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You have to be realistic about these things.

I have now reduced difficulty in Troubleshooter to Easy, down from Hard. I am not mentally prepared to figure out the min maxing required to finish DLC 2 on hard. Or normal for that matter. I may go down to story difficulty, since at 300 hours, I am only interested in seeing where the story ends

If Obsidian eventually gets shut down too at some point, I'm hoping for somebody to mod the **** out of The Outer Worlds. We've shut down the best. Now try the rest. At Microsoft, we cut corners so you don't have to. Who, who, whoa, it's Spencer's!

Since this is a "history" post, I'll start with the oldest stuff first and work my way towards the current time, here and now on the Obsidian boards I often deny having owned a gaming console and that is technically correct. But... long unrelated story, I grew up with relatives who were "junkies" (heroin addicts) and they would often rob stores and homes for things to sell for mere pittances at times to finance their addiction. One day, the oldest showed up at my parents place (my mother, for reasons, had become their legal guardian) with a Pong gaming console they had stolen somewhere and no fence would take it off their hands. The original Pong console was among my first video gaming experience in the mid 70's. It was my parents though, not mine. (I would have loved to put an image of the console here, but I honestly do not remember what it looked like 50 years ago) Other sources of video gaming at the time was the arcade machines a various convenience stores and grill bars. Some were electronic, some were part mechanical, part electronic. I particularly remember a "Duck Hunt" game, where several layers of glass were used to create the sense of depth and a single glass plate was used to reflect a flying duck from a TV screen hidden out of sight. The shotgun was mounted to a stick that was effectively a big joystick. No fancy electronics at all. Other places had more modern games like Galaxy Invaders... I spent a fortune in coins on those machines. Jump forwards almost a decade, 1983 I was convinced I was going to end up studying biology after high school... until my dad came home with three page advertising pamphlet for the Commodore 64. It was so colourful and impressive looking. It used an elephant to symbolize the humongous memory it had (even though only 38k turned out to be available to the user in the end). I managed to raise the money for my machine of dreams as well as the associated tape recorder and two games. A game on tape called "Beach Head" and a cartridge called "International Soccer". First two games I ever bought with my own money. Never mind that programming the C64 got me hooked on software development and an impromptu career change, the games changed my life too, spending much of my free time playing games on the old "Bread Box" (Danish nick name for the C64). US Gold was a major publisher int he 80's and the football game? It took almost 10 years before a better game of its kind came out. Another decade later I raised the money for a Commodore Amiga 4000 and a hard drive. Gaming now became almost an art form. Bear in mind, in the early 90's, the Amiga completely outperformed contemporary desktop PC's, with the latters CGA graphics and built in tweeter for sound. Never mind the operating system, where MS only caught up with Windows 8 or thereabouts. But the games... sooo many, soo good. On the C64, I developed a love for strategy games and role playing games. SSI gold games, the Ultimas etc. were not just nostalgia, they were state of the art as each individual title came out. So many strategy games too, it was like paradise for a gamer like me. The Amiga added better graphics and real music to many titles. And they just kept coming for the next decade. This is where I almost get to the point... (skipping a list featuring literally a decade and hundreds of Amiga games here) Some of the newer PC games in the late 1990’s looked interesting and I could run them on a PC Emulator. One title in particular stunned with its atmosphere (because I'm a child of the Cold War and the end of the worlds was always present), the demo for a game called "Fallout" had me completely hooked. I bought the full game and... it didn't want to run on my PC emulator (even though the official demo did). Life as a PC gamer Building myself a PC, my first gaming experiences on it was Interplay’s Fallout. More games followed and Fallout together with the first Tomb Raider were my standout memories from the late 90's. Then I ran into a game from the now established Black Isle Studio called Baldurs Gate 2 (yes, I missed the first one) and I spent the next 12 months, day and night playing the heck out of that game, to the detriment of the rest of my life pretty much. Fallout 2 happened, I ended up buying Baldurs Gate 1 too, completing it a few times, nothing like the time I invested in BG2 though. Still, I took note of the name Bioware as well as Black Isle. That thing called Obsidian I was active on the internet too at the time, but I had little interest in this thing called "Forums" (some newfangled sofware that was probably going to die out in a year or two, so why bother?). Usenet was where things happened and many discussion groups (especially the alt groups like alt.games.interplay) were completely unmoderated. Calling it the wild west is being nice to it. Usenet died the slow death of entropy and forums stayed. By the time I had convinced myself to join the Interplay forums, Interplay de facto folded. At least, it ceased to exist as the Interplay I knew. That's when I heard about this "successor company" called Obsidian Entertainment which had plans for opening up a forum. Still not the fastest tool in the shed, it took me a fortnight to sign up. Despite being somewhat of a troll at times and getting into fistfights at times, I ended up as a moderator. Much to my own surprise honestly. I suppose the thinking at the time was something along the lines of using a troll to catch a troll. The discussion subject at the time was "Project Delaware", resulting on all sorts of crazy speculations and wishful thinking (and doom saying). Knights of the Old Republic arrived and... good game with awful ending is the best way I can summarize it. An understatement of course, as the ending was completely missing for various reason... Neverwinter Nights 2 followed and was slightly less buggy the Kotor2 had been, but not flawless. The DLC's however... Mask of the Betrayer in particular brings back fond memories of a game I might not otherwise remember. The Sequel Maker Obsidian was developing a reputation of making buggy sequels to Bioware games that were all 132% perfect... at least if you were to believe the most critical voices. Of course, there is a lot more to how such thing happen, but gamers are a weird bunch, often prone to tunnel vision and confirmation bias, congregating towards echo chambers. Especially when it comes to likes and dislikes of games. Fallout New Vegas managed the impossible, convince a lot of people that Obsidian could actually make great games, that weren't necessarily direct sequels to existing games. It is probably also the only Obsidian game I feel like coming back to again and again, despite it's age. I know Outer Worlds offers a lot corporate humour and a feeling of living in dystopia, but something about the post nuclear setting just strikes a nerve because of my age (growing up during the cold war, expecting the end of the world every day). Playing through scenarios where humanity survives said war feels good I suppose? Still here Obsidian is no longer known in the business as the "buggy sequel" maker, but as a world builder, story creator and the maker of interesting characters. Like Obsidian, I’m still here. Still enjoying video games 40+ years later, still having a preference for crpg's and turn based strategy games. There are many more Obsidian games I could mention (take a look at the forum!) and would have loved to spend time on, but those are the ones that stuck out for me... -Gorth

Hey @mkreku, I'm sorry you've been running into this issue with the Authentication System. I'll have our back-end web developer look into that issue so that you and others have the proper ability to remove the two-factor authentication as needed. In the meantime, I've gone ahead and removed the 2FA from your account so if you would like, you can set it up again without having to use the recovery codes. Thank you for bringing this authentication issue to my attention and sorry again for all the inconvenience its been causing you over the past couple of years.

Sorry Obs, but I am not really interested in first person games so until we get another TTRPG from you no money from me

This is probably wishful thinking, but Microsoft probably bought Bethesda for the Bethesda, not necessarily all of the other developer's Bethesda owned. They wanted the big IP's that Bethesda has. Obsidian and inXile are separate deals. It looks a lot worse if they go in and shutter them. But yeah, if Avowed or Outer Worlds 2 doesn't hit sales expectations, it could be very bad. So make sure to buy a copy and leave it running all day long to help them out.

Ok, not sure if this has been mentioned before because I'm lazy. Several years ago I activated "Two-Factor Authentication" on these forums. I used an authenticator on my phone to login. Naturally, as one does, I lost that authenticator (don't even know which one I used). For several years I've been trying to turn off that Two-Factor Authentication, but.. you need Two-Factor Authentication to turn off Two-Factor Authentication. Not joking. Can someone explain to me how that's supposed to work? Having to login here using recovery codes every time made me stop coming here altogether. And no, recovery codes can not be used to turn off Two-Factor Authentication (unless I'm missing something). Help.

MS going to close down Tango Softworks and Arkane Austin TX. WolfEye have set up their first ever offices in Austin TX just last year. That's the new studio by Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio, which already has quite an illustrious roster for people familiar. Any bets accepted there's more ex-Arkanes going to pop up in there? Every ending is a new beginning. Also, before anybody speculates: The dichotomy between Austin and Lyon has never existed like that. Arkane have never been a company of two studios. Rather a studio of two locations, with people moving between them as well (see Harvey Smith moving over to Lyon to direct Dishonored 2 and then going back). That's firstly a misconception that Colantonio himself has corrected multiple times. Secondly, if Lyon weren't working on a rather popular IP as we speak (Blade), I could imagine MS pulling the plug on them too. If Blade is gonna bomb... edit: Dang, @mkreku beat me to it.

Xbox shuts down a bunch of game studios: https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-shuts-slew-of-bethesda-studios-including-redfall-hi-fi-rush-developers So.. how long do you think Obsidian and inXile will last? Not exactly the cashcows Microsofts shareholders demand from them..

Hi. same problem. I want a Refund on the outer worlds (SCE). Its been 1 year now into the mess and this issues have not yet been resolved.....Please update us as soon as possible.

The debacle around The Crew comes to mind. Also, might aswell drop this; https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ Short version Long version;

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/us-israel-hamas-hostage-ceasefire-talks Sneaky Americans.

Heroes of Might and Magic 6 comes to me immediately as a first example, of what they are talking about

End of the day, if you enter into a contract in any other field and find you're losing money you can't arbitrarily decide to cancel the contract, with no consequences. If your options are literally literally shutting down a server or going bankrupt... your company is figuratively literally in the crapper already. Otherwise you're just trying to dodge obligations that you don't think you should fulfill because now they're costing you money- and often trying to get people to buy [sportsgame_currentyear] instead of playing [sportsgame_currentyear--] they'd otherwise be perfectly happy with. Software companies have got away with a load of crap you wouldn't get away with if you were selling sandwiches, beds, cars or even service contracts like catering or cleaning just because it's software. So your Suicide Squad game released 3 months ago as a GaaS and sold appallingly? Tough noogies, that's the risk you take as a company, Warners. It costs you money to run the servers for the 27 people playing it you say? That's the risk you take. You can tell how hard up WBD is, Dave Zaslav only took home 300mn in pay and stock options over the past three years, wonder how many servers even 1% of that would keep running... [yes, I know it isn't shut down, yet]

If there's no challenge anymore and if there's no meaningful purpose/reward, then it gets boring very fast...

<disclaimer> I am not a lawyer </disclaimer> To me it is a bit like the different approach to garbage in different countries. In Germany, you pay for your garbage weight allowance. It is your garbage. You have your own bin. You have a padlock on the bin so no neighbour can sneak their garbage into yours and have you pay for it. In Greece, you do not have your own bin. You dump the garbage (ideally) in the city's garbage bins. You pay the city tax based on the square meters of your home, and the amount of actual garbage you produce is irrelevant. As a result though in Germany, throwing something in the garbage does not automatically relinquish ownership. In Greece it does. Taking this to gaming, does a permanent shut down of servers allow for the argument the company is relinquishing it's financial interests in the specific title and therefor a non-profit, community run server or a community coded removal of the always online system should be allowed?

And these are all valid examples but what is the petition expecting to change legally In other words if there is an online gaming service that is losing money is the legislation going to say " you cant shutdown the gaming servers " ? And thats fine but then who is going to pay for the servers to be maintained? Maybe the idea is where the community maintains it like City of Heroes I just think trying to get the state to legislate this type of thing is problematic

Darkspore when EA shut down the server. It was always online even when playing single player. Yes, it wasn't a great game, but because co-op didn't do well, people couldn't relax in single player anymore? Any Microsoft Xbox live game when Microsoft decides to stop the live service on PC back in... Can't remember when. City of Heroes on the other hand proves that if the company is willing, it can allow the community to create the means to enjoy the game, even when the company has no more financial interest.

I still dont understand what the petition is suppose to achieve, this what the petition website says " Many videogames rely on servers. When these are shut down, games can be left unplayable where no action is taken to remove this dependency. We believe this is effectively robbing customers, leaving them with no recourse to retain their purchases. We have concerns that existing laws and agencies do not effectively solve this problem. Thus we believe government intervention is needed to stop this practice." What if a company goes under, then the online servers will also be shutdown. But whats more relevant is what is an example of what they talking about ? Specifically around what they mean by " When these are shut down, games can be left unplayable"

Hello.I have a problem.All of a sudden I can't login today. It says my username up in the top corner, press F1, wheel spins, nothing happens. Click Multiplayer, get the you need an xbox account error. Maybe someone has a solution?

My pet Disappeared with inventory, there were valuable thing with him, where did it go? Need him back. Is this a bug?

It's really depressing to see how people defend the megacorps for free.

I don't think she ever stopped acting. She had that Mother movie last year that was decent. That being said, this looks terrible, but it also looks like she probably got paid well to get bounced around in a box for awhile. Wait, she did that one before...is this a sequel to The Cell? Ah well, they can't all be Hustlers.