Yeah this "take control of a soldier in third person" is the surest deal-breaker I could see in a strategy game. I guess there are people that are into that, but wow for me that is like the antithesis of the whole genre.

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Classic case of people that don't use Linux seeing some development message and thinking "wow this is huge Valve is working on drivers for new hardware", while we look at it and just see business as usual because that is how Linux works, people are constantly working on things and it is all very public and Valve has been doing it for a decade.

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I mostly agree with Liam. The main problem with Chrome for me is being Google controlled; which is made obvious with Manifest V3 sabotaging adblockers, an obvious conflict of interest. Thus, Google giving up some control is a good thing.

Of course, if this was a way for them to ensure Chrome dominance it would be a high cost... but they are already there, and frankly uncontested. This isn't a Google power grab, it is a Google concession (to the antitrust lawsuits).

I have all but given up on Mozilla; they keep trying to copy Google's bad practices in an effort to secure non-Google funding, and it never works but always undermines their very principles. I'll use Firefox whenever it is advantageous to do so... but I'm not expecting it to cause any meaningful change in the web as a whole.

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With regards to the Linux Foundation (and the comment about Google "outsourcing costs" to them), Google is a Gold member of the foundation, which means they pay at least $100k (and less than $500k) per year to the foundation.

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I expected it to be much worse, particularly storage.

But I am very disappointed that it does require a dedicated GPU, which the previous Civ games did not. This is a franchise that always appealed to a broader audience, with more casual players, and even a modest GPU requirement is going to exclude lots of systems. It might seem reasonable from the perspective of gamers that need a stronger GPU for other games, but it is a huge leap from the perspective of someone that never needed a GPU for Civ.

And like, with the viewpoint and the gameplay, the extra fidelity really doesn't matter. We mostly see stuff from far away, tiny things that should prioritize clarity over detail.

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Quoting: KlaasWhy do they claim that they did not request a takedown of the itch.io domain, when that is exactly what happened as a result of their requests?

They claim, or at least imply, that they only requested the takedown of this specific page hosted within itch.io (the fansite, created by one specific developer), not the entire itch.io domain with a lot of other things.

Quoting: LoudTechieThis is a great example of "it can be done legally, but nobody actually does it" by the way.
The itch.io founder challenged the takedown.
In such a case they should receive a response from the rights holder within 24 hours.
They didn't.
If this was a DMCA takedwon request, they can now come and try this out in court, but the burden of proof lies with them and not everyone with a website has the budget and guts to take a coorperate behemoth to court.
Which is why this guy saw only the path of public shaming as a way out, which worked by the way.
He has a response.

As clarified by leafo, this was not a DMCA takedown. It was an abuse report claiming fraud and phishing, not copyright violation.

Though as you point out, they do put the effort to distance themselves: "a takedown was issued", not "we issued a takedown". And then "we did not request the takedown of the entire domain", which leaves space for someone else (like "the partner") to have done so.

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Quoting: hell0As someone who worked on the "other side" (in fact, I personally automated some abuse handling), I'd like to offer a bit of a different point of view.

Firstly internet in general is fundamentally flawed in that most of the protocols and technologies in use today were developed by some nerds in a uni/garage. They were never intended to be used at such scale nor were they designed to be abuse-proof.

As a result, internet is full of trash. I worked for some small registrar/host and we would get hundreds of abuse reports daily, week-end included. And the sad truth is that 99.9% of them were legitimate: hacked websites, domain registered with fake/stolen info for phishing, servers used to send spam, the list is endless.

Additionally, the bad actors are not dumb, abuses are often obfuscated (like displaying only if the referrer is google or at certain times of the day) to make detection harder. Checking whether a website is really compromised may require some technical skills (and thus be expensive).

It sucks for itch and imo, their registrar is still at fault if itch did indeed reply (should have trigger a human check). But in general "shoot first, check second" is sadly the most efficient way to protect people from scams, phishing and other bad stuff.

If they want to accept some false positives, I'd say it is fine... if they take liability for it. Revenue lost, deadlines missed, possibly moral damages. Do they? Is it viable for a small business or individual to get it? Otherwise, they should have to prove they did due diligence before taking it down.

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Ooh, cool! I want to join the giveaway, thanks!

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Well it is good, if season passes are a thing then having proper mechanisms is good - more transparent, easier to manage, more organized. I'm not particularly invested in the idea of season passes (I rarely buy things on release much less in advance), though I'm not strongly against it either.

Quoting: pbThe idea is good but some of it doesn't seem enforceable, I'm sure they will be adjusting these requirements.

That is presumably why they are only doing it with selected partners with a proven track record. This is likely going to work more as a friendly agreement than a set of hard rules.

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This cell and these restraints are both entirely for your protection. We can't guarantee your safety if you are free to leave.

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