Hot take means something else here. In common usage usually only the first half applies, that is, “piece of deliberately provocative commentary”

Maybe folks just like symmetry.

If your comments are going to gum up the thread with a segment that they don’t think will have any effect, what’s a few more to match?

Do current versions typically get EOL announcements? I wouldn’t expect it to make sense to announce EOL that early unless it’s a product on some sort of cadenced release schedule

For me it also happens constantly with things like the crossword, which obviously can’t be listening.

Links between folks is part of it, but a lot is just ordinary coincidence.

Maybe English (Malta) if that’s an option

Also it’s Valve. People choose the projects they work on and are free to start their own projects.

I’d be a little surprised if there weren’t several earnest attempts to make 3.

It doesn’t look like a hardware issue. Yes, the less powerful hardware is what forced graphical changes, but it looks like an art direction problem.

The changes mostly fail to capture the essence of the original design. The characters look like they were ripped from the SIMs.

No one is expecting the same lighting, textures, or poly counts, but they do expect something that looks like Mortal Combat. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation.

You’re right that this may be a budgeting issue of sorts, but if they can’t set aside enough resources to make it look like some sort of Mortal Combat game, then maybe they shouldn’t have made the port.