sj_zero
@sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
- Comment on Ubisoft propose cutting up to 200 jobs at Paris headquarters, as unions reportedly agree three day strike 6 days ago:
Ubisoft has been getting it's nuts kicked for years now. During the last quarter, its profit margin has been -24%.
Under these conditions, money > people for anyone. If you made 50,000 a year and every year you were coming up 12,500 short, you'd be looking to make major cuts to your spending, and if someone was going to get hurt as a result, you'd have to just apologize and move on because that's not sustainable.
Anyone who holds Ubisoft stock for the past 5 years hasn't made a profit. In fact, they bought a stock at around 80 dollars that is 4 today. Without changes, their investments will go to 0, and every worker at Ubisoft will lose their jobs at that point.
It may appear as if this is a unique feature of capitalism, but under any economic system, underperforming systems need to be cut. People aren't buying the games, people aren't playing the games in great enough members and at high enough prices to justify having so many people working on each game, so there just isn't a good reason to keep giving resources to all the workers.
- Comment on Bully Online mod taken down abruptly one month after launch 2 weeks ago:
Very good point.
- Comment on Bully Online mod taken down abruptly one month after launch 2 weeks ago:
No, Rockstar has been pretty consistent on shutting down all mods for their games. There is a source Port of vice City and GTA III I got shut down too, and it wasn't for sale.
- Comment on Copy of Grand Theft Auto that runs in a web browser gets taken down by DMCA 5 weeks ago:
ReVC and ReGTA3 were both taken down by take two several years ago. It makes perfect sense that they'd take down a fork.
- Comment on NoAuthority.social Goes Down After Hardware Failure 2 months ago:
Always sad to see a site down like that.
I've got redundancies and backups, but shit can always happen.
- Comment on Valve makes almost $50 million per employee, raking in more cash per person than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft — gaming giant's 350 employees on track to generate $17 billion this year 2 months ago:
Does Microsoft have less money than Valve?
- Comment on Valve confirm the Steam Machine will be priced like a PC with similar specs, rather than a console 2 months ago:
Unfortunately, during the pandemic we discovered what happens when things are underpriced. Effectively, if you don't have the original company pricing their products according to the market, the scalpers all swoop in and buy up all the stock and resell it at market rates.
- Comment on Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec 4 months ago:
Seems like one of those things that the bean counters really like, but it's not good for anyone. The customers end up getting a shittier experience, and the developers who make really good games end up really not getting their fair share because if a bunch of people sign up for game pass or something they are going to be subsidizing all the other companies that made games that didn't get people to sign up.
I feel kind of Lucky in this regard, I got to realize very early on that the game subscription service is better on paper than in reality. Around 2007 there was a game subscription service called gametap. It was a pretty good service, lots of good games - really good games, but you had things like if a game that you liked came out of rotation it was gone, and you never owned anything so if you quit your subscription you lost everything in fact I'm pretty sure you even lost your sabe files with that service.
Games that you love are really a thing that you want to own.
- Comment on Microsoft's 6502 BASIC is now officially open source 4 months ago:
BASIC bros, it's all up from here!
(Note: FBXL.NET has been a BASIC website for decades)
- Comment on Devolver boss calls GTA 6 an "AAAAA game" in latest attack on human dignity 4 months ago:
MY GAME IS OVER 9000 A!!!!!
- Comment on Microsoft says recent Windows update didn't kill your SSD 4 months ago:
One of many books that I'm working on behind the scenes is a programming book that is going to be for the free basic programming language, but is also intended to be a history of computing and a broader computer science course. One of the recurring jokes I intend to put into the computer history is "that would be the only time Microsoft did something sketchy"
Their very first action ever was to announce that they had an Altair compatible basic ready to go. And it turns out that even that was a complete lie. They only bothered actually making the basic interpreter once it became obvious there was demand based on the feedback from the magazine letter.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong won't cost nearly as much as they could probably charge for it 5 months ago:
From an economics standpoint, the amount of money that you're putting into a thing doesn't really have anything to do with the amount you charge for it. I'm working on my first novel right now, and it's been a whole lot of work -- I've been working on it for 9 months, and while I haven't been working on it full time every day, I've put a lot of time in every single week since I started. By contrast, a much better author working on a much less ambitious work probably spent a lot less effort on their book. Regardless, I can probably charge a lot less for my book because the demand for my book is going to be a lot lower than the demand for their book is because people are like their book and they're probably not going to like a mine LOL
The higher you charge for your product, the less people are going to buy it, but the greater your margins are going to be, the lower you charge for your project, the more people are going to buy it to a point, but the lower your margins are going to be. For an indie title, and this is still an indie title, you could try charging more and you would still sell a lot of copies, and you really improve your profit margin, but part of the reason why indie titles work is that you can get it into the hands of a lot of people, and if it's really good then those people will end up going off and evangelizing to others, and eventually you have cult hit on your hands.
The reason to have a and bigger production is that if you think that you can get more of those sales for a higher cost, and thus getting higher margins with higher volume. A lot of companies are learning right now that you don't lose money on each unit and make it up on volume, so there's a lot of massive flops going on.
- Comment on Over 450 Diablo developers vote to unionise, because "passion can’t protect us from job instability" 5 months ago:
Ask the journalists and the factory workers; unions can't protect you from it either.
- Comment on Humble Bundle have launched their 2025 Pride Month games bundle 8 months ago:
Something that I have been warning about for years now is that all of these establishment voices that claim to support a thing are just going to use that thing up and then discard it like a used tissue.
The sooner people realize that, the better off everyone will be. Global megacorps are not your friend.
- Comment on Search engines are getting worse, so OpenWebSearch funded by the European Union want to fix it 8 months ago:
Amen.
- Comment on The empire strikes back with F-bombs: AI Darth Vader goes rogue with profanity, slurs 8 months ago:
"what did you think would happen? I'm fuckin evil! I killed kids! You think I'm too nice to use some f-slurs?"
- Comment on Are AAA Games too bloated? 8 months ago:
They might be, but most AAA games for many years just haven't been worth playing at all, much less forever.
Like 95% of my gaming is pre-pandemic.
- Comment on Harassed by Assassin’s Creed gamers, a professor fought back with kindness 8 months ago:
"we based this off of actual historical Japanese battles"
"So here's a giant enemy crab, you flip it over and attack it's weak spot for massive damage"
- Comment on Discord CEO steps down, replaced with former Activision Blizzard CSO as they work towards being a public company 9 months ago:
Discord is like the dread pirate Roberts combined with a used car salesman. "I'll probably kill you tomorrow, you should buy nitro"
- Comment on Ubuntu 25.04 upgrades halted due to Kubuntu users getting a broken desktop 9 months ago:
No lies detected...
I'm brave. I'll run anything on the bleeding edge. I main Debian sid.
But that thing, it scares me.
- Comment on Classic post-nuclear shooter Metro 2033 Redux is now free to keep on Steam and GOG 9 months ago:
"classic"
Nnnooooooo! That's not true! That's impossible!
- Comment on That Pac-Man, but what if he was a little bit evil, Metroidvania now has a summer release date 10 months ago:
"Remember Secret Level, that Amazon show that came out last December? I wouldn't blame you if you already forgot about it"
Imagine assuming people are still watching streaming services.
- Comment on Were Sony and Microsoft Truly Worried About The Google Stadia? 1 year ago:
Especially when you're a company with a history of shutting down products people liked.
The Google graveyard is a website that will repair any urge to rely on a Google ecosystem.
- Comment on Doom: The Dark Ages Dropped Multiplayer In Favor Of Doomslayer's Cyber Dragon And Giant Mecha 1 year ago:
Jeez, that's exciting. Giant doom mech.
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077 Has Finally Hit Overwhelmingly Positive On Steam 1 year ago:
Honestly, I played it at launch and it was pretty good. I'm told my experience was unusual
- Comment on New survey reports one in 10 game developers have lost their jobs in 2024 1 year ago:
It's gonna keep happening until they start making games for people who play them again.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for board room executives.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for the media.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for political insiders.
Problem is,
Board room executives are supposed to be selling games, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
The media is supposed to be talking about games for people who play games, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
Political insiders are just hoping to use poorly produced propaganda to change hearts and minds, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
And so most people just keep playing and buying games that were made for people who play games, since they aren't board room executives, part of the media, or political insiders.
A lot of the more simplistic things said about games today are actually just heuristics for games only made for these three groups. "Oh, it has X, it was made for the New York Times, not for me." "Oh, it has Y, it was made for continuous monetization, not for me." "Oh, it has Z, this was made to spread a message, not for me." Then people get all defensive about X Y and Z, not realizing it's just a heuristic and most people will play a good game with all 3 if it's good, but given how expensive games are, a heuristic that's mostly accurate is enough to scare a lot of people away from a game. How many hours does it take you to earn the 100 dollars they're floating for GTA6?
- Comment on Almost a third of developers think generative AI is a negative for the games industry, says new survey 1 year ago:
Like any tool, it's about how it's used.
But it'll make some real shite possible, cheap.
- Comment on Square Enix Has Set Up A New Policy To Go After Harassers 1 year ago:
Won't someone think of the poor, poor, global megacorporations?
- Comment on Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' 1 year ago:
I don't always even know if I agree with myself when I'm trying to figure out stuff that's outside the edge of my own understanding, so regardless of whether you think you're right I appreciate the constructive engagement.
One employment lawyer I heard an interview with once suggested something similar to but subtly different than what you're talking about, that "woke" is actually a scheme by the ownership class to divide the working class by getting us to attack each other so we don't work together to get better wages or working conditions from them.
It's definitely a multi-faceted issue.
One of the keys is definitely that "woke" isn't all progressive thought, it's a very specific point, so to criticize the piece isn't to necessarily criticize the whole.
On the matter at hand though, the fact that the accusations against Musk are very specific and in a very specific order really speaks to the fact that it isn't really the author's personal thoughts. There's lots of things you can go after the guy for that aren't in order "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic". Much more relevant to the article would be that he often claims he'll be able to do things he can't, or he sets timelines he can't possibly meet, or his whole fortune is based on a ponzi scheme where the world's smallest car company has a market cap that dwarfs any other car company even when those other companies have entire product lines Tesla isn't even involved in. Most people who play video games don't play a game engine. Most people agree that once John Romero left id the company really wasn't the same, and while Quake 2 is a technical marvel it isn't nearly as fun to play or atmospheric as doom or quake. Doom 3 was also a technological marvel, but most people don't remember it as a classic the same way they remember doom or quake. Doom 2016 was the first time in decades that id really hit the nail on the head hard, and it was thanks to real creativity and bringing new ideas into the franchise and in many ways into the genre as a whole.
That's the actual problem with using AI to produce games, AI is an inherently conservative force -- not in a political sense, but in that it is fed data and does a great job of creating permutations of that data. AI is incredibly powerful for creating something like what has already come before it, but true creativity brings something new. Someone writing about a feeling nobody's ever written about that represents insight into the human mind, that's something a human can produce, but not an AI.
- Comment on Blizzard are delisting Warcraft I and II from GOG, so GOG adds a special discount and will keep them updated 1 year ago:
Of Course I already had these games on gog...