Zoraptor

bitComposter made the new Jagged Alliance game which was not very good, apparently. They haven't bought the Stalker game licence and really ought to know that given they published CoP exCIS. From the RPS comments someone who contacted the actual owner says that bitComposter hasn't paid him royalties for 8 months either.

No one can answer that accurately, as that would depend on jurisdiction, where the offence is taking place and what the local laws say. In general, in most western countries, if you get caught pirating something you'd get taken to civil court and sued by the copyright holder, having been caught by a private investigation of some sort rather than a police one. For a criminal case you'd be investigated by the police and prosecuted by the relevant government agency in a criminal trial. Usually a civil trial has lower burden of proof and cannot result in incarceration, but only monetary damage. It's a civil matter in general because it is the responsibility of the rights' holder to police their IP- rather than the state. To be even more specific, you usually would not get sued for downloading something, but rather for the uploading portion of torrenting, as that is distributing copyrighted materials and it is easier to prove damage.

Really? Because it's my understanding that in every single country in the world, copyright infringement is explicitly not theft. That's why "copyright infringement" and "theft" are two different crimes. Well (and I'm guessing here) if you download a copy that you don't own and then share it, isn't it technically theft and then copyright infringement. If you however own a copy and then share it, then it's only CF. No; to use BruceVC's watch example walking into the shop and taking the watch is theft- the owner is deprived of the ownership of the watch and its benefits, including selling it. If on the other hand you duplicated the watch the owner would still own the original and have its benefits no matter how many copies were made, similarly if I copied the Mona Lisa it is not the same as stealing it from the Louvre, though both end up with me having the painting one means that the Louvre still has the painting while the other deprives them of it. If you steal a CD with songs on it you will get arrested and (potentially) charged criminally with theft, if on the other hand you download the songs that make up the CD the shop can still sell the CD and the law broken is copyright infringement which is (at least in small scale cases and most jurisdictions) a civil rather than criminal matter.

For the steam platform the store and the platform are, by design, one and the same. The steam platform ("steamworks") absolutely and completely requires the steam storefront ("client") to be integrated as well. The only difference is the loss leading for valve is due to software subsidisation rather than MSony's hardware loss leading/ subsidisation. No the difference is that you think the exact method is important while I'm saying they're two similar approaches which lead to the same endpoint, and that the endpoint is far more important than having the exact same method of getting there. As an illustration, what you're arguing is that it is a significant difference whether I catch the bus or drive to get somewhere. While I'm saying that differences in taking the car or the bus are irrelevant as they're both methods of transport with associated, similar, but somewhat differently structured costs but have the exact same purpose- and that the purpose is the most important thing. The hardware for a steambox sounds like it would be similar, but presumably neither windows nor directx would be available so a porting to openGL and linux would be necessary at least. Certainly it could be easier to port to a nextbox, if it used directx/ win8variant and similar hardware to PCs.

That's not equivalent to the licencing fee, or instead of one, unless you think the store you buy games for your PS3 from is actually a charity. No, it's the same to all practical purposes. Most of the trad console market's sales are still retail, hence the console makers monetise retail by charging per sale. All of steam's sales are digital, hence they monetise the digital side, the only practical difference is (semi) fixed costings vs a percentage cut. If that or having two people taking a cut at retail are differences then there's a difference too between me buying locally and internationally, or method of payment. If I buy via credit card they get a slice of the purchase price as well DD/ retail vendor/ other, and if I buy something in USD then there's currency conversion andor foreign transaction fees. None of which change the cuts that valve andor console maker get in the slightest.

Yes, pretty much the same, right down to the rabid fanboyism. And, because I'm at least marginally self aware, rabid red-rag-to-bull haterism as well. Potted version, as I'm ahead of schedule on the 5 minute hate: Offering steamworks and its features for "free" (which it isn't, it's just a different type of cost; see also Facebook_piggies.gif) is a classic loss leader strategy- because bandwidth is cheap and you'll make the costs back from a single sale. The 'beneficial' stuff they do is designed to lock people into the system, eg support of modding is not in any way a Valve specific thing, it's another PC specific thing that Valve is "embracing". Instead of a console licencing fee they have the 30% purchase cut (which is actually a lot higher, at least for full priced games). You're free to buy your steam games from other places too, but they'll only run through steam itself, just as you can buy your console games from EB or WalMart but good luck getting them to run without the console. They can even 'brick' your account remotely. Basically it's a software console with good PR and devoted fans; using the classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy to convert PC gaming into Steam Gaming. MS was highly generous too with free Internet Explorer and free, enhanced Java as well, and everyone knows why they did that.

That was already discussed- as an 'outsider' he is an info source for new players (or old ones who have forgotten stuff) as they don't know a lot of the stuff he also doesn't know. That may not be super important for veteran players with eidetic memories, but it certainly is something that from a game design perspective has to be done, one way or another. As a wholly new character he's far better suited to it than any of the returning ones who will already know that stuff.

It's a complaint about a fictional space soldier behaving and looking something like modern US marines. Fictionalised modern US marines, unless COD/MW/BLOPS/MOH etc are documentaries. Parallels could as easily be drawn to spartans from 300 or the space marines in Aliens, as examples. Who knows, maybe a... volus? elcor? ?? companion might have been awesome, Javik was- theoretically- extremely interesting and could have shed a lot of light, but not so much in practice. I'm just rather amused/ bemused by complaints about either having a soldier on a military vessel or him behaving like a soldier.

It's a complaint about a fictional space soldier behaving and looking something like other fictionalised soldiers, space or otherwise, and how having a space soldier on a military vessel, during wartime, is somehow a Bad Idea. I wish they'd used a different visual design for Vega but ultimately it's as peripheral as Liara or Ashley's breast augmentations, worth an eye roll and perhaps a quiet reflective facepalm, but not much more. Otherwise it's about as compelling as saying that Anderson is a Magical Negro and citing a bunch of Morgan Freeman movies. If anything there's far too few space soldiers in all the MEs, discounting Pfc Deadmeat from the very start of ME1 there's three (?) alliance troops as companions in the whole series which makes basically no sense as, ME2 excepted, you are alliance military.

Valve do things pretty much exactly the same as Sony/ MS et al only 'better' as (at present) they get people to turn their PCs into steamboxes themselves rather than having to manufacture and design loss leading hardware. The software part of the console is the important part as that is the part which makes money, and steam has pretty much every single console software characteristic already. How exactly their hardware ventures are meant to work is a bit of a mystery as the vast majority of the games they currently sell don't work well or at all on Linux, and they aren't going to get a cheap windows licencing deal to compete against MS's own product. So it'll be loss leading hardware trying to sell software on an OS that no mass market game makers are targeting, pretty much the exact reverse of how they've become successful in the first place.

To be fair, some chaps like Doenitz may have benefited (he was acquitted, with good reason IMO) Found guilty, I'm pretty sure, and in parts in rather dodgy fashion too. IIRC he was the guy who had Chester Nimitz say that if he (Donitz) was found guilty then he (Nimitz) should be as well since the US used the exact same unrestricted submarine warfare tactics wrt Japan.

IIRC Spiedel is also the guy who ignored Hitler's orders to bombard Paris with artillery after von Choltitz refused to dynamite the place, so hardly Hitler's poodle.

I kind of regret referring to Vega as Lt Beefcake now since there's nothing much wrong with him, he's Jacob v2 in effect, someone without much to like or dislike especially. He certainly ain't a Mary Sue (almost always the most lazy of accusations) as there's no evidence he's an authorial insert, his 'purpose' is as noted an info dump for new players rather than to get an author into the story; he isn't better at stuff than the main character, quite the opposite; he doesn't get to sexxor teh Shepard (the classic Mary Sue behaviour) and lastly he is, presumably, a Gary Stu and not a Mary Sue. I'd also disagree with criticism of Legion's death mainly on the grounds that he is clearly and explicitly unique, hence him referring to himself as "I" at the end. Much of the stuff both with him and with EDI is precisely about what makes something alive rather than being a machine or a tool. The obvious conclusion is that both EDI and Legion are 'alive' and are unique individuals, as such they are not just software and hardware (a point specifically raised by EDI) but more than the sum of their parts. In an alternative universe where everybody is synthetic there might be a parallel complaint that [organic] is just 4.2 litres of water and various amounts of carbon, phosphorus, calcium, nitrogen etc so why can't [organic] be brought back; after all Shep was once so we know it can be done!

Steam is explicitly a subscription service, per their SSA ("Steam Subscriber Agreement") which everyone who uses it has to accept. It has no subscription fee at this point of time, as with every provision subject to change at any time with sole recourse being to launch a class action lawsuit cancel your subscription.

The most likely reason for lack of ME2 peeps as main line companions almost certainly goes back to the structure of ME2 with the suicide mission and most of the cast potentially being interstellar fertiliser, meaning that resources spent on them might be 'wasted'; and they're (rightly) seen as less important than Tali/ Garrus who were in the first game as well. Wrex is treated much the same, after all, and Ashley gets far fewer lines than Lt Beefcake or Liara since she might be dead too. Having said that, as I understand it there wasn't even going to be the short near end game conversations with your companions at one point which would have been an utterly baffling omission, so the treatment of some of the ME2 people may have been Developer Disconnect. I think that something like Bos_hybrid suggested of them turning up to help out (or end those annoying and seemingly endless attack waves earlier) would have been a good compromise, albeit a pretty much entirely cosmetic one.

The problem I see with using Harbinger, or any reaper really, is that they lack any compelling personality or motive, and that goes right back to the first game and the conversation with Sovereign (which amounted to "YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND OUR MOTIVES!!!!") and continues in ME2. As such they're pretty much tools or cyphers rather than actual antagonists. I'd also presume that Harbinger would try to either kill Shepard or persuade him not to use the Crucible at all in preference to the synthesis option. On a more fundamental level, it would also be rather like asking an individual locust about the reasons for the apocalypse, at least at the moment you get to ask 'god' instead. I wouldn't dismiss the suggestion out of hand though, I just think there are a fair few potential pit falls and much as with the current situation you'd need some fairly significant rewrites of earlier stuff to get the most out of it. This does nothing to solve the problem of exposition and explanation. Also sounds like ME6th Sense, which would mean that Shepard really died at the start of ME2 and everything after is hypoxic hallucination [/twist].

What would you suggest instead of the star child though? It may be a weak "it was OK" style defence, but there has to be something better offered as an alternative, and something that doesn't involve rewriting ME2/ the whole trilogy after the fact. Ultimately the problem is that the sort of progression needed to get to the ending of ME3 from the ending of ME2 needs either exactly the sort of exposition that video games aren't really very good at and which requires very good planning from the start (which didn't happen) or a star child like info dump/ interactive wikipedia approach; or a kludgey "Get the hell out of my galaxy!"/ bang! superweapon! style ending which is equally poor storytelling. What it really comes down to is that ME2 did not do the job required of it as the second game in a series in terms of advancing the main story, it was more Mass Effect: Cerberus or Mass Effect 1 part 2 than ME2- it set up stuff and did it well, but it was all peripheral stuff with the main series' storyline barely advancing. It left too much for ME3 to do what with tying up peripheral storyline loose ends as well as the whole Reaper invasion. So I tend to cut ME3 some slack not because I'm particularly happy about how it turned out (though I am, in parts) but because the blame for its shortcomings are more appropriately apportioned to ME2. Insufficient foreshadowing and groundwork means that everything gets dumped into the last game and it's too tight a fit. In an ideal world the whole trilogy would have been planned out well in advance, and the various clashes/ counterpoints illustrated through the different ideologies of the 'agonists- the dichotomies between the Krogan/ genophage, Geth/ Quarians and Cerberus/ aliens should provide an ample framework and potential for developing a good 'deus ex' style choice ending. But there was simply no scope for that after ME2. I actually think that: illustrates it quite nicely. There are very few complaints about, say, Mordin or Legion dying precisely because their situations were set up well across multiple games with the main themes introduced in ME1 and expanded upon in ME2 leading to a fulfilling ending to the storylines in ME3. If only there'd been similar attention to the main storyline I can see most of the complaints about star children and trinary choices and the like- which are effectively complaints about method of storyline delivery rather than storyline itself- being largely rendered moot.

I'm starting to see how Volourn got broken, all those many moons ago. ME3 endings are the best ever FACT! Stop the falsities, commence the verities! It's all ME2's fault for not doing it's primary task of setting up the continuing story properly! Deus Ex showed that a similar ending can work! Some nice soothing ointment liberally applied to the effected areas and I'm sure everyone will be able to sit comfortably again. Knowles is a pretty sensible guy from what I've read, but he's wrong about the endings. The most important thing about an ending is not that it is positive, but that it is fulfilling. Two of the best endings in CRGs are PST's and Fallout's, and there is very little positive about either. It's perfectly possible to get an absolutely dreadful- in an objective sense- ending for MOTB where you end up becoming the living embodiment of capitalism a personfication of hunger, and if you've played in that style it's a very good ending. And something like the end to NWN2OC or Fallout 3 is not bad because rocks fall, everybody dies/ illogical story stupidity death is 'negative', it's bad because they're appallingly bad endings. Conversely, the (LS) ending for KOTOR is positive, but still sucks more than a hole in the ISS. I'll happily concede that the endings are not necessarily fulfilling since that is subjective, but I do kind of wonder what exactly people were expecting. Given the set up some sort of deus ex machina was pretty much inevitable and given some of the (again, deus ex like) set up for J C SHEPARD a happy ending with lots of little Liaras/ Ashleys/ Mirandas/ Carths/ et alias frolicking in a field of daisies was never on the cards.

And? People ask for compensation all the time. Crazy homeless guys ask for change. If you want money, you monetize. I wouldn't call failing to donate to a charity case ("the creator asks for compensation for their creation"). Uncharitable, maybe, but not morally wrong. Err...exactly what has the homeless guy created that he's asking for compensation for your receipt of their creation when he begs for change? How does the homeless guy scenario apply at all to what Hurlshot is talking about? Clearly Homeless Guy is an ex developer who got sacked by the IP rights holder immediately after his six months of 100+ hours/ week crunch (no overtime) ended while said IP rights holder pocketed the benefits of his labour; never got his bonus because the metacritic was only 84% and a game that sold eleventy billion copies somehow failed to make a profit :che: Fundamentally IP law overall is rubbish and desperately needs reform at exactly the same time as vast quantities of money are being spent on lobbying to try and tighten the screws even further in a manner that would make minipax blush. Piracy would be a whole lot more easy to get all "BEHEAD THOSE THAT INFRINGE IP RIGHTS" about if many of those IP rights holders weren't a bunch of asterisking asteriskholes themselves.

That's the one that puzzles me as the whole R+L=J equation is such a prominent part of the books and it is difficult to see how it can be handled now, given the lack of a perspective character to use for exposition/ flashback. Well, there is a certain Bog Devil, but he hasn't even turned up in the books because he knows too much.

Already is. A bit pricey though, given what is was going for prior to the switchover.

They do, of course, pale into insignificance compared to the quality of your reviews Volo. But they're good enough for mere mortals.

The guy who wrote the GB review does post at the Codex though complaining about that is as silly as blaming /v or the codex for negative reactions to DA2. Every GB review I've ever read has been quality even if I haven't always agreed with them, and the chances of them writing a review to garner Kodex Kool Kredits is... negligible.

I've been playing Pharaoh on and off over the past couple of months and it's good, but then all those style of games are pretty much of a muchness. If you like one there's a very large chance you'll like the others. I really wanted an Akhenaten scenario for Pharaoh though.

No, you almost certainly aren't. How about having to get every software install approved through Microsoft? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a big government repository of approved programs you're allowed to install? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about cutting off internet access to those suspected of piracy, or entire countries if the piracy rate there is too high? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a nice always on internet monitoring program where every keystroke and action is logged for perpetuity? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a nice big government list of approved websites to visit? It'll stop piracy, after all. Half+ of those aren't even made up.