If you need to clarify that your characters are of legal age…

It’s pretty clear this was their marketing strategy from the start. Just play the “we’re a victim of evil valve” card and suck up some sympathy pre-order buys.

Reminder that there was about 5 devs + some outside contractors that made amnesia the dark decent. An excellent horror game. Made by a very small dev team.

These guys just suck. And then they want to cry about how it’s not their fault they suck.

And each dev is free to make their own font. But if they want to uses someone else’s, it stands to reason they might have to pay that someone else.

If you draw a really cool painting. That doesn’t mean I’m allowed to then just scan your artwork, print it on bottles and sell them.

The problem here is no one had the foresight to realise it’s a pretty big issue when you’re leasing the rights to a specific font for a specific period of time, what happens after the lease expires?

If they did, the contractual language would be different.

It’s not a problem in this sector alone. It’s a problem, in many sectors, but no one seems to learn from others mistakes.

I skimmed through this, and some other stories from the same “news author”. Either the author, Matt Wales, is actually bipolar and needs to seek treatment, or he just angles his articles about the given topic based on whichever third party threw him some chump change to buy a coffee.

I’ve never seen someone be so anti-steam, and pro-steam at the same time. One article is praising steam as the best thing that happened to humanity, the next one is talking about how terrible they are and how much they just want to censor games and kill studios they don’t like.

One article is praising Nintendo as the greatest gaming company ever, and the next is talking about how evil they are regarding the palworld lawsuit.

I know publications have their bias, but at least most of them are somewhat consistent in their bias…

I did find this comment under one of his articles regarding this game. (Yes, he’s made three articles about this game, one after the other), and I thought it summed up my short experience with eurogamer. (most other comments were very anti-steam, but that’s to be expected since everyone else that threw up in their mouths quickly clicked off the article)

Deejay#4435 1 day, 10 hours ago

15 years ago, Steam was a curated walled garden. Every game was manually approved for sale, and if they didn’t like your game and didn’t think it was good enough, then you didn’t get to sell on there. It was gutting when my game was sold on XBLIG, GOG, Green Man Gaming, and some other stores that I can’t remember, but Steam just gave us a flat-out “no”.

To be fair, the game was pretty crap (Eurogamer gave it an 8/10).

Extraction shooters “needs” PvE-only mode as much as Dark Souls “needs” an easy-mode.

It’s not a case of if they should offer exclusive modes. But you should get what you paid for. And you’re paying for PvPvE extraction shooter. If they add a PvE-only mode down the line, fantastic, but their main focus, should be to create the best PvPvE experience they can in accordance to their vision of what they want the game to be.

No matter how much you playtest your game, there’s gonna be “unexpected features”, balance has to be tweaked, exploits have to be removed. They’re gonna have their hands full for at least 1 year after launch before they can even think about adding additional modes.

Probably because a lot of nintendo games are speedrun on emulators. Since it can be difficult to attain region specific hardware and cartridges that are optimal for speedrunning, they resort to emulators so the barrier of entry isn’t unreasonable.

And we all know how Nintendo feels about emulators.

Not to say it explains how it benefits Nintendo. But it explains why they’re going this route.

Payment processors, such as PayPal. Are private companies and have a wide discretion to decide who they do, and don’t do business with. Just like you as a private person have a wide discretion to decide who you do, and don’t do business with.

A baker has every right to refuse a customer that wants a cake with a swastika on it. So the same rules have to apply to PayPal being allowed to refuse to do business with certain industries. They are not your bank.

If, it was some “religious organization” that got their hands in PayPal. Why would they only stop authorizing payments in certain regions? Wouldn’t it then be applied everywhere?

The fact that it was only in specific regions. Makes it far more likely that it’s due to the legislation in those regions regarding incest. Rather than a moral decision from corporate PayPal to stop authorizing payments to Steam.

Steam did not remove every porn game. They removed those belonging to a very specific category.

I’m not missing the point where payment processor aren’t police. But they still need to follow legislation in the region they operate.

First of, it’s not “Point in case”, it’s “Case in point”.

Second, I can honestly say. I have no idea how many payment processors does or does not authorize payments regarding legal porn for various websites. Feel free to link an article or source that investigates that particular topic.

If you look at the post. They claim “Possibly related to PayPal because people in certain regions have not been able to use it to pay on Steam.”

If this was PayPal taking a stand on a corporate level against porn games on steam. Why would only certain regions be affected instead of everyone?

The obvious answer, is that it’s only certain regions, because of their legislation. If PayPal wish to do business in their region. They have to follow their laws for those customers.

Sure. If that’s your opinion regarding art that’s ok. We don’t have to argue about that. It’s subjective and will change from person to person.

Regardless if something has utility or not. The point remains the same. You often want things you yourself is unable to create to an acceptable standard.

I’m not an AI fanatic. I do not believe AI makes everything better. But I do believe it can make certain things easier if used correctly. And I also think it’s a big difference between someone sloppily making an entire story arc with AI, rather than someone that uses AI to fill in some of blanks.

And again. This is all subjective. But just some food for thought.

Clothes have both utility and artistic expression. But do you really care if a person made your pants, as long as they look good, are comfortable and of high quality?

I’m not trying to change your mind. Just explaining my reasoning behind my opinion.

I want to include paintings as decoration on my walls where I live. But I don’t want to paint them.

I want a bed to sleep in, but I don’t want to build it.

I want food to eat. But I don’t want to grow it myself, nor would I like to raise, feed, care, and slaughter the animals I eat.

So… Maybe I want some trivia, an easter egg if you’d like, about something weird and funny. Despite not wanting to write it myself.

The article specifically mentions PayPal.

There needs to be a lawsuit against Visa because PayPal stoped authorizing payments to steam in certain regions?

You are still refusing to acknowledge that regional legislation can easily prohibit purchases from sources that facilitate illegal products.

I have never heard of a case where payment processors refuse to authorize payment of a legal product because they don’t like the product.

Do you comprehend how big of a problem it is if a payment processor can’t authorize payments to steam? That’s not something they do for the fun of it. It’s because there are legal hurdles. Everyday they can’t authorize payments is lost revenue, and risk of losing customers.

I’m sorry, but you will just have to source your incest porn games from somewhere else.

I’m not even sure those titles are legal everywhere.

Allowing digital purchase of illegal products can very well be criminal for the payment processor in certain regions.

I mean just look at those titles. “Incest daughter - BDSM”.

Here’s what i think is likely. For one reason or another, they get excessive refund/chargeback requests regarding these types of titles and decided to act as they don’t think it’s profitable.

I don’t think they care what so ever what you buy, as long as it’s profitable for them.

I didn’t say anyone would hire a writer that hates writing. You keep asking rhetorical questions about things that no one brought up.

Why are you making a narrative video game without a writer

I answered this already in the comment you replied to…

People can be passionate and want to create things despite not being adept at every single aspect involved. You keep creating scenarios in direct opposition to what I’ve explained and then tell me your scenario doesn’t make sense.

Why someone would need story-driven pieces of prose in PacMan? I don’t know buddy. You tell me. I never suggested anything of the sorts.

I’ve had great discussions with other people. But you seem intent on bad faith arguments and straw-manning every chance you get.

None of the justifications make any real world sense to me.

It’s very telling you see it as “justifications”, as if I would have to justify my opinion on the matter. It is what it is based on my experience. I have no doubt, there are a lot of things that make no real world sense to you.

But not everyone thinks that writing that kind of stuff is fun. Not everyone enjoys that part of creativity. I know lots of people that love the creativity of solving problems with code. but writing reports is the most boring thing in the world.

If you have people in your studio that are fantastic and love writing that kind of stuff, that’s great! I’m sure the quality of that is noticeable. I genuinely do believe that when it comes to art in any shape or form. A skilled human could do a way better job than any A.I.

But I can also see a world where you work in a smaller studio, you’re a tight team of a few really great and passionate programmers, but writing literature just isn’t your thing, it’s not what you enjoy, it’s like if someone asks you to dance. Looks great when others do it but you just feel awkward and would rather melt through the floor so no one has to see you.

But that’s the thing. It’s just opinion. No right or wrong. Just different thoughts on a subjective topic. You would probably enjoy writing up something like that. Me, I’d love to give a few ideas to get inspiration going. But to actually write it all up in an interesting way is just not something I would enjoy. And it would take forever…

I’ll just reply with my 2 cents on your two points. This is the kind of topic where there isn’t a right or wrong. Just different opinions and people thinking differently. I hope you have a nice vacation and with that, here goes.

I know from personal experience that what you would like to do, does not often co-exist with the time you’re allowed to spent on it. I would have loved to refine so much, add better function, create a more robust framework to allow expansion of future functionality. But the machine is going out to a show in 4 weeks. It doesn’t need to be refined, it doesn’t need to be perfect. But it does need to work and be functional.

I did not use A.I for that project. Along with it, I had to create a UI that worked on a touch-screen. I had never done anything of the sorts before. I did study up and learn the basics in order to create the UI. Honestly, using A.I did not even cross my mind. It wasn’t a question of wanting or not wanting. It literally did not even occur to me that it’s something I could have used. But thinking back. If I had, maybe I would have saved a few hours and could have used that to finish some “almost done” functions.

Everyone is different, and I’m sure most devs are super interested in the details, they’re just, different details. The detail of certain text might not be as important to a dev as the detail of a certain framework and building it in a specific way to allow for future implementation of… whatever.

I’ll end it with, I’m sure there are devs of your description as well, that would rather die than let some machine taint their vision of what their project should be.

I suppose I see it from a very practical point of view. Rather than an artistic point of view. But I do understand the concern. And should quality start to suffer as a result, I’m sure my opinion would change.

We are not going to get anywhere debating a made up scenario. And what glyphs would or wouldn’t do instead of text is subjective. Maybe the game isn’t centered around ancient egypt?? I’m sure someone can find 1 million and 1 reasons as to why something might be text. But that’s not the topic.

I didn’t claim more = better. But I do think gen-AI has a place in some areas. You don’t have to agree.

In my view. It’s a tool. Tools can be misused. Tools can be useful.

If your scenario is “the vase is empty” then yeah… I don’t think anyone is using prompts that take longer than typing the description.

But in the case of, let’s say a scientific report on an alien encounter and resulting dissection then a prompt will for sure give you way faster inspiration than thinking of it all yourself.

You may not like that. That’s ok. But I would not have a problem with that.

Why do we need a bunch of unrelated text and images of the game stands fine without them?

Classic case of things you don’t notice because they’re there. But you will notice their absence.

Don’t put the blame on generative A.I for filler content. I’ve seen Loren ipsum as filler long before generative A.I was even invented. It’s always down to the devs to make sure what they put out is good.

But generative A.I absolutely make it easier to create the filler content, so you can focus on other aspects.

You’re putting out a lot of “what if”. If my grandma had wheels she’d be a bike and if my mom had balls she’d be my dad.

This has nothing to do with gen-A.I. so someone has lots of important lore that contradicts other lore? That’s their fault for misusing their tools. Not a fault of the tool.

It’s not like they would suddenly do a better job just because they didn’t use gen-A.I, they would still do a shitty job if they can’t pay attention to details.

It’s fine if you just don’t want any gen-A.I in what you purchase. That’s an opinion, a stance and I respect that. I just personally am not bothered if used correctly. I’m just complaining that their categories of gen-A.I doesn’t allow me to make that distinction.