (I'm wagering a lot of Ben Shapiro and YouTube channels with under 100,000 subscribers.)

Here is the whole video for reference on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTg1ynIPGls

You can take what you want from it. I don't see a comparison personally between her comments and Trumps though. Also I don't believe ALL the Trump supporters there really approved of what was happening at the capitol. I also think ANY person under any movement who causes violence or destruction should be dealt with equally and fairly under our justice system. Protesting is one thing. Violence is another.

Report: Trump Administration Considering Adding Tencent and Alibaba to Trade Blacklist.

Gotta give that one last kick in the nuts do they?

Jaysen wrote on Jan 4, 2021, 18:16:
Apparently Tanya Roberts is still alive. https://www.tmz.com/2021/01/04/tanya-roberts-still-alive-rep-saying-shes-dead-70s-show-bond-girl/

So far TMZ is the only reporting this. I wouldn't call them fake news, but they also aren't the most reputable. Be nice to get more verification from other sources at least. Saw this note on FB as well and was gonna post the same link though.

Cutter wrote on Dec 20, 2020, 14:24:
Don't get the draw of these games. Do you guys like games like this, They Are Billions, et al? Are people that play these RTS fans too?

Defense grid was the only TD game I really enjoyed to be honest. I have over 300 hours in it. I tried others and couldn't get into them. But for some reason Defense Grid held me. For nearly as many hours as I put into Skyrim.

jacobvandy wrote on Dec 8, 2020, 11:33:

Simon Says wrote on Dec 7, 2020, 22:21:

jacobvandy wrote on Dec 7, 2020, 20:48:

However, there's a major disclaimer: This is near-final code, but CDPR has been working on bug fixes, tuning, and optimization for the past couple of weeks. AMD and Nvidia are also working on driver improvements, and the preview copy includes Denuvo protection. That could impact CPU performance in particular, which is why this is a preview of how the game runs. The final release code should perform at least this well, and hopefully a bit better.

Denuvo is not a factor in GPU limited scenarios and if you really believe they're gonna go from 30fps to 60 with a patch and driver optimizations, I have a bridge to sell you.

Oh, look.

Editor's Note, Dec. 8: At the request of the publisher, we have edited this article to remove some benchmark figures taken before the Day Zero patch that may not be representative of the consumer day one experience.

Can we set aside all this and take note to the very strange use of "Day 0" patch? How is there a 0th day? Also they contradicted themselves in saying "day one experience". While this is a silly minor thing it's been nagging at me since they last made that delay and said day zero patch.

I'm baffled by this.

I think the only thing I would find beneficial to a cloud gaming service is some folks probably can get a better chance at being able to play the game at a decent image quality over their personal PC's. Also portability for some folks. Personally I have no interest in it and I also see it as another way for publishers to keep the product off your hard drive. But that's my two cents.

I love where GOG's heart is but it isn't the be all end all of platforms right now. The DRM free is generally great to have, and I certainly try to buy from GOG these days when I can. With that said I am still avidly using Steam as well... probably more than GOG (and Galaxy).

Finally this damn game is coming out though. I hope it's worth all the hype I've allowed myself to consume over it. I rarely let games get me in a frenzy of absolute desire to play it but I just love the Cyberpunk setting in general and Witcher 3 was pretty impressive. So a bar has been set already in my mind about the expectations of the quality of content in this game.

Being in China but always on VPN and having purchased in USD... I am under the assumption it releases on the 11th for me. Perfect... Friday. There goes all my Substance Designer work I was planning on doing.

Domgrief wrote on Oct 31, 2020, 03:58:

VaranDragon wrote on Oct 31, 2020, 03:10:
I've played through Half-Life so many times I don't even remember if I played through Black Mesa 1.0 I know I waited for it to come out for ages, and that's pretty much what I remember about it. Hmmm.

The highest praise I can offer for Black Mesa is that it was like playing the game as I remembered it (with all of the great moments and surprises), and not how it was. That said, I still haven't checked it out since they added Xen... if that plays like I remember it I'm going to have to reassess my praise.

From my understanding they made massive improvements to the Zen stuff. Including gameplay.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 28, 2020, 13:16:
People. What a bunch of bastards.

I wonder if anyone else caught this reference.

"Warpzone Studios' dwaven mining colony".... is dwaven a new race or species?

People talk about how this was to read. They are valid statements.

TEXT READABILITY CONSENSUS CALCULATOR
www.ReadabilityFormulas.com
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READABILITY CONSENSUS
----------------------------------------------
Based on (7) readability formulas, we have scored your text:

Grade Level: 11
Reading Level: standard / average.
Age of Reader: 15-17 yrs. old (Tenth to Eleventh graders)
----------------------------------------------

You're killing me Smalls. They really twisted that meaning of going gold around didn't they? In my years of experience... gold is ready for print. The console games I worked on we never said it went gold until we passed certifications.

Verno wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 13:07:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 13:02:
Excellent, I'll most likely pick this up on Gog, regardless of the negative reviews of it on Bluesnews. I must see for myself!

It's not a bad game at all but it's very front loaded content-wise and a bit shallow on gameplay systems. They kind of lull you in expecting a Fallout style game but it's a lot lighter than that. I had a decent time but it quickly becomes rote and you get godlike way too quickly. The dialogue is still vintage Obsidian but they went a little too zany with corporatocracy in space. I would give it a 7/10, it's solid but unremarkable.

Excellent summary that I agree with.

If Amazon wants to win at games they have to do what Tencent does and just throw money at studios. No kidding. Tencent in Shenzen alone has more than one studio per floor in their campus. I mean it's gotta be over 20 studios in there. I don't know the numbers really but a friend of mine worked there for several years and he described it as just endless in "studios". Not teams... studios. A lot of them even build the same kind of game... just with their own feel. They just never stop throwing money at it.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 3, 2020, 20:43:
Hmm, there are already caves. And the Extreme Hills environment is pretty mountainous. I guess it will be interesting to see what they add.

Says it right in the second sentence. Improved generation and new features like lush caves and dripstone caves. Admittedly the caves were pretty boring over time so it's nice to see they may add something new to that.