I said I hardly ever buy PC games.
If I’m interested in a PC-only game, I check GOG first, then I check Steam. I will rarely ever pre-order a PC game.
Edit: Also, I appreciate the (probably unintentional) Attack on Titan reference.
ten years at least.
If you haven’t seen the show, don’t look it up. It’s a spoiler.
Honestly, if I can, I always get physical. If I buy a digital copy, there’s no guarantee that the store I bought it from won’t take it back or something like that.
Yeah, it’s still pretty common for big publishers to sell their games physically. Games from smaller devs that self-publish are usually only sold digitally, though they can sometimes end up getting published physically later on if they get popular enough.
Edit: Or were you talking about Best Buy and Amazon selling physical games?
That’s actually a good example of a game I initially pre-ordered but then cancelled because I didn’t like what I saw in later trailers.
If I can, I try to get my pre-orders through Best Buy’s in-store pickup, which means I can simply walk in the store and pickup my order. It’s essentially the same as going in and buying the game on launch day, except I’m guaranteed a copy that I’ve already paid for. If I don’t pre-order, there’s a chance the store either won’t get any copies by release day or they may sell out of them by the time I get there after work.
Also, try as I might, there’s been several times where I haven’t been able to get a copy from Best Buy for one reason or another. That leaves Amazon as my only choice. So, in that case, pre-ordering means I’ll get my package on launch day, typically in the early afternoon.
So, for me, it’s less about the pre-order bonuses and more about the logistics. I want to play a game on the day it comes out. I’ve usually planned to have free time specifically to play the game on release. So pre-ordering means I spend less time looking for a copy of a game I already know 100% that I’ll enjoy and more time actually playing the game.
(I apologize for the really long comment.)
I still pre-order, but I’m very selective. I only pre-order games I am 100% sure I’ll enjoy it.
If something comes up in the months before release that makes me question whether I’ll enjoy the game or not, goodbye pre-order.
There’s also very few companies and franchises I trust enough to pre-order from. They’re mainly the Kingdom Hearts (but only the “main” games; I’m not buying that rhythm game) and Persona (also only the main games, not the spin-offs) series. I also pre-ordered Metaphor (because I trust Atlus as a developer after having played all three games in the modern Persona series, and because I liked what I saw in trailers and what I played in the demo) and am actually enjoying it more than Persona.
To put it another way, I pre-order games from developers and directors I 100% trust to deliver a good game that I will enjoy immensely. Any less than that, and I will not pre-order. Like I said, I’m very selective. If I haven’t played anything from the developer before, I won’t pre-order. If they’ve broken my trust in some way, I won’t pre-order. If I don’t like what I see in the trailers or what I hear in the interviews, I won’t pre-order. If I see that DRM will negatively impact my play experience (which admittedly doesn’t have much of a chance of happening since I rarely play on PC), I won’t pre-order.
and complained on mastodon that it’s stupid design that mod logs are public. [Screenshot]
Maybe they should’ve, you know, looked at the site for 2 minutes before signing up. The modlog is linked at the bottom of every page.
Game still requires either full or limited data collection in order to play. It apparently asks you for permission after the intro cutscene.
Sadly, based on reviews for the game on GOG, while the game is technically DRM-free (in that it doesn’t Emily any of the traditional DRM like Denuvo), it still requests either full or limited data collection.
I say this as a die-hard 3D Zelda fan:
I was soooo boooored in BOTW! There was no current main story. It all happened in the past. You’re basically playing through the climax the entire time. And I hated it. I mainly play Zelda for the story, and this was a very poorly told one.
TOTK was somewhat better because it gave us better characters (I will die for Tulin), a bit better characterization (I enjoyed Zelda getting a lot more fleshed out this time), and a somewhat better story… but there were still way too many reused story beats. That is to say, the story was fleshed out much better, but they still reused the overall story structure from BOTW (get the memories fight the four bosses in the four temples, etc.). They did add a fifth temple and a mid-game story thing, but that’s mostly it. They also didn’t even acknowledge how similar some things were to their counterparts in BOTW (ex. the Malice Gloom), which really bothered me. Also, some stuff just felt… unfinished. Like the reporter bird who, by the end of it all, just ends up pondering and trying to figure himself out… and that’s it. It felt like setup for DLC, but there wasn’t any.
… That was a very unintentionally long rant.
To summarize: hated BOTW; somewhat enjoyed TOTK, though it could’ve been much better.
Fair use has nothing to do with this. Fair use has to do with distributing a copyrighted work. Emulators are (ideally) running completely original code that isn’t copied from the company’s source code. This is why, for example, PCSX2 has you use “your own” PS2 BIOS instead of including it.
The PS2 BIOS is copyrighted, so it’s illegal to distribute it (and it’s never been “fair use” to distribute it). But it’s not illegal to do whatever you want with it (including dump it) as long as you own the console you’re dumping it from and as long as you don’t upload it to the internet for the purpose of distributing it to others. As far as the law is concerned, you bought the console and can do to it whatever you wish, provided you keep it to yourself and don’t distribute it to others.
Games fall under the same category. You’re free to dump your games and play them however you wish, provided you don’t distribute the dumped game to other people. However, companies are also free to implement measures (DRM) to stop you from doing that as much as possible, likely because they know more people would illegally distribute them if they didn’t.
I’ve already found two repos that successfully copied everything over before the main repo disappeared. I even built a working copy of Ryujinx from one of them. I’d probably find several more easily if I tried hard enough.
IIRC, they’re legal as long as they don’t explicitly distribute any of the copyright owner’s own code or files. That’s why, for example, PCSX2 requires you to dump “your own” PS2 BIOS and doesn’t provide any itself. Because PCSX2 doesn’t distribute the PS2 BIOS and because its way of talking to the BIOS doesn’t copy the source code, that emulator is in the clear.
Some modern emulators (ex. Ryujinx) don’t even need BIOS files (or whatever they’re called on Switch) to be able to run games. But they also don’t use Nintendo’s original code to run the game.
Take all this with a grain of salt. I’m saying it from memory.
I’m curious if they still have the most downvoted comment on Reddit.
Edit: Yep.
I’m curious if Sony had properly advertised their account creation requirement much earlier on if people would’ve accepted.
It’s not even that they didn’t properly advertise it. It’s that they changed the requirements completely. Here’s a before and after of one of their FAQ pages:
Movies, ebooks, audiobooks, TV shows, anime, games, PC software (be careful with this one), etc… You just need to know where to look.
It’s at least partially because these games have been available on PC in areas where PSN isn’t available. So people bought them, not knowing that, eventually, PSN would be required.
What’s more, Sony has also removed the game from sale on PC where PSN isn’t available. So now some people can’t even buy the game on PC anymore. And people who do own the game are left with two choices: violate Sony’s own TOS to create a PSN account for a country they don’t live in (something that, ironically, some of Sony’s own support reps have supposedly suggested) or attempt to refund the game.
It’s also worth noting that some countries actually require you to own a PlayStation console to even be able to create a PSN account. You have to create an account via the console. It’s not available on a web browser. One country in particular that I’ve heard this is an issue in is Ukraine.
Ironically, Microsoft would later remove Cortana itself in an update.
Asking stuff like that is always a good idea, IMO. It could be the difference between a successful Linux install and a very expensive paperweight.
… Don’t ask me how to install it, though. I’ve only tried Ubuntu as a dual-boot, and that was several years ago.
OP didn’t mention games that have Denuvo in them. They simply mentioned pre-ordering games.
And before anyone says this is a post about Denuvo, OP’s comment was phrased in such a way that it could sound like, “Why would anyone pre-order games in the first place in 2024, regardless of whether or not it has Denuvo?”