As I mentioned in the rumor article yesterday, and I repeat myself since no one mentioned this, Saudia Arabia is probably going to use this as an attempt to make themselves appear more appealing to the youth. They have been big into esports for the same reason. Everyone assuming there will be insane monitization might be right, but SA might very well be happy to lose money (or at least make minimal profits) if it means improving their long-term image.

While I wouldn't bet big on it, I'd suspect EA to improve under this new management. Not that EA has anywhere to go but up really.

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While I'm no fan of any of the involved parties - politics aside, this will probably be good for the games.

Saudi Arabia has been doing a lot of PR to make them look better with the younger people. They were hosting some big esports tournaments and such. If we assume this is in the same vein, they will probably try to (no guarantees though) make games that are more appealing to gamers in an attempt to gain favor among the huge global gamer demographic.

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I think this is how the #stopkillinggames should work. If the company doesn't want to keep the servers running the community should be allowed to run their own servers. You don't need the company to release source or anything at all. The community can reverse engineer basically anything. The only thing stopping them is legal action. If you aren't supporting the game, you shouldn't be allowed to take legal action against these kinds of projects.

The real "problem" isn't that this is being done it is the fact that, and the stats show this very clearly, people are playing older games way more than newer games. If we could play our old games indefinitely, how would the poor corpos make ever increasing profits shipping slop? Won't someone think of the shareholders!

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Personally I think some of the games that got removed deserved it though, actually, probably most of them.

Imagine if something you like gets banned because some busy-body thinks it "deserves" to be removed. If we allow this to set such a precedent, it is only a matter of time. First they came for the porn games and I did no speak out because I wasn't a gooner. When they came for *my interest* there was no one left to speak out.

You can't legislate (this is even worse - it isn't even legislation!) morallity.

People have different preferences/interests and as long as none of it is deemed illegal, all of it must be allowed.

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Hot take: as linux is adopted and the mainstream crowd shows up, you won't see improvements as many people predict. My bet is that if/when the non-technical users outnumber the technical users linux will end up following the same enshitification path we've seen time and time again.

Further, the more popular linux becomes the more ripe for corpo takeover it also becomes. If you look at the corps already paying for linux development it is quite shocking.

It won't happen overnight, but I'd wager that in 10 years linux will be more adopted and shittier.

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Makes me wonder, if it's starting with virtual smut, how long before they start deciding other types of activities aren't permitted with their system. Paypal decides political activists are problematic? Suddenly patreon can't host anyone campaigning for climate change or other issues, etc. Could happen.

The "conspiracy theorists" have been saying for years that digitial currency (this is more on the side of digital product, but in the same ballpark) in its various forms would lead to exactly this. They even claimed it would start with fringe stuff being censored/removed.

First they came for the hentai (I think it was similar incest/underage content specifically) and I did not speak out, then they came for the porno games and I did not speak out...

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What's the rationale here?

The idea is that always online games can be turned off. If there are people happily playing Skate and Skate 2, we need to make it so they literally cannot continue to play (while they aren't doing that, they are planning that for skate. and future games). This way we "force" them to buy new games.

I honestly think it is as simple as this. Even if there is only a slight chance you buy another EA game, it doesn't matter. If all/most of the companies do more/all online, the forced churn will simply bring more people to the buying market and EA or any other corpo will get some of those sales.

And if the game is doing great? They can keep milking the micro transactions.

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This looks like an almost 1-to-1 copy of Dicefolk, which I thought was a pretty decent game. It is more puzzle than deck/dice builder IMHO.

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Games in the 90s were that expensive because it was a niche market. As the market grew so did revenue with economies of scale. Today we are probably nearing saturation and the only way to make line go up is to increase prices.

The video card market I think paved the way for these price increases. First it was bitcoin, then covid, and now AI forces on the video card market that showed manufacturers that people were willing to pay nose-bleed prices. Sadly now that the lamp has been rubbed I don't see video card prices ever coming down. An article yesterday about the 9060xt called it "a budget beast" at $350 fake MSRP. $350, even today is not really budget. $250, maaaaybe $300 if you squint, but not $350.

As long as enough people pay these prices - and they obviously are - there is no going back. I'm always suggesting boycotts on this kind of stuff. If people won't pay then prices will come down. I personally am a patient gamer (excluding a few new indies) and will gladly wait years to get games for $5 or less.

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I'm repeatedly flabbergasted by the amount of abuse people around me will put up with.

In tech terms, and probably a lot of others as well, most people simply don't know there are alternatives or how to configure things to better suit themselves. There is that joke about how there is exactly one generation that can rotate a PDF. The older gen never had to learn how to use a lot of these tools and the younger gen is getting the most watered down exerperience where everything is hidden so they never learn anything beyond the surface.

There have been, for years now, professors complaining that fresh computer science students don't know the most fundamental things about computers - like what a file system is. This, IMHO, dumbing down everything to the lowest common denominator is the root of enshitification. In the endless pursuit of "line must go up", companies are trying to cast a wider and wider net to catch as large an audience as possible.

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