I’ve been rapidly barrelling toward a DRM-free-only self-hosted future, and part of that is DRM-free books. In an attempt to get out of Amazon’s clutches, I looked for where I can buy DRM-free books, like Project Hail Mary. The answer I came up with was: nowhere. Everyone is following the same playbook. Why would I buy from your store if you’re doing exactly what Amazon is doing? I’m already shopping on Amazon, and I want something better.

(The answer is that I can break the DRM on other stores, but I can’t on Amazon. When it’s this difficult to get DRM-free books, I wouldn’t blame people for resorting to piracy.)

Why on earth would I buy from Epic if I have any other option? What are you doing better?

I was a huge fan of the previous games. My friends were huge fans of the previous games. We all loved Infinite. Fallout 4 is another great example of that game being way better, and way better received, than the tone that you tend to see on forums. Perhaps because those people were so burned that they can’t help but talk continually about how upset they were with it? I see this all the time in fighting game circles around Guilty Gear Strive. That series never broke 1M copies sold of a game before Strive, and Strive has sold like 4M+ by now. Not only that, but tournament entrants are consistently healthy at every major. If competitors weren’t happy with it, they’d stop playing, and we know that from plenty of other fighting game scenes. Even if everyone who played a prior Guilty Gear also hated Strive (which isn’t the case), it should be extremely rare to come across those legacy players’ complaints, but even 5 years into Strive’s success, those voices are quite loud in forums.

It’s the #72 highest rated game of all time on Metacritic with a 94/100. I don’t think BioShock Infinite really fits this thread.

They’re aware.

I keep thinking, “This will be the year for Super Street Fighter 6”, and then it doesn’t happen. I guess that makes sense, since the game remains incredibly popular. And is maybe even more popular now than it was when I played? People love throw loops, I suppose.

With digital platforms like Steam allowing games to continue selling for years following launch, accumulated revenue from catalogue titles has become one of Capcom’s crucial sources of profit, and has indirectly enabled Capcom to invest in rebooting previously dormant IPs.

It doesn’t hurt that their games typically aren’t a million hours long either. Before Village came out, I could play through Resident Evil 1-7 in a couple of months without rushing.

You’re free to believe what you like, but it is real. The cost of an input (electricity, server components, employee salaries, etc.) goes up, and the cost of what a company produces has to go up as well.

That’s what the order form says here in Brooklyn, which ought to be more expensive than most locations. Maybe it’s because they have to compete with the plethora of bodegas we have.

It varies, but it’s something like $7.50 to $8. In any case, inflation is a thing. Theme Park was added to the Good Old Games program, which means GOG did real work on it, and it’s not egregious to charge a few extra dollars. Plus, sale percentages are variable; sometimes Dragon Age is 50% off, but right now it’s 60%; this sale might not be a given game’s deepest discount. Are they charging what you’re willing to pay? If I was in the market for Theme Park at $0.89, I’d probably still be in the market for it at $3.

Wait until you find out what Subway used to charge for a footlong sandwich.

You didn’t even research the legislative changes for women’s suffrage or civil rights, which you probably ought to have been taught in elementary school if you couldn’t be bothered to go to Wikipedia. Actual members of European parliament seem to be confident in what they’re able to achieve without a win on this citizen’s initiative, going from today’s press conference, and I trust that they have a better idea of it than you do.

If you don’t want to engage with anything that disproves your stance, like new legislation that the civil rights movement fought for, then sure. If the “erosion of IP” is the continued availability of something that people already paid for, and the consequences of that are that now the producer is going to have a hard time selling its successor, then I think that’s absolutely the obvious thing that 1.3M people signed a petition to have changed rather than relying on existing laws that clearly aren’t serving the consumer. We’ll see what parliament comes up with in the Digital Fairness Act and how California’s efforts go.

A group could take SWTOR, add content, and have people donate/pay for it despite the IP holder not wanting their IP used that way.

I’m guessing you blocked me, but these are mods, and they’ve existed for a long time.

Sega

Hasbro

And I thought there was a third example in recent weeks, but I’m struggling to find it right now. In place of that, you can look at the implosion of Sony’s live service efforts, with Marathon falling far short of making money, and for some reason Fairgames, rumored to now be called Break-In, will be the last one out the door after that Horizon live service. After that, I’d be shocked if they keep trying.

It was the only mainline game I hadn’t played at the time. I still haven’t played Tactics, Shelter, or 76 and don’t really intend to.

Video game adaptations are effective marketing. I’ll say from experience, the Fallout show was the most effective commercial I’d ever seen. They probably hoped it would lead me to playing Fallout 76 like it did for so many other folks, but I played Fallout 2 instead.

You have to first understand the ways in which you can be burned, which takes lived experience.

I don’t have a PS5, and I only play on PC, so every game requires a download to play it. But I do think that if this criteria matters to other folks and this site still doesn’t cover the part that matters to me, it’s demonstrative of all the ways that studios have compromised the products they sold to us.

I’m not sure if everything is covered on the Steam game pages, but that is a good first starting point.

It’s worse than that, actually. They technically provide all of the resources to inform the customer of this stuff, but it isn’t enforced. Palworld used to say that it requires an internet connection in the Steam Deck verified section, but that wasn’t actually true. Every Borderlands game except for BL1 GOTY edition has LAN play, meaning that series will survive a server shutdown, but two of them don’t list it; my guess is that the person managing the page doesn’t know or care. I’ve got a friend, as we speak, looking into which features of 007 First Light still work without an internet connection, which I wouldn’t even know was worth checking if it wasn’t for IO Interactive pulling new shenanigans with the latest Hitman games (he’s being more thorough, but the initial assessment is that it might restrict access to the challenge rooms).

UPDATE: My friend confirmed the challenge rooms are locked without internet. Bastards.

When existing legislation didn’t suffice, the movement was for further legislation, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that postdated Ruby Bridges’ attendance of an integrated school. And now we can bring that back to SKG requesting additional legislation because the existing legislation doesn’t suffice.