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Why I'm not very interested in computer games anymore...


kano

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https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/c7rblr/ebooks_purchased_from_microsoft_will_be_deleted/

 

Today, some very rich, very white men reserve the right to take content away from me and delete it from my computer after I've paid for it. Here, we see such a practice in action! I am morally opposed to a world that works this way. If you sell me something and then you take it away from me tomorrow without my permission, that is called theft, I don't give a fuck how you justify confiscating what you sold to me, it's still theft plain and simple, you are depriving me of something that I acquired from you up front. That's without getting into the spyware concerns with these games that require an Internet connection to play, not only so that they can take it away from you at any time in the future, but play loose with your privacy and personal information too! https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/20/17485762/red-shell-spyware-pc-games-controversy-steam

 

And then we come to my personal opinion that most games today just suck balls and aren't worth playing. The developers and publishers care less and less about what fans of the franchise want, because they know that millions will still buy the game regardless, which is why you see games with no level editing tools and now in some cases not even a jump button, because jumping means freedom for the player, which means more work for the developer! As the player you are just on rails and it's little more than an interactive movie, sometimes with cut scenes that cannot be skipped. You either can't modify the game, or doing so is extremely limited.

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Today, some very rich, very white men reserve the right to take content away from me

 

What's even more important is their age and height.

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Focus on Indies. There are a lot of great games by thoughtful devs still coming out. Concentrate on them.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I don't actually know when this all got started. Companies were doing it ten years ago, at least! https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

 

If you know of an earlier example of this happening, then do share it, I want to know. Companies do this admittedly very rarely, but they have rigged the system so that they can do it to you whenever they choose, for any reason they desire. And that is not okay.

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22 hours ago, Springheel said:

 

What's even more important is their age and height.

In the USA, the justice system has a reputation for being racially biased. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/

 

And that is  before we bring money and political power into the equation, something that probably sways the justice system in favor of the offender in every part of the world. Thus the above statement.

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21 hours ago, kano said:

In the USA, the justice system has a reputation for being racially biased.

And that has precisely what to do with the ownership of computer games?

Are you saying that if there were fewer black men serving unjust sentences in US jails, the games industry would stop using DRM?

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Use GOG. Or Steam only if the games are DRM-free. Reject titles that require online activation, always online functionality, etc. Unless they are multiplayer and you don't mind accepting that the game could be killed.

You can also sail the high seas.

Use fully loaded Kodi too.

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4 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

And that has precisely what to do with the ownership of computer games?

Are you saying that if there were fewer black men serving unjust sentences in US jails, the games industry would stop using DRM?

My point is that corporate thugs (and other powerful people) regularly get away with things that would land an average person without billions of dollars in serious trouble. Selling you stuff and then  disabling it, deliberately designing user interfaces to deceive or mislead you into doing or accepting things against your interest (there's a proper name for this, it's called a dark pattern), continuing to collect data about you after you have explicitly opted out (this one violates rules regarding wiretapping for sure), yet, the only people who ever get punished for doing any of the above, is the little guy.

 

Consumers are too dependent and obedient like a drug addict to take a stand against bad behavior by ceasing to support huge corporations, because they just have to play the latest installment of Halo or Madden, and thus, the descent to hell in the technology sector is both in full swing and unstoppable.

Edited by kano
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Microsoft is giving you a refund for all the ebooks you bought over the years, and you've therefore concluded that you're not interested in video games anymore.

Awesome logic there.

And then to top it off, you play the completely irrelevant race card for no discernible reason. 

Great post, can't wait to see what you come up with next.

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5 hours ago, brethren said:

Microsoft is giving you a refund for all the ebooks you bought over the years, and you've therefore concluded that you're not interested in video games anymore.

That's what i read elsewhere as well. But, if you're trying to make a point, it's of course important to leave out details which could disprove your point.

I play less and less games as well, BTW. But, for different reasons. They just plain suck these days. At least most of them, which are made for the masses. Prey, for example, was a great exception. But, look where it got them. Not a very popular and well sold game. It's sad. As soon as there's some demand in terms of story and gameplay, the kids won't like it.

Edited by chakkman
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I don't have too many problems with modern games, except that there are more and more publishers pursuing heavy monetization patterns and product as service model. So at the moment can't buy anything that's published by EA, Activision, Ubisoft and the like.

But what's more important, my free time is rather limited these days. When I have a choice between playing and making stuff, I choose making stuff 99% of the time.

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Last game i tried to like: Dying Light. You know, it has some cool stuff, but... it feels random and generic like Assassins Creed or Far Cry. What do i kill zombies for, when they're back five minutes later, and, what's the point of such repetetive gameplay? Make games interesting again, don't add chests every 5 metres, which all spawn irrelevant and always same-ish content again after 15 minutes. Why do such a big gameworld, when it's so short of interesting, and unique locations, which are tied with interesting events? Why add random encounters, which are all the same, and which really annoy you after 3 times of doing the exact same stuff?

I don't understand the kinds these days, and i don't understand the industry, which has to bow down, and create such simple game mechanics, and such boring content. It's quanitity > quality, and that's a shame.

Edited by chakkman
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I don't understand Ass Creed and the Ubisoft Template games at all. They are busywork simulators and 90% of the content there is boring indeed - and so many people seem to just love these things... The content is spread so thin that Ubisoft puts paid permanent XP boosters and stuff like that. So they're basically saying, "The game you bought for over 60 bucks is boring, pay us a little extra to make it better".

Indie games can suffer from that as well, although typically without predatory practices, so the problem lies more with pacing. I bounced off Void Bastards lately, twice actually, because it seemed repetitive and lacking variety in its opening stages. Or maybe it's just me and my impatience?

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11 hours ago, brethren said:

Great post, can't wait to see what you come up with next.

So if I sold you something, and then I came back later and just took it away while leaving money on your table as compensation, does that make it okay? Does that make it not theft? Maybe you want what you bought more than a stack of money. If that wasn't the case, maybe you wouldn't have bought the item in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, I have no business doing anything like that without your permission. Just because both political parties' sole mission is to suck off corporations all day long, and they have managed to work the system so that they can arbitrarily revoke something after selling it to the consumer whether he/she likes it or not as a result, that doesn't make the practice any less reprehensible, or any less an example of theft. Stealing someone's car and leaving them the value of the car... is still theft.

 

"I needed that book to finish my school work." or, "The new version has been altered, and I don't want it, I want the version I originally agreed to buy." or, "the author has decided to pull it from circulation, and the only people selling it now are scalpers, charging 5x what it used to be." or, "The ebook industry has been caught in (another) price fixing scandal, and that book is now double what it used to cost." In all of these cases, I don't want a stack of money, I want what I bought. They had no right to arbitrarily take it away from me.

 

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/apple-450-million-settlement-e-book-price-fixing-supreme-court

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html

This problem goes WAY beyond video games, which are just trivial entertainment. Books are used for WAY more than that. But these heavy handed business tactics are manifesting all over the place. Doubtless that you will reply that it is okay that they took content away from customers because the customer only paid for a license to read the book. And I will point out that they happily use misleading terms and phrases all over the marketing material, like "buy it now", "weekend sale" etc etc.

The bit about them being "very rich and very white" and getting away with doing this to consumers is called political satire, given that our "justice system" in the US has been shown to be biased, as I referenced before. It's called humor, and poking fun at the system.

 

At the end of the day, opinions differ. We can agree to disagree and that's fine. Mine is that (never-mind the heavy handed and unscrupulous business practices), the stuff they pump out today is so terrible that it isn't even worth downloading for free!

Edited by kano
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4 hours ago, peter_spy said:

I don't understand Ass Creed and the Ubisoft Template games at all. They are busywork simulators and 90% of the content there is boring indeed - and so many people seem to just love these things... The content is spread so thin that Ubisoft puts paid permanent XP boosters and stuff like that. So they're basically saying, "The game you bought for over 60 bucks is boring, pay us a little extra to make it better".

I'm pretty sure people like it that way. Otherwise such games wouldn't sell like hot cakes.

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On 7/10/2019 at 12:59 AM, kano said:

My point is that corporate thugs (and other powerful people) regularly get away with things that would land an average person without billions of dollars in serious trouble. Selling you stuff and then  disabling it, deliberately designing user interfaces to deceive or mislead you into doing or accepting things against your interest (there's a proper name for this, it's called a dark pattern), continuing to collect data about you after you have explicitly opted out (this one violates rules regarding wiretapping for sure), yet, the only people who ever get punished for doing any of the above, is the little guy.

I don't disagree with any of that. It really is one rule for the elites and another rule for the rest of us, particularly with authority figures and politicians. For example, in the UK the government have passed laws allowing widespread surveillance of internet users while conveniently excluding MPs and their communications from the scope of the law. Similarly, the anti-sex-discrimination laws that apply to normal workplaces have specific exclusions to allow gender quotas for political candidates.

But let's not needlessly introduce race (or other personal characteristics) into the discussion when it doesn't have any actual relevance. All that does is create artificial division which doesn't benefit anyone except the elites themselves. If the "little people" want to stand up to the elites, they need to work together, not divide themselves into meaningless groups based on superficial characteristics and then spend time squabbling over things which happened decades or centuries ago and which none of us have any control over.

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One thing that gave me a good laugh was the ISPs demonizing Mozilla for enabling secure DNS queries by default in Firefox. The punchline of this joke is of course that the Edward Snowden disclosures showed ISPs working so closely with clandestine surveillance programs to spy on Internet users.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/06/mozilla_ukisp_vallain/

 

I'm in the US, and we have things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

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That's why I'm with Andrews and Arnold (AAISP), the most geek-friendly and anti-censorship ISP in the UK. Here is their CEO's response to the ludicrous behaviour by the ISPA:

https://www.revk.uk/2019/07/doh-and-vpns-and-trust.html

I particularly like the fact that A&A are not members of the ISPA, but decided instead to donate the cost of an ISPA membership fee to Mozilla instead. ?

I look forward to the point where everything on the internet is encrypted, DNSoHTTP and VPNs are commonplace, and the censorshits can get the fuck out with their "filtering obligations".

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 They had no right to arbitrarily take it away from me.



Whether they have the right or not depends entirely on what you agreed to when you bought it.  I suspect they DO have the right to take it away, or there would be lawsuits over it. 

You can make lots of valid criticisms of the business model, but the only thing that will make it change is if people stop supporting it.

 

Quote

The bit about them being "very rich and very white" and getting away with doing this to consumers is called political satire, given that our "justice system" in the US has been shown to be biased, as I referenced before.

 

I don't see how pointing out the race of people you don't like falls under any definition of "political satire" I'm aware of.

As for the study you linked, using it to demonstrate "racial bias" is exactly contrary to what the authors of the study themselves said:  "the commission said its report “should be interpreted with caution and should not be taken to suggest discrimination” "  https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/17/16668770/us-sentencing-commission-race-booker

Also, I suspect you threw out "very white" without even bothering to check who the head of Microsoft was.  The current CEO is Satya Nadella, an Indian American.

 

 

 

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I already spelled out that companies deliberately mislead people into thinking they are buying a product (by using that very word), and then they hide unconscionable terms in a huge agreement that few have the patience to read and fewer understand. They also generally wait to spring this agreement on you until they have your money! Other things they're fond of, are inserting terms and conditions that they know are illegal and/or unenforceable in order to confuse and mislead the consumer. Examples include forbidding repair by third parties or mandating arbitration in the event of a dispute.

 

I am not here to debate morality, I'm here to say that I'm officially done putting up with, supporting and financing their bullshit, as I have more respect for what dropped out of my behind yesterday than I do for them.

 

On the subject of racism in justice...  https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/12/cbp_facebook_group/
 

And on the subject of political satire/humor, another example that really cracked me up was the episode of The Simpsons where they went to military school. The drill instructor said "Well, seeing as you attended public school, we're going to assume you're already proficient with small arms, so we'll start you off with something a little more advanced."

 

We in the US unfortunately outrank every other country in terms of school related attacks. It's so bad that if you added up every other country in the world, there are still more of them occuring here.

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On the subject of racism in justice...  https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/12/cbp_facebook_group/

 

You seem to be all over the place here.  What do examples of shitposting on a social media group with thousands of border patrol members have to do with the subject of "racism in justice", let alone the race of Microsoft CEOs?

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Springheel said:

 

You seem to be all over the place here.  What do examples of shitposting on a social media group with thousands of border patrol members have to do with the subject of "racism in justice", let alone the race of Microsoft CEOs?

 

 

These are the up-standing individuals who decide which travelers get thoroughly searched, and which don't. They also have a tendency today to demand peoples' passwords while we travel, something that would make Hitler proud. When you see them openly making crude comments about certain races, it isn't out of the question that those feelings also sway their decisions while they're doing their jobs.

 

It doesn't matter what color the CEO is. When we're talking about a huge company, no individual that works there is ever accountable for their actions. When they get caught doing something bad, they just blame it on some low level guy who "didn't know what he was doing", as demonstrated below, and all is forgiven.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/27/accidental_music_monopoly_bid/

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These are the up-standing individuals who decide which travelers get thoroughly searched, and which don't. They also have a tendency today to demand peoples' passwords while we travel, something that would make Hitler proud. When you see them openly making crude comments about certain races, it isn't out of the question that those feelings also sway their decisions while they're doing their jobs.

Nothing in there explains what this has to do with the justice system or Microsoft, but setting that aside....

You're talking (as is the media in general) as if every border patrol agent was in that group posting racist material.

A few important questions:

1.  How many people were posting offensive material?  Was it less than 50%?  Less than 10%?  Less than 0.1%?

2.  How "offensive" is the offensive material?  Are we talking about threats of violence?  Doxxing?  Harassment of individuals? Racial slurs?  Or is it just insensitive comments and childish name-calling?

3.  How frequently was offensive material posted?  How was it dealt with?

Without knowing those details, you can't make any useful judgement about that site.  It could be every member of the group was a card-carrying Nazi planning the extermination of asylum-seekers en masse, or it could be that the group had little moderation and was taken over by a dozen anonymous shit-posters and everyone else abandoned it.

 

 

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