Yes. Our country is run by geriatrics who, among other things related to modern society, legislate on technology they don’t understand. We need younger members with more flexible minds who have at least spent some part of their younger lives dealing with problems we have a modern variation of today.

But especially SCOTUS members. Any kind of term limit on them would be better than what we have.

It’s not just a data mining cash grab. It’s a bigger cash grab than that. If they had required the account link from the beginning they would not have sold the game in countries where you can’t get a PlayStation account.

They clearly waited until the hype from the game settled in before they made this requirement so that they could make all of the money from the countries they don’t service.

That way they could squeeze a little extra out of the player base by mining their data long enough later that players can’t get a refund. Doesn’t matter to them that they’re forcing players in half the geological world to quit.

Truly despicable. They should be forced to issue refunds to players they are effectively kicking from the game, but something tells me nothing is going to happen.

I meant that to say, it’s a genre that deserves to be distinguished from just one of the many games that define it.

As a rephrase of that comment, defining the 5 games I listed after one game that basically just came before them would be dishonest because of how different those games all are from Slay the Spire and each other. That’s why the genre is named after what they all have in common, which is a mashup of two existing genres.

What you’re proposing would be like renaming the first person shooter genre to “halo-like” or “call of duty-like” just because those games predate a lot of others and people like them. It’s unnecessary and loses the descriptive quality of the name it has.

The genre can be called “rogue like deck builder” all you want, we all know what it really is: “Spirelike”

Well, you did. And you also directly acknowledged that the genre already has a name in the same sentence.

It seems to be your opinion that it needs another one, even though the name it has is already so well established that it has its own steam tag.

I mean, you’re entitled to have that opinion, and I also understand the logic behind it. But this conversation wasn’t started with “us” saying it needs another name.

I do see your point, but in this specific situation the genre already has an accepted name

Are there any other genres named after games? I’d say rogue is the exception.

I think the “rogue” in rogue-like refers to the fact that you start over if you die. Not the similarity to the actual game. Am I misunderstanding you?

I think I get what you’re saying, that rogue-like was named after the game and therefore this genre should be named after slay the spire. But I think Rogue named the genre because there wasn’t anything else like it. Slay the Spire is still at the end of the day a mashup of two existing genres.

I really think it deserves its own genre. Games like Cobalt Core, Balatro, Tower Tactics Liberation, Alina of the Arena and Loop Hero are all unique in their own right and differ greatly in gameplay from Slay the Spire and each other but still hold to the deck building rogue-like core.

Slay the spire is the granddaddy of the genre, but isn’t the single defining example by far.

I start almost every comment I make on those instances with

I know this will net me a ban

to play a bit of reverse psychology with the mods there, who don’t touch my comments when the denizens there inevitablely say

Oh yeah you think you’re so smart well we don’t ban opposing opinions unlike some places

And the mods there have their hands tied because banning me would prove their own guys wrong.

It’s worked pretty well so far.

and we don’t need games anyway as they’re unproductive

So you come to a games community to shit on games and brag about how your shitty OS doesn’t play them?

Make it make sense

Fair enough

Unpopular opinion incoming:

I don’t think we should ignore AI diagnosis just because they are wrong sometimes. The whole point of AI diagnosis is to catch things physicians don’t. No AI diagnosis comes without a physician double checking anyway.

For that reason, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that an AI got it wrong. Suspicion was still there and physicians double checked. To me, that means this tool is working as intended.

If the patient was insistent enough that something was wrong, they would have had them double check or would have gotten a second opinion anyway.

Flaming the AI for not being correct is missing the point of using it in the first place.

That’s true, but games exist already where people can host their own servers. Pc gaming is kind of like the sandbox of platforms. Other major consoles solved that problem by sunsetting their free services so that you can’t just go play an existing online game for free on their platform.

It would be a gargantuan task to sunset free online connectivity as it exists in pc gaming today.

Once enough people do it, it like playing whack-a-mole on a grand scale. Must have been a big enough problem if they decided that locking whole countries out of the market was a solution.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s that simple. Console online services get away with making you pay because the system is locked and you don’t have a choice. Pc gamers can host their own servers, and if steam ever becomes so anti consumer as to charge for access to your library, competitors will rise and the market will balance.

I’m not in an affected country, but from what I can gather from what happened most recently:

Steam changed their pricing policy in relatively poor countries from localized affordable prices to strictly usd equivalent because people in other countries were using vpns to make accounts in those poor countries to get games for what would be pennies for them.

I don’t remember which countries were involved in the first place, but in those countries now where they don’t make as much money on average, but everything is much cheaper, some steam games can cost the equivalent of a month’s salary.

That’s why the store isn’t viable in those countries anymore.

Edit: Here’s a source

I don’t think that taking a cut for the sheer exposure of the platform is the same as exploitation. Even small devs make more money by an order of magnitude through steam than they would if they did not.

Steam costs money to operate. I really don’t understand why people think steam should just be valorous and noble and not make any money. Labeling them the middleman implies they don’t do anything. They provide a service in the same way a grocery store is there to make sure you don’t have to drive to a different farm every time you want a different kind of vegetable.

That’s really the only problem I have with what you said. Of course people shouldn’t be loyal to companies, I’m just pointing out the flaw in your logic that people should be loyal to people instead. Any type of figure that you don’t personally know is primarily a concept.

But also, “Behaving like a responsible consumer” is an idealistic fantasy that mostly fails because of the prisoner dilemma. If not enough people do it, the only people who suffer are the ones doing it. That base mindset might be overcame on an individual basis, but it’s rarely popular enough to gain the traction required for actual change, and it becomes more and more difficult the more people are content with the service.

It doesn’t help that steam is essentially the only game launcher that isn’t tiny or garbage.

By your logic, it makes sense to be loyal to Gabe, who has long thought to be the driving force behind steam remaining what they are and not falling down the capitalistic hole of exploiting their users for every red cent.

The US congress is freaking out about TikTok because of national security concerns about china potentially harvesting data on americans and influencing politics, not because TikTok is a monopoly.

This is not at all the same thing.

Here’s the difference. When we talk about companies dominating an industry, we’re usually talking about practices that keep competition from even forming. Monopolies are formed as a result of big companies buying out or making it impossible for their competition.

Steam doesn’t do that, which is a big reason they won their monopoly suit. They just provide a better model than anyone else is willing to, and they rake in the cash because of it.

Compare this situation to books-a-million in the states. Books-a-million doesn’t have a monopoly on books, they just have created a better environment for selling them. They aren’t stopping other book stores from opening or buying chains to shut them down, they just sell you a cup of coffee and give you a place to sit while you browse their massive selection.

That’s not a monopoly, that’s just better business.