While absolutely too many things are charged for in gaming today (exp boosts? skip potions? cheat armor that was already fully developed at launch? all ways to get your company on my high seas list)… in the specific case where (1) new content is continuously being developed AND (2) the game is not asking for mandatory spending to continue playing (e.g. no expansion pack to purchase, no subscription fees), I don’t think the concept of charging for in-game content at all is abusive.

If I buy once and then a year later some optional paid cosmetics or other goodies are added, I think that’s permissible. And if I’m in a free to play live service game, I recognize the ongoing dev costs need to get covered somewhere.

I do vastly prefer those companies that give their games TLC and updates for free, and I’m not saying the standard pricing for optional purchases in the modern market are reasonable. But I think the existence of in-game purchases, if not their current state, can make sense sometimes.

Okay but seriously, what is this pedantry even? I wasn’t trying to put forth some all-encompassing thesis of every reason people might pirate, nor do I accept that “needs to be in on all the current memes” is some reason one is entitled to media. And neither point has anything to do with the discussion we’re having with OP.

Bizarre as heck tangent.

Hey man, I’m willing to be honest about what I do. I’m not entitled to consume that media just because it exists, and I’m not going to beat around the bush about that.

I don’t really understand why you’re comparing these two things? One is a group of people refraining from consumption of certain goods for personal reasons - health, ethics, climate impact, whatever. The other is a group of people consuming arguably more goods than they (we tbh) deserve since we’re not willing or able to pay for it for one reason or another.

A better analogy would be comparing piracy to… I don’t know, a veg-eater of whatever type who still enjoys the taste of bacon and resorts to stealing it because it’s better to hurt the meat industry than to pay? It’s a product that person really doesn’t really need and absolutely would have never paid for, yet the person still wants it and obtains it in a way that hurts the industry.

(The analogy doesn’t hold up since stealing physical goods has a different impact than distributing digital copies, but it’s the best I’ve got off the cuff)

E: okay, after reading your other comments, I’m both confident this didn’t address the point you wanted and confident I don’t really understand your deal well enough to do so. Both of these groups have some members who have a problem with industry practices and others who are into their chosen lifestyle for other reasons. It seems like you’ve made some odd decisions about which groups are most prevalent among each and are framing your premise around that, and I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye on it when the premise is Like This.

Or are you trying to say veganism should be more widely accepted because “DRM is wrong” is roughly equivalent to “animal suffering is wrong” re: “industry bad”?

Mhm, that’s one of the “very recent additions” I meant. The other being Memoria, but that’s a sidequest.

Bit of a sensationalized headline, then. They’re almost there, but not “entirely.”

Article only mentions dungeons. Did they add it for story trials too? As far as I know that’s only available for early 4-player trials and a couple of very recent additions. The Chrysalis, Steps of Faith, etc can still wipe a group of human players easily if their mechanics are ignored.

Are they still working on buffing the shit out of the same modern day protagonist as before or what? I only got about halfway through Odyssey (but looked up the ending) and skipped Valhalla.

Again with the fixation on the OP. Let me be more direct: I didn’t ask you.

Everyone has given good advice, but I just want to remind you:

it’s kinda dusty and feels like a bad place for babies

They evolved to do this without much human intervention in all kinds of outdoor conditions. Have their lives been improved by domestication and human watchfulness, yes, absolutely… but they’ll be okay. A little dust will not be a serious hazard.

It’s kind of you to care so much.

Sure, but that was just additional context for my question, which was what this poster feels is the difference between changing owners and buying out a company.

What is the difference, in your mind, between changing owners and buying out a company?

To me they’re the same thing and this is an appropriate reply for OP. Is it just a matter of scale for you? (I think we’d all like bigger examples, but this still works)

Huh. I guess you’re one of those that waits for people to tell you things in the comments, makes weird extrapolations about it, and jumps to conclusions rather than just clicking the OP link and absorbing the information there?

How did you even get that from what I said?

And literally the second tweet the dev made was “they’ve never sent any replies to me” so he’s clearly been trying?

I’m usually more understanding of people missing information, but it took you more time and effort to jump to these conclusions and write a totally incorrect defense of Epic than it would have to just see that the info is right there.

No, there was absolutely no claim that it was an innocent mistake, I’m not sure why that was written there. It’s just a promise to look into it, no more no less.

The procedural content especially is, like, antithetical to the formula.

Agreed; I don’t even understand why procedural generation is popular anymore. It was novel in its first uses, but where devs see convenient shortcuts and marketers see “infinite replayability,” I see “this shit is all going to feel identical after like 5 tries tops.”

Oh look, it’s the skybox from 3 planets ago with the ruin from 2 planets ago and the enemy selection from 5 planets ago. And I think this might be a new shade of blue in the grass, or is that just the skybox casting a weird hue over everything?

Much refreshing, very discover, wow.

Guessing you didn’t see the recent news about Epic doing a big layoff and shedding properties recently?

More like “Owner is convinced the new blanket is not for Rocket.”

It’s a pokemon reference, fainted was correct.

Usually yeah, at least twice, but with Fight Club you can’t even get that since the two central characters were so… divided.

At best you get to re-contextualize the reactions of the characters around them, but that alone was never enough for me, so that’s why this is my pick.

Fight Club. Really good, but just hasn’t ever had the same impact on repeat watches.

With a lot of other “plot twist” movies, you can at least enjoy repeat viewings because you see and enjoy all the signs, and maybe even pick up new ones. But Fight Club, despite being excellent, doesn’t really execute the repeat view appeal very well at all imo.

I haven’t had the new vaccine yet, but after evading the old strain and catching the new one before vaccines were available, I can say… the original Moderna vaccine kicked my ass about equally as hard as covid’s first day did.

(The cough is by far the worst part, but for me that didn’t start until later, so the covid fever day felt completely identical to the post-vaccine day.)