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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • That’s a bit much… It’s just not possible to guarantee that as a developer

    Software is a living thing, and anything useful is made up of layer after layer of ever shifting sand. We do our best, but we are all at the mercy of our dependencies. There are trade-offs, there are bugs we can do nothing about, and sometimes moving forward means dropping support for platforms that are no longer “cheap” enough to afford while also working on the game

    I love this though. I also like the idea of requiring access to earlier builds.

    These mitigate anti consumer practices - dropping support for a platform is more likely to be a technical trade-off or unintentional consequence though




    1. installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library

    2. It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it

    DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction

    Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to




  • That’s not what arbitration is. This doesn’t stop valve from reaching a settlement, it stops them from using fake privately funded bench trials

    Binding arbitration means the results are legally binding, non-binding arbitration means a judge needs to approve the arbitration results before it’s final. Sometimes it’s with an off duty judge, sometimes anyone can be the arbiter

    Regardless, on one side you have a repeat customer, on the other you have someone who will probably never be back - there’s a built in conflict of interest



  • For all we know, they’re literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say “yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000”, meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest.

    That would be illegal and easily discovered

    But you could pay $10M to hire another company to do the sound mixing. They might spend $500k to do the work. You might also be the owner of that company, and the money ends up back in your pocket…And that’s not embezzlement or a kickback, because that’s what it’s called when poor people do it



  • Holy shit… When I got my wisdom teeth out, I literally broke down in tears after being awake for 20 minutes without Percocet

    Friend, it’s ok to take opiates sometimes…

    Kratom could be an option. You make it into tea, the first cup is a weak stimulant, the second (on an empty stomach) will start to work as a weak opiate. The third or fourth might give you stronger relief. The red strains are supposedly better for pain relief

    You can’t OD on it, it’s commonly available in head shops or online. The addiction potential is very low, you’ll make yourself nauseous before getting what you’d get out of normal opiates. It’s most closely related to the coffee plant - the toxicity concerns are all about contamination, the plant itself is pretty innocuous

    I can give brewing instructions if anyone wants to go down that path, I drink it for anxiety but others say it helps with pain management