Quoting: Purple Library GuyYeah, but the point is everything an AI produces is somebody's Yoda or Harry--maybe two or three somebodies mixed together if you're lucky.

This is widespread, but still false assumption. A good approximation to 100% of all characters generative AI will draw have never been drawn by anyone before. The AI has learned how to draw people by analyzing drawings of people. But it's not a "collage tool" (which this ridiculous lawsuit filed by some artists claims). There are no fragments of Yoda or Harry in the model, unlike these people claim. If you make the AI to, then yes, it can draw an accurate Harry, because it has learned the concept of Harry by analyzing pictures of him. But chances that it will draw Harry without you prompting for him are pretty close to zero. If you don't prompt for copyrighted characters, you are very likely to get an original one.

If you want to make sure to get something original and avoid overfitting (which would be prudent if you plan to use the assets in a game), you'd never prompt for just one artist's style anyway, you'd combine many.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The US copyright office deemed AI art non-copyrightable, which in the end means that there is no good reason to ban it. If generative AI made it, the developer of a game doesn't own it, but nobody else does, either. It's for all practical purposes Public Domain. The one exception might be overfitting (generative AI accidentally producing output close enough to the copyrighted data it got trained with). Overfitting is currently the core of a lawsuit Getty Images filed against StabilityAI - their model is known to have reproduced their (trademarked) image watermark in its output. That doesn't mean that ALL AI art is legally questionable, just some of the output might be. Similar scenarios can already happen when a developer is using assets they believe to be free, when they're in fact not. Valve still doesn't ask for proof of ownership of every single asset used in a game published on Steam.

This rule seems more to be about taking Valve out of the line of fire coming from the anti-AI peanut gallery. As is evident by a surprising number of posters is this thread, humans still hate change and will fight everything new because it's new. Teachers have fought calculators when they were new, and artists considered Photoshop the end of all art when it released, too. Now the newest object of hate is generative AI. It's not surprising. It's just how people are. In 10 years, there will be two kinds of game studios: The ones that embraced AI tools, and the bankrupt ones. Until then, the peanut gallery will throw a few more peanuts, I guess.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Great to see a game running on Linux that's certainly going to become a big hit. Personally, I am not going to get it. I don't own a single Blizzard game, so there is that. I just don't like that company and their business practices.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The "Toon" shader makes the game look like a...well...cartoon. Which I suppose is the idea, but my roleplayer self is still cringing. But hey, if some people like it, who am I to judge!

Great to see the game still getting updated!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Wow! A laptop that's actually portable, unlike these "gaming laptops" I never understood why anyone would want one. Looks nice!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Am I the only one actually liking the #1234 system? It lets us use names we actually like, instead of making us use what's not yet taken. Any platform with a few million users will run out of desirable names within seconds, so there is that. I suppose most of us will just append random numbers to our current username, and the result will look pretty much like it currently does, just without the dot between the name and the numbers. And a lot of chaos during the conversions.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

In my own experience, most of the time when I find a "Verified" game to be less than playable is when the testers apply a very loose definition of "legible text".

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I belong to the 58% who still plays mostly on the desktop, but I am not parting with my Deck. It has become the device for gaming on the sofa or in bed and filled a gap for me there (I don't own a "proper" console and don't want one). I am still surprised how many recent games it can run just fine (including Hogwarts Legacies). Yes, that's probably going to change in the next few years when newer GPU generations become more widespread, but I expect the Deck to run most if not all the games I am playing for years to come.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Newton

Quoting: sjrObviously Cities:Skylines 2 is a mandatory purchase. :)

Not with the Paradox launcher.

I hate launchers too, but if you're boycotting every game having one, there is not a lot of choice left.

Personally, I am totally thrilled about both Skylines 2 and the Sims-alike. The Sims 4 is one of the last EA games I am playing, and I can't say I would be sad about that company being gone from my life. I also have zero faith in The Sims 5 becoming a good game.
Skylines is one of my favorite games overall, and the only bigger complaint I am having about it is engine performance. The successor will probably solve that, so that alone is enough reason for me to buy it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

To be honest, I am not even sure what kind of changes to the game would warrant a new game at this time. Civ VI isn't perfect, and a handful of things were done better by previous editions, but other than that, I'd have considered Civ VI the "finished" Civ. With the only exception that I am not a fan of Civ VI overly cartoonish looks. Maybe they will change that, there is always hope.

View this comment - View article - View full comments