There was an argument to be made that it wasn't a scam back in the early days. However, any benefit of the doubt has long since evaporated. CIG has repeatedly claimed that SQ42 was nearly done or just around the corner - then in July 2022, we received this update:

During July, Narrative focused on completing first-pass scripting and recording scratch dialogue for a large section of one of SQ42’s middle chapters. Design refined the gameplay in this section so Narrative frequently played through these updated enemy encounters, puzzles, stealth, and navigation challenges.

The game was meant to be feature complete in 2019 and yet now they're working on first-pass scripting for a large section of the game in 2022. And rather than address any of this, it's buried in a monthly report that barely anyone reads. CIG even scrapped the roadmap, so it's not even pretending the game is due any time soon anymore.

The whole thing is a Ponzi scheme. If funding dried up tomorrow, CIG would never be able to complete the game. It's all based on new investors backing the project and keeping it afloat.

TLDR: Game tries to be controversial to generate sales. Game is removed from a bundle for being too controversial and hurting sales. Blames cancel culture.

I know nothing about that case, other than what was written in this thread. But he was acquitted by a court of law right? If what he did was deemed legal, and you have a problem with the legality of his actions, then the problem is either YOU or the SYSTEM.

The issue is not the legality but the morality. Most people can agree that going around looking for people to shoot is not acceptable in a civilised society - that so many Americans think otherwise is a testament to the moral bankruptcy of their culture.

I'd be concerned if the FTC wasn't investigating large mergers like this, especially when they have the potential to impact competition in the market.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
And Chris Rock mocked someone for having a medical disorder, knowing full well that her hair loss was something that had caused her distress after she had taken the time to go on television publicly to talk about how traumatic and significant it was for her as a woman to lose her hair.

That doesn't excuse physical violence. That also ignores that Chris and Jada have known and worked with each other for decades, so it's not like he made the joke about a complete stranger.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
I question the values of anyone who would seek to diminish what HE did, and yet so many do. It was 'just a joke', after all. Do we now make fun of the weight loss people suffer for contracting AIDS? Or the way Parkinsons patients shake? Or the way pharyngeal cancer patients speak with a voice box? Apparently people have decided there are some diseases or conditions that are acceptable to mock and others that are not based upon what they (who have experienced none of them) decide are traumatic enough symptoms.

Would I make such a joke? No, but I'm not a comedian. But we all know that comedy can be quite edgy and as a result sometimes it crosses the line. Does that mean I think it should be outlawed? Of course not. Whereas physical violence is outlawed.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
If the racist dickbag John Wayne gets to keep his Ocsar after attempting to assault Sacheen Littlefeather

If you're talking about the 1973 Oscars, then that's a pretty bold interpretation. What we was trying to do was remove her from the stage for making a political speech during the Oscars. He of course had no right to do so, and was prevented from doing so.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
Clint Eastwood can still win them after mocking her attempt to educate the public on the butchery of Native Americans and continued horrific treatment by the US government (at the personal request of Marlon Brando)

There is a massive difference between expressing an opinion and physically assaulting someone.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
That said, while I do not agree that violence was the best choice for Smith in this, I do understand it.

Everyone understands it, but that doesn't mean one has to support his actions.

Teddy wrote on Mar 31, 2022, 23:14:
Had someone gone on a giant stage viewed by millions and mocked my wife's struggles with depression and self-harm, I would have done far more than just slap the man.

I'm sorry that your wife has gone through that - that's awful. But physical violence is a last resort and only when you or your loved ones are at risk of actual harm. Sometimes it's difficult being the bigger person but it's the right thing to do. Will and Jada could have addressed this in any number of ways without violence.

Jivaro wrote on Mar 29, 2022, 02:44:
*gasps*
THE VIOLENCE! OH MY!

please. he slapped him, it wasn't a fight. drama queens.

He physically assaulted someone over a joke. I question the values of anyone who would seek to diminish what he did.

Jivaro wrote on Mar 29, 2022, 02:44:
BY THE WAY: Will Smith isn't getting away with it because he is rich, he is getting away with it because Chris Rock didn't press charges. You know that. Don't come in here with this "rich privilege" crap.

Bullshit. He should have been immediately removed from the event and should never have been awarded an Oscar. The fact he was given a platform after such an egregious act speaks to the lack of integrity in Hollywood, especially when Smith went out of his way to avoid apologising. Do you really think that Smith's status and privilege wasn't a factor in Rock refusing to press charges? He would have been painted as a bad guy by the media, saying he deserved what he got for the joke he made - it could also have impacted future earnings for him.

So yes, Smith is getting away with physically assaulting someone because of his privilege.

I can't imagine the psychological impact this would be having on them, though I'm glad they're moving towards some sort of normality. This is easily my most anticipated upcoming game, so I'm really glad to hear that it is moving forward.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Mar 17, 2022, 17:46:
Agreed. The way modern CPUs work, overclocking is pointless except for bragging rights.

The biggest drawback is that power consumption goes through the roof, at a time when energy costs are most important than ever. Chips like the 12900KS are effectively overclocked out of the box, as their power consumption is way out of whack in comparison to other SKUs. So yeah, I'm fine with this.

Hardline Mike wrote on Mar 7, 2022, 03:28:
Activision isn't expecting anyone to do anything. You're not required to donate or even pressured to do so. Like I said in a previous thread, criticizing people for donating a number you think is not enough is wrong and counterproductive. It creates a situation where donating nothing is preferable to donating something, to avoid any criticism of being "cheap."

You'll notice we don't have any headlines here mentioning how X or Y game developer has not donated anything, and thereby no comment sections in which they can be excoriated.

That's not what I was saying. The point is that people like Kotick are worthless parasites that extract obscene amounts of money out of companies and contribute very little to the performance of the business. If that money instead went to the employees doing all the hard work then they would have the ability to make vastly larger donations without needing the company to match their donations.

If employees as a collective were responsible for determining the corporate pay structure there is no chance that they would choose to pay the CEO $155m for a year whilst lower level employees have to borrow money and work obscene hours to get by.

Hardline Mike wrote on Mar 6, 2022, 20:25:

Cutter wrote on Mar 6, 2022, 12:43:
Kotick is a cheap, greedy bastard. Shocker.

Cutter criticizing someone elses donation while donating nothing himself. Shocker.

Kotick's compensation for 2020 was $155m and he has an estimated net worth of $8 billion. Yet Activision is expecting employees on significantly lower pay to be the ones making donations to such an important cause.

So I'm with Cutter on this one.

hypnotic wrote on Mar 3, 2022, 13:17:
I am a huge fan of the S.T.A.LK.E.R series. This is disappointing, but the circumstances are understandable. I highly anticipate the release when it happens.

Yeah, this was probably my most anticipated game of the year but it pales in significance to what the people of Ukraine are going through. My wife has been finding it really difficult, as she originates from neighbouring Hungary and has a friend from Ukraine who is trapped there. The pictures that they've sent are truly horrendous and they even witnesses a Russian shell flying overhead. We've sent over money to help out but every day we worry it will be the last time we hear from them.

1badmf wrote on Feb 25, 2022, 03:49:
the thing that makes me think twice when people demand US intervention is that: if ukraine isn't going to defend themselves, i don't see how we can waste our lives defending them. ukraine isn't a small backwater like afganistan; they're a country of 40mil people. if they wanted to they should've called up an army of millions but they haven't. not like they haven't had adequate warning either.

Without EU/US/UK military support - as in boots on the ground - the Ukrainian military never stood a chance. Having millions of poorly trained and poorly disciplined fighters would only have increased the number of lives lost without changing the end result.

The only reason that Russia invaded is because the West made clear it was not interested in intervening (besides sending some military supplies). Applying a few sanctions was never going to be sufficient to deter Russia, especially when it has been transitioning away from Western dependence for the past decade precisely to allow for actions like this.

NATO and the EU should have both deployed military forces in Ukraine as a prospective member to both organisations. Putin has exposed how toothless Western governments are.

Can't wait. The original was excellent.

Scheherazade wrote on Jan 13, 2022, 13:34:
sc is cpu bound.

1080 with a 3950 cpu beats a 3090 with a 2950 cpu - at 1440p

iirc the renderer is thread limited (2 threads iirc???), and so it heavily depends on raw cpu core performance.

as of a few months ago, when i last checked in on it***

Yeah, it's part of the Gen12 renderer rework. But for now the game runs appallingly, even on high end systems.

asmodeos wrote on Jan 13, 2022, 08:39:
Star Citizen is a pretty epic technological experience. I have a very high end machine and it would be a disservice to not play around with star citizen on it.

A pretty AWFUL technological experience, sure. Even with an RTX 3080, I get framerates in the single digits at Orison and it probably averages about 20fps there.

Kosumo wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 04:23:
It's very scummy behavoiur that I believe should be illegal. (I'm sure it is in some countries) Taking money for the promise of stuff and then not delivering is criminal.

It's a pyramid scheme - money being taken from new backers / purchases to deliver what was promised to early adopters. If funding dried up tomorrow, CIG wouldn't be able to complete development of the game with the remaining funds. The majority of funding comes from Star Citizen, yet the majority of resources are being used to develop Squadron 42.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
To be fair, currently one of the strongest PvP ships in Star Citizen is the Gladius light fighter. It's quick, agile and a good player can constantly evade shots, find weak spots and just constantly whittle down even big ships due to it's mobility and size. And it's also relatively cheap to buy with in-game credits at around 1.1m which is absurd given that it's currently the best dog-fighting ship in the game. A lot of the absurdly expensive big ships are mostly for showing off or for big Organizations (guilds)/a group of friends who just want to control one big giant ship together. But if you pit a group of 6 players controlling one big combat ship against 6 players controlling cheap light fighters each, the light fighters will win almost every time (unless they really, really suck). As it currently stands, big, expensive whale ships =/= pay2win

Do you really think that CIG is going to make large multicrew ships that cost over $1,000 ineffective against low-end ships? Because obviously it isn't. Six people in a Gladius aren't going to be able to take down a fully crewed Idris or Javelin, not to mention that those ships could just keep fighters like the Gladius in their hangar bays. Rich backers will always be better able to exploit the current meta.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
From what I've experienced, it's not that hard (just a bit grindy) to make millions of credits in-game to buy any of the currently-flyable ships either via Mining or doing Bounty Hunting PvE missions so Roberts is not wrong in that regard. The main reason why people spend such an absurd amount of money is because a lot of them are just flight/space sim nerds who have a shitload of money to spend on their hobby. It's the same type of people who literally spend thousands and thousands of dollars to have a fully decked out flight sim cabin with multiple displays, HOTAs setups and extra cabinet buttons and layouts. It's also a preventative thing where there's bound to be server wipes due to a big patch implementing major changes and all of your in-game credits and ships are now gone. The only way to prevent this is to shell out real money to buy ships so they'll be there in your hanger after future wipes.

A key aspect of P2W is making the regular activities "a bit grindy" in order to nudge people to spending money to get around them.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
I fully admit to scoffing and joking about Chris Roberts and "Scam Citizen" but an online buddy of mines kept bugging me to try it out and he was so convinced that I'd love it that he even offered to buy me a cheap pledge back to join him in the game. Not wanting a handout, I bought a cheap pledge package myself and I do have to fully admit that so far, Star Citizen is really quite addictive if you love space sims/shooters. It's also a weird juxtaposition because while the game is buggy and performs like shit on modern hardware, it also shows an amazing amount of promise because it IS an amazing, unrivaled feeling when you can run around an absurdly detailed city, buy armor & guns, take a flying shuttle to the city's space port, randomly run off any docking-bay platform, leap out into space and zero-G float into and land in the open cargo bay doors of a friend's huge mining ship and run around in its interior while that friend pilots us to a new adventure at a distant planet or moon. All without a single loading screen.

Star Citizen definitely warrants most of its criticism but while Robert's promised game is moving at a snail's pace, the basis of a great online game IS there and I personally can see the game being an amazing online FPS/space sim if it ever does gets released. I really do think that someone needs to reign in Chris Roberts and to get him to polish and optimize what they have now in the online version of the game and release big, new content afterwards. At this rate, I'm afraid it's going to be a George R.R. Martin situation where Roberts is going to croak and the company will go tits up before he's satisfied and releases the game.

The scam is that Chris Roberts isn't even trying to complete SC or SQ42, whilst always pretending that development is on track and major releases are just around the corner. The features added throughout 2021 are mostly features delayed from Q1 2019 (refineries, physicalised inventory, reputation and Crusader/Orison). Meanwhile a lot of other important features promised by Q1 2019 are missing - server meshing, salvage, data running, refuelling, land claims, etc). Despite that, funding has increased from about $35m per year up to $85m.

Features like server meshing are foundational to the game working. Yet back in July 2018, CIG was still claiming it would be released by Q4 2018 - just 5 months away. Now it is currently scheduled for Q4 2022 and has been substantially scaled back from its original concept. There is no way that CIG actually thought server meshing was only going to take several more months to complete back then - it was clearly hiding from backers how far behind schedule the game was.

jdreyer wrote on Jan 5, 2022, 22:26:
@TheAreComingForYou: Any news on SQ42?

CIG initially promised a video series called The Briefing Room detailing progress on SQ42 (only after immense pressure from the community over the frequent delays). It released one video at the end of 2021 and was then promptly abandoned, with Chris Roberts stating the game is too early in production to be showing off anything more. And the one video released was just a tour around a single asset, with no actual gameplay.

It is so far behind schedule that CIG isn't even giving an appropriate release date since abandoned the previous one of Q4 2020. Also worth noting that Chris Roberts talked back in 2019 about raytracing and geometry virtualisation (see: UE5's Nanite) being targeted for 2023-2024 so it seems implausible that SQ42 would release before major upgrades to the engine are implemented. And that's without factoring in any of the usual delays.

CIG has also just started to ramp up hiring for it's UK studio which will scale up through 2026. But that's fine, as CIG raised record levels of funding in 2021 (over $85m) so isn't in any hurry to finish the game.

In other words, don't expect it any time soon.

6 Ways to Delete Yourself From the Internet (may require registration or subscription).

So I have to register for a website in order to find out how to delete myself from the internet? That sounds counterproductive.

WaltSee wrote on Dec 12, 2021, 13:19:
Oh, brother...;) I'm just waiting for the first person in and around gaming to apologize for being born...;) It's coming.

Good grief, stop being such a snowflake. Bungie was called out for its poor business practices and issued an apology on that basis.

Icewind wrote on Dec 12, 2021, 19:00:
So do we cancel Bungie now like we did Activision, and Ubi, and whoever? I guess every company in the known world has to be super super super gentle with every single employee or it's abuse.

Abuse is abuse. There were plenty of issues exposed: mandatory overtime, sexism, sexual harassment and a culture that protected long-time employees from the consequences of their actions. If you wish to keep portraying employees not wanting to be sexually assaulted as 'needing to be super super super gentle' with everyone then that speaks more to you that is does about the situation.

Ah yes, a topic about a delayed gaming device being taken over by US domestic politics. Lovely.