Right, but this only works if you have DuckDuckGo set as your search engine.

Dogs bowling may be a joke, but it’s surprising how many dogs enjoy skateboarding once they learn the basics.

Jesus. And here I thought you were going to suggest something simple like chamomile tea.

Something I wonder about - if the delivery guy is lazy or falsified the image, maybe it’s a JPEG with basic location information attached. If so, that could be a form of evidence against them, hopefully get someone fired.

The stupidest instance in recent memory was an LGBT-positive video saying “It’s okay to be queer!” but in the captions, inserting another one of those fucking dinky-ass asterisks into the word “queer”.

Okay, so is it NOT okay to be queer? Should we censor “boy” and “girl” next? Or maybe stop with the silly asterisks and blame the medium that actually tries with the bans.

The most fragile thing to me is their funding stream, which may even serve as a source of enshittification demands, implemented as subtly as possible.

If the original comic someone found is correct, now that word has been censored and re-edited in…

“But I must!”
“Fine, well…at least take this whip. Oh, and learn the spell Hydro Storm, if you can.”

If we can work out which data conduits are patrolled more often by AI than by humans, we could intentionally flood those channels with AI content, and push Model Collapse along further. Get AI authors to not only vet for “true human content”, but also pay licensing fees for the use of that content. And then, hopefully, give the fuck up on their whole endeavor.

There’s a game around time travel called Quantum Break that brings up this topic.

Someone brings detailed messages to their past self…and acknowledges, as a way of proving it, that September 11 is going to happen - but due to the way time works, no matter who they warn or what they say, no one will believe them and nothing will change.

I don’t even know if everyone read that bit of text lore ingame, but it was pretty emotional.

Yup, the Xbox does that; but it’s at least good to acknowledge that was not an insignificant effort on their part. They had a lot of people slowly putting out compatibility packages for old Xbox games based on popularity.

I’m guessing Sony doesn’t feel like doing that when they can also provide that hardware via more expensive cloud systems.

I’ve definitely had some of those issues. I won’t count an old issue where my GPU needed a special connection to attach audio to its DVI output (rare oddity). Some others:

• Most computers would need to swap default audio device between whatever you use at a desk, and the TV registered as an HDMI audio device.
• Bluetooth connections to arbitrary controllers have gotten better, but they had often needed manual enablement each time through mouse-based menus or a number of firmware updates to work with Windows/SteamOS.
• My Steam Deck, even in its current iteration, takes some time to recognize the connected TV and swap resolution.
• The mouse cursor issue can come up if you had to do any mouse-based option swapping, like that thing with audio devices.

I’ve definitely gotten it working and had a blast, but the number of button presses to get to starting the game can sometimes be hard to predict. Even when I had a computer dedicated to the TV (a long time ago when SteamOS was fledgling) it was pretty unreliable about having all the right updates and not needing a mouse.

On the idea of random drives: Many of them might not be able to read the encryption on Playstation discs. I could be wrong, but I think the way they operate involves more than just software encryption. Sony is best off making their own. Hence why pirates burn special copies.

On reading prior generations: I think they’d be capable of reading those if they wanted, but running old Playstation games is more a matter of correct CPU architecture. Most of us have played old games on the new consoles, but often there’s a bit of manual porting/emulation logic going on to get it working - so the package delivered from PSN isn’t exactly would come from an old PS2 disc.

Props for accepting a counterargument on the internet graciously. Not something we see often.

Who said that?

Be specific, include the word “only” as you quoted, and very important: Don’t lie.

I can’t speak towards whatever you might be misinformed about. The only other close thing I can think of is when a support staff told a user that their account was going to be deleted, which prompted a huge backlash. But, one of the determinations seemed to be that they only do so for inactive accounts that have never purchased anything; and was in fact a GDPR requirement. So, it was another nothing article based on rumors.

Which makes sense if you think about it - actually put some kind of motivation behind the “evil schemes” you’re reading. Greed is very much expected, but removing people’s old games doesn’t gain Ubisoft anything but poor press. If you told me they were selling cheat codes for old games for $30 each, I’d believe it. There’s no profit in what people are actually suggesting though.

The other thing I worry about is for people to be genuinely too blinded by reputation to give games a chance, or to give meaningful feedback that helps those diamonds come to existence.

I feel like there are some timelines/realities where big publishers like EA / Ubisoft put out a genuinely good game. And it has happened - Titanfall 1/2 are darlings to a lot of people. I’d say Mario + Rabbids was genuinely fun and had great music. I’ve watched streamers play Star Wars Outlaws, and while no, it’s not a fantastic game and I don’t plan to buy it, I can see a few touches I can appreciate. The fact that players basically chuck it in the “Ubisoft = shit” bin to go on hate-tirades without having much of substance (or better yet, to put their energy into praising games they liked) to say seems to doom us by our own expectations.

Remember that Valve had to work with Sierra (a big evil publisher) as they were starting, before eventually going solo. I worry that the next decade’s Valve is going to get trashed because at the time of their next release, they were “Ubisoft Southern Northland” and “ubisoft = shit”.

Man, I really want to assume our lords and saviors will keep putting out perfect games, and yet we’ve been burned in our history.

CDPR put out a half-baked Cyberpunk after a year of hype. Valve put out “Artifact”, the Dota card game. It feels like the really inventive studios sometimes get tired of the working formulas they’re adored for and end up putting out things not many people like - possibly as a way of doing a personal passion project.

I’ll be happy if that never happens for Larian, but it’s a worrying possibility.

At least we have that fanmade expansion for Heroes 3.

Is this at all accurate?

The closest thing I could find when I searched for this topic is that the multiplayer and online services related to those games were being taken offline. Given you can still play Counter-Strike 1.6, I can see some frustration on that, but I also didn’t think many people knew AC1 had any multiplayer features.

Anyone reading can go and take a look at current reviews on Steam for Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2. The newest reviews come from the last few weeks, and no one is highlighting “Ubisoft STOLE this game from me, CANNOT BE PLAYED” etc.

Which makes it hard for me to respect memes like this one when the reactions, at least in part, seem to be driven by constant misinformation. Ubisoft games are absolutely mediocre, I can agree with that, but there is absolutely no need to lie about them.

I am aware of the game preservation movement, focused on The Crew, and I’m in favor of that. I still don’t think it had anything to do with the quote. No one in game publishing makes a business around taking away games people were already playing.