First time ever I agree with Sweeney on anything. But he's right. It makes zero sense to disclose that you're using AI tools when a good approximation to 100% of all developers either already do, or will do soon. Right now, people are so obsessed with pouring hate on AI generated/assisted art assets that they're forgetting that pretty much all software developers are already using AI tools for coding, at least in some capacity. Guys, that stuff is going into games as we speak, but unlike art assets, you just can't see it.
It makes even less sense considering that in, say, 2-3 years from here, even experts will probably be unable to tell if an asset is AI generated or not, which will render the remaining discussion about whether or not to put labels on it, obsolete, too.

My personal take: We should start embracing what cannot be stopped anyway, and rather talk about how to compensate artists, writers and coders for using their assets for AI training. That's the real issue, at least in my opinion.

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Love seeing Embracer go down. Good for Cryptic to be free again. They made some really decent games back then, when they were still independent. Maybe they can again.

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A feature to be proud of, although I always wondered how they were able to fund the servers.

They still use your typical micro-transaction shop, including lootboxes. The difference between them and a F2P game really is that they don't have to go full-predatory, since they also generate some money from DLC sales, where F2P games don't. And as far as I know there is nothing in these lootboxes you can't also buy directly, or earn.

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I guess the Anni event made the devs finally realize that GW2 isn't the drop-in replacement for GW1 it was meant to be. Both games are great, but they are very different games, appealing to different play-styles, and perhaps different moods. People want to play both games.

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To be fair, Kernel-level anti-cheat isn't THAT common. Like 99.99% of all games don't use it. It's common in a certain genre - competitive multiplayer games, namely shooters and MOBAs. A lot of people (like me) who wouldn't touch shooters and MOBAs with a ten-foot pole anyway, are mostly unaffected by kernel level AC.

I suppose we can only wait and see. Steam Deck brought attention to Linux. The reactions were different, so far. Some (shooter) devs went "Ugh, let's just ban it!" and others went out of their way to support their games running on Deck and even desktop Linux. If the Steam Machine generates at least as many sales as the Deck (and why wouldn't it - handheld gaming is niche compared to living room gaming), we might see even the shooter devs changing their stance. There will be a point when saying no to Linux money no longer makes sense, and we're not that far away from it.

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When Steam Machines flopped back then, it was because Proton wasn't ready. Now it is. I have no need for a console, but this could be a complete game changer for Linux gaming. A lot of people other than me prefer gaming in the living room, and now there is a great alternative that's not enshittified, locked-down corporate garbage like...every other console out there. Image a console people can buy great games for during Steam sales for like 5 bucks each. I bet it will be a hit.

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Ah, I miss Obsidian making games like this.

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That's why I said Debian testing / unstable, not Debian stable.

My bad! :)

Mint which doesn't ship recent kernel

The version numbers might seem dated, by mind that Ubuntu based distros maintain these kernels for a longer time and backport newer features.

Also, I think KDE is a better fit for modern gaming features

I love KDE Plasma, really. Only reason why I didn't switch is because Cinnamon is "good enough" for the time being, and my requirements of DE features aren't all that high. Wayland is not required in any shape or fashion for gaming as of today. I'd notice if it were (still not using it). ;)

it's more stable than Arch

Anything is. ;)

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I'm surprised in general that Linux Mint is ahead of Debian (testing / unstable)

Mint user here. I think that's because for gaming, Mint is a great compromise. Debian's ultimate focus is stability, which makes it a fantastic choice for servers, but in gaming, you often want components that aren't quite that old. It still doesn't randomly break your stuff, unlike rolling release distros.

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I think the question is more "When you ask a Large Language Model to 'write' you some code, where did that code come from and whose copyrights is it infringing?"

Well, from a purely technical point of view, the question is easy to answer: It made the code up, based on knowledge it gained from looking at other people's code. That's really all there is to it.

The legality of doing that is murky, as of today. Mostly because traditional copyright law wasn't designed with AI training in mind. Keep in in mind that no trace of source material is left in the trained model, which puts the model weights outside of copyright law's reach. Several lawsuits have been filed, arguing AI training with copyrighted material to be illegal. Every single one of them so far has been tossed out by courts. In case you wonder, yes, Meta was found guilty of copyright infringement, but that wasn't about the training, it was about them torrenting books they used for the training.

Unless copyright law is getting updated (I am not seeing anything in the pipes in any relevant jurisdiction), that leaves ethical considerations. And as we know, these are very much subjective.

Same applies to the actual output. To be copyrightable, a work needs to be human created (anyone remember the famous case about the monkey selfie?). AI output is clearly not human made, so the output is not copyrightable - and thus cannot be affected or bound by any kind of license. It's legally public domain.
The one issue is if the model accidentally or on purpose produces full replicas of copyrighted/trademarked material. Queen Elsa doesn't stop being copyrighted just because an AI model drew her. Which is behind the case of Disney vs Midjourney - their model is trained on Disney's work and can reproduce it on prompt. Which - since the outputs are technically distributed when the customer downloads them - could be a copyright violation. I do actually expect Disney to win this case, but let's see. In the end, it looks like a bigger issue than it is. People could make a replica of Disney IP by copy/pasting it, without the AI detour. The result will probably be API model providers having to block people from generating copyrighted/trademarked material. Most newer models I am aware of already aren't trained on specific artists to prevent these issues.

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