Zoraptor

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.

Yeah, well it's pretty clear I'm not part of any consumer revolt in that respect, as I'm not a consumer and have said so- there's effectively nothing that can be done to get me back. Presumably at least Nonek and others are still consumers or at least potentially so though, and they want things to be improved rather than abandoned wholesale. You're taking, alternately, what I say and what Nonek say as being representative of everyone when it isn't, there is no canon law equivalent except insofar as there's a huge number of interpretations of what exactly canon is. And yeah, telling people that they should just stop consuming/ stop complaining is telling people to shut up, to all practical purposes, it's just a more polite way of doing it. I've seen that claimed, frankly I'd only believe the stats either side use if I'd checked myself. Far too easy to get the results whoever was looking wanted by stacking the criteria.

They do, at least up to the point reality and economics intervenes- but if they call themselves "PCGamer" (as eg name only) yet only write polemics about 'progressive' issues in gaming then they don't have a leg to stand on when people complain about them not writing about games or having an obvious bias. Their name choice implies that they will be primarily games orientated, they could simply call themselves 'progressive'_gamer.com or write it into their mission statement instead, if they want to slant everything they write one way. If they don't though they cannot then complain when they find that their readership figures have imploded or whatever. Choice and Consequence, they're free to choose to write what they want about what they want- we're free to tell them to go jump in a lake in consequence. Oddly enough, last post here (or near enough) I said that gaming journalism was largely people writing stuff I'd never read about games I'll never play. I don't read games journalism much at all, largely don't care about it and have always said that I consider censorship far more serious as an issue. But, you seem to be coming at things from the exact opposite end from what you accuse Nonek of; that it is such a trivial matter that nobody has the right to be upset about it, with the strong implication that people should just Shut Up. Well, no. They're free to write what they want about what they want and to choose what they care about every bit as much as journos are, the difference is that while journos are reliant on people reading stuff for their livelihood a lowly commentator isn't, and isn't being paid. And I don't care about Leigh Alexander at all, I have neither any animus not much sympathy towards her. Her article was stupid [edit: specifically because I consider it to have picked an unnecessary fight, and very likely deliberately], and I'd defend that opinion pretty strongly, but it isn't anything I personally feel the need to deconstruct in detail. If others want to though, well, go for it. They've as much right to do that as she had to write in the first place, if I don't like the content they produce I can just not read it, after all, exactly as I can do to journos. Ain't no one forcing anyone to read anything.

You seem to be rather hung up on the use of the word 'right'. You are correct that they have the right to preach or whatever, and about whatever they like- within reason and within any legal restrictions. But equally, preaching is not their purpose, their purpose at least theoretically is to inform gamers not to push particular political agenda. There would not be any (sensible) complaints about 'progressive' issues getting heavy weighting on a site called SJGamer for example, or one which had an explicit policy as such but it is fair to complain for general purpose gaming media as the purpose of gaming press is certainly not to browbeat their own audience into conforming with their social aims or claim that that certain parts of their audience should not be catered to; in any rational sense there cannot be sympathy for those who denigrate/ preach at their audience then find that that audience is no longer interested in them. There, they have simply got what was the logical outcome of their own actions. If my bank gave me lots of Catholic propaganda rather than rapaciously pillage and loot my wallet look after my money I'd quote Jesus in the Temple at them tell them to go asterisk themselves, and no one would blame me.

Eh, they'd be nuking Sweden (or Veliky Novgorod) if doing that. Not really politic at present, but Kiev was a descendant part of either Novgorod or ultimately Varangian Swedes, depending on where you draw the line and is neither Muscovy nor Russia's ultimate antecedent. It's kind of ironic that the Swedes gave us Goths and Rus centuries ago, and now they're a bunch of lentil eating hippies.

That was the point of watching 'Chuck'. It was written into their contract that they had to pointlessly eat Subway sandwiches and Yvonne Strahotski had to have at least one scene in her underwear during the last season. I wasn't complaining overly much about that last stipulation, to be fair. The point of ME2 however was to laugh at all the fanservice poses and male gaze camera angles Miranda was put in by a 'progressive' company that had forgotten the internet existed for such things- if you're a troglodytic misogynistic ogler, at least. Can't say I either have optimism or pessimism about ME4 personally. I'd wish they kept the MP and SP parts essentially separate but I wasn't too worried about the approach they used on ME3 for that, I never played MP and it didn't overly effect me. The overall ME structure is quite a good fit for a MP game though. As for the other stuff like supposedly being set in Andromeda and the like, some of it sounds plausible, some of it not so much.

Rune, and Arx Fatalis both were mostly underground, and both superb. Though I always did want to find the way out ~even in Eye of the Beholder. Legend of Grimrock and Ultima Underworld as well. Practically there is also very little difference with being set underground or in any enclosed space- to most practical purposes games like System Shock could be counted as well. Mostly they use the somewhat claustrophobic feeling as an asset to add to the atmosphere.

OMG, PrimeJunta was Lord of Flies, finally it is revealed. He's even changed to a similar Colonel Sanders avatar to the one LoF had.

It is "journalism and bias in the games industry" though, not just games journalism. That's an important distinction, as most of the discussion is on topic for the games industry part of it. Plus, of course, twitter and the like are now regarded in many places as nuMedia/ citizen journalists/ serious commentators on issues and much as I may personally dislike it that is a blade that cuts both ways. Don't get hung up on the cliche of "it's about ethics in games journalism", plenty myself included care far more about the attempts at censorship than about what inducements someone I don't read gets for saying stuff about something I likely won't play. In any case, under the aegis of 'games industry' people related to the games industry or journalists or even individuals commenting is fair game whether it be someone complaining about Vavra saying something 'outrageous' or someone complaining about Schaefer saying something 'outrageous'. I think you would have a point if there were some overt harassment or encouragement to do so going on, but there really isn't and I haven't seen any apart from the occasional 'email these sponsors' type suggestion and, well, if that counts for harassment then there's been a lot of harassment going on, for decades, from every interest group. If people are looking for places their stupid tweets have been published there are far more important places to look at than here- at twitter itself or at the person in the mirror who posted them in very many cases; especially if they're embarrassed enough about making them to have deleted them post facto. In the last case the best 'solution' would be to have actually thought about what you were writing, 140 characters is a stupid limitation prone to allowing absolutely no nuance whatsoever but people should be aware of that. It's easy enough to write stupid in a forum, and you you don't have to worry about a word limit either. For that reason I'm pretty glad there was no comment here about Chris Priestley's comment re CalgaryExpo because he did actually apologise (may have been forced by cdpr, but meh, benefit of doubt so far as I am concerned) as did a couple of other people with pretty good grace- that is all you can really ask from anyone, given twitter's format. I do find the idea of trawling through people's social media looking for gotchas decidedly unappealing and generally rather reminiscent of witch trial/ McCarthyist thinking, in theory at least- everyone has said stuff that in retrospect is dumb or makes them look bad or that they regret, or even stuff that may be unpleasant but not really relevant; using that against them potentially years later is questionable and often a cheap way to try and get them to stfu. But, it is so in terms like 'often' and 'generally', it can be appropriate and where the line is drawn in terms of 'decorum' is very much subjective. Really though, if you're comparing GG to ISIS or the KKK, calling for all men to be killed or whatever on a public forum you should have a reasonable expectation that you will attract attention, and that some of it will be negative. If they think it's all going to be positive feedback then they aren't much in touch with reality.

Yeah, can't see any back seat moderating there. OTOH, apparently serious linkage to rationalwiki? Ooooookeydokey.

Would people be surprised if the host agreed with his satirical over the top statements? Youtube link, for those interested. Ye gads, that last line is near pure Bruce.

1 stupid looking lightsaber 3 shakeycam fight sequences where you can't tell what is happening 6 ridiculous amounts of inappropriate lens flare 2 pointless overlong cgi action sequences designed to sell games/ toys (not JJ's fault though, was Lucas's sole stipulation when selling) 1 time travel incident... I did think the casting in nuStar Trek was pretty close to spot on, except for Simon Pegg. To me it felt like he wanted to make a Star Wars movie though, instead of a Star Trek one. An annualised movie system for Star Wars- next, we find out who really stole the Death Star plans, yet again- does not fill me with confidence, nor does the rather staid and conservative content Disney has already released.

Needs more references to 'levelling up' or- and really, the set up is so perfect for this- 'get out of here gamer girl' Though I presume they do exist somewhere else in the jpgverse. Stalin too was infamous for his complete lack of sense of humour. Not sure about sarcasm, I doubt anyone dared to even consider using it on him. Though it might explain certain things ("yes, Josip, eliminating our officer corps is a great idea! Why don't we wipe out our doctors as well, while we're about it?")...

All the bundle deals are up now, along with some indies over the weekend and Div:OS for 40% off as well. Pretty good options there (Lucasarts, Paradox, M&B, Gothic, Divinity, Men of War, D&D especially), though I expect most will have already played/ already own most of them.

Yeah, the edit limit may be somewhat annoying- very occasionally, mostly it's who cares- but the quote system has some pretty significant and very annoying issues where it breaks quotes about half the time if you shorten them and is (was?) refusing to delete nested quotes properly. All topped off by the plain text editor not wrapping text lines any more meaning that if you use that you have to scroll half the way to India if you're writing something longer than a sentence and it not behaving consistently with those problems, sometimes it's all fine and other times it's not at all. Mind you, I complain now but it's been like that for months and I haven't been bothered to actually write anything down before now, so the edit time people are certainly motivated.

Yeah, the new stuff from Disney or licensed by them is automatically canon, old stuff automatically isn't though it may be recanonised by being referenced by new stuff. That's pretty uniform, only grey area pretty much is TOR and whether that counts as 'new' or 'old' (or some weird situation where new content is canon, but old isn't). Currently it's a weird Shrodinger's Canon case, but obviously one very peripheral to the movie series.