As much as I like putting limitations on lootboxes or banning them out right, I’ve seen what developers do when they can’t use lootboxes. $20 to $30 “micro” transactions with predatory menus and game mechanics that make you feel bad for not owning the latest hotness. They will do anything to make that microtransaction money regardless. They’ll just take advantage of a different part of your brain.

I don’t even know what a God of War live service game would be like but I can’t imagine it would be good.

They’ll just ask ChatGPT what to do while the world burns.

There will always be alternatives. And honestly I don’t blame them for going to an even more Chinese app. Your data is going to get taken and used against you anyway so you might as well give it to China and fuck over the US companies that are directly fucking you over.

I’m not saying it’s the right mindset, I’m just saying I get it.

I’m honestly surprised more content creators on TikTok haven’t raised a stink about this from what I’ve seen. Agree with it or not, for some people this is their livelihood.

You sound like such a bottom right now.

My go to is still surprised Pikachu face.

Fantastic game but lemme tell ya, the controls for that game did not age well. I’ve tried to go back and play it, even on an emulator where I can customize the controls, and it is baffling how unintuitive the controls are on modern controllers. It worked when the N64 controller was considered good. But with how controllers have evolved it’s basically unplayable no matter how it’s configured.

It will literally never happen, but a remaster would be sick.

Hey! I almost forgot about this when I left Reddit. I was so excited to see it come to fruition some day. I’d love to beta test but I’ve moved to an office job since then so I probably won’t be able to help much.

Damn I didn’t even know. That’s pretty dumb on their part as they could have been a bigger competitor. I’m sure they made the decision before Spotify took off as hard as it did.

Everyone always gave me shit for sticking with Pandora. It can basically do all the shit that Spotify can these days albeit a little different. You can even make your own playlists and listen offline if you have premium. It has a more limited library but it’s barely noticeable except maybe once or twice a year I can’t find a song I wanna listen to. It’s simpler and cheaper than Spotify with most of the same features. My favorite part is that I can literally pick any song I want and it will just continue playing after it’s over with similar songs. I’ve discovered so much music I would have never tried if it hadn’t shown up. And so far it hasn’t been overrun by AI slop like Spotify. Sure they pay artists less compared to competitors but at least they aren’t just straight up trying to replace them.

I’m not saying Pandora is objectively better. I’m just saying Spotify is falling into the world of enshittification and there are many alternatives out there. You could even just buy music and support artists directly like we used to.

I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered “yeah, but where do they get their money?” I always figured it was just a way to take people’s data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let’s be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It’s basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.

Isn’t a subscription on a free platform just donating with extra steps? Either way it’s optional but with one of the options you get perks. I’m not discounting the obviously shady things they are doing, I’m just pointing out that they’re basically the same thing from the perspective of the consumer but you get bonus shit.

Just playing devil’s advocate here, but they have to make money somehow, right? It’s either this or advertisements. And I fucking hate advertisements. I say the only way they could truly drop the ball is if they opt for both subscriptions and advertisements. The only other option is donations. And I honestly can’t see that as a viable strategy for something like Bluesky.

I don’t upload YouTube videos so I’m unsure about the logistics of settings for videos. Do you get these options on videos already uploaded or is this only an option when first uploaded? Is this for the whole channel or video specific? Just curious how it works. Regardless if they ever decide to turn it on by default that would mean YouTubers would have to go through hundreds of videos and turn it off individually unless it’s a channel wide setting kinda thing.

Edit: Just noticed it’s under channel settings so I guess that’s a good thing. If it was video specific that would be just plain evil. I guess I shouldn’t give them ideas…

Same. Doesn’t play Deadlock very well which I find really funny since it’s a Valve game. But it’s a play test so I’ll give it a pass for now.

Like it or not, this is the easiest way to get Linux further into the mainstream. I’ve had Linux on my laptop for about a year or so and have been loving it, but I’ve still been wary about switching my gaming PC. I think the biggest issue with most people hesitant to switch is ease of use. From the outside Linux looks cryptic and kinda scary for most people. I mean you have to do research just to find out which distro to use and even then might not even find one you like on the first try. With Windows… You just install Windows and you can already do everything you need to do.

This seems very counter productive for the kind of business they run. If everything from videos and thumbnails to comment sections are AI generated, everyone will just start sticking to the people they are subscribed to and never read the comments. All this would do is promote less engagement with the actual platform.

Has NZXT always been this shady? I bought a PC from them like 5 years ago and it’s been going strong since the start. I’m sure as hell never buying one again, that’s for sure.

I always forget that ZeniMax even exists, honestly. They’re all just Bethesda to me. In my mind I just picture them as “big Bethesda” and “little Bethesda.” Regardless, they were all bought by Microsoft so it was probably Microsoft that fucked over Arkane. So it’s kind of a moot point anyways.