Icewind wrote on Jul 9, 2020, 01:02:

Kxmode wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 23:47:

Cutter wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 21:14:
Not a good deal considering you can get Origin Access for $30 a year.

Considering UPlay is Ubisoft's games, and Origin is EA's games, I'm not sure how that comparison works. Are you saying EA's subscription service offers more?

Steam now carries all of the EA games that EA pulled from their store, as well as all the Ubi games. So I don't see a reason to use either Origin or Uplay.

Given that most of the high profile EA &Ubisoft games on Steam still require the respective accounts, you're almost certainly still using the Origin and Uplay launchers (running in the background) even when you launch the "Steam" version.

our quick-witted hero with a tongue as sharp as his katana

I'm not quite sure I'd call Mr. "It is you who will belong to my ass" quick-witted. But that's part of the 'charm' of Lo Wang to me.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Jun 27, 2020, 00:08:
"One of their employees pretended to be single and dated several women."

So a dude did something stupid that isnt related to the company?

This feels like a reach.

Adultery runs the risk of blackmail. Blackmail targeting executives always turns into something bad for their workplace. Getting rid of executives committing adultery is thus a prudent course of action for any corporation.

Blue wrote on Jun 26, 2020, 12:24:

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 26, 2020, 12:05:
My little tip for flying, stinging pests is a fly swatter. Fuck 'em.

I know that's a lot of people's approach to such things, but when possible I try and avoid killing, it makes me feel bad. And it's not like he was hurting anyone, while picking a fight with him had the potential of collecting a bunch of nasty stings. Besides, bald-faced hornets are actually predators of even less desirable pests, including flies. So yeah, he got the catch and release treatment. For me it was a no-brainer.

You should probably need to figure out where the nest is. If it's anywhere close to places you frequent, it will almost certainly become a major issue in the autumn as the workers will start not having any roles for the hive. This will in turn make them stray away from the hive, looking to gorge themselves on anything sweet they can find. In this state they have a tendency to turn hostile without any provocation beyond the target holding/having eaten something sweet.

Simon Says wrote on Jun 20, 2020, 21:12:
If Nintendo doesn't have a legal ground for people using for current graphical enhancements ( upscalers and co. ) ...

You might have had a point if he didn't use "NES" in his advertisement. By doing so, he's giving Nintendo a legal argument of him profiting from one or more of their registered trademarks. And possibly also an argument of him causing potential market confusion. And the NES trademark is very likely considered active due to the NES Classic being re-released two years ago (and the original run being in 2016).

Pr()ZaC wrote on Jun 20, 2020, 14:58:
I just hope the big N will let this go on.

Nintendo is the main reason you shouldn't pay anything for an emulator for any Nintendo system. Unless they're directly involved I expect them to take exception to an emulator charging money on a platform as visible as Steam.

Acleacius wrote on Jun 20, 2020, 10:57:
I didn't trust Valve for the first 5 years or so, and they are far from perfect. However they do have a pretty rock solid international network and they always seem to be trying to improve. Point is epic is tricking people into thinking the games are free, because they are just tax write offs. Which means, we all in the US are paying for them with our taxes. Steam isn't doing it, nor are they lying about their store's stability since release. epic had/has (no idea what it's like now, never signed up) such shitty service they had to give away games. Besides I really don't want to go through the list of epic sins and their bottomless pit of foreign investor cash.

A very quick bit of digging reveals that Valve has also used (and potentially still use) the various ways of dodging taxes that corporations doing business across multiple nations use. It even landed them at least one lawsuit for trying to avoid paying VAT to EU nations for games sold in the EU even though Valve still included VAT in the games sold. They basically skimmed an extra 15-25% (the range of VAT for the EU nations) for each game sold on top of their standard 30% for several years. That practice only stopped with the lawsuit and some changes to national laws around the EU.

Also, Epic's bottomless money pit is from Fortnite loot boxes, which is really no different from the Steam Marketplace with TF2 & CS:GO loot boxes and Steam Trading Cards in terms of scummy practices.

Valve is about as saintly as Epic when it comes to these things.

Acleacius wrote on Jun 19, 2020, 22:31:

Cutter wrote on Jun 19, 2020, 21:16:

The Half Elf wrote on Jun 19, 2020, 19:20:

Cutter wrote on Jun 19, 2020, 19:07:
Wow, a 7 year old game for free! Valve's really busting open the piggy bank on these free titles, eh?

Considering Valve has nothing to do with it beyond the hosting platform....

So who's giving it away?

Publishers handle most freebies and indie developers handle their own. I.e. this is probably to help promote a sequel or three. Even with epics big giveaways, they are paying the publishers for the right to give it away. It's a tax write off, basically US tax payers are paying for epics freebies, which is why I refuse to buy or receive free from epic. It's why I don't buy deep silver any more, after being a big supporter because they handled lots of Euro Indies.

I would hope you apply the same boycott to EA & ActiBlizzard then, because not only do they not pay taxes but they also get tax returns and/or public grants to the tune of several hundred million dollars. I don't have the status of Valve, Take Two, or Ubisoft at hand, but I would be surprised if they paid much in the way of taxes.

It could also just be people with AT&T or WBIE stock trying to use a rumor to inflate the price of said stock so they can pull some short term profit.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 9, 2020, 16:48:

roguebanshee wrote on Jun 9, 2020, 12:50:

jdreyer wrote on Jun 8, 2020, 16:03:
Dreyerson (13) installed VS yesterday and has decided to learn C# (he's already pretty good at Python). What's a good course for him? He does an hour of Khan academy a day, so I suggested he look there for a course, but he didn't like that idea. Any suggestions? All the stuff I have at work (Pluralsight, etc.) are all on the company network, so I can't let him use them.

Does he prefer video, text or interactive courses?

Unity (the engine) has some free introductory C# programming courses on their site that build upon their framework. From what I've gleaned they're mostly video based with some text. The Unity editor integrates (somewhat) seamlessly with VS for code editing purposes, but he will obviously still also have to learn the Unity editor's interface to make things happen.

I just checked and it looks like Unity currently has a 3-month free trial of their premium course service: https://learn.unity.com/

Hey thanks. I'm not sure exactly what he prefers, I'll check, but in my experience I prefer this format: introduce a concept, then have you code the solution yourself and have the site correct you or help you if incorrect. He installed Unity last week, so that may be a good way to go, esp with 3 free months of premium. And I know C# and VS pretty well, so I can serve as a resource when he gets stuck, but would prefer he learn a lot on his own while I'm working.

If he already has Unity installed, I'd certainly consider that the primary option. And if he doesn't like the way the Unity team tries to tutorialize things, there are a lot of free (and paid) sites with a wide variety of approaches. And there are a lot of youtube channels with tutorials for devs of varying skill levels.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 8, 2020, 16:03:
Dreyerson (13) installed VS yesterday and has decided to learn C# (he's already pretty good at Python). What's a good course for him? He does an hour of Khan academy a day, so I suggested he look there for a course, but he didn't like that idea. Any suggestions? All the stuff I have at work (Pluralsight, etc.) are all on the company network, so I can't let him use them.

Does he prefer video, text or interactive courses?

Unity (the engine) has some free introductory C# programming courses on their site that build upon their framework. From what I've gleaned they're mostly video based with some text. The Unity editor integrates (somewhat) seamlessly with VS for code editing purposes, but he will obviously still also have to learn the Unity editor's interface to make things happen.

I just checked and it looks like Unity currently has a 3-month free trial of their premium course service: https://learn.unity.com/

Kxmode wrote on Jun 4, 2020, 02:46:

jdreyer wrote on Jun 4, 2020, 02:31:

Kxmode wrote on Jun 4, 2020, 00:42:
"Will" implies absolute certainty. I can't entirely agree with that premise.

It will happen. It's the holy grail: publishers retain total control over the product. No more cheating or wares sites. That said, it will be a long time coming. In order to not lose sales, a streaming-only game depends on a critical mass of very high-speed infrastructure, say 80% of major markets (N.A, Europe, China-South Korea-Japan) or so. It will be many years before this exists in enough places in the world to make this feasible. And it will happen first to large publishers and AAA titles. Indie titles will probably always have installable .exes.

Also, I responded to you in our FTFY thread.

Publishers need us more than WE need them. WE tell publishers what to do by the absolute fact that WE control their existence. When WE don't support something, they know it. That was on full display with Stadia, Google's failed attempt to make cloud gaming mandatory. A failure that forced big industry publishers like UbiSoft to acknowledge.

What a nice dream you have there.

It is almost a certainty that every majro publisher will jump at the first hint of cloud gaming being a realistic option (it isn't right now). And when you can only get access to "Major AAA Release Title" by using the publisher's cloud service, the majority of gamers will jump to it, as long as the service is actually reliable. UPlay, Origin, EGS, Battle.net and even Steam are only around because they have/have had major titles as exclusives.

Exclusives are going to be the way the big publishers drag everyone on to their cloud service platforms. You may not care about the first 50 titles to go cloud exclusive, but you're going to be forced to accept it at some point unless you completely abandon every major publisher. But the vast majority of gamers won't. Not even the ones protesting the loudest (see "Boycott Modern Warfare 2").

It might take 20 years (or even longer) for the infrastructure to be expanded enough in the US, but it will happen at some point.

Verno wrote on Jun 2, 2020, 10:36:
They must have huge DLC plans for this.

If you read the FAQ and blog (linked in the FAQ) you'll learn about some of their plans, which do include a launch day DLC (Amazon faction).

Jonjonz wrote on May 29, 2020, 06:54:
I played I and II and most of the DLCs except the prequels.

I found the whole series competent and mostly solid, but a bit repetitive once you have explored every nook and cranny.

I am guessing the Pre-Sequel is the same old-same old, just in a different environment? How much game play does it offer compared to I and II?
So is this prequel worth the download?

The core gameplay loop is the same, but the characters/classes are new and have abilities not seen in the previous games.

Cutter wrote on May 25, 2020, 11:58:
*REMOVED*

The main problem is that they go shopping later and they most certainly don't need to wear masks or gloves, but they do need to touch and smell every single piece of produce in every store they visit. So what if they might be a carrier, other people should protect themselves.

Completely disregarding the fact that the masks and gloves are best used by carriers and potential carriers to protect others. Wearing a mask doesn't protect you as much as a carrier wearing a mask.

El Pit wrote on May 22, 2020, 04:07:
I played the original Civ quite a bit but never got really hooked. This is why I passed on the other Civ games and clones, but I might give this free game a chance. This is how freebies work: they try to get you hooked so that you buy DLCs or the next or previous game if you like what you're playing. And I think there is nothing wrong with this little enticement.

The thing about the Civ games since Civ 4 is that every expansion has really changed and improved the gameplay. For these games it has been the case (for many I've talked to, including myself) that the previous iteration with all expansions is better than the current with no expansions, but the current with all expansions is better than the previous with all expansions.

And the expansions for each game are properly classified as Expansions and not DLC. While the core mechanics stay mostly the same, each expansion also introduces a lot of new stuff (not just new civs) that change how the game is approached.

The Half Elf wrote on May 18, 2020, 16:05:

Bill Borre wrote on May 18, 2020, 10:34:
That's too bad. An open world pop game like AC: Odyssey would've been pretty cool.

AC Origin and Odyssey are more PoP then AC games.AC games use to be about being slick and stealthy, now you can go flailing in. Not to mention the stealing. Origin had a great story tied into the AC History, I've yet to find anything in Odyssey that does so. Boy throw off a cliff that survived and yet has all these abilities or background that are not explained.

AC2 wasn't all that difficult even if you went into every encounter flailing like a madman. Except the forced stealth encounters for obvious reasons.

wtf_man wrote on May 18, 2020, 14:50:

RogueSix wrote on May 18, 2020, 14:38:
It is already optional for quite a few games. MechWarrior 5 would be one example. You can create a shortcut to the executable and launch the game without the Epic client.

What's the ratio? Like 10% of their AAA line up? I'm not talking indy games that are easily available DRM free.

What I've experienced with EGS freebies is that a bit more than half of them are DRM free, including the Batman Arkham games. The ones that require DRM aren't available DRM free elsewhere either from what I've been able to determine.

Dev wrote on May 15, 2020, 10:04:

roguebanshee wrote on May 15, 2020, 09:34:

Dev wrote on May 15, 2020, 09:04:

roguebanshee wrote on May 15, 2020, 05:10:
Just remember you need to activate 2FA to grab a copy.

I wonder why they added that requirement for their freebies recently. /s

You can use your email as the 2FA.

At which point the email becomes a potential bottleneck for reselling those accounts. And Epic may also have an automated system looking for people using the same email address as 2FA for multiple different accounts.

I mean it's easy enough to use the dots in a gmail, get multiple free emails, use a free email forwarder. So it's only a bottleneck for the most casual of resellers. If they really wanted to bottleneck it, forcing a phone number 2FA would have been more effective.

An app based 2FA sure, SMS based "2FA" is generally considered less secure by experts than using "1234" or "password" as your password.

Dev wrote on May 15, 2020, 09:04:

roguebanshee wrote on May 15, 2020, 05:10:
Just remember you need to activate 2FA to grab a copy.

I wonder why they added that requirement for their freebies recently. /s

You can use your email as the 2FA.

At which point the email becomes a potential bottleneck for reselling those accounts. And Epic may also have an automated system looking for people using the same email address as 2FA for multiple different accounts.