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Ah, Mindustry. I always get burned on it quite fast, but still come back to it regularly. Guess it's time to dig in again.

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Quoting: emphy

It could go either way with it simply asking for people to enter their date of birth ...

The pro and anti big government politicians in the us seem to have settled on bad government as a compromise.

Silly buggers.

That's the plot twist. The politicians only campaign on anti-big government. After the campaigning is done, all the politicians are for big government. "my top down command and control government is better than your top down command and control government, totes". Vote Blue no matter who or Big Red Wave!! It's all the same; different coat of paint.

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"TRX" just makes me think of the RAM truck that put Ford and their Raptor in their place. lol

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So, it's basically abandonware now.. I know that's not legally correct, but in my eyes that's free game then. And that really sucks, the developers at Dramatic Labs deserved that revenue from what I can tell. Never knew it existed until I saw this article, but it looks like a damn solid Star Trek game.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuySo if they're not selling the game at all, is it still piracy or should it properly be called "game preservation" instead?

Nobody will judge you for preserving a game ;-)

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they probably can't announce that they will have to remove the game due to licensing issues, those contracts are full of small lines... the brand owners do not want to be blamed of anything... so they did the big promotion, so any fan could buy it one last time and when it is announced is already too late

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Just a heads up on availability: yesterday i noticed that they had some steam decks in their refurbished section available here in germany (so i guess its for all the EU area).
I was unlucky, and i tried over an hour to get one, but checkout failed (probably because someone else was faster every time!). Keep an eye out if you want one, perhaps there will be another batch coming and you are luckier than me. I want an OLED...

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"Hey boys, please everyone get on board this beautiful new ship! Yes, all of you! Mark, Elon, Jeff, Donnie, you get the best seats! The launch will be GREAT! And the name of the ship? Ark Fleet Ship B. Enjoy the ride.

Man. When you finally find out that Neuromancer was unrealistic optimistic, it kinda hurts.

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Quoting: LachuBut any other implementation than field in passwd is bad.

I'll quote from the article:

Quoting: Liam Dawerather than relying on self-reported ages.

Hence just having a box that says 'how old are you?' with a simple input is not good enough.

Some options for how it may actually work:

• Scan your ID card to verify (although many people in the USA apparently don't have an ID card because they don't really need it and don't want to spend the money, which to me as a Belgian is wild).


• Scan your driver's license to verify.


• Scan your birth certificate to verify.


• Input your SSN (Social Security Number).


• Submit a blood sample.


• Maybe you'll be able to request some kind of certificate from your city hall which can be scanned.


• Or perhaps something else I didn't think of.

Of course, those could be defeated by having someone else do it for you, so maybe monitors will have iris scanners and keyboards fingerprint scanners so you're constantly being verified (government of the USA, I'll take payment for my contributions to your cause in silver or Ethereum, thanks).

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Quoting: vic-bayThere are bad achievements, like "kill 50000 wolves", but overall it can be a good tool for powering up replayability.

Don't say that, I'm about to get, "do 1000 kickflips" tonight.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: tfkThis is not the job of a government. This is the job of the parents.

And the article mentions a "parents decide act", which I could theoretically get behind.

I have noticed that for at least the last 25 years, government bills in the US always have titles that are pretty much the opposite of their actual function. So whenever you hear a "something or other" act and the something or other seems like a good thing, you know the actual substance of the bill is going to be rancid.

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So if they're not selling the game at all, is it still piracy or should it properly be called "game preservation" instead?

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TR3 is possibly my fav one ever, I'm happy this project exists. I remember one evening cycling to a nearby town as a kid just to buy a copy.

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The game is really promising so far. And the performance is excellent if you consider it just launched into early access. Really looking forward to more updates. Also i didnt know that the Dev planned to make a Linux version as well. With that in mind if the game looks interesting to someone it should be a no brainer to buy & support this game/dev.

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At a 5 dollars pricetag is basically an extended demo experience and I'm fine with that. What they were building was a overambitious sure, this was not unsuspected. But maybe because of that I still think it is worth to the try even as it is, specially if it's on the backlog. It was already a good experience playing solo.

Audio and visual direction is topnotch. Not allowing mods (at the time it was being actively developed) to keep those standards might have been a shoot in the foot. Being always connected into one of varying small servers with a handful of players might have been another. Being able to see other travelers (PCs) as rare and speak to them/ band using only gestures and emotes was novel but it might not helped getting traction. And a small developer maintaining such infrastructure is sure to bleed $.

A pitty game world won't grow (without mods stepping in), but the experience was unique already even as it is. Worth a try just for that.

But true EA, like Kickstarter is always a risk. Unless you're wanting to help the devs or playtest, better always wait for 1.0 specially for cases such as this were the project dies / gets sunsets (even if gracefully) because of this.

Unrelated, will this be the same fate as Nightingale? (see some recurring patterns here)

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This all began way back when we started making digital goods palatable and accessible to normies.

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Oh, well. I guess that makes it abandonware...

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Yeah there was a 80% sale followed by this *kthxbai* announcement. Total dick move. 😡

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Wait, it's already gone? No prior warning or anything? What hellish behavior on the part of the publisher.

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The internet is a series of tubes. We're making sure the children are directed into the right tube.

/s

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I hate changelogs like that. They are so vague as to be meaningless. Rather than coating it with virtuous-sounding jargon, just say, "We changed some code!" It's probably more accurate, anyway.

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When you read this news post, the game is already gone. Poof.

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While India has a large population, it isn't a large Steam market. India's statistic (for comparison with the others I was adding as you were writing your post) is just 15.6 PB. That's the same sort of size as Indonesia or Argentina. Not nothing, but not a market mover.

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Quoting: UltraViolet

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

For what purpose once can speculate, all we know is that this is due to lobbying from Meta who have spent over $2bn on lobbying efforts for this specifically.

Who can then continue to abuse their users, as age-gating will not be in their control (how convenient)

I would always assume that there is money involved. This whole talk about it being implemented for government control falls IMHO quite flat since Palantir reared it's ugly head, with Palantir the Govmnt already have all info and all control.

The same is true for the ChatControl 2.0 legislation that they want to implement here in the EU (thankfully the parliament have watered down it quite well and right now it is in a form of limbo) which can be traced back to Thorn (owned by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore) who sells the software needed to implement it in it's original form and CC2.0 was put forward just days after Ashton had a meeting with then Swedish EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson.

Apple and MS joyfully jumps on the age verification train (AFAIK Apple already have complete implementation of this) in order to put Linux at shame.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: LoudTechieThnx for the information.
In which case I'll ask how come only the recorded number of Chinese users visibly fluctuates?
With access one can point to some kind of government interference, with measurement issues that doesn't work.

In countries where household PC ownership is standard (such as Europe and North America - the other significant regions on Steam) the measurement issue isn't a factor.

In other countries where PC bang gaming is standard (such as Japan and South Korea, as I mentioned) the Steam market just isn't as big.

China is a huge market, and the historical console ban among other factors has made playing online games in Internet cafes the norm, where measurement is hard (potentially impossible).

And India didn't have such a ban. Good point.

Explanation of what I did wrong:

Spoiler, click me

I wasn't really aware of which regulation had done what.
I just thought size(Chinese market)~=(India market) stabilityLaw(Chinese market)~=stabilityLaw(India market), thus instability is the same.

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Ahhhhhhh yes yet another brain dead impossible to implement "bill" from your local congress critters. WEEEEEE HERE WE GO!

This is literally impossible to enforce for any number of the reasons posted by all my friends here. So ..........

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Quoting: LoudTechieThnx for the information.
In which case I'll ask how come only the recorded number of Chinese users visibly fluctuates?
With access one can point to some kind of government interference, with measurement issues that doesn't work.

In countries where household PC ownership is standard (such as Europe and North America - the other significant regions on Steam) the measurement issue isn't a factor.

In other countries where PC bang gaming is standard (such as Japan and South Korea, as I mentioned) the Steam market just isn't as big.

China is a huge market, and the historical console ban among other factors has made playing online games in Internet cafes the norm, where measurement is hard (potentially impossible).

Edit: here are some stats from Steam for comparison.
Download traffic over the last 7 days.
UK: 53.9 PB
Japan: 35.9 PB
South Korea: 39.7 PB
China: 380.8 PB

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This is sad to see it when EA games just totally give up. I for one don't purchase ea games, so even if I was SUPER into or interested in this game, I never would have bought it, and never will because of this. I guess there's reasons for it, but ... I suppose this is a perfect example of "don't buy ea games yall".

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

For what purpose once can speculate, all we know is that this is due to lobbying from Meta who have spent over $2bn on lobbying efforts for this specifically.

Source for the curious:
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

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Quoting: TonyHoyleSo first you've got to define operating system in such a way that it doesn't include half the devices in your house.. (before you can press this doorbell you need to present your passport for verification).

Then you've got to define it so it doesn't make business completely unviable. You're going to make linux illegal?

Then given that narrow definition, if you can even do that, you've got to deal with all the thousands of edge cases..

There *are* solutions coming, like verification apps where the data stays on your device and simply provides attestation that you're over 18, that don't require ham fisted legislation like this. But with lawmakers being typically 80+ they don't understand the problem enough to wait for it.

They're gonna do only the first part.
The amount of doorbells visiting porn sites'll grow explosively.

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