Ghost_MH

I have no idea. The full terms aren't at all public. I'm just gleaning from memory about the whole free games thing as it's come up in the news over the just year or two. If I were Epic, I'd have to imagine there's a time limit on when they'd pay. I also imagine there's a lot of data that shows that the vast majority of games that are bought and then not played within a year are never played. I'm fairly certain I have like a hundred games on Steam that fall under that category. I don't think I've once ever cared about card drops or achievements or anything other than just the games, themselves. That may be why I don't really care about what launcher a game is on. They're all free to install, so I guess it's a big whatever to me. Like when The Witcher 3 came out, I bought it on GOG since I figured that would get the most money in CD Project's hands. A shame the company turned out to treat their employees like shit. Then again, Valve isn't exactly known for its great culture either.

This one is fun in either English or Japanese. I guess there are a ton of manga fans upset this isn't a traditional anime, but fuck that. The author didn't want an anime and opted for an animated comic and it really works well for this comedy. I'm a fan. There's no need to stretch a three panel joke into ten minutes when it can be told just as well in a fraction of one.

It's quite a thing, right? Same here. I have a pretty good collection of games, outside of the free ones, there. Honestly, if I have the choice, I'll grab the game there or somewhere like Humble just to give the devs a bigger cut. I really could not care less of having extra launchers on my PC. I'm also not going to spend cash on a PS5 when I have a great PC perfectly capable of playing those Playstation/EGS exclusives in 4k.

That sounds like a lot of effort to support devs whose games you don't want to play. You could also just install the games and play them, you know?

My understanding is that they pay developers a set rate, not full retail, per installation and not games claimed. If you've claimed every game they offer, but only installed and played two of them, Epic is only paying for those two. That would also explains why 2020 saw them lose more money than 2019. More people at home with more free time to play those free games.

Does that line even still exist?

Oh god, I finally came across it in the wild. I guess some idiots are saying the vaccine killed DMX because he died a few days after getting it. You know, ignoring that he also ODed on the same drugs he's been fighting an addiction over since highschool.

I don't think anything is wrong here. This looks to be profit generated from the EGS, so that's 12% of that $265m minus whatever they spend on free games, exclusives, and development of the EGS, itself. If you told me that equaled -$273m for 2020, I'd say that was probably right.

Jason's story isn't really about the games, themselves, but the people at Sony who are feeling pressured to work on the big budget games. Sony putting more and more pressure on their devs to help support they're tentpoles while neglecting their smaller titles doesn't exactly contradict their previous releases.

Looks like Apple is now refusing the provide testimony in the Senate hearings on app store competition... Apple refuses request to testify for Senate app store hearing WWW.THEVERGE.COM The hearing was set for later this month. Apple likely feels nothing good can come from this that won't result in bad press while also believing this is all for show and Congress has no plans to do anything about their ap store practices. They're probably right here.

That's certainly true. I think this is just a reality of the ease of entry game publishing has these days. It seems like the major publishers have a harder time keeping talent they then push to work on budget constrained titles with very little backing. Like, why put yourself through that when you can go work on a passion project that gets picked up by Epic, Nintendo, Microsoft, or Apple? Even if it doesn't, there's still Steam and Nintendo's wildly lax eShop requirements. The Bloomberg story covers exactly that happening at Sony Bend.

I guess that comes down to what you consider mid tier these days if we're going with budget as the barometer here. I'd definitely put the, like, Yakuza games there. Nier: Automata is certainly mid tier, budget wise. Nowadays it's just a weirdly gray area. I'd consider AAA to be those games whose budget is "whatever it takes to get it done". Any game that questions whether it can include features due to budget constraints during the preliminary design process is a step below that.

I wouldn't mind this if Biden used the Trump policy of reallocating military funds for emergency items...like climate change. I mention that because I swear I recall Biden talking about doing just that.

I don't mean to single you out here, but the last five years have been some of the most diverse gaming years I've ever seen. You don't even have to look everywhere. Even if you focus on one publisher like Annapurna Interactive you've got everything from Florence to Kentucky Route Zero to Sayonara Wild Hearts to super weird games like Wattam and Donut Country. I mean, even Nintendo released stuff Ring Fit Adventure and the Labo. That doesn't even include the fun stuff we've been getting in the VR space. I think the focus of a lot of game reviewers and many gamers in general have been increasingly on the big stuff with huge budgets or games with tens and hundreds of hours of content. That, however, ignores a lot of the stuff I've really enjoyed over the last generation. Donut Country was like 1 hour of game. Gris is maybe 3 or 4 hours. Superluminal is half of that. There's a lot of great and wildly diverse gaming out there. Hell, we're even seeing FMV games make a comeback with Telling Lies, The Complex, or that new game, Ghost, that can only be played at 10pm with animatronics by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. It's a great time for finding any kind of game you can imagine. Hearing about Sony doubling down on only AAA stuff while Microsoft and even Nintendo look smaller is disheartening.

Looks like Epic is trying to argue that Apple's refusal to allow competing app stores isn't about customer safety, but also to prevent people from freely leaving the platform. Their evidence here are internal Apple emails discussing whether bringing iMessage to Android would lower consumer barriers to moving to Android. Apple says iMessage on Android ‘will hurt us more than help us’ WWW.THEVERGE.COM ‘The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage.’ That's actually not a bad argument to make, especially when you have public statements from Apple saying they want stuff like Facetime and iMessage to be an industry standard and then have nonpublic statements saying that would be a bad idea because then people might move to Android. It's probably Epic's best argument, in regards to app store competition, so far.

I wonder how many people actually subscribe to Apple Arcade. The fact that Apple hasn't bragged about it yet makes me think they aren't doing great. That's even worse than Apple TV. Even then, Apple released numbers, but those numbers included the free year they give folks that buy Apple devices. They really should have just gone one price for Music, TV, and Arcade.

Yeah, I saw that. What a shitty situation.

He may very well not make it, but looks like some family of his may have jumped the gun.

Just came here to see if anyone posted that video. It's brilliant

Looks like they've settled in the most ridiculously obvious Nike only sued to shut up conservatives way. Nike and MSCHF settle Satan Shoe lawsuit, say any ‘confused’ buyers can get a refund WWW.THEVERGE.COM The full terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. MSCHF has agreed to a voluntary recall. They'll buy back any shoes bought by customers that were confused and thought these were made by Nike.

Yeah, this is actually pretty good. It really starts getting intense one you get the red Pac-Men roaming around.

Ha, that's my brother. Even my picky-ish five year old has a more developed palate. I don't get it. There's so much delicious food out there. Binging with Babish had an episode on tteokbokki like a week or two back. I think I have everything I'd need to make it. Maybe I'll try making that tonight. Kids on the spectrum are even more fun. My daughter is diagnosed severe autism. A lot of what she does is learned behaviors from watching others because giving her verbal directions don't really work. Either way, my son doesn't like eating the crust of his pizza or the crust on his sandwiches. My daughter somehow figured how that means you're not supposed to eat the edges of food and took that to the extreme. Pancakes end up with the centers chewed out. She rips burgers in half, eats the center, and leaves the edges. She somehow tries to eat the center out of cupcakes and just makes a huge mess. Nuggets are peeled and only the chicken is eaten. Again, kids are fun.

This is how my girls are. They'll eat just about anything you put in front of them. Takoyaki? Sure. How about some mildly spicy popusas? Why not. Is that tofu? Hell yeah. My son, five, can be picky and if he says he won't eat something my youngest will follow along even if she loves it. I don't get it because he'd eat sushi with us just a year or so ago. His only exception is spicy food. If we say something is too spicy for him, he'll eat it come hell or five bottles of water. Kids are fun.

I think I said this before, but all the major gaming companies have the ability to filter for this kind of language already. Intel doing it in real time on an end-user's own computer is cool, but we've gotten really good at looking for key words in speech. The only reason this hadn't happened is for fear of pissing off racists and other Gamergate-types that spend a lot of money on games. It's Jordan's whole "Republicans buy shoes, too" mindset.

This one is easy. Facebook doesn't actually delete user profiles and also creates dummy profiles based on data collected from their users' contact lists. That way if Pierre here tried creating a new Facebook account, Facebook will suggest all his friends and family that already gave them all his contact info via access to their contact lists. Facebook also uses this to recommend you invite your friends to join when you give them access to your contact list.