Recently, Clair Obscur told another story of ex-publisher success. So far, we only know of the review success and I don’t actually know if it’s a financial success.

If it is, I can only hope it leads to some investor understanding in just how done the world is of lottery-planning in the game world; seeing one victory, and having every single publisher chase it.

• Cover shooters
• Candy crush mobile games
• NFT games
• Battle royales
• 5v5 Overwatch clones

I don’t mind saying, I’m writing a book, and this is one of the conversations near the end. One character says to another: “Yeah, things are better. But can any of us truly say that things wouldn’t have improved if that terrorist hadn’t threatened everyone?”

Thankfully, in the story’s case, the reply to that quote is that while explosions and deaths were far more visible, a variety of powerful people were already making broad changes - just in a slower and less risky way. Of course, that’s fiction; and is not saying those things are a guarantee in the real world.

That’s the thing, though. I respect the analogy, but the equivalent here would be if the game was also checking your drive for other games, for financial apps, scanning your browser’s cookies to see which sites you visit, etc.

If, while playing a singleplayer game, they’re recording what actions you take within that singleplayer game, it’s understandable some people wouldn’t even want that - but I also don’t see that as nearly so invasive as other data travesties. Worse, highlighting it here feels like a “cry wolf” situation where you’d desensitize people to the most harmful privacy breaches.

Based on the article text, it’s only citing things like how long you play. I thought most games collected telemetry like this?

Don’t get me wrong, if it was scanning your drive to sell data to harvesters, I’d be extremely unnerved. And you should definitely be able to turn this off. But I feel like even Valve has recorded things like “60% of players quit after losing to this boss”

I guess I’m glad Twitch took a side on that?

After Bezos went full nazi on the Washington Post, I have expected the worst of everything Amazon.

If anyone is done with the official series and wants some more, some indie games that nicely follow its success:

Gyakuten Live, a fan game based on Love Live School Idol - three cases in, generally based around lower-stakes crimes but with surprising escalation

Occult Crime Police, a series based on small town paranormality

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane, takes place in a world of magic where rules of spells are often a form of evidence.

I’m going to warn you: There’s a lot that ICE and the administration have gotten away with because of people claiming “No way. Their actions would be too ridiculous if that’s what it was. There must be more to it.”

What we knew already even before scarce details emerged:

• Judges are extremely slow to take deliberate actions, to affirm their position as a fair arbiter that gives all sides chances to respond
• ICE has scarcely ever provided sufficient evidence for many of their arrests, including most of the high-profile ones
• The immigrants involved in this crime showed no indications of being violent or dangerous (even though ICE claimed they were)

So no, I don’t think ICE can be given benefit of doubt in this case. Every officer involved with this one can be arrested - and they can provide their argument when they go on trial.

One track is made from subgrade steel and has a risk of derailing the trolley. The other is filled with explosives and shrapnel. Do you change the track?

If you’re trying to say that a recording of a video game is not considered fair use under copyright law, then I give you the existence of Youtube and Twitch as counter evidence.

So, funny you should say that…

This happened to Persona 5. Atlus felt that they had a legal basis to make copyright claims on the game - in their case, circumstantially around spoilers (I guess because they wanted people to pay $50 to experience the late-game story)

And they walked back, not because lawyers were dismantling their case, but because of public outcry. That basis of public preference is what has encouraged game studios to be friendly with Twitch / YouTube, not because judges would rubber-stamp any fair use “transformative work” argument. That is also why many games have given explicit notices to say “Content notice: Please feel free to share videos of this game wherever you’d like!” etc - as it is a non-default judgment.

So, as strange as it is to say, most uploaded videos of a game is in some murky legal territory. Obviously, most studios don’t care and even prefer them to be shared for visibility - or took the time to include those notices to make it 100% legal. But when the recording came from an internal build, the game itself is “stolen”, in that the person playing it breached either terms of viewing or terms of employment, and then the person re-uploading it is breaching copyright as they had no permission.

If you want to work it through the other way, permission to upload a work is non-default. You need to provide a basis it’s legal, not a basis it’s illegal. In many cases, it’s “I made this”. For 99.9% of video game content, it’s “the developer is okay with it”.

If something that would normally be copyrightable is leaked, then the only people who have legal rights to that work are still the original owners. Anyone taking/sharing it is breaching copyright.

Different case for something someone recorded/created themselves, ex recording police abuse on their phone.

I know some people have a misguided view of “But you didn’t register copyright, it’s not copyrighted”. That’s the opposite of how it works. Rights are granted at time of creation; copyright is a “granted” right as part of sale/viewing managing how something can be shared.

Otherwise, a photographer that takes a picture of a rare Snipe can have that photo “legally” stolen before they make it to a lawyer.

It’s common to think of libraries as Public Book Rental, but recently most have expanded their services quite a lot.

• Rentals of items many households may only need briefly, like tools to find insulation gaps
• Online services that allow for digital renting of comics, manga, audiobooks, and even streaming services like Kanopy that have both old and new movies/TV shows
• Printing services; so that you don’t need to buy an ink cartridge for one printout one month, then another 4 months later when that cartridge has dried
• Tax prep assistance; because fuck Intuit

Libraries were admittedly the reason I started the thread but I’m also curious what other things will be mentioned.

I think at some point in time, I might have been a little bit more susceptible to this. I’ve had a very hard time getting a girlfriend, in part because of a terrible dating sphere - ironically, very much caused by rapists like Andrew Tate. So really, the men frustrated by lack of attention should be blaming Andrew Tate, not worshipping him, but the same situation is true for, say, businesses suffering from government regulation joining lobbying groups, etc.

Loneliness combined with the requisite image of male strength kind of forces people to either admit to being a loser, or “taking charge” in a way that demonizes the rest of the world. Being turned down repeatedly denies them a lot of power, so they’re eager to steal some back in any way they can, even if it’s for a cause that doesn’t actually help them.

As for why I never fell in there; I had good parents, and a financial cushion. If I was always starved for cash, chances are mental stress like that might’ve actually pushed me into very poor choices.

I call this Shadow the Hedgehog darkness. When something wants to look dark and mature from the outset, but it’s really a form of childishness. Same appearance takes effect for a lot of “dark” anime, where people are routinely betraying and causing pain, and “At its heart most of humanity just wants chaos” blah blah.

I do think there’s a lot of horrible stuff in the world, but it’s usually far more banal than anything these edgelords envision. When put face to face, people usually want to be kind to each other. But we’re not put face-to-face often enough.

I tend to use these platforms without feeling I’m “committed”. I’ve abandoned things like Reddit before, and can likely do so again.

But I can see with the organization levels of channels that others are not thinking the same way.

I think every few years I’m reminded this game exists, and go in to try to check it out - and I still have some account issue where my email is in use but it also won’t send a reset code.

Politics is a form of negotiation with other elements of leadership to make a nation’s major policy decisions.

Musk, you never DID get involved in politics. You hired a private army and got involved in criminal intimidation.

I know it’s easy to see Zionists and Christian nationalist psychopaths, and fear the irrationality of so much of the world, but that’s not the full nature of religion - and many of us see much more than that.

I mean, many of us have faith beyond that. I gave $10 to a homeless guy today. I trusted beyond rationality he wasn’t going to spend it on a bottle of scotch. Even when it’s trust in other humans, that’s faith. Even when it doesn’t make sense, trust and faith in people’s empathy, or a higher purpose keeps some people going.

I’m definitely an atheist, but occasionally I’ve seen spots of really nice elements to religion - that have often become less visible in the recent cases of religious extremism.

Actually, that’s Lieutenant Columbo of the LAPD.

Mario!? Who would have thought Nintendo would revive one of their oldest properties?

Would we ever have a chance of tying employee termination to a “reason”? Eg, if the company has decided to end a certain venture, downsize, or is down in revenue, each could be a reason - but if investor releases contradict those, then they could be investigated for it and possibly have the termination reversed, much like many of the recent DOGE firings (because no one in Congress said to downsize)

Probably a vague and incomplete thought.