Peruvian_Skies

Possibly stupid question: if they found out that people were doing illegal stuff on it, doesn’t that mean that they were monitoring people’s conferences? I thought that the FOSS community was big on privacy.

Don’t worry about it, you were right.

It might actually preclude some games from even getting a Switch port at all due to performance.

You are right, I mixed it up with something else.

Edit: I’m an idiot.

Exactly. But AFAIK every Denuvo game eventually gets cracked, so at least we will have the pirate copies. From a preservation standpoint, a dumped ROM is much better than a physical cartridge anyway, since it’s more portable and easier to back up. It’s the contents of the cartridge minus the physical limitations.

Dehydrated water: just add water.

Good, maybe in two or three more years Windows 11 will be useable. Right on time for Windows 12 to roll out and drag Microsoft users back to the Stone Age again.

I was actually agreeing with you and in no way do I think it’s ok because everyone does it. Rather, I’m very dismayed that everyone does it. Yes, it seems like a good idea on paper to use paid alpha and beta releases to fund development but the system has been shot to hell by the fact that the overwhelming majority of publishers who do this abuse it.

I prefer a single upfront purchase, though I am not against the idea of expansion packs or meaningful DLC (extra character races, maps, campaigns, etc). For online games, I think cosmetic DLCs are a good way to bank server costs. People who don’t want to buy them aren’t missing out on anything really, and the people who do get some nice swag/street cred to show off.

What I am completely against is pay-to-win crap.

In PvP, skilled players are at a disadvantage against prepubescent kids with daddy’s credit card and that really ruins the experience.

The most ridiculous to me is when you can use real money to buy items/skills/exp for single-player games. I remember being shocked to see that there were several launch-day DLCs for Tales of Zestiria for packs of healing items or early weapons that are normally obtainable in-game, just to help you out in the beginning. There used to be cheat codes for this sort of thing, now the “cheat” is forking over cash.

Not only is it predatory, people are actually paying for something the game already gives them access to, essentially giving the publisher money for being able to play, and then giving them more money for being able to play less.

Steam is riddled with Early Access games that were abandoned before ever reaching a final release. If you reach your financial goals before finishing the game, you’ll get a bigger payout by moving on to another project than by keeping your promises. Users are outraged at first, but their memories are short-lived. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There are some notable exceptions, though. Kerbal Space Program comes to mind.

Stats.FM is another good one. It shows you all sorts of statistics on what you listen to, which you can filter by time period and use to find new music.

Terrorists and authoritarian governments are each others’ greatest allies even though both pretend otherwise. Each one uses the other to endear itself to the people and justify atrocities that they would otherwise never get away with, all in the name of protecting you from the other one.

Wouldn’t it be possible to create some kind of “post-browser” that takes input from the web browser and displays it after passing it through ad blockers and whatever else?

Lemmy has undercover ads now?

Sorry but that just isn’t realistic, no matter how effective it is at pushing your anger buttons.

You’re forgetting that patent law applies to industrial property across every sector of the economy. This is a technology issue that goes far beyond entertainment media.

I agree with you, we need legal protections - but for the future. Even the E.T. game for Atari has ROMs easily available. It was just too easy up until recently (and still is with Nintendo hardware) to dump ROMs and write very functional emulators. I’d say nothing up to the PS3 era is in danger, but that’s a very partially educated guess.

We’re not in danger of losing anything. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. How is passing new laws going to magically detect and erase all the PSX, SNES, MAME, etc ROMs that I play offline from my computer? How is it going to prevent people from torrenting these files through VPNs in countries that don’t give a rat’s ass or sharing encrypted ROMpacks? Jesus, even archive.org is chock full of retro games. Trying to get rid of ROM sharing at this point is like trying to dry up the ocean with a fistfull of cotton swabs.

Plus, emulation itself is not and cannot be illegal, barring a complete redesign of intellectual property law from its very foundation. Games themselves, BIOSes and encryption keys are protected, but an emulator is, in rough terms, “something that achieves the same result through different means”, and if that could be made illegal, then someone could patent the hammer and you’d have to pay a fine for nailing two things together with a rock.