You know, I kind of feel like Valve could dodge this bullet and/or use it in its favour. They could allow users to resell games on their accounts, but the sale would need to go through official Steam channels, be done at whatever the current store price is, and the user would simply get a cut (presumably in their Steam wallet if that satisfies the courts), not unlike Epic’s creator codes for streamers.

So e.g. instead of a 70/30 split on a regular sale, there could be a 60/30/10 cut if Valve grant 10% of the sale to the user, or something like 65/25/10 if they share the cost with the publisher. This way, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for mass resale. Now of course, there wouldn’t be an incentive for buyers to look for second-hand licenses specifically if the price is the same, but Valve could develop an auction house-style system like in MMOs (or as already used for trading cards) where there’s kind of a backlog of users who want to get rid of their license and whenever a new sale is made on the store, the user who has been waiting to resell the longest gets their wallet credit and the license is removed from their account. This also prevents scamming on both ends.

An alternative would be to go full auction house/trading cards with it and let users set the price they want to buy/sell at, with Steam and the publishers also taking a cut there. But I feel like that would hurt Steam and publishers more (taking a smaller cut on cheaper sales, presumably) and open the way to chaotic speculation.

It’s absolutely a tricky idea to approach since the system was never designed for it in the first place, but done right it could be an opportunity to integrate a very popular feature that no other storefront has ever wanted to offer and that consoles have been working on preventing for years.

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Bit of a touchy question, but isn’t it a bit pricey for a < 3 hours game without much gameplay?

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I tried running Borderlands TPS the other day to play with a Windows-using friend since the Linux update may never come, but the game doesn't locally save properly. I can see the last edit time changing on the save files, which seems to rule out location or permission issues, but no change is actually kept between sessions. Really odd.

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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyI haven't read Stallman's latest comments personally, but my understanding is that one of the comments which got him in hot water was a comment that suggested some of these chicks went into these situations of their own free will... Which is a perfectly valid - and very likely accurate - point (like it or not, most 12+ year old children of both sexes have a much better understanding of sex than they should, at least these days!).

(Emphasis mine.) It’s not even that. He said that it was likely that these girls, while coerced by Epstein to offer sex for money, were probably also made to act like they were willing when approaching their clients (presumably so as not to scare them off; my words, not his). In my opinion, the headlines are a gross and either careless or malicious exaggeration of his statements.

It’s not even a long chain of e-mail when you figure out the weird PDF formatting. Here’s Stallman’s original e-mail in question, which as soulsource said seems to originally be in (partial) defence of an accused (and deceased) client of Epstein’s sex trafficking. Or I should even say, in defence of accurately describing his offence.

Quoting: StallmanThe announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

Quotedeceased AI "pioneer" Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims [2])

The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation:
taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem.
(See (link))
Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.
Only that they had sex.

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

I won’t analyze it with Stallman’s rigour, but there are a few points worth repeating although others have already said so; from top to bottom:

1. Stallman’s correspondence is mostly interested in the differences between sex, rape and sexual assault and using the proper terms in an accusation, as the acts imply different levels of severity and mal-intent (in this case on the part of Minsky, not Epstein).

2. To reiterate, he says she likely presented herself as entirely willing, not that she actually was. The difference matters here since he is evaluating Minsky’s culpability as a client, not Epstein’s as a pimp. I’m not sure whether Stallman implies that it makes the situation any better, but keep in mind he’s still arguing against the use of the term "assault", which leads us to:

3. He is not wrong to say that in such a scenario, it’s entirely possible that there was no use of physical force and "assault" would not apply.

The whole thing gets more wobbly and weird as the discussion goes on, and certainly provides fodder for anyone wanting to get rid of him, but at the very least Stallman clearly expresses that "We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex -- by Epstein. She was being harmed. But the details do affect whether, and to what extent, Minsky was responsible for that."

Source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html

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@monnef
May I suggest taking that conversation to the following thread: An Open Letter to Liam Dawe on Censorship

I predict that the topic at hand will generate a lengthy debate as it is without crossing the streams, so to speak.

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Are the footpaths based on unit traffic or pre-placed? I still remember how much it blew me away when I saw the former as a kid in one of the Settlers games.

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Clearly, ^-1 is a footnote that’s on the previous screen! :P

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Quoting: GuestThis game looks pretty damn solid. Unfortunately I can't get over the giant, ridiculous Dunce Cap the protagonist has on his head.

(snip)

I'm sure it is written into the canon/lore of the game with some kind of dark, otherwordly explanation, but I just can't get over it. I snicker incredulously every time I look at it. I can't take it seriously because of it and I just don't think I could get into it for that sole reason.

Is that weird?

Sorry in advance if I sound lecturing, it’s early and I’m just trying to be to the point.

Looks more like a capirote, actually, considering the game’s theme and the protagonist being called The Penitent One. You can even see the Goya painting from the Wikipedia article on the KS page. Similarly to the dunce cap, the original intent was to publicly shame flagellants, but there’s certainly a more serious undertone here than just being a dunce. They also made it a tad more hardcore than the original paper cap:



I’m actually more interested in the game now that I know a bit more about its context :)

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Woah molly, this isn’t the kind of game I expect when I hear Team 17! I’m surprised you didn’t add a gore warning before that video, Liam (not that I personally mind).

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Quoting: edoLast time I tried it (like 2 years ago) I couldnt figure out how to use it, I always felt playonlinux was easier to use. I dont use any of those now, since now steam has proton, I would take a look at it if I ever buy overwatch

I’ve definitely had an easier time with Lutris than PoL, and it looks like it has a more active community, or at least more up-to-date scripts. It always seemed that PoL was hard to get into, while Lutris seem to have had more success in getting people outside the development team to contribute.

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