Mastercard says "It wasn't us!"
Stripe says "It wasn't us!"
Visa said "It wasn't us!"

So... who was it?

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Well, if things go downhill, somebody can still take the last GPL-licensed release and fork the project from there. *shrug*

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Honestly, that's all we can ask for. Nobody is demanding a company to build up in-house Linux competency to natively support a OS that's growing, but still not exactly a market share behemoth. Not to actively hinder their games running on Linux is good enough, IMHO.

What makes me really angry is these studios (looking at Epic, EA, Riot Games among others) who don't have programmers competent enough to implement cheat resiliency directly in their games where it belongs, and then blame Linux for being too free and its users for being too tech-savy, so their intrusive bandaid Anti-Cheat solutions won't really work there. Personally, it doesn't affect me all that much, looking at the abysmal quality of the games these people make, but it's hard to deny that it does slow down Linux growth if these games aren't running on it.

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It's amazing how I never even heard of this game before. I guess my brain has a filter for Battle Royale games and just doesn't notice them. From reading the article I gather that this company did everything wrong that can be done wrong, starting from making a completely unoriginal game in a completely saturated market. And yes, that hat is stupid. So, no big loss.

The only thing I am slightly curious about is how they plan to improve the game by firing its staff. I suppose their idea is to feed it to ChatGPT and enter "Make this game better than Fortnite, do not make any mistakes in the code!" in the prompt?

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The law is really kinda weird. If I understand the case right, some random person on the internet claiming "It's mine and my proof is because I said so!" is enough to take down a game whose developer can prove that they bought the assets in good faith. It would be really nice if at least the claimant had to produce some actual proof that the assets are actually theirs, and their first addressee of complaint had to be the asset store which allegedly sold the assets without license. Not a person who did absolutely nothing wrong.

The number of cases of games using 3rd party assets ending in legal disaster like that is mind-numbing. I think many developers don't realize what a legal minefield 3rd party assets are. From that perspective, it's kinda easy to understand why some/many small projects switched to using AI rather than 3rd party assets. AI isn't without risk either, but it's nowhere -that- bad.

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I won't miss any of the newly censored games, but I have an extreme problem with corporations forcing their morals and beliefs on us. Regulation isn't their job, it's the government's. A constitution banning censorship isn't worth the paper it's written on, if we tolerate corporations to do it instead.

Who can say for sure that the prudish suits at Visa/Mastercard/PayPal won't decide tomorrow morning that D&D is satanic after all, and demand taking down Baldur's Gate 3?

This has to stop somewhere. I didn't elect the CEO of Visa or Mastercard to decide what kind of content I can see or buy. Personally, I would love to see Visa and Mastercard socialized and their current workforce being DOGE-ed. The thought of having 2-3 corporations around that can nuke any company anywhere on Earth, at any time they please, just by refusing to do business with them, is more than a bit chilling.

But unfortunately I can't see the Land of the Free (Enterprise) to do anything about it. So, looking at the recent success of the Stop Killing Games petition, someone in the EU needs to set up a petition asking for a law that would compel gatekeeping businesses to do business with ANYONE as long as it's legal. That would solve the problem, too. But I unfortunately don't live there.

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What do expect of a company that doesn't even know to how apply basic grammar rules to a game title?

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But this probably sounds too simple for their complicated minds to get it.

Oh, they understand perfectly well what we want. They just have not the slightest intent to give it us, because they love being the greedy control freaks they are. So they make up all these crap to disguise their real answer, which is "It's much more profitable and fun not to sell them anything, and be able to take it away whenever we feel like it."

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Happy Birthday! :)

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I think you're a bit confused here. People who put their heart and soul in making the game, and people who shut it down, are rarely the same people.

I know what you're trying to say here, but even the higher-ups are part of the team that made that game happen. It's THEIR baby, too.

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