Lol what a strange stretch. I’m not Christian, I’m an atheist socialist annoyed at how the US government has historically worked to overthrow socialism everywhere in the world.

TIL- PirateSoftware is not referring to piracy in general, but is the username of a twitch streamer who criticized the movement.

NYPD has offices all around the globe. Because… 9/11 or something.

Socialism has failed every time it’s been attempted, for one very good reason.

I fully expect the CIA to get involved. Probably before the general election even happens.

So they can go work for EA? Or Ubisoft? Or one of Take-Two’s dev teams? Or something owned by Tencent or Embracer or Epic?

This isn’t just “Microsoft bad”. It’s “Microsoft is one of many giant mega corporations that are ruining the entire industry”.

Maybe some of these people could join or found smaller indie studios, but there are reasons why they didn’t do that already.

There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists

The quote is attributed to a park ranger from Yosemite in the 80’s, though I can’t find any more details.

I do wonder how much overlap there is between AI and dumb people. Of course, “intelligence” is more complicated than that, but still I wonder how many people would have done something like put Elmer’s glue in their pizza cheese without needing AI to tell them. Either on their own or because they didn’t understand someone was joking.

The regulatory bodies of several nations really dropped the ball by allowing the Zenimax and Activision-Blizzard acquisitions.

This isn’t the result of a market being “overextended”, and it isn’t about finding efficiencies. It’s about Microsoft doing what it’s always done- Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Just one more offenses added to the pile of anti-consumer tactics employed by tech companies.

The EU is slightly further ahead than most, but globally most governments have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting consumers from anything digital.

I can’t hear Richard Horvitz without thinking of Invader Zim. He does a ton of random voices in the more recent Ratchet and Clank games and it’s very distracting.

I don’t want to accuse Trump or his administration of having rational or intelligent decision-making processes, but it’s hard to really have any productive thought or conversation about theit decisions if I just assume they are irrational or stupid. So bear with me as I try to make sense of something that might be senseless.

There have been a handful of odd discrepancies from the Trump administration piling up. Mueller, for all his flaws, did prove that a good chunk of Trump’s campaign in 2016 had illegal ties to Russia and Putin. Even though Trump avoided direct consequences and pardoned some of them, they were still convicted and the ties to Putin are solid. Heck, there were ties between Trump and Russia going back to the 80’s.

Musk also has ties to Russia and Putin. So it was not all that surprising to see Musk throw his full support behind Trump last summer and then do the whole DOGE thing. It was a bit odd to see someone so thoroughly tied to electric cars support someone so pro-fossil fuels, but I could see Musk deciding that defense contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other businesses might outweigh reduced EV subsidies for him.

Allegedly, Trump and Musk had a falling out. The back-and-forth on social media, Musk stepping back from DOGE, and later walking back some of his statements. Speculation as to whether that was real or not. Was it really over the spending bill? Was Musk really leaving DOGE? Was this all a ploy to manipulate the stock market and do some insider trading? Was this just Musk on drug-induced psychosis?

Then the tensions between Israel and Iran flare up again. Trump sides with Israel as the US traditionally has, Putin sides with Iran as Russia traditionally has. There was the recent Tucker Carlson interview of Ted Cruz, and we’ve seen some discord among the far-right over whether to support a US war against Iran or not. The US struck Iran and didn’t appear to do a whole lot of damage, and Iran struck back in the most polite way possible and did pretty much no damage.

Other wonderful folks have dug up old Trump tweets from the Obama years, speculating that Obama was appearing weak and would strike Iran as a show of strength.

So was this all just political theater? Trump doesn’t actually care whether Iran has nukes or not. He wants Trump to appear strong and willing to go to war. He wants to show his support for Israel and reaffirm America as the World Police.

So my guess is that Netanyahu keeps pushing what he can get away with. Allegedly, there was tension between Netenyahu and Biden over the line between counter-terrorist operations and genocide. Biden, the consummate centrist neoliberal, allowed the genocide as long as it didn’t hurt businesses, but seemed to have been pressuring Netenyahu to keep restrictions on it. Trump abandoned those and Palestine seems to be suffering far more since he took office. Then you add the Israeli strikes on Iran on top of that- I don’t think they had anything to do with new intelligence Israel received, just that Netenyahu felt he could get away with it while still maintaining US support from Trump, which he could not have done under Biden.

Where I start to really speculate- I don’t think Trump cares about Iran. He doesn’t care about of they have nukes or not, he doesn’t care about Islam vs Judaism vs Christianity. He care about the media narratives, especially in the US. Same thing with the tarrifs- it was more about appearing powerful to his base than actually being powerful.

Well, this isn’t about side-loading or alternative app stores though. The lawsuit is looking to force Sony to allow 3rd party key sellers. So you would have to use a different device like your phone or PC to go to another website, process your payment and get a code, then go to the PlayStation store and redeem that code to have the game added to your account and available for download. Just like there are 3rd party sellers for Steam keys. I know Nintendo allowed that for the 3DS, because there was a period of time where you couldn’t process payments on the 3DS’s eShop, but you could still redeem those codes.

What you’re suggesting would be akin to allowing Ubisoft, EA, or Rockstar to have their own stores on consoles where you could bypass the PlayStation Store/Xbox store/ Nintendo eShop if you want. Potentially 3rd parties like GOG, Steam, or Epic, but certainly there would be restrictions there. For examples, Steam would probably just be the Store without all the other platform features Steam offers. GOG’s anti-DRM stance probably would not fly.

Another key difference is that consoles have physical media. As far as I know, you’ve never been able to go to an Apple store or any other electronics store and buy a physical copy of an app. Even the digital edition of the PS5 now has an optical disc drive available for purchase.

This isn’t adding up. I’m all for consumer protections and I love European countries forcing global countries to behave, but this reads more like a console-war fanboy hit piece than legitimate criticism.

According to the article, Sony “is enjoying the position of a monopolist with 80% of the Dutch console market”. That number does not pass the smell test, and there’s no further details provided or sources given. I know Xbox sales are considerably worse in Europe, but the only way I can imagine Sony hitting 80% markets are is if we ignore the Switch and Switch 2 as “handhelds”, and also ignore gaming PC’s and the Steam Deck. Which seems like a bad faith argument to use when evaluating software markets.

The article also claims that “Sony can easily control game pricing in its digital store”. So is this lawsuit exclusively discussing Sony-published titles, or are they just ignoring the role of the publisher in this?

It looks like the goal of this lawsuit is… To force Sony to allow 3rd party platforms to sell download keys that can be redeemed on the Sony store. Which… Is fine I suppose but I don’t expect that to really help the consumer or have an impact on competition. The article doesn’t provide any data on that and I’m not sure whether any actual research has been done there, but in my anecdotal experience those kinds of sites either just follow the MSRP and sales, or are doing shenanigans with different regional price rates or FX rate arbitrage, which can occasionally lead to issues for users depending on how the game works and how important the region is to it. There might be some reduced fees from Sony in the transaction, but I expect that to be made for by similar fees from the 3rd party, or the publisher pocketing the difference. It doesn’t seem material enough to change the price consumers see. Digital “goods” don’t have supply restrictions, so this won’t increase the supply and I don’t see how it changes demand.

Also there’s a lot more questions I have about their methodology. Maybe things are different in the US than Europe, but Nintendo is famous for having fewer sales with shallower discounts than anyone else, with multiplatform games (both physical and digital) being more expensive. The phrases “Switch tax” and “Nintendo tax” have been around the Switch for almost its entire life. Is the Switch just being excluded as a “handheld”? And when they are looking at disc prices, does that include used copies too, or perhaps include a factor for resale value that is reducing the cost?

Maybe they are right, but this article leaves a lot more questions than answers, and I can’t find those answers from a quick Internet search.

Gauntlet tends to be my go-to for these situations.

There’s versions on Steam real cheap that run great on the deck. Not that emulation is hard but it can occasionally be a little janky so it’s nice to not have to worry about it. Tends not to be super sensitive to lag. It’s easy to pick up and learn. It’s fun to play as a one-off, but also fun for a regularly recurring experience too. You don’t need a full controller either- I often use my RetroBit Genesis controllers, but I’m sure a joycon would be fine.

Even shows that do get more seasons often see their budgets slashed. It’s similar to blockbuster movies that get cheap direct-to-tv or direct-to-home video sequels.

The Witcher comes to mind. I know a lot of hardcore GAMER fans had complaints about them deviating from the games, but even worse imo was the budget. The lighting, the CGI, the makeup. The acting even seems worse (maybe fewer takes, less editing budget?). The first season looked like it was trying to compete with Game of Thrones and other HBO shows. The second season was a step back, but still looked good. The 3rd season looked like a soap opera.