Zoraptor

Yeah, that really says it all. Multi billion dollar company that wants to be arbiter of what is and isn't PC gaming but doesn't want to do any of the stuff necessary to do it properly such as making sure the stuff they sell works properly, whether game or mod. If GOG, a company an order of magnitude smaller, can employ more than two people to test games Valve surely can. I'd have a lot more (well, some at all) sympathy for steam-as-monopoly if it weren't such a lazy monopoly with an attitude of minimal effort and throwing stuff out there half baked. If they had real competition and it was the real 'free market' that Mr Newell supposedly idolises then there would be real consequences for their shonkiness, but as it stands the lock in and inertia protects them almost completely. Even their apology was basically a "we're very sorry that you didn't like it" type 'apology' of the sort you see constantly from politicians who aren't really sorry for anything except the negative reaction they got.

Heh, the codex claims to have found (or been tipped off to by a Pole, at least) the official editor for ToEE hidden inside its Polish patch, accessible by unzipping it into a new folder. Haven't actually run it since I don't have ToEE installed, but the editor is there at least. Cue dozens of iterations of 'at least the game can get some Polish now!' puns in the codex thread, which are lame- though I guess they can have a good Krakow doing that now. Don't know who found it but I hope there's some Szeczin his future as a reward! (One day I will find a use for combining a hearty kiwi "g'day" and "thanks" into a suitable Gdansk pun and be able to die satisfied, but today is not that day)

Upcoming Star Wars movies and the belief that the SW titles will sell better is the most likely reason, I'd think. The new titles on GOG seem to be above and beyond their initial agreement with Disney so it seems likely that more titles will be coming, and there aren't that many SW titles left now.

The Russian ambassador should go and offer the peaceful protesters some cookies (and by the looks of things some toilet paper, what's up with the number 1 looted item being bog roll. Could understand if it were...) and moral support in their struggle. It'd make me laugh. Ah, Separatists! Must be an outside group though, all separatists are outside groups so due to the toilet paper I'm going to blame everything on Maduro in Venezuela trying to destabilise the US rather than any policies of the government, local or national.

They also have the release of Rebel Assault 1&2- not great games- and the two Jedi Academy games which are pretty good, plus 2 bundles of their entire SW content. Of course, I have half the content of the cheaper one on CD/DVD and precisely none of the more expensive one but still, pretty good value.

N.B. the Viet Cong won in the end and whatever he says, he doesn't actually change. Paid mods will be back later, they say as much in the announcement. Just with better (well, any would be more) PR push prior and more focus on managing/ fragmenting opposition to it.

And it now appears that paid mods have been given the Nguyen Ngoc Loan treatment, with full refunds. Probably refunds to steam wallet, but nevertheless. (lollin at the comments though, one million variations of 'we know you really loved us Valve' incoming. If it weren't in bad taste I'd coin the phrase 'Battered User Syndrome')

Which is perhaps the most pointless argument in games ever, because games are not meant to reflect reality, their purpose in the vast majority of cases is specifically not to be realistic. That's true whatever genre you look at from the most casual like Farmville or The Sims (albeit both have a veneer of 'realism' but their purpose is escapism, and as below, to make money) to those targeted at the core gamer demographics. The only time it isn't true is for hardcore sims and the like- usually small market, mostly cannot care less about politics- and games as stories. Things like Gone Home are fine, of course, and there's nothing to stop them being made if people want to, there's just no obligation for people to play, care about or buy them nor for companies to decide they should make Gone Home: The FPS instead CODBLOPS#. It's also why people get annoyed over the Vavra type stuff, you have people demanding his game not reflect reality to conform with their beliefs and the demographic distribution of somewhere like the US- not even modern Bohemia. It's more 'entitled' to think the other way, really. If the two alternatives are (1) a company should serve its audience (me) and (2) a company should not necessarily serve its existing audience but should serve (me)/ my political opinions then it is obvious number 1 is the correct answer- and that, primarily, is why Leigh A got such a negative response as well. There's nothing 'entitled' about that, aiming for your audience is economics 101 and is a mutually compatible aim between supplier and consumer. Doesn't mean you can't aim for a different audience with a different product of course, but that is not generally what sjws want, they want everything to conform to their particular vision. Which is, of course, impossible since there is no monolithic sjw group any more than there is a monolithic GG group. Have I ever mentioned that I loathe the word entitled? Because I do.

No, for inflicting possibly the only major naval defeat the english navy had between Sluys and pretty much forever and worse, being awfully cheeky about it. Spare a thought for poor old frenchie too, they spent six centuries trying and losing. (I was given some of those sprinkles when I was in Enschede)

This guy 'mysteriously' got his spinal column severed at some random point in custody rather than got shot so Wals' gun comment doesn't apply here anyway. I went to Baltimore and it was... interesting. Quite nice down by the waterfront then a couple of blocks away it went full The Wire location shoot (well, Homicide: Life on the Street since it was a fair while ago now) with dilapidated houses, industrial decay and all the rest.

Bruce Jenner is a D list celeb on a program on e! or MTV or something with some over exposed Americo-Armenians. Then no, and yes. What, no De Ruyter smoking the English fleet at Chatham? That's as good for a history troll as the Volournians burning Washington in 1814.

Meh, any internet grouping of any significance will have elements of a hate group. It's basically the same process by which you have football fans, most of whose purpose is to support their teams and football fans whose purpose is to hate everyone else's team and provoke or attack their fans. The internet is rife with morons, inevitably some will be on your 'side' of things, sometimes, and just as inevitably some will be against you. I get around the more negative elements of GG much the same way people like TB do, I don't consider myself to be part of GamerGate. Fiona(var). Fiona is a girl's name. Since it's Welsh in origin I'm not sure whether there would be dutch/ other foreign equivalents as there are for names like Catherine or Elizabeth, but that is why the assumption is made. Same mistake was made fairly regularly when he was admining TTLG for a year prior to coming here.

I mowed a neighbour's lawn the other day. I got paid $50. Well, when I say I got paid $50 I mean that Masport got paid $25 for licensing me the lawnmower and Shell got $12.50 for licensing me the petrol I used to run it. Not even a joke, really. Check out John Deere's "you don't actually buy our tractors" shtick. Oh, it will definitely output encrypted esms/ esps that only work/ can only be exported to the workshop- at very, very least as default option. I'd put a decent amount of money on it. They'll go the whole hog drm and all, it's as inevitable as Valve trying to monetise mods was as soon as they established the workshop. It's got a justification (protecting modders' paid work, you wouldn't steal a mod!), it's got benefit- for them- of more money and it's relatively easy to do. End of the day that is the whole point of having a walled garden architecture and loss leading in the first place, you accumulate power so when you want to do something unpopular what you say goes- it's no coincidence that the SSA is the most consumer unfriendly of any portal EULA, they know they can get away with it. I mean, I'll do what I can do and would encourage others to do so as well, but there's a reason PC gamers are known as spineless jellies, and it isn't just because boycott CoD groups end up with most people playing it though that is certainly a big factor- it's because they have been turning their thousand dollar electronic devices into consoles with all their restrictions (and more, 1st sale doctrine still applies to console games, after all) willingly.

Well, the reciprocal statement is accurate ("if someone doesn't feel harassed it isn't harassment", by definition), so feeling harassed is a necessary condition- but it isn't the only condition, of course. It's the sort of rule that is really intended for people hassling cosplayers and the like, not for political statements or personal beliefs where you get sensitive snowflakes and censorious gits who just want to shut people up who disagree with them.

There really isn't any other alternative than some sort of petition/ boycott, the relationship is so skewed that those are basically the only things that can be done, advertisers and the like cannot be brigaded or whatever- the only equivalent would be going after any modders who put their mods up for sale. Which will happen, but won't be something I'd either be comfortable with nor advocate particularly as it's an obvious recipe for abuse. You're a bit harsh on the journalists though, ideally they'd all be crusaders for truth and justice, incorruptible and brave; but then, so would Valve's software engineers as well- ideally. Practically, both Gawker and Valve are companies made up of individuals who want a pay cheque, after all.

I'll leave the rest because there's already a thread on it in the gaming forum, and also because this sentence alone is all I really need to make the point. Ethics is not, itself, about what is legal or not, it's about what is ethical. It isn't actually illegal for Gawker to do the vast majority of the stuff they've been accused of doing either, writing biased stuff, clickbaiting, paid for articles etc it's just crappy practice from crappy people- even their use of unpaid interns has not been proven to be illegal, yet. I don't give a flying asterisk if Valve's SSA is technically legal, it's a massive infringement on purchaser's rights* by a company that is monopolistic and responsible for egregious erosion of the practicalities of what game playing is, and all for the benefit of Valve. I don't use Gawker, and I don't use Steam, but in terms of ethics they're pretty much identical whether you like it or not, indeed as previous Valve is already profiting from the equivalent of a Gawker contributor actively plagiarising others' content- with the proviso that, apparently, Valve has been advising people that is actually OK to do so- which is actively illegal (albeit, you have to challenge them via DMCA, but it's exactly as illegal as piracy is, because it is piracy. Indeed, it's worse than baseline piracy because they profit from it). Sheesh, they've started censoring ratings for the paid mods because they're too low, that's straight out of a Gawkeresque playbook. *as someone from New Zealand software is a product, not just a licence, by law, indeed we have a specific addendum on refunds due to it being covered by our CGA; and unlike the EU one there isn't a legalistic workaround to allow them to refuse refunds based on technicalities because that loophole doesn't exist here. The ethical thing would, of course, be for Valve to honour the spirit of the law- lord knows, they have enough money as it is- but, as it actually is, they ignore the spirit of the law and solely work to and around the letter of it. **** them then.

Yes. :smug: It wouldn't, you don't have a leg to stand on legally- though this is peripheral and was used primarily as a hypothetical. But, Paradox used to cancel support for base games when they released paid for expansions, for example, so it definitely has happened, and there is no legal recourse for it. Really? That's... startlingly naive, to be frank. Bethesda's base UI is rubbish, they have no incentive to fix it themselves if they can sell an improved UI for $10 a pop; it actively makes it against their interests to fix things like that. As for games always getting fixed- I don't know where to start, that's not even closely related to actual reality (eg Spacebase DF9, dozens upon dozens of Early Access scams etc). Buggy games get abandoned all the time because you don't have legal recourse, Valve excludes Class Action as part of their SSA, makes it near impossible to get refunds and good luck getting anyone to go small claims court or equivalent to get back 20-40$. Their SSA is about the most consumer unfriendly document anywhere- Origin's, for example, is positively benign in comparison, let alone GOG's. Read their EULA- they claim ownership of all mods anyway, they aren't 'asking' or 'buying' anything. That clause is legally dubious, to say the least, so they aren't trying to enforce it actively- since they would lose, it's mostly a hedge against similarity/ derivative based copyright claims- but it is there. And it opens the way to them compelling people to sell mods, or trying to outright seize them, or forcing mods to go workshop only. It is, quite simply, an abysmal idea practically even if the basic idea that modders be rewarded is theoretically a very good one. As for the last, they have an active interest in not catching problems related to charged mods. They don't get cash for free ones or ones hosted on Nexus, after all, only for those monetised on Workshop. And again, what legal recourse is a free mod maker going to take against Valve? Again, that's very naive. Lol. You might want to read the general gaming forum some time, I don't use steam at all and never will. But plenty of people who do use it are very upset about this. Well, you're not arbiter of what is relevant or not and it is clear that many do consider it relevant. There will be plenty of illegal stuff and plenty of unethical stuff done there, people are already monetising other people's mods which is copyright infringement, with Valve and Bethesda benefitting. Steam's support is rubbish and their curation is rubbish, those are the two things that are essential for this system to work, plus it's a further attempt to put even more of PC gaming behind steam's walled garden. Plus, the two parties that have contributed least to the mod by far get more of a cut than the person who actually made it. I couldn't care less if something is successful or if other people boycott or not. You can only do what you can do, don't do anything though and you'll always fail. Apathy is Death, to quote a famous computer game.

Yeah, it's the same thing, just from the opposite direction. Which is why it's dangerous to go the "don't make fun of people/ don't quote randoms" route, far too easy to end up doing exactly the same thing yourself And extra yeah, Pakman plays devil's advocate and it is what a good interviewer should do. Getting peeved that he does it 'against' GG is childish to the extreme, you can't ask for good journalism then complain when it's applied to your side; that's both hypocritical and juvenile. I couldn't care (much) less about corruption in games media so I'm a bit biased, but the paid mod issue is perfectly relevant when seen as part of a general consumer revolt, same as charging for patches, buggy releases and other crappy practices would be. The general GGer likes gaming and doesn't want it to be changed arbitrarily for the benefit of other parties whether they be rainbow haired 'progressives' pushing an agenda or monopolistic corporates pushing their profit margins.

Modding has never been very open-source anyway. From what I've seen, most (PC gaming) modders... work alone have huge egos keep their source/work files and tools secret seem allergic to the very concepts of collaboration and sharing That runs completely counter to my experience. Except perhaps for the 'huge egos' part, but then again if you're making stuff you usually do it with the thought that it's going to be good and that other people will want to play it, else you wouldn't bother. Certainly from what I've seen of the VtMB, Dark Engine/ Dark Mod, IE game modding, Deus Ex modding, Paradox modding etc etc none of those points are accurate at all, except for a fringe element (eg Tessera for VtMB) who are generally not well regarded at all- and usually make crap mods. It certainly appears that those points are not, generally, true for Bethesda modding either. I didn't like F3 much, but there's tons of 'base' fan created mods, modding tools, script extenders and the like freely available for it as there is (and hopefully will remain) for Skyrim.

It's on Steam Videoshop at $10 per view. (Guess Untergang parodies must be dying off, at one stage you got them on everything up to and including obscure GIS computer software)

In theory, most people wouldn't have a problem with it I suspect. Mods greatly improve many games, and modders deserve appreciation. From that perspective it looks like a great idea, modders can choose whether they want to be rewarded and how much, buyers choose what they want and don't have to buy anything. Hard to argue against, even if it is something that was free now being charged for. So it could pass muster in that respect, in theory, at least if the proportions of the monetisation were adjusted to be less rapacious. But it will still be a maximally disclaimed/ buyer beware system where the really fundamental killer from a consumer perspective is that you know there will be problems, publisher and Steam will maximally disown said problems (while still accepting their share of the money, of course) and you know that you will have to deal with Steam 'Support' to try and fix said problems and get refunds. Worse, if you get mod squatters the people who actually made the stuff have to deal with steam support to stop someone else profiting from their work. I wouldn't accept that if it were from a company like GOG with decent support and good curation, or even from Gamersgate who have good support. This system really needs both good curation and good support, steam is... not exactly brilliant at either. And whatever else it is, it is quite transparently designed to push modders onto steam workshop, exclusively, and kill off competition.

Can't see anything positive out of this at all. Even the thought of modders getting (often deserved) money is pretty much completely subsumed by those who have done no work getting 75%. Facts seem to be: 25% cut for producer, rest goes to Valve/ Publisher. Hope you enjoy your serfdom, creative types. No payout until you get $100 ($400 gross), don't make that and steam keeps it. From a company that will cheerfully take their cut of that 7c trading card you've just sold Bank details required for everyone Valve employees apparently advising people to monetise other people's free work (!) by changing them slightly (!). If true that is just plain monumental crappiness and they deserve a boot to the gonads, at bare minimum. In those cases disputes will be 'resolved' by an interested party, ie valve, investigating DMCA claims where they benefit if favouring paid mods. per above, actively encourages people to steal other people's work Encourages people to remove mods from nexus and put them behind steam's paywall Encourages even further a 'modders will fix it' attitude. Bethesda giving you a crap UI? Here's a good one for $10, $5 of which goes to... Bethesda, the people who gave you that crap UI in the first place plus $2.50 to the people who made it possible to charge for it Will get the drm/ pirating cycles applied to mods of all things Having said that, I suspect we may well get some dialling back as PR- upping the cut to 33% or something. Offer people something terrible to see if you can get away with it then rescind a few things so the slightly less horrible alternative suddenly seems a lot more reasonable.

That really is damning with faint praise given the current season of Arrow is borderline awful. It used to be dumb fun, now it's just plain dumb. Frankly, that's insulting to Dawson's Creek. The romantic arcs there were finely crafted Shakespearian epics of love and loss compared to the episode to episode wild vacillation and pointless drama for its own sake romantic subplots in Arrow give us.

Thief isn't an RPG. You cannot progress your character nor play dress up with him so you're stuck with tap dancing shoes and a specialisation in sneaking around rather than my preferred magic user specialisation, nor can you talk to people- except yourself which suggests you're a bit on the mad side- and it doesn't really have realistic combat, you can just swing your sword three ways, block and shoot arrows/ throw bombs. On the plus side, there's a romance in its sequel, so at least one RPG box is ticked. It's a romance with a tree, but I'm fairly progressive so didn't mind. A lot of those problems are fixed in its modernised version, Thiaf, though.

Embrace Extend Extinguish Monetise Mr Newell learned well the lessons of Bill Gates III. Steam Workshop has always been a cynical attempt to subsume the PC modding scene into Valve's closed steam ecosystem via leveraging market dominance, same as they've tried for PC gaming in general. For people who are 'just fans really' and 'nice guys who love PC gaming' they sure as asterisks love to nickel and dime the people they love. Plus the nexus people (hardly unbiased, to be sure, but probably should know) are suggesting the usual 70/30 split is reversed, with Valve/ Beth getting 75% and the mod creator 25%. Now awaiting the cease and desists against anyone refusing monetisation, my bet is... 2 years, max, before someone tries it. Ceterum censeo Steam delendam esse, as my good bud Marcus Porcius would say.