I have made a couple of games with AI. My kid was in hospital, I couldn’t sleep. I had a couple of massive projects running that I absolutely could not hold focus on, and so I knocked up a reimagining of an old Amiga game called ECO, and a RPG shooter that has a few nods to Dragon Heroes: Shooter RPG. Had a few people play it and they think I should sell it, but I’m very aware it’s just two more data points in a sea of “slop”. Does it matter they were made with love? They were therapeutic and got me through a rough time? Does it matter that they were both games I missed, not because they were good exactly, but their mechanisms were different and not well covered by modern games, so I tweaked and I poked and I can’t draw for shit or compose so I let the AI do that. So, no matter how much I care, they are worthless in the eyes of a lot of folks here - I can code a bit, I absolutely couldn’t have done these without AI. I’m not going to sell them - but if you think me resurrecting long dead concepts with the shit bits taken out to bring a smile to me and my kids is some crime against joy, and identical to massive studios that put profits before the enjoyment of the very people they are supposed to serve - you can fuck right off. I will take a shitty, cobbled together indie concept riddled with AI and heart over some of the most (hand made), cynical profiteering shit that the AAAs were pumping out a couple of years ago, and will continue to pump out but with AI added.

The thing that reflects on the gaming industry is the big guys keep forgetting about the game.

You are explicitly allowed to retain PII for critical business purposes. So in this case as a key component that the software licence is attached to they can retain it forever anyway.

No mostly I mean when he acts like a bellend.

Until Tim Sweeney does something about Tim fucking Sweeney I am good thanks.

There’s also a Denuvo review account that only reports Denuvo status. Great if you don’t really use the reviewers because it puts the status in the main store page.

Also. Apple has alt app stores in other regions. Data transfer on Apple hasn’t needed iTunes for a long time, and it will read USB-c hard drives and keys. I don’t disagree with you that iOS is more locked down, just pointing out the gap keeps getting smaller. I have a Jolla pre order in, because I’m a fan of open hardware, but it will likely be my android phone that I drop in favour of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Not at release. It came later though for certain chipsets.

No complaints about Yomu.

They did this with “plays for sure” DRM protected music files too, way, way back. Never bought content of any kind from them after that and then killing Windows LIVE.

Just assume everything from them has a “destroy after” date set in the near future.

1. And yet almost every single one had a “Buy” button on the purchase page, not a “licence” and I sure as shit didn’t sign a damn thing. I act like I own them, and will continue to do so. Half the EULAs contains some illegal bullshit anyway and the “also is any of this invalidates local laws, just ignore that bit” clause is relatively a lot newer than a lot of classic games which I probably do own because of this. With the greatest respect, laws are - effectively - requests when the entire population willfully ignores them.

2. Absolutely true. And this is where I have difficulty with this initiative. I am a heavy collector and patient gamer, I get to stuff years after release. As such I have always avoided heavily on-line stuff so I can use my own schedule, and that’s the sticking point here for me. In the current environment where it’s easy to see network requirements, and even refund games after testing it seems like this could be handled by vote with your wallet for the most part. However, I take a very different view of the current bait-and-switch of taking games without a hard online requirement and changing the terms in some way after release, and this alone is enough to make me support the movement. Adding launchers, additional account requirements, micro transactions post release should be heavily controlled. If you don’t state at release you will be adding MTX - or even DLC honestly - you shouldn’t be able too in my mind. It’s a different product.

I think the other thing that so many are either too young to remember, or perhaps not technical enough now, but in the 90s, you ran your own game servers, and it was awesome. It was hard back then, someone seemed an ISDN or leased line to handle the traffic and access to a decent PC or server - requirements that are now in reach of everyone with a joke connection, a multi core machine and a docker install. There’s no reason this couldn’t be handled that way again with the companies monetising “content packs” for the servers and letting communities flourish. But they like the control.

It’s going to be interesting seeing the outcome here!