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"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

The proof is in the proverbial pudding. "Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become [Steam's] largest market in Europe," Newell said.

From: http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

One of my favourite gaming authors has an insightful appraisal of Denuvo and how effective it is. His conclusion is that it's already proven all the publisher's claims about piracy to be lies and in doing so has made itself redundant.

If you want to learn more about what Denuvo is and how it works from a games programmer and (good) author, then it's well worth a read.

Here's the main thrust of the article:
> On the other hand, I stand by the point I made four years ago: Denuvo is so good it proved it was useless.
>
> For years, consumers complained about intrusive DRM. It locks you out of your legitimately purchased product.
> It creates bugs and slowdowns. It’s a hassle. It makes it impossible to run the game years later when the servers
> go down. It punishes legitimate customers while doing nothing to inconvenience the pirates.
>
> In response to these concerns, publishers would tell us that strong DRM was necessary because of rampant piracy.
> Piracy was blamed for high prices, or for a refusal to port games to the PC. Developers claimed that between 90%
> and 95% of players were using pirated copies. This led publishers to make absurd claims that game prices would be
> lower or that they wouldn’t need to close so many studios if there weren’t so many dang pirates,. The assumption was
> that if 90% of players are pirates, then games would make ten times as much money if we could stop piracy. All those
> pirates would run out and buy legitimate copies and it would usher in a golden age of low prices and profitability.
>
> Tomb Raider 2013 pre-dates Denuvo. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider were both protected
> by Denuvo. And yet we haven’t heard about any miraculous sales spike that caused the second two games to massively
> outsell the first. If Denuvo makes any difference at all, it must be very slight. Is it even enough to offset the loss of
> potential customers? If Denuvo was actually making a measurable difference in terms of sales, wouldn’t all games be
> using it by now?

https://www.escapistmagazine.c...

PayPal had a regular pattern of "freezing" accounts that they, on their own, determined were "suspicious". This allowed them to keep the money in an interest bearing account that they collected or even refuse to turn it over at all because in the US PayPal was not regulated like a bank.

That practice came into clear focus when they attempted that stunt with Markus "Notch" Persson of Minecraft fame when they froze his account of over $750k. However, because Markus was from Sweden and Swedish banking rules did apply they had to release the funds.

The key here is to not forget, at least in the US, PayPal is NOT regulated like a bank and if they make a random decision to freeze your funds there's no agency you can go to for help.

So you are citing a fictional character for what is normal, typical office behavior.

Here are some real-world examples:

(1) A post written last month states that, "I work in a workplace where ... dirty talking, sexual innuendo, double entendres and joking sexual invites are part of the every day occurrences."

(2) A post written in 2003 that states that, "The relationship between colleagues is great, not only professional but personal, too. When we talk, we can say dirty words ..., tell naughty jokes, and sometimes even flirt. Both sexes enjoy them"

(3) A page with some people trading "dirty jokes" to tell at work.

(4) A poll conducted last year which states that 44% of adults feel that "dirty jokes weren’t a form of sexual harassment" in the workplace.

Honest amusing video reviews

He speaketh the truth.

Ah yes Anita Sarkeesian. She bullied so many people by daring to talk about her opinions of videogames on youtube. Even worse she harassed the hell out of gamers by viciously having her kickstarter campaign get massively overfunded.

No one said feminists were smart. But considering that she's doxed people, yes indeed she should.

Would you mind waiting until I have a nice bucket of popcorn before starting?

Would you like to eat your crow now or later?

There is no central command, no inner circle to infiltrate.

That's the theory, but in practice it's actually a small number of people directing the group. For example, most members are script kiddies who download clients like Low Orbit Ion Cannon to participate in DDoS attacks. The attacks are directed by the few anons with some actual skill - the app simply fetches a file with a URL in it and starts hammering away.

If you read the infamous IRC logs from Anonymous IRC channels and the archives of posts on 4chan, you can see that it's actually just a handful of people, lots of sock puppets and a legion of useful idiots who joined in our of shear ignorance.

Oh look a troll with a Facebook logon!

If I paid for a product that did XYZ and then a few months after I purchased it the manufacturer said "If you want to keep using feature Z you must upgrade the firmware. Oh and by the way the new firmware removes feature X." I am well within my rights to be butthurt whether I use X or not. And I have never even attempted to mod my PS3.

BTW it was the Air Force that built the cluster.

Right, so Randi did it (if you can find those tweets). What about the rest? Just because one person is an arsehole doesn't mean everybody vaguely related to them is

Sure can find them here. and another instance here. Or her harassing Anne Rice, and leaving fake book reviews. Pretty good for a anti-harassment person, she does tell people to kill themselves and light themselves on fire often too. Of course there seems to be a pro-"no bad tactics, only targets" mentality among the majority of anti-GG people including making shit up. That's from Bob Chipman by the way, there's also people like Sam Biddle who's harassed and threatened to call a kids employer to get them fired, and said the phrase "bring back bullying." You can't forget the general crazy either.

And of course you can find a list of various people who've either doxed or harassed pro-GG people here. And you can see how someone falls into the cult mentality of wanting to be a "good feminist" here Just a list of anti-GG harassment and of course this beauty where Adem Sessler and Jim Sterling come out pro-doxing Well maybe it's nothing, or maybe there's a lot of people out there with serious mental problems who believe that lashing out is the only way to cope with their own problems.

Maybe way out of band of what you asked but I'm tired, so fuck it.

The most famous example is Valve corporation. They released their employee handbook a couple years back detailing what they had done to achieve their organization state. The one that stuck out the most to me was that Gabe Newell stated that bossless had to be bossless which had to include the CEO. Its seems like the CEO didn't quite get that memo as he made sure to keep himself presiding over bonuses and raises in the company as others in the comments have pointed out.

Even this implementation was not immune to criticism as reports have been made by former employees that its very hard to get anything done because there is no one to set hard goals and priorities. If you want to get a project going then you have to convince your coworkers to join in. This apparently lead to an interoffice popularity contest with cliques forming around certain individuals, and the rest of the people being left out to dry because they didn't have the same social clout.

Here is an interview with a former Valve employee at the escapist:

http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

It seems like the general culture is positive, but only due to a lot of conscious effort on the part of the people.

Because I'm bored...

Sony
http://www.techhive.com/articl...

Microsoft
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

Nintendo
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://toucharcade.com/2014/05...

First, you do crowdfunding and maybe even some crowdsourcing. At some point, you may want to do some early access. Put as much or as little DRM as you want, but it shouldn't be illegal to crack it. Spyro 3 had notable DRM. [1][2] Get your game on GamersGate, GOG, and/or Steam. Steam has some early access features, and puts reviews right on the software's store page. Also, there are many websites that resell Steam keys. There are software bundle sites for when sales are lagging. Not that popular, but product placement, like a racing game having actual ads on billboard can happen. Then there are the free-to-play, pay to unlock shiny objects, MMOs. Skylanders and amiibo and Disney Infinity show another way to earn money. When trademarks actually involve a confusion of source the confusion of source should be prosecuted, but putting a large swish that looks like Nike's logo as a decoration on a shirt should not be prosecuted, but on a tag that is designed to prove source should. I was reviewing my philosophy of key generators, but if you go to the company's website, like Steam or Playstation Network to redeem a key, that should be prosecutable as you are misrepresenting your situation to those sites. Now that may sound like EULA's but you are usually presented with a EULA after you already bought the software, and there is some room to argue that the person who clicks on accept might be liable, but the people he enabled to use a copy of it without seeing the EULA didn't agree to it, so are not liable. Now that can be gotten around by cracking the installer too, but that means that there's more time to sell your product without the pressure of unauthorized copies.

Puns aside about consoles insomnia. Wasting $100s of dollars of you power bill every year is not a serious concern for the video game industry. In 2008 the NRDC, the US EPA with their EnergyStarWalmart beat the console industry about the head and neck and the video game industry managed to sandbag any regulation that even a GE or Sylvania could not for lighting. The reason is simple sloth and incompetence. Simply put the problem is not energy used during game play , but the lack of a meaningful sleep mode. This lack of sleep mode is driven by poor APIs to book mark game status and put the console into sleep mode. The other energy driver is the console companies instant on collecting detailed data of how you use your device and uploading it when you are not playing plus forcing add and other "content" down to your console when it should be sleeping.

Puns aside about consoles insomnia. Wasting $100s of dollars of you power bill every year is not a serious concern for the video game industry. In 2008 the NRDC, the US EPA with their EnergyStarWalmart beat the console industry about the head and neck and the video game industry managed to sandbag any regulation that even a GE or Sylvania could not for lighting. The reason is simple sloth and incompetence. Simply put the problem is not energy used during game play , but the lack of a meaningful sleep mode. This lack of sleep mode is driven by poor APIs to book mark game status and put the console into sleep mode. The other energy driver is the console companies instant on collecting detailed data of how you use your device and uploading it when you are not playing plus forcing add and other "content" down to your console when it should be sleeping.

Zero Punctuation from The Escapist and Ben Croshaw is fucking hilarious - these are short, fast paced game reviews done in flash animation if you're not familiar.

Red Letter Media for Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, and of course Mr. Plinkett. These are movie reviews, commentary and sometimes satire from movie buffs. The most well known (and the reason I still regularly check back) are the scathing several hours long multi-part dissections of the Star Wars Prequels there are some for a few other things as well but the eloquence and insight in the Star Wars Prequel diatribes is really something spectacular and worth watching (it will put in to words what you probably felt).

Even further removed from blogs... Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic where two different ventures from the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 continue doing what they did sans puppets. I prefer Rifftrax of the 2, and collect them both.

Key word was "successful."

Square Enix also released two sequels to FFXIII and that was a complete flop too. That they're releasing an expansion doesn't show that it's a success, it shows that Square Enix doesn't understand the sunk cost fallacy.

As I understand it, the "rerelease" of FFXIV was essentially just another New Game Enhancement like what Sony did to Star Wars Galaxies: they completely changed the game, ripping out the parts that people enjoyed, and copying World of Warcraft to the point where you're better off playing the real thing than what's essentially an anime knock-off. There were some interesting ideas in 1.0 (the ability to play the game as just a gatherer or a crafter without doing any combat, the ability to mix and match class abilities, the ability to choose your own stat growth) that were basically completely neutered in the new version to turn it into anime WOW.

Like every MMO since WOW, FFXIV is yet another example of how no one has been able to duplicate Blizzard's success. It's yet another in a long line of failed MMOs which makes just enough money to keep the servers running but not enough to grow the genre or attract new players.

For any of my favourite sites that I see using Flash for video or audio, I feedback to them asking when they are moving to the HTML5 tags.

I asked The Escapist a similar question, and the reply was to the effect "Subscribers have access to our entire library in high-quality HTML5. We accept major credit cards. Adobe Flash Player is required only for free viewing." (Source)

Ah, naivete. Any time I feel like humans are smart, I just come here and read, and I'm cured.

Just skimming through your post, I see that you've incorrectly assumed the following:
1) That those illegal downloads represented lost sales. Haven't the RIAA and MPAA taught you anything about the faultiness of that logic?

2) That the people torrenting the software were potential customers to begin with. When it comes to B2B software, which is what is being discussed here, there are established channels for procuring demos or trials of software. You don't torrent it unless you never had any plans to be a customer.

3) That a competitor even existed. Small software niches, like the one being described, oftentimes only have one player, since the space is too small to support multiple competitors. With a $50,000 per seat price for software developed by a small company, it wouldn't be surprising if they were the only player in that space.

4) That the crippling of pirated copies results in any sort of meaningful backlash. If the recent examples of pirated games being crippled are anything to go by, people are finding them "hilarious", rather than being upset.

5) That pirates of B2B software complain about the quality of the software. If you just got done pirating a $50,000 copy of software, which is what is being discussed here, the last thing you'd do is trumpet the fact that you've done so by complaining about it to anyone at all. In the case of games, these sorts of techniques are being used to get pirates to out themselves.

Nice try. "Thanks to gamergate", three women have been forced from their homes from threats that law enforcement officers found credible enough to suggest that. Trying to pretend that gamergate has done anything but abuse people defines you as - at best - an imbecile.

It causes you physical pain that few here buy into the "mysogyny and harrassment" narrative, doesn't it?

The cover-up didn't work.
The week-long gaming press news blackout and ongoing user comment/forum censorship (in former free-speech strongholds such as 4chan and Reddit, no less) didn't work.
The coordinated, ongoing smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Over" articles hasn't worked.
The endless train of embarrassingly desperate counter-hashtags hasn't worked.
The Wikipedia and Nightline hit pieces only damage those outlets' credibility for short-term effect.
The SVU episode . . . hahaahhahaha WOW, where do I even begin . . . it is progapanda that couldn't be more precisely crafted to the corrupt press's specifications (i.e. "narrative"), and broadcast to a national non-gamer audience, much of which likely accepted it as reality. It was a wake-up call to quite a few previously unaware or neutral parties, especially game devs*.

Eurogamer is the latest games journalism site to update its ethics policy in the wake of Gamergate, joining PC Gamer, IGN, the Escapist, and of course Kotaku/Gawker (though in Gawker's case, they put up more of a fight and the Gamergate pressure to be ethical had to be routed through the FTC).

Gamergate also got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him:
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi...
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20...
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-...

Ask yourself how much of this you've seen reported in the corrupt media (which at this point, sadly, clearly includes Slashdot). Of course none of it ever had a chance of appearing in the Wikipedia article. Nothing enrages anti-Gamergaters more than someone covering both sides of the story, and that should tell you something.

Their side thrives only in an environment of propaganda and censorship, and evaporates when faced with integrity and transparency. They prove the need for Gamergate every time they write an article based on the assumption that terrorism and child porn^W^W^W^W misogyny and harassment have become the root passwords to the Constitution^W^W journalistic ethics.


* like Mark Kern and Ken Levine, who had nothing to do with Gamergate, but were so disgusted by the SVU episode that they publically called on the gaming press to stop slandering gamers. Both were instantly swarmed by anti-GG on twitter, and VG24/7 ran a hit piece on Kern without even getting his side of the story, and refused even after he specifically asked them. I think Eurogamer saw exactly what happened to Kern, and it's no accident that tha

I could care less about HL3.

Obligatory PSA regarding your butchered idiom.

On topic: Completely agree. In the Zero Punctuation review of The Orange Box Yahtzee observed that:

Episode 2 does suffer a little from being the middle child, there's no real beginning and no real end so the story tends to meander around and it's difficult to shake the feeling that we're just killing time before the next episode wraps it all up.

Over 7 years later we're still waiting... :(

The cover-up didn't work.
The week-long gaming press news blackout and ongoing user comment/forum censorship (in former free-speech strongholds such as 4chan and Reddit, no less) didn't work.
The coordinated, ongoing smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Over" articles hasn't worked.
The doxxing and harassment of pro-GG folks hasn't worked.
The endless train of embarrassingly desperate counter-hashtags hasn't worked.
The Wikipedia and Nightline hit pieces only damage those outlets' credibility for short-term effect.
The SVU episode . . . hahaahhahaha WOW, where do I even begin . . . it is progapanda that couldn't be more precisely crafted to the corrupt press's specifications (i.e. "narrative"), and broadcast to a national non-gamer audience, much of which likely accepted it as reality. It was a wake-up call to quite a few previously unaware or neutral parties, especially game devs*.

Eurogamer is the latest games journalism site to update its ethics policy in the wake of Gamergate, joining PC Gamer, IGN, the Escapist, and of course Kotaku/Gawker (though in Gawker's case, they put up more of a fight and the Gamergate pressure to be ethical had to be routed through the FTC). And there are probably more I'm forgetting.

Gamergate also got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him:
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi...
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20...
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-...

Ask yourself how much of this you've seen reported in the corrupt media (which at this point, sadly, clearly includes Slashdot). Of course none of it ever had a chance of appearing in the Wikipedia article. Nothing enrages anti-Gamergaters more than someone covering both sides of the story, and that should tell you something.

Their side thrives only in an environment of propaganda and censorship, and evaporates when faced with integrity and transparency. They prove the need for Gamergate every time they write an article based on the assumption that terrorism and child porn^W^W^W^W misogyny and harassment have become the root passwords to the Constitution^W^W journalistic ethics.


* like Mark Kern and Ken Levine, who had nothing to do with Gamergate, but were so disgusted by the SVU episode that they publically called on the gaming press to stop slandering gamers. Both were instantly swarmed by anti-GG on twitter, and VG24/7 ran a hit piece on Kern without even getting his side of the story, and refused even after he specifically asked them. I think Eurogamer saw exactly what happened to Kern, and it's no accident that that their policy explicitly includes a "right of reply" (perhaps a subtle message that they won't similarly treat game devs like shit).

I would say that illegal activity is a large part of it, but I do think it serves an important purpose. If everyday buying of bitcoins wasn't more expensive than using my credit card on a website(try buying bitcoins online it's expensive) I would be all over it. Private transaction without the worry of someone stealing my credit information. Someone online can only fleece me out of what I put in without linking to an account with a credit card of bank account attached. There are other options in this area though. Also while I'm not into illegal activities I don't necessarily want people tracking my every movement online.

Say if I had wanted to donate money to wikileaks back when credit cards were rejected. I'm not doing anything illegal by support that site but my credit card wouldn't be accepted. Paypal will hose you on anything if you aren't careful just look at what happened to Notch when minecraft started pulling in mad cash.

I don't want to be limited just because someone THINKS I'm doing something illegal.

http://rt.com/usa/214007-datac...
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

On the other hand, sometimes being overly critical can itself be a good meta-scoring metric. For instance, if Yahtzee can't find anything bad to say about a game, it's usually because it's not shit.

The cover-up didn't work.
The week-long gaming press news blackout and user comment/forum censorship didn't work.
The coordinated, ongoing smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Over" articles hasn't worked.
The doxxing and harassment of pro-GG folks hasn't worked.
The endless train of embarrassingly desperate counter-hashtags hasn't worked.
The Wikipedia and Nightline hit pieces only damage those outlets' credibility for short-term effect.

PC Gamer is the latest games journalism site to update its ethics policy in the wake of Gamergate, joining IGN, the Escapist, and of course Kotaku/Gawker (though in Gawker's case, they put up more of a fight and the Gamergate pressure to be ethical had to be routed through the FTC). And there are probably more I'm forgetting.

Gamergate also got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him:
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi...
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20...
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-...

Ask yourself how much of this you've seen reported in the corrupt media (which at this point, sadly, clearly includes Slashdot). Of course none of it ever had a chance of appearing in the Wikipedia article. Nothing enrages anti-Gamergaters more than someone covering both sides of the story, and that should tell you something.

Their side thrives only in an environment of propaganda and censorship, and evaporates when faced with integrity and transparency. They prove the need for Gamergate every time they write an article based on the assumption that terrorism and child porn^W^W^W^W misogyny and harassment have become the root passwords to the Constitution^W^W journalistic ethics.

The cover-up didn't work.
The week-long gaming press news blackout and user comment/forum censorship didn't work.
The coordinated, ongoing smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are over" articles hasn't worked.
The doxxing and harassment of pro-GG folks hasn't worked.
The endless train of embarrassingly desperate counter-hashtags hasn't worked.
The Wikipedia and Nightline hit pieces only destroy those outlets' credibility for short-term effect.

Last week PC Gamer became the latest games journalism site to update its ethics policy in the wake of Gamergate, joining IGN, the Escapist, and of course Kotaku/Gawker (though in Gawker's case, they put up more of a fight and the Gamergate pressure to be ethical had to be routed through the FTC). And there are probably more I'm forgetting.

Gamergate also got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him:
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi... [twitter.com]
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20... [gamepolitics.com]
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-... [zenofdesign.com]

Ask yourself how much of this you've seen reported in the corrupt media (which at this point, sadly, clearly includes Slashdot). The anti-GG side thrives only in an environment of propaganda and censorship, and evaporates when faced with integrity and transparency. They prove the need for Gamergate every time they write an article based on the assumption that terrorism and child porn^W^W^W^W misogyny and harassment have become the root passwords to the Constitution^W^W journalistic ethics.

They write opinion. That's what game journalists do. If you don't like it, don't start a shitstorm that just gets all the nuts on every side riled up, because it is anti-productive.

The "gamers are dead" article was shit. But if you actually read it article, "gamers" as defined in that article are "dead." Why would you want to cater to (paraphrasing here) Cheetos-huffing, Asperger's syndrome, basement-dwelling troubled children, since that isn't what "gamers" are anymore, if they ever were? "Gamers" are every person that (shock) enjoys playing games. No, you don't get to threaten people because you don't think the same, but you can have a different opinion.

I agree. Two weeks ago there was a submission in the firehose about the DRM endangering SSDs by incurring thousands of disk writes per minute. Why does the summary take the time to mention the DRM without mentioning this issue?
http://slashdot.org/submission...

Here's a good critical writeup of some red flags in the game that might be harbingers of much worse things to come:
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

Not really been wondering, we already got to witness it first-person in HalfLife! Just watch out when you notice any resonance cascade...

Well, we're gonna be fine as CERN has Gordon Freeman working for them. He even got a crowbar

I haven't seen any of this; do you perhaps have a link?

easily found:
http://theralphretort.com/game...

Lots of information there. They're very brazen about it because no one in the mainstream ever calls them on it.

They don't even use sock puppet accounts. They do this under their own names.

I did see that one (only once though); at least the idiot in question apologised...

They only did that when it hit mainstream and there are so many other examples of the same thing I don't know where to start.

Do you have any links about these?

KingOfPol was sent a knife in the mail
http://www.reddit.com/r/Kotaku...

Milo Yiannopoulos was sent a syringe full of an unknown fluid
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

I have links for everything else if you want it. It is very easy to find if you look for it. The media is doing a complete snow job on the issue. It is so striking that we're seeing this:

http://techraptor.net/content/...

You might also find this interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

They're lying.

Look at this in regards to Anita:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Then watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That is colbert from the comedy central show basically giving her a puff piece. Now he isn't a real journalist but you can see the pervasiveness of the media blackout on the issue.

Note that comments are disabled on that video. Look at his other videos... comments are permitted.

This is what gamer gate is about to a large extent. Systematic media corruption and censorship. They're lying to everyone.

Does it matter? Is it a shit issue about a shit community that no one cares about? That is relative to you. However, they are doing it and there is nothing to stop them from doing it anywhere else.

They actually banned someone right in front of Julian Assange. Which had him join in the issue on our side as well.

Everyone that opposes, questions, or criticizes these people is labeled a bigot out of hand.

There are so many god damn links. If you are really curious, I can put you in touch with other people that will tell you themselves. No one in this is hiding. The media outright refuses to interview anyone but the anti side. And when we invite the anti side to come onto channels and talk to us they refuse.

They won't talk to us. They won't debate. They won't explain themselves.

All they do is lie, make threats, and trick idiots into backing them.

Just saying if consoles aren't powerful enough to make you happy, well there are these new fangled PC things with a shit ton of CPU, RAM, and other goodies and gamers like me who spend way too much money on them to play games. Of course if you keep taking the attitude that we are all pirates, releasing shitty ports and so on don't be surprised if we aren't so interested in your products

http://www.escapistmagazine.co....

Some is not a lot of people. It's probably not big enough for publishers to care, nor cater specially for - because it just costs more money to do than they'll get back (ROI).

Which is exactly the draw of free software. It lets companies that use software meet needs that the publisher refuses to meet for ROI reasons.

It's like why PC ports of AAA games are so shitty - because the ROI on PC is poor. There may be more PC users, but there's also a ton more piracy, so what sold well on consoles may barely make up the porting costs on PC.

Does a copyright infringer really cost the studio anything? Not every infringing copy directly correlates to a lost sale unless copyright infringement demonstrably siphons off paying users. So a port can be worthwhile so long as there are enough paying users. Copyright infringement is a service problem, and this appears to be true of both games and movies.

According to Vivendi, (the original) World of Warcraft took 4.5 years to develop and cost $63,000,000 (63M).

I'm assuming Titan had similar production values.

Other people are estimating the same cost.

I'm probably preaching to the choir but this week's Zero Punctuation was all about Romero and doesn't paint him in the same positive light as TFA.

In this thread, the "accusation" is that the accusations against Zoe have truth to them. The accusation takes the form of a comment, not an article in its own right. Your "[citation needed]" post is out of place.

If you're curious about it, look it up. If you dispute it, dispute it. This is a website where people comment about the article, and often about things completely unrelated to the article. Some work on your part is required, the comment thread isn't a place for you to whine about not being spoon-fed. For your [citation needed] comment to be taken at all seriously, you have to at least add that you searched for it and couldn't find it, so you don't believe it's true without more work on OP's part, thus [citation needed].

As it turns out I was curious about the accusation as well so I searched for some more information. Took me about 10 seconds to find some interesting things:

http://www.escapistmagazine.co...
http://thezoepost.wordpress.co...
http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx
http://pastebin.com/Ph22THkJ

If a 15 minute open refund period produced "obvious and intuitive consumer benefits" just think about what an hour could do. You know, like enough to actually test out the app for REAL. Especially apps that are more complicated than flappy bird and, oh yeah, more expensive.

Mea Culpa: though I will acknowledge that a "free" app with in-app purchase, that works well enough to test it out before spending money, is indeed one way to get around the limited 15 minutes to test the app.

But of course those apps are not the problem. The problem the government (you know, the supposedly by the people FOR the people) is trying to prevent predatory sharks from bilking people of money through shady practices like kids games that make it very easy to just click click spend a shed load of money.

"Open purchase window" here does not mean "open refund". It means "you don't have to enter your password again to buy something". Go smurfberries!

No idea whether I should listen to Nerval's Lobster... but I've come to trust Moviebob, and I've never heard him pan a film like this, ever...

http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

Not only are they trademarking (and actively pursuing against) folks with "Candy" in their game name, but also anybody with "Saga" in their name. Such is the case where they are pursuing a block against the trademark filed for "The Banner Saga", which is a nordic influenced, turn-based strategy, RPG game. See reference articles at:
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

Old CEO did make a comment about having players pay per bullet if they could.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.354961-EA-John-Riccitiello-thinking-about-charging-money-for-bullets-in-games?page=1

A great deal of the (all negative) comments are about the fixed-width design, which is horrible--especially for wide monitors. And I agree.

But I think it's more insidious than that. I think this is Dice making Slashdot available for "Wrap Ads" (my term; I've no idea what the industry term for this is.) This is an advertisement that takes up all the white space around the site content (usually including some flash ad in the regular side-bar ad space.) I've only seen these in relation to video games and movies, but that might just be because I don't visit many sites not dabbling in those categories. Some sites that do this:
-IGN (they're running one right now for Final Fantasy XIV, even! Giant flash ad at the top. Load it in a browser without NoScript/adblock to see)
-Anime News Network (and what do you know, they're also doing it right now!)
-Escapist Magazine (home to the popular Zero Punctuation series of game reviews, but they're not doing it right now.)

Just like city buses wrapped completely for advertising, I believe that Dice has created this layout--which goes against best practices (I think?), especially where nerds and news are concerned--expressly for the purpose of selling wrap-around advertising. Most of us won't feel it, since a large portion of the community uses NoScript, AdBlock, and other such add-ons/services, but it still makes the comment section a pain and that's all Slashdot is good for now. Timely news? No. Properly edited synopsis that remove extreme spin/bias? No. Editing to check for dupes, sometimes within hours of each other? No. More-intelligent-than-average internet commentary with a user-ran moderation system that helps to bring the more useful comments to the front? Yes.

And this new layout cuts the space for that by half, wrap ads or no. So when the current Slashdot layout goes, so do I.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126572-Fallout-3-Steam-Keys-Run-Out-Keeps-On-Selling-Anyway-UPDATED Fallout 3 so it eventually got fixed, but google around a little and you'll find cases for lesser known games where it didn't.

I like Steam, I really do, but I also consider everything I bought on it a rental more or less.

I've been a PC only gamer since the late 90s and to GTA V I have a big old...meh. After GTA IV and the whole "take me bowling" bit and comparing it to the batshit crazy fun of flying down the street on a broomstick or sucking up gangbangers in what looks like a giant Hello Kitty mobile (if the kitty went on a 3 day crack binge) and launching the gangbangers from the attached cannon several blocks into enemy vehicles?

I don't know about anybody else but when i play a sandbox i want total batshit balls to the wall FUN with a capital F made from fire and awesome and until another Just Cause comes out so I can grapple pursuing cars to the street and recreate the scene from T3 again I'll take the Saints Row series. The action is more extreme, the missions are often challenging without being frustrating, I just find the Saints games to be more FUN. From what I have seen so far it looks like GTA V has gone even further into that whole "dark, depressing, and gritty" feel and real life has enough of that already, thanks. What GTA needs is another Vice City so I can do 140+ MPH in a Hawaiian shirt and jump what feels like miles while Flock of Seagulls blasts on the stereo, now THAT was FUN.

Good news! They're completely overhauling the loot drop system in the expansion (and the free patch update for those who don't buy the expansion will get the benefits, too).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127079-Update-Diablo-IIIs-Loot-2-0-Breakdown-Less-Better-More-Epic

The CEO claims only 3% of Firefall players are playing PVP (I believe it).

The Escapist article seems to say that 3% of PvP players are playing the eSports PvP arena (Jetball) which seems far more believable than only 3% of players are PvPing.

Jetball equivalents have always been rather bad (see the UT series) and rarely played competitively. I don't know why they expected anything different.

I read earlier today on The Escapist that they've basically suspended all PvP in the game. So it looks like they've got a lot of kinks to work out.

Sorry, wrong. Steambox is the name of the new valve console and if the rumors are true its gonna be a game changer. Instead of being stuck with one company making one console with one set of hardware, imagine that YOU get to decide what hardware and form factor its in. You can DIY or buy from one of several vendors, want it in a laptop? As long as that laptop meets the minimum specs you can install SteamOS (based on Linux, hence why Valve came out with steam on Linux, to get the bugs out) and you're golden. Want it in a traditional console shape? Several vendors to choose from.

If this takes off I could see it totally changing the landscape, FINALLY giving console the ability to choose vendors and stores that we PC owners have always enjoyed. This is why my sales of HTPCs have gone up of late, as the increased competition (Steam,GOG,Origin,Desura,GMG,Humble Bundles,etc) makes PCs a MUCH lower cost gaming platform and with Steambox the average Joe will finally be able to just walk into any store and buy a prebuilt system that will open everything up!

Ironically this is happening at the same time that both major console OEMs are about to release their most bloated platforms yet thus losing one of the biggest selling points for consoles, how they run "bare metal" and thus dedicate every drop of CPU/GPU to gaming. Both the Xbox N and PS4 have been reported to use a full 4GB of the 8GB of memory for the OS, probably for all that TV crap that honestly many won't use nor need as most TVs have that "smart TV' crap built in, and as Jim Sterling noted with this last generation consoles have become just very crappy PCs and if Valve manages to pull this off it will be trivial to turn hundreds of millions of PCs into nice consoles.

That's why you need alternative treatments.

I can think of few topics in which linking to this sketch comedy video from last year is more appropriate.

My cousin currently owns an Xbox 360 and likes to play Call of Duty series, Battlefield series, and similar first-person shooters. He has rejected the Xbox One and is trying to decide between a PlayStation 4 console and a new gaming PC this December. Which $400 gaming PC that can play games with comparable graphics to forthcoming PS4 games would you recommend?

I play those games myself and looking forward to Battlefield 4 this winter. A PC is the best choice I feel and what I use.
I tried the Battlefield3 Beta on the PS3 and just didn't care for it at all.

Playing these games you can talk to others say your Squad or clan members; a helicopter pilot and gunner are a deadly pair if they
can talk to each other. The Playstation has just the one avenue I believe to chat to each other, The PC has three I can think of off hand Sonar by Dice,
Team Speak and Ventrilo. (all free) an example showing how much more versatile the PC is.

The PS4 will require a PS+ Subscription of around $5 (US) a month to play online, "roughly the same as an Xbox Live Gold subscription."
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124821-PS4-Online-Multiplayer-Requires-PS-Subscription

The PC, no subscription required, just an Internet connection.

I'm sorry but you are wrong and here is why: Gearbox is being sued over A:CM because of all those that preordered and got burnt, in fact I bet if you looked at the figures the majority of their sales were preorders and day 1 sales before the reviews hit. There is a video about it and the pushing preorders on The Escapist and I ahve to agree, anybody who preorders anymore is just nuts.

It is a lower price, for a version of a product with a huge defect -- namely, that the sale is illegitimate.

Keep in mind that different products have different values attached to those peripheral value-addeds. For example, you can't claim that music is "defective" because it was taken through piracy - since there's no such thing as "music maintenance", "upgrades", or "the ability to speak candidly with the vendor". Some software products fall into the same category. Also, don't think that piracy stops pirates from "speaking candidly with the vendor and request new features/enhancements". I've seen pirates caught on webforums complaining about bugs in games that haven't even been released to the public yet. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.139753-Arkham-Asylum-Pirates-Get-a-Gimpy-Batman

I think my point still stands, since you never attempted to even dispute the fact that the price paid by the pirate is not the same thing as the price they would've paid had piracy not been an option (when you were attempting to claim that the value of a product is only what the buyer (i.e. pirate) paid for it).

Effectively, you're claiming that, if a pirate gets something for X dollars (where X dollars could be as low as $0), then that shows that's all they were willing to pay, and therefore, it is the value of the product. That's obviously flawed and wrong.