I mean mods are free, there's no money to be made, hence no legal protection. Though maybe if you view social status like cash maybe you'd get pissed off? Especially if you feel only the hard workers deserve to be popular/get laid.
Nothing is free in this world: time spent doing something has value. Because software pirates used to think that other people's work had no value we now have annoying procedures to start and authenticate games, sometimes forcing us to register to several "keys providers". The results are that now honest customers are "paying" in time and hassles to get their games to start, while "pirates" don't have this trouble. And it's just a question of being honest : when taking someone else's work, it's only fair to give them credit. I don't have to explain fairness now, do I ? That "credit" sounds awfully like something related to "value", and it surely has nothing to do with "getting laid". I don't think Galileo, Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie spent their lives doing work that will benefit the whole of humanity just for on expectation of "getting laid"... .
What are you talking about? I bought Empyrion on Steam and there were no weird delays when starting up the game for the first time, simply checking yes for a EULA. I understand, it's just some people actually do boast and take credit in order to impress women in order to get laid. Since women tend to be more sexually attracted to what they perceive as an Alpha male. Otherwise why do so many high school males grandstand and boast all the time?
Well things were much simpler when this all started, right ? There were no requirements to install "Steam" or anything else when we bought a game, and we could sell it to a friend and they could use it, just like everything (mostly) else in the non-digital market. We had a key on the box, and that was it. Buy a fridge, use it, sell it as 2nd hand, no one will try to make you look like a thief. But for games and software, people have been accustomed for decades to jump through hoops just to get their legitimately purchased product to work, and they can't sell it because the product is now bound to an account. For Steam-only games it's not such a big deal, but some games require making an account with another provider (EA, Rockstar Games, etc). But the whole point is that all this "internet required to play/ register" should not have been forced on customers to start with. Just like Microsoft forcing people to upgrade their OS just because they need to keep the cash flow, and O Surprise your old, legitimately bought software is not supported anymore ! So I have tons of CDs with games that I bought and can't use anymore, unless I'm not tech savvy and run them in a virtual OS. But for all the non-geeks, that is a total rip-off. Or they can just wait for GoG to put their old game on their site with some fixes... I suggest that this is actually a minority, but it is very largely broadcasted as "the norm". Most couples with children are made of non-alpha males and very ordinary women. The real "attractiveness" is far more related to the brain than to the body. Good sense of humor, being compassionate, having some courage, etc. Computer games are typically for male audiences, with only a very small portion of players being female. Look at the present forum : how many "female players" do we see here ? Not a lot. So people boasting in a video game context are surely not doing it principally to "get laid" but probably more to compensate for some lack of self-confidence. Also look at the average age of players here on the forum : a lot around 40 and above, so not the typical high school "boaster".
I'm talking about young guys who trick gullible women into believing that they are something that they are not, having a one night stand and then leave the woman afterwards before his true self is revealed to said woman. A sort of fake till ya make it, simple pump and dump. No couples or intent for a long lasting relationship, just sex and as much sex with as many partners as one can handle. Well yes, but you have to remember it wasn't really forced. The majority of the masses found it more convenient to download online rather then getting a hard copy, and once said majority had already transitioned over then the corporations had an excuse for digitalized copies only. If the majority of consumers from the very beginning never transitioned over to buying digital only once it was made available, it would have been very hard for companies to justify going said route. Well it's either that or they could have forced people regardless, especially since many big videogame companies bought up the competition who might still give people a physical option. It's also more money on their end to make physical copies of a game (since you have to pay some Chinese factory the money to make those discs before you can distribute them to your consumers). Which if you think about it has also ironically allowed underfunded and smaller development studios to enter the market, since the cost of having to manufacture discs is now null. Now one could argue that these underfunded development studios never should have been allowed to enter the market, due to maybe having bad coders and not having enough money on hand to pay for disc manufacturing is a sign that the studio couldn't pull out a business loan from the Bank because they know they already engaged in bad business practices/is unfit to survive. Therefore one could make the argument Steam bad because it allows unfit companies who SHOULD go under due to being unfit for the capitalist market.
I know what you're talking about. It's just that you started with this : So we're drifting a bit from the topic here. I know some young dudes are dumb, but that was not the point. And they don't all get smarter with age unfortunately... You are already one step too far : it's precisely because Steam blocked Sierra from selling their games that made them hard to purchase "offline". It started with Half-Life 2, being the first game forcing online authentification, even for hard copies bought offline. And they knew pretty well that there was big $$$ tied to this, offering a replacement for hard copy printing/packaging and distribution for producers, in exchange for fees to distribute online via Steam. Like you said in your next paragraph, yes. Also they aimed at killing the 2nd hand market where players could sell games they bought, which could run with just a simple key on any machine. So we buy a fridge, but we are not allowed to sell it when we get a newer one. This is clearly anti-consumer practices. I think this is not a problem, as Steam also has a "review" system which allows potential customers to learn about what they plan to buy. It's far from perfect or "objective" but better that nothing or "game journalist reviews" only. And since we're on the topic of "copying other's ideas and work" look at the Epic store : they don't have any kind of forum, so people who want to discuss about their games ... go to Steam. That is jarring. At least EA has a "community" but all these "online games stores" simply copied Steam, and the ones that were the most impacted by this were the customers.I don't think there is an area in the whole "free market" where the customers get laughed at harder than in the software market. We could buy a program and use it for years, not it's "subscription" based... That is ridiculous. Just look at GoG: they found a way to be much less intrusive and allow all games purchased to be played offline, with a one-time only authentification, while Steam keeps forcing things on its customers : updates, machine ID checks ( oh! new computer ? please verify your account), and pushing ads. GoG also does not make installing their client "mandatory" to download and install games.
Oh really? I had no idea. I always wondered what would happen to my Steam games if say the internet was taken down because of a massive hack attack (perhaps caused by WW3). So despite the fact that the games are saved on my hard drive, I can't play them if my computer can't connect with Steams servers?
Well I had the same worries, and surely lots of other players too. Without going into WW3, let's just say that Steam goes bankrupt, out of the blue. In fact when companies go bankrupt it's very often out of the blue, because they try to keep money coming in as long as they can, and it does not happen when a bankrupcy is at the horizon, quite the contrary : shares take a plunge and people panick. So they hide it as long as they can. So Steam gets out of business, and all games on Steam and unplayable, until they get some patch. I think lots of customers would gang up and try to force Steam/Valve to patch as many games as possible, but frankly this would be chaos. I think one possible outcome would be that Steam would give their authentification code and database to another distributor so they can allow some transition. It is well known that most EULAs in the IT world are full of completely nuts and illegal provisions that would have no value in Courts, but that doesn't prevent producers from drowning customers in walls on incomprehensible legal gibberish. All provisions aimed at forcing the buyer to "let go of all recourses" and allow the seller to do whatever he wants with his product even after it was bought are not applicable. But how many people are willing to take a case all the way up to Court ? And that is precisely why producers are pretty much free to do whatever they want, knowing most people will not do anything about it. We had an interesting case here recently, where a well known lawyer had problems with her iPhone and tried to get her "legal warranty" to apply. After the usual customer service "can't do" garbage, she started sending official registered mail to head offices, then she had a meeting with a team of lawyers who genuinely tried to mislead her and have her sign a waiver and whatnot. She finally got the warranty to apply and they simply sent her a new phone, but she wrote an open letter in my city's main newspaper to tell the story, and warn that ordinary people would probably never have the courage nor the knowledge to get very far.
FYI @Joij ... the "alpha" moniker was applied to wolves in captivity- an artificial situation. Nobody in animal behavior subscribes to the nomenclature anymore. In the real world, wolves don't socially organize that way. Basically the whole premise is misogynistic bullshit that continues to be promulgated by guys trying to explain why *they* can't get a date or keep a mate.
Pecking orders exist in the animal world, there's not necessarily Alpha males, but there do exist analogous examples in the animal kingdom. Not in every species, but a decent amount. Also I don't agree with the premise of the meme. It could be very true that the problem in the failed relationship wasn't you, but rather the other partner.
Well I guess that's just the way of the World. But then again those hackers and thieves which you so dislike would end up becoming the heroes. I but someone will attempt to hack/create an emulated authentication code if something like that happened.
That's just a twisted way of trying to turn something bad into something good. There would be no need for hackers, just legit programmers paid to fix the problem. It's also a very "Hollywoodian" perspective to depict hackers as the best in the field, but in reality there are tons of better programmers out there that have better things to do, and also have a reputation to maintain. I still remember how the IT gurus told everyone that there was going to be chaos at midnight on december 31, 1999. They were everywhere telling doomsday stories about power grids shutting down and whole countries being paralized. Nothing happened worth writing down in history books. Now we may be making a whole lot of noise for Steam going down, while it may be a very simple thing to fix for them if it ever happens. It has already happened many years ago, but not many players are willing to risk using that stuff and losing their whole account's contents...
There is another problem that you failed to take into account for this mod, and that problem is starting to hit RE as well... you want to make it more difficult, so it take more time to touch end-game content with more ore to grind, more recipes to follow, more sub-level things to build, so you can build advanced level materials etc etc.. .... first, this is a MMORPG approach that is needed to keep players slaves of a paying account the longest possible time, not really necessary in a free game world... it's not more difficult, it's just a PITA... Second , and the main part, this game need a NEW wipe/start each time there is a major (even minor sometimes) update (for the base game or the scenario/mod). This is a stupid vanilla game mechanic that you can't prevent. And we didn't take into account the wipe because of corrupted base from a not tested enough update (the classic update "WITH NO IMPACTS" , all the computer system admin in the world know what i mean) Now, for example, with RE1.8, you need something like 1 month playing 6-8 hours a day (for a standard players, that don't know each tricks/ shortcuts to reduce time spending) to reach all end-game contents for each task, but if there is an update during that time (for the main game and/or the mod with new contents) , you are condamned to begin again the game from the start. At the moment, there is 1 major update that need a wipe so you can use the new contents, each 1.5 - 2 months So a casual gamers who play something like 15 hours /week (2 hours a day) will NEVER see the end-game content on a MP server (even the medium one...) I'm an avid Reforged eden player with more than 3400 hours of empyrion play since the official V 1.00, and i still think the most fun part is that part until you take-off from the starter planet (the SURVIVAL part in a SURVIVAL game... amazing, isn't it ? after that, survival is no more a concern) more difficult is NOT always to making things taker longer time take that into account...
I know of servers that have been going for 6+ months. A wipe is only needed when a server's database and save game file gets so big that it becomes unstable (which has nothing to do with the updates themselves). That is an issue with Reforged because the galaxy is larger and has more stuff in it than vanilla, but it does affect vanilla as well. But wipes are at the sole discretion of the admins. If your server is wiping every month or two then it's because those admins chose to wipe, not because of an update.
you are right and wrong.... if you didn't want the new contents, you can forget the wipe, otherwise you need to wipe... i agree with you that is not totaly mandatory but, who didn't want new content when it's out ? new traders, new missions... new POI modification will need a wipe as all the already discovered playfield/planets will not be updated with the new content/modification / bug corrections. on no man's land server where i play, the last wipe was when 1.8 was out, and the next will probably be with the your next update of RE if we need it to see your new addition...
