Call of Thunder! CodThunder! Battlethunder!

If they get this right, I suspect it will swell the War Thunder numbers significantly!! We'll end up with videos like that @GnarSasquatch guy on Arma Reforger!

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Quoting: Xpanderflatpak :sick:

no appimage?
i guess someone can extract the client from it and build an actual package

nice to see linux support though

I love how ridiculously divisive we all are as Linux users. :grin:

Dare I ask... why the hate for flatpak (a puke emoji, no less!)? If I can't install something directly, I want a flatpak. I'll use an AppImage and resent it, because it (often) doesn't create a menu item, it requires me to find a place for it to live (I usually bung them in ~/Misc/Apps or something), and doesn't update with the rest of my system. I won't use snap, as I'm not interested in YAI (yet another installer) when I already have flatpak.

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It's hard to be upset at the Hyprland donations, I suppose, in the face of the all the good they're additionally doling out on a monthly basis. Still wish they'd drop Gnome for KDE though (and by extension, also drop Hyprland), as this feels like the direction of travel these days.

I might just be blinkered there though. I suspect Gnome still has a huge mindshare, probably as a combined result over decades of Ubuntu and Fedora.

Edit: Just read this forum post and no, I don't think it's hard to be upset about the Hyprland and Omarchy sponsorships at all now. JFC, Framework. WTF. Stop.

https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/75 [External Link]

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Quoting: BoldosSo, if I understand it correctly: People/users do not like AI stuff in games? :huh:

Incredible, eh? Who'd have thought?? /sarcasm

Specifically though, it's genAI that's so hated. ML/AI has been around for decades without burning the planet, stealing jobs, pirating books, abusing copyright, talking kids into bad situations, or kick-starting a new nuclear era during a climate crisis. I could also point out the price of Nvidia GPUs, or 32Gb of RAM, I suppose, but I feel like it's already earned its derision by this point. Screwing up gaming/computing generally is just icing!

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Selfishly, I have Netflix (albeit debating keeping it much longer after I ditched Spotify a couple of months ago), and won't ever take Paramount, so hopefully this hostile bid fails completely. Also, as others have noted, this is backed by Jared Kushner apparently - Trump's step-son, with additional backing from the middle east.

According to the FT, Paramount are on the hook for only (!) $12bn, while $24bn is secured through several middle eastern sovereign wealth funds (who are still separately diversifying from oil through initiatives like PIF's investment in EA e-gaming), and the remainder is a debt through a combined commitment from the Bank of America, Citigroup, and Apollo.

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Terse is a better word, yeah. Caustic was too much, sorry.

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Quoting: cybolicTo make myself perfectly clear, I very much welcome discussion of the content of the game and its ban, and of course think you a free to interpret the original scene in any way you wish, but I cannot stand misinformation.

That's probably not going to be possible, because as I said, the FAQ was ret-conned somewhat. I believe the devs are "doing a Wolfire" and blaming Valve, perhaps not unreasonably, for their situation. But they're not helping their case either, beyond stirring up publicity by painting Valve as the big bad.

I don't really want to argue with you either - you're quite caustic when replying, so sure of your "facts" that I have no will to argue the semantics of "art" vs "sexual" vs whatever.

Like, you're still using the FAQ as the source of truth, but I've already pointed out that it's unreliable. Speaking of...

Quoting: cybolicDo you remember where this was posted?

Nope, sorry. I remember it only vaguely - I follow the IndieDev bot on Bluesky, so I noted the story briefly and moved on.

I think we could do with moving on from this one now.

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We've got a few folk reading the developer's FAQ and commenting about why folk are talking about a scene with a child riding a "horse" in the game - the FAQ has now removed any reference to this.

However, original reports of the issue, on social media, made by the developers, claimed that they submitted an early-release version of the game, in which a live-action sequence depicted a young child (about 10-12 years old) riding a "horse" (a naked woman wearing a horse-head). The developers only uploaded this version to create a game-page, but Valve used this version to block-list the game.

While the scene could be argued to not inherently be "sexual" itself, the developer believed that this was the reason for the block and so they attempted to resubmit, after re-filming the scene with a 20-year old version of the character. Valve refused to re-review. Sadly, the social media posts have been removed now, so evidence of this is difficult to source. Also, the developers have changed their story in the FAQ, making it even more difficult to pin down the "real" story.

Hopefully that clears up some of the confusion in previous comments.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: scaineThis reminds me of that ridiculous situation where a gay activist asked a bakery for a "support gay marriage" cake and the bakery refused. And the gay activist got up in arms about this, and it went to court! Madness. Sure, the bakery are bigoted scum, but they're a private firm, and they get to be bigoted about the cakes they sell. Thankfully the courts agreed [External Link]. But in summary, if I was selling pizzas and someone came in asked me to make a pizza in the shape of (insert something offensive here), I'd throw them the fuck out of my pizza parlour. My house, my rules.

Hrm. I have a bit of a problem with that perspective. So, if someone has a bakery and they do wedding cakes, it's OK for them to refuse to do the wedding cake if it's for the wedding of two gay people. What if it's for the wedding of two black people? Or, two black people wanting to be served at a diner? I think the US had a whole big movement about that kind of thing, what was it called, "civil rights"? What if it's for the wedding of two Christian people? I'm an atheist, I'd be happy to refuse to serve evangelists, except I believe they have rights. Basically, your position takes us back to Jim Crow, except against whoever a lot of people can be persuaded to be prejudiced against. There should be limits to the rights of businesspeople to run their businesses the way they want. They're not allowed to commit fraud, they're not allowed to put poison in their cakes, and they shouldn't be allowed to poison society either.

Also consider: How does your instinctive reaction shift if, instead of simply refusing to serve (group you don't like), merchants were to start charging different prices to groups they don't like? The product costs twice as much if you're gay, or black, or muslim. That OK?

The BBC article covers some of that. Another gay activist, for example, challenged how a gay bakery would feel about being forced to make gender critical cakes.

I'm not saying we should scrap discrimination laws, but I'm very glad that common sense won out here. Let's just say that if I was forced into making a cake for an asshole bigot, that bigot probably wouldn't enjoy the cake I made...

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@kuhpunkt - I have no idea why you're being so argumentative about this - your quote-cutting sounds really aggressive, so apologies if I've pissed you off somehow.

But if you believe that a game only takes 6 months to develop, and that everyone was just instantly cool about this change, you're deceiving yourself. Similarly, 5000 keys, many of which would have gone out to press already, is nowhere near enough to cover the possibility of a top-selling bundle. Finally, sure, the Valve cut change happened seven years ago, but is predated by nearly two decades of an unchanging, non-negotiable 30% cut, a cut that's still valid for the vast, vast majority of developers. It's perfectly normal for people to have latched on to that??

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