Yeah I’m a fan of the subs that do allow it one day a week. Sometimes you’ll see stuff custom made for the sub based on some comment or post that made the rounds.
But yeah for now I’d say no memes. As everything expands I’m sure we can get enough people to get gaming meme subs going.
It gets a super heavy recommendation from me. The game is absolutely excellent. It’s everything the Battlefield community has wanted from Battlefield for what feels like a decade now.
Do not let the graphics fool you. The game has solid performance, great gunplay, great progression akin to BF4, the class system feels excellent, they can do very large scale due to not having excessive graphics performance will be fully and solid, destruction is also fantastic its just got it all.
As someone who’s felt let down by Battlefield for a while now and put thousands of hours into it back in the day, this scratches that itch like you wouldn’t believe.
I’d say to jump right into the 124v124. At that level, one player is not going to change the tide too much. (Its more akin to the battles in Planetside 2 than your standard Battlefield due to the sheer scope.)
Basically Epic like every other publisher has created their own launcher/store.
They aren't trying to compete on features and instead using profits from their franchise to buy market share (e.g. buying store exclusives).
The tone and strategy often comes off as aggressive and hostile.
For example Valve was concerned Microsoft were going to leverage their store to kill Steam. Valve has invested alot in adding windows operability to Linux and ensuring Linux is a good gaming platform. To them this is the hedge against agressive Microsoft business practices.
The Epic CEO thinks Windows is the only operating system and actively prevents Linux support and revoked Linux support from properties they bought.
As a linux user, Valve will keep getting my money and I literally can't give it to Epic because they don't want it.
While we were very reasonable, we understand that you just didn’t get it, which made you sad. We understand it feels bad to be sad. To remedy this, we will try again using different words.
“We recognize that our recent runtime fee policy announcement wasn’t well-received. We genuinely apologize for the oversight and any confusion or concern it caused. Your feedback is invaluable to us. We are actively discussing the policy with our teams and the community and will be revising it based on your inputs. Please bear with us as we work through this, and expect an update soon.”
Yep, that has a better tone. There’s a limit to how good a statement you can make when at the core you really plan to do enshittification one way or another, but they could have thrown in a smidgeon of accepting blame also. E.g. “We were unable to provide clear and unambiguous answers to questions that came up” costs them nothing.
group offers diversity inclusion consulting, whatever that means
It usually means ensuring a lot of small details. For example if you have a native american character, they’d make sure you do not randomly pick a culture that doesn’t fit what the character does or their background, that you don’t show some non-native stereotypes, that you don’t idolize them like in stories unless your specific story calls for that, etc etc.
You’re supposed to work with consulting companies like these when you don’t have people who can judge this on your own team, because it’s so easy to get so many details wrong. Of course it’d be easier if your team already knows how to do it, sure. But if you can’t, then it’s the right step to get someone external who can help you not make a joke out of a character. Again, unless they’re suppsoed to be a joke.
this only exists because companies can benefit from it by getting there ISG score higher because they can say they put diversity in a game. normally consultants where for a specific topic like for guns or history or a culture but sweet baby only does superficial things and represent themselves as experts when there just in marketing no expert in anything to do with the game.
Group announces fan remake. Group get cease and desist. Internet tells them they should have just dropped it one day out of the blue. A tale as old as time. Im sympathetic. But its idiotic to announce a fan remake of anything unless you have the written consent of the owners. (and even then its risky because they can always revoke those permissions at random)
According to Wikipedia it started out as a mod, Valve asked them not to give it a name too similar to their own Half-Life Source, then later Valve approached them and suggested a commercial release!
In Valve’s case it’s just a smart move both for PR and business. Black Mesa isn’t competing with any of their products since I’m sure not many younger people are super interested in the original. In fact the remake might drum up interest by some people to play the original. And it’s sold on Valve’s platform, giving them a cut. Win win.
The announcements of fan works are always to drum up more fans to contribute to the work. And honestly 99/100 it doesn’t result in legal threats, it makes sense to do. Fan works don’t get made in secret, in secret they get to version 0.01 and sit on one person’s hard drive for a decade
well yup and thats what they want the games to be. a service. multiplayer diablo2 was much like an mmo but no servers needed. You could run the server and play with your friends or even open it up but everyone needed to have a copy of the game. so it has been done and they want to do it more and more.
While I’m super into self hosting instances, that usually defeats the point of MMOs. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that the publishers of MMOs often defeat the point of their game after long enough anyhow.
All that has generally pushed me towards round based games where the only advantages are my own personal skill.
Too late, they already communicated their greed to every gamedev out there and no one can ignore the potential of Unity fucking them over again anymore. Overall the whole shitshow was good advertisement for Godot.
It’s truly the year of mask-off corporate reveals. WotC, Reddit, Unity, Twitter. Probably more I’m forgetting or unaware of. So many big moves to capitalize on long time stability that, quite predictably, result not in amazing increase in profits but the irrevocable tarnishing of public trust that they relied on. It’s kinda wild to watch, honestly.
It’s IMO a sign that the current financial bubble is about to burst and it’s going to do so in a very violent way despite greedy bulls still pushing the “it’s different this time, we have AI now” bullshit.
Investors have their money trapped in these companies, and when they see what riskless treasury bills yield, they naturally start losing their minds because their money is instead in companies that fail to make significantly more than that riskless benchmark. So those investors then pressure those companies to do whatever they can to produce a good enough return on investment in a short period of time as they run out of patience and they themselves know that hell is coming in the financial markets so their shares might lose an even more significant amount soon.
The end result of CEOs and executives under pressure by investors, and engineers stressing out because they understand the financial situation and that they have to either be yes-men and agree with whatever changes the executives propose or be laid off (because another way to reach the target set by investors is to reduce costs by firing people), is obviously the enshittification that we witness today.
The conventional wisdow is that in time of economic turmoil, companies should lower their profit margins and weather out the storm.
However, in today’s capitalism, this is not not acceptable. Shareholders demand ever increasing profits and anything short of that is considered a failure. If you don’t keep your margin, you are to be scolded and discarded.
Now, the loans that many of the companies have cost a lot more money than 2 years ago. So the enshittification is used to enable the continued growth to keep the profits growings.
That’s how it is once the free money dries up. The profits must rise, no matter the long-term damage this causes - so they try to bleed the existing customer base dry to keep things rising for one or two more quarters. What does it matter to them if all the employees who have worked hard for years will lose their jobs due to their mismanagement?
I lasted a little longer but not much. It really was bad. I reinstalled it after their giant patch that was supposed to fix it and gave it a second chance: the shooting was better but the main issues with everything else were still there.
It was like they asked ChatGPT to create a Saints game.
User Create the plot for a game similar to the first four Saints Row games
ChatGPT Title: “City Unleashed”
Plot: In the sprawling metropolis of Havencross, crime syndicates have taken control, leaving the city in chaos. You play as a street-smart vigilante who rises to power in order to reclaim the city from the clutches of these criminal organizations. As you build your own crew and establish dominance, you’ll face off against rival gangs, corrupt officials, and powerful crime lords.
Starting as a small-time crook with a personal vendetta, you’ll complete daring heists, engage in intense street races, and execute audacious stunts to earn respect and resources. Your actions catch the attention of an underground resistance that seeks to topple the syndicates. They offer you support, guidance, and a chance to reshape Havencross.
The game offers an open-world environment, allowing you to explore the sprawling city, engage in a variety of activities, and make choices that influence the narrative. Customization plays a significant role, not only in terms of your character’s appearance but also in building your gang’s identity, from outfits to vehicles to hideouts.
Throughout the game, you’ll encounter memorable characters, each with their own motivations and backstories. As you forge alliances and rivalries, the balance of power in the city shifts dynamically. The story takes unexpected turns as you uncover the dark secrets behind the syndicates’ rise to power and their connections to influential figures in the city.
With a blend of over-the-top action, humor, and engaging storytelling, “City Unleashed” captures the essence of the first four Saints Row games, delivering a high-octane, open-world experience filled with outrageous missions, explosive combat, and a dynamic environment that reacts to your choices.
I’ll be honest, that is kinda how the new Saints Row was probably pitched in the design docs.
The problem is in the details. They failed to:
Create other games worth mention.
Have memorable characters.
Implement motivating vendettas or any personal motivation.
Make the city feel alive, which invalidates the whole open-world environment (a criticism I’d level against CP2077 too, it feels way too sterile).
Have any meaningful way of influencing your relationship with characters or forces.
Have a story worth mentioning.
In a lot of ways, the pitch document probably describe a good game. Just like ChatGPT does, there. But note how your mind is filling in that all of this would end up in the actual game, and be competently done. And that’s where the actual GenZ Saints Row fell apart, too.
I didn't even bother buying it. The trailers looked so bad and then you'd have to wait for a Steam release. No thanks. When the first gameplay videos dropped it looked like absolute trash and really just rehashed all the repetitive content from the previous games, which was plentifully criticized to be a huge weakpoint of them already, with a lame story, idiotic characters and a boring map on top of it. It was just a rehash of all the bad, but I guess that's all they could pull off.
For me, the big “Nope” was how despite being a modern game and running like arse (and not looking all that well), the streets are mostly empty. I mean at the very least I would assume they could re-implement SR3 one-to-one in more … opulent?
But instead it looks and feels worse than the older games, even in a direct comparison, because everything is dead and empty and still stutters like crazy.
SR2 was the peak of the series for me. I played 3 and 4 but they already felt like they were being constrained by budget even back then. They were mostly copy pasted mini games with far fewer missions.
Yeah there’s always a lot of divided audience feedback. SR2 was too serious for me still, it felt like a low-budget GTA clone and I wasn’t even a GTA fan in the first place.
But SR3 and 4? They were so ridiculously over the top, they parodied the whole genre. A genre I love to see made fun of, so they were perfect for me.
3 struck the perfect balance for me, it was like playing an action movie that didn’t take itself too seriously while still maintaining a tenuous grasp on reality. 4 fully jumped the shark for me and was hard to enjoy.
I’m sure that, while 17k may be mathematically and technically true, they’re going to be virtually indistinguishable. I’m pretty hyped for the game but I also don’t care for the obviously clickbait claim.
It’s nice to know the ending will touch upon your actions thoroughly, but I suspect it will be a lot like the The Witcher 3 technically having 40-something “endings” (but really it’s just 3 major outcomes with some variations on the details).
I agree and I suspect companions are carrying a lot of the weight for this calculation.
Hypothetically, if there’s 10 companions with 10 individual endings each you’d get 100 endings right there. Add in 10 main endings and you get 1000, add in 4 major side quests and 4 variations each and you’re at 16,000 ending variations.
I’m not entirely sure why, but I don’t think that adds up. 10 companions with 10 different endings is a total 100 endings, however there are apparently 1.7x10^13^ combinations if you were to pick any 10. I don’t entirely know if I did the math right there.
So you don’t have 1000 endings from the 100 total companion endings and 10 main endings, you have 110 total endings.
Either 17,000 is a figure from the various combinations (compare that to Fallout 3’s purptorted 300 endings) or there are 17000 total ending “slides.” The former is much more likely.
Unless I’m getting the math wrong myself, for any “pick 1” combination set like this we’re dealing with just multiplying the combination sets together. Technically we’re multiplying by the factorial of the sample size, but 1!=1.
We’re not picking any 10 from within the subset of 100; you cannot pick both ending 1 and ending 4 from companion A and then no ending at all for companion C. I’m assuming each individual sub-ending is mutually exclusive with the rest of its sample space. That difference of assumptions is what led to your 1.7x10^13^ combinations.
You’re probably more right than me here, but I’m just not following. Does it matter whether or not to pick 1 from 10 sets of 10 or to pick 10 from a single set of 100? We don’t care about what set each individual item came from, just that it’s unique and the number of possible combinations.
Edit: Probably just best to dismiss this. I clearly have no idea what I’m talking about.
Yes, it matters. If you’re picking 1 out of 10 each from 10 different sets, you get 100 combinations. This also limits the sample space to what is possible.
For simplicity’s sake so we can do math that we can intuitively figure out, look at it as picking one from binary choices, with three companions. So you have companions A, B, and C. With possible endings A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.
If you pick 1 from A, 1 from B, and 1 from C you get 2*2*2 possible outcomes, or 8.
If you pick any 3 from the set of 6 (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) you get 6!/(3!*3!) possible outcomes, or 20.
With the former, you always get one ending for each companion. Every companion has an option selected, and every companion does not have multiple endings selected. With the latter, you might get 1 from each companion. Or you might get A1, A2, and B1 — with no endings for companion C, and two endings for companion A.
How can ending A1 “A lived happily ever after” and ending A2 “A died midway through the player’s journey, never having found happiness” both happen? They cannot. We need to use a system that limits the sample space to exactly 1 per companion, even if that option itself might be “doesn’t show up in the end slides.”
Since it’s variations of the combined ending, each permutation would count as unique. Meaning that 10 companions with 10 endings each would total 10.000.000.000 variations,
I hate how this is phrased as “redundancies”. IGN literally JUST bought these outlets, they haven’t had time to dig into and examine the organizations they acquired; it’s just straight into the Corpo playbook of “lay people off and let the dust settle where it may”.
These are people, not “redundancies”. They contributed in the old organization, and they could contribute in the new, but they never even got the chance.
Generally when companies like this are bought it isn’t to acquire the talent. That’s legitimately what needs to be taken into account when it comes to things like antitrust. You want to buy out this company, are you buying it because you want their talent to join with yours to make something better? Cool. We’ll let you do that provided you do it today fair and competitive manner.
Any other reason for wanting to buy this company is going to need to be pretty heavily scrutinized.
It amounts to the same thing, though. Whether you got a few months pay to carry you through or not you still lost your income, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever find a job that matches it in pay, benefits, etc.
Read the guys comment again though. They say their issue is with calling them “redundancies” in a language sense. But it’s not sugar coating it or anything, that’s the legitimate term for what happened.
You generally don’t buy a business and then figure all of that out. You figure it all out and then buy the business. IGN already would have 100% known the managerial setup at these companies.
What should happen is not always what does happen. There are tons of examples of brain dead companies and rich people buying companies they dont understand and then ruining them because of that.
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