Quoting: emphy

Quoting: Mountain ManWhenever I hear people talk about "game preservation", it always sounds suspiciously like, "I want free games."

Because, of course, no one ever spent anything on the re-releases on steam/gog or the evercade cartridges.

Except we're talking about emulators, which is something else entirely. More often than not, using emulators to "preserve" games is just a thinly veiled excuse to pirate software.

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Whenever I hear people talk about "game preservation", it always sounds suspiciously like, "I want free games."

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How dare Nintendo protect its intellectual property!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain ManPeople who assume that if CEOs were paid less, then the workers could be paid more, have a rather simplistic and naive understanding of how business and the economy works.

And yet, going by history it seems to work out in practice. Look at places and times where the CEOs are paid less, and you find workers who are more prosperous and have better working conditions.

Perhaps, but there's no hard and fast rule that says better paid employees are necessarily more profitable employees. If raises were guaranteed to increase profits, then every company would do it, but it's rarely as simple as that, and the harsh reality is that sometimes layoffs are necessary to keep a business solvent.

I think I'd want to claim that when times are tough enough that layoffs are necessary to keep the business solvent, the CEO should not be increasing his pay by more than the money the layoffs save. Really, how hard is this?

And that's before you even get to the part where the people laid off were not just costing wages, they were presumably making the business money, whereas a raise to the same CEO, as a reward for business failure so far, is unlikely to cause more money to exist in any way. So if you lay people off, you may have a net gain if it was a money-losing area, but it will be smaller than the money saved on salary unless the idea of hiring them in the first place was an example of lunatic incompetence in the first place. So the CEO raise, which is pure loss, isn't just several times as large as the savings, it overwhelms them to a ridiculous degree.

But I guess it's justified because the CEO, from his yacht, makes the tough decisions and takes risks--what if his decisions led to the company going under and he had to make do for a while on just those 26 million smackers? Oh, the humanity!--while ordinary employees laid off face no risks at all . . .

Look, you can vilify the CEO all you want and pretend that running a multi-million dollar company is done from a yacht while casually sipping martinis instead of being hard work that requires decades of business experience, but the fact is, giving himself a raise isn't what led to the employees being laid off, and if keeping the employees was likely to turn a profit for the company, then they would still have a job. I've been on the receiving end of layoffs before, and yes, it sucks to lose your source of income, but I also recognize that businesses aren't charities, they exist to make money, and if they're losing money keeping certain people on the payroll, then good business says it's time to let them go. Like I said, if increasing profits was as easy as handing out raises like candy, then everybody would be doing it.

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Mountain Manand the harsh reality is that sometimes layoffs are necessary to keep a business solvent.

But it doesn't look good when the CEO (or his Board) gives himself a $20 million raise/bonus at the same time. Instead, it looks like the CEO is terminating employees simply to justify padding his own pockets. This leads one to question his ethics.

I don't suppose there are many CEOs who care how some people might interpret it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain ManPeople who assume that if CEOs were paid less, then the workers could be paid more, have a rather simplistic and naive understanding of how business and the economy works.

And yet, going by history it seems to work out in practice. Look at places and times where the CEOs are paid less, and you find workers who are more prosperous and have better working conditions.

Perhaps, but there's no hard and fast rule that says better paid employees are necessarily more profitable employees. If raises were guaranteed to increase profits, then every company would do it, but it's rarely as simple as that, and the harsh reality is that sometimes layoffs are necessary to keep a business solvent.

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People who assume that if CEOs were paid less, then the workers could be paid more, have a rather simplistic and naive understanding of how business and the economy works.

Let's put it this way: if an employee's salary exceeds the amount of income he generates for the company, then there are two options: 1) Reduce his salary; or 2) Terminate his employment. The CEO giving up a raise to pay the employee more, therefore making the disparity between his salary and his value to the company even greater, is perhaps the worst decision in this case. You can extrapolate this to an entire studio.

That's just the reality of being an employee, you are always at the mercy of someone else, which can kinda suck sometimes. The only way out is to start your own business and work for yourself.

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For what it's worth, Fallout 4 looks and runs amazingly well on my LCD Steam Deck. While I can get a solid 60 frames per second, it only gives me little more than an estimated one hour of run time on a full battery. If I dial it back to 30 frames per second, it gives me an estimated two hours, and by tweaking the power settings, I can stretch it out to nearly three hours. Not too shabby.

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Quoting: ssj17vegeta

Quoting: Mountain ManI know Paradox gets a lot of flack for their seemingly endless DLC releases, but you have to admit, they do actively support their games for a very long time.

I wouldn't call it a support out of kindness. Their whole business model is based on selling DLCs for years then selling it all over again when they release the next game, so it makes sense their games get a decade of updates, much like what EA did with The Sims 4.

What they (rightfully) get shit for is not quality but quantity. Some DLCs only consist of adding 3 buttons (Dharma for EU4) or like 100 events (Friends and Foes for CK3) which more or less amounts to adding several assets and filling a JSON file with new text, not the big programming gameplay challenge it seems to be). People wouldn't mind so much if those DLCs sold for one buck. Alas it's not the case.

Worse thing is, since they went public, the content per dollar for their releases have gone a steady downward spiral, again, much like every other AAA publisher out there, so, no surprise about this shrinkflation. When you compare for example CK3's Northern Lords to CK2's Old Gods in terms of music, events, gameplay additions, it's... mind-boggling.

Except every DLC release also comes with a free patch that fixes bugs, and in many cases adds new features and content, so even if you never buy a single bit of DLC, you would still benefit from the continued support. And since the DLC is released a la carte, you can pick and choose only the ones that appeal to you, if any.

Of course there is a lot of "fear of missing out" from some folks who have convinced themselves they are getting a lesser experience even if they have no interest in a particular release, and they seem to be the ones who complain the loudest.

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I know Paradox gets a lot of flack for their seemingly endless DLC releases, but you have to admit, they do actively support their games for a very long time.

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