It's worth noting that War Wind has been free on GoG for several years now.

https://www.gog.com/game/war_wind

RogueSix wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 08:03:
It's not Denuvo.

It's just as likely the devs did a sloppy job of implementing the protections offered by Denuvo the first time around.

That wouldn't be anything new.

El Pit wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 15:12:

roguebanshee wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 07:56:
D2:R always aimed to be D2:HD Edition with a few UI QoL updates but no gameplay changes. In large part because most monitors these days aren't 800x600 (or the original 640x480). What SC:R successfully did and WC3:R failed horribly at.

If you want a more "modern" experience there's a lot of other good games out there and D4 is comming at some point in the future.

Yes, nowadays monitors are e.g. 3440x1440p... /*sigh

According to the latest Steam HW survey, around 87% use a 16:9 display with 1920x1080 being the most common by far at 68.42%.

3440x1440 sits at a wonderful 1.02%, which is an amount few developers would redesign the game from scratch for if the resolution causes gameplay issues.

TheBigVlad wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 03:25:

Cram wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 20:33:
"let the way to hell Ball Runs be open"

zzzzzzz

This is one of many reasons why I have no interest in this. They should have overhauled the loot system to be more like Diablo 3, where almost any monster can drop anything. Doing Baal/Pindleskin/Whatever runs 1000 times in a row, to hunt for a specific item, isn't fun. Also, get rid of charms. The purists have Diablo 2 already, why not modernize the game for the rest of us? Oh well. It looks like the game is successful in doing exactly what it sets out to do, so I hope the purists are happy with it at least.

D2:R always aimed to be D2:HD Edition with a few UI QoL updates but no gameplay changes. In large part because most monitors these days aren't 800x600 (or the original 640x480). What SC:R successfully did and WC3:R failed horribly at.

If you want a more "modern" experience there's a lot of other good games out there and D4 is comming at some point in the future.

From that list, it seems fair to assume that Tales of ArseArise has sold reasonably well.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 10:31:
Or when there are opposing rulings from different courts/states and they believe they should decide the matter. Any way you see it, it is unlikely Epic or Apple will stop until the Supremes make a decision, even if that decision is to not make a decision.

If SCOTUS decides not to accept the case that is them saying that the case itself has no real impact on the legal system. It doesn't say anything about the merits of the case or the outcome.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 21:40:

Leahi84 wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 21:32:
Who says this is going to the supreme court? I don't know if they'd even take a case like this. Also it depends on how the Supreme court views apple, if they are seen as a left leaning company at all they might lose. Either way, it's rather presumptuous of you to assume Apple will ultimately win out.

Well, I doubt either side would stop before getting there. If the Supremes refuse an appeal, that's them saying it wouldn't change if they did take it. And as is the case even for us lowly common humans, not making a decision is in of itself, a decision.

SCOTUS refusing to look at a case could also boil down to them not thinking there's an important enough legal question.

MeanJim wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 18:57:
What is stopping publishers from putting their apps on the Apple store for free, and then locking everything inside the app behind in app purchases, cutting Apple completely out of the loop?

You need a game that's built around a constant flow of microtransactions for that to work (including a simple payment UI). They also need to set up a deal with a third party payment processor (because getting the papers in order to become a payment processor is not a cheap or quick thing) who will take a cut anyway even though that is likely far less than 30% (1 to 5% depending on card,a paid amount and transaction volume is the norm iirc). I don't know how Apple handles payment disputes, but that's something the publisher has to think of now as well. And chargebacks are always a nasty surprise waiting to happen for any company dealing with online transactions.

While it would be possible if the order survives the inevitable myriad appeals, it's not something I'd suggest to a smaller publisher (and certainly not for a small indie developer). The large publishing houses will almost certainly switch as fast as they can.

MeanJim wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 18:57:

Hellcinder wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 15:32:
I've been hammered quite a bit for this view, but why does Apple (Google, Microsoft, Steam, name your leach here) deserve 30% of anything for products they don't produce?

The infrastructure argument is swiss cheese also, because if you need 30% to keep yourself afloat, you're doing something very wrong.

Running those app stores isn't free. They have bandwidth costs, utility bills, and employees to pay. With Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, they sell the consoles at a loss and make up for that by taking a cut from the games sales. I don't know if that's the same for Apple's phones or not.

From what information I have been able to gather, Apple does earn a substantial amount from selling the phones whether directly to customers or to a carrier (that then recoups the cost via the long term plan that comes bundled). From what I can tell they also make a decent amount of money on support and peripherals, which is why there's also a large market for third party support and peripherals.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 9, 2021, 04:28:
How about older games whose publishers and/or developers are long out of business? Whom, exactly, is being stolen from? And applications suffering the same state? Again, whom exactly is being stolen from?

Copyright law says lifetime of the author + 70 years for something made by a single person while "work for hire" (ie. anything released by a company) last 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation (whichever expires first) unless explicitly relinquished.

I can't think of a software creator who died in 1950 or any software published in 1925.

If a company closes its doors, there'll still be someone who claims ownership of the assets. If it was due to bankruptcy, the creditors will be the first in line to claim any IP. If the company was shut down because funds ran out (without any loans), there's still a distribution of assets afterwards. Unless copyright was actively relinquished there is still an owner, even if they might not be easy to track down.

Hmm...by that logic, virtual machines are piracy, too, because they can be used to emulate firmware and BIOS code that is long, long out of production and unsupported. Emulators, too, for now defunct hardware.

The simple version: Code can be copyrighted, chips and hardware can be patented, instruction sets have no protection. VMs and emulators do not copy the software or hardware, but rather implement a way to interpret the instruction set.

LOC wrote on Sep 7, 2021, 12:46:
What I don't get is the people who scream from the clouds about freedom of speech this and that - don't seem to understand how freedom of speech is supposed to work.

It seems fairly frequent that those yelling about how their freedom of speech is being suppressed confuse Freedom of Speech with Freedom from Consequences.

A good old XKCD on the subject
https://xkcd.com/1357/

ZeroPike1 wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 13:35:
Brexit dumb asses can eat the soup they crapped in as far as I'm concerned.

An important chunk of the people who pushed for Brexit have enough wealth to weather the storm, they might even be able to acquire even more long term wealth and political power. In part because their money isn't tied up exclusively in British assets.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 22:49:
Patient: "Doctor, I have a gaping wound. I am in immense pain. Please help!"
Doctor puts a small bandage over wound
Doctor (proudly): "Well, my work is done."

If it's all they do, sure that analogy works.

If they actually go ahead and change the workplace to be less toxic dudebro, then changing the name of a character who was specifically named after a person who was highly toxic in the workplace is a way to further distance themselves from the toxicity. But only if they actually change the workplace.

Time will tell.

VaranDragon wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 08:01:
What's with all the antifa hate? Antifa is short for antifascism right? What's wrong with antifascism? The way I see it the only people who would have a problem with antifascism, are fascists.

That's a very touchy political subject in the US.

Not that I disagree with your outlook, but any attempt at explaining the situation would very likely lead to a highly politicized thread with lots of flaming on both sides (not that there haven't been attempts at forcing that).

But antifa is only used negatively by people who also use "woke" or SJW the same way.

It looks like a perfectly reasonable balance between the tone of SR2 & 3 to me.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 21:17:

"The firm has apparently been hosting listening sessions with employees to hear their complaints"

It would not surprise me if those WilmerHale "listening sessions" weren't voluntary. Employment was based on meeting with WilmerHale at a set date and time. Further, before the "listening session," employees received an NDA document that required a signature as a condition of further employment. The NDA forbids them from speaking about an "internal matter." Breaking the NDA results in immediate termination, loss of severance benefits, and health insurance. I don't believe for one minute Activision-Blizzard hasn't strong-armed their employees into silence. Look for a nasty exposé by Jason Schreier.

A contract written and enforced like that has potential to be challenged in court as unenforceable, which would make any terminations based on it unjustified making ActiBlizz liable for damages. While the US has extremely limited employee protection laws and contracts can be very broad, there are still legal protections against things like that. Even though ActiBlizz has had lawyers go over their contracts, it's not unlikely that they've added clauses they know won't hold up in court but expect most people won't even think to question.

US contract law does have protections for people entering into contracts with a much more resourceful entity. But you generally need an impartial contract lawyer to go over things to find out if there are legally dubious parts of a specific contract.

And in a case like this confidentiality is not a shield in any way whatsoever, if they try to stonewall using confidentiality as a reason the judge could potentially take that as an admittance of guilt.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 17:58:

The Half Elf wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 17:46:

jdreyer wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 16:15:
EA makes a move to avoid being voted "Worst Company in the World" for the third time.

Pretty sure Activision/Blizzard has it in the bag this year

Worst video game companies? Sure. Worst Company in the world? I don't think any of the companies above breaks the top 100. Any oil company, any heavy processing or manufacturing company of any type, the entire auto industry... hell companies that farm and sell Palm Oil or Bananas are probably the top 5 or ten just from the thousands of murders they have committed. Then of course there is the banking industry... yeah video game companies have decades of real crimes to go before they get anywhere in the world rankings.

It's always good to keep things in perspective.

"Worst company of the year" is essentially just a rush to see who has caused outrage in the largest group of keyboard warriors that year. It's not some award given out by a committee of "qualified" individuals after several weeks of intense research.

A lot of what the actual worst companies do never reaches the press and/or is not easy enough to link to those companies (at least in the public concious). Maybe the stuff they do is just too nebulous to get riled up over. Or it could be happening in a country that has worse problems than a few hundred fatal industrial accidents (or actual murders) a year. And famines/droughts caused by recklessly greedy corporations in developing countries has basically been business as usual for several decades.

It's just so much easier to vote for whichever corporation has caused the biggest uproar during the last year than researching which company has done the most shitty things. Even moreso when you expect that to be how others vote. Push the outrage button and send a message (that inevitably gets ignored by almost everyone a day or two after the award is publicized).

jdreyer wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 08:14:

roguebanshee wrote on Aug 24, 2021, 05:21:

jdreyer wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 18:39:

BIGtrouble77 wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 17:40:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 12:16:

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 12:10:
“there’s no more cheating in Warzone, I guarantee that.”
How long before there’s a cheat that allows you to circumvent hardware bans.

That "cheat" already exists. It's called a VM. Ban the VM? Cool, spin up a new one with slightly modified virtual "hardware" and you have a new machine signature.

You can always passthrough (well, on Linux you can at least) your shit-hot GPU to the VM for performance and use an iGPU or a second, less powerful GPU for the host machine.

Do this ad-infinitum.

VMs already have a blanket ban in pubg. I haven't been able to play any competitive online games for years because of this policy.

How do they tell the difference?

One method

Interesting. Not insurmountable to spoof, but requires some work.

You should pay attention to the fact that the link is from 2013, and a lot of work has gone into detecting VMs since then (most notably in the case of malware creators trying to evade detection).

jdreyer wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 18:39:

BIGtrouble77 wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 17:40:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 12:16:

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 12:10:
“there’s no more cheating in Warzone, I guarantee that.”
How long before there’s a cheat that allows you to circumvent hardware bans.

That "cheat" already exists. It's called a VM. Ban the VM? Cool, spin up a new one with slightly modified virtual "hardware" and you have a new machine signature.

You can always passthrough (well, on Linux you can at least) your shit-hot GPU to the VM for performance and use an iGPU or a second, less powerful GPU for the host machine.

Do this ad-infinitum.

VMs already have a blanket ban in pubg. I haven't been able to play any competitive online games for years because of this policy.

How do they tell the difference?

One method

NasWulf wrote on Aug 23, 2021, 09:13:
who is playing single player in Quake?

Every single sane person on this planet.

Philll wrote on Aug 19, 2021, 20:34:

Slick wrote on Aug 19, 2021, 19:25:
*crickets*

Nothing a few hundred million in advertising wont fix

With the amount of people who don't pay attention to games other than their singular franchise, ActiBlizz doesn't need to shovel a ton of money into advertisement, despite a more gaming aware forum like this being decidedly meh about it.

Also: "Call of Duty Presents", not "Activision Presents"...