ObsidianNebula

@ObsidianNebula@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GOG reportedly suffering from staff turnover and poor management: “Current business model is likely running out of steam”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve read through your various comments, and I’m not sure you see the difference here.

  With other platforms such as Steam, you download the Steam program that acts as a single installer for every game on the platform. You have to be logged into a valid Steam account to download a game from their single installer. If you use a new computer, you have to log into Steam and download from Steam. On GoG, you download an installer per game. Those installers can be transferred to any device and download the games even if the computer has never logged into GoG or even connected to the internet. You can store all the installers on an external drive, which you can’t do for Steam.

  If Steam eventually dies or your account is banned, you can never install those games again. If GoG eventually dies or your account is banned, you are correct that you can’t download new installers, but you can use any installer you have already downloaded.

  If Steam dies or your account is banned, the game you already have downloaded may not even work anymore due to DRM (this is on a game-by-game basis). If GoG dies or your account is banned, your games are guaranteed to still run since they are not dependant on GoG DRM (with a small list of exceptions people aren’t happy about).

  You may not care about any of this, but there’s a decent chunk of people who want to keep their games regardless of anything the purchasing company does.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Happy birthday, peon⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m on mobile, so maybe the photo isn’t loading at high resolution, but I don’t think your points lead me to believe AI generated this.

  The finger looks a little odd, but it could just be the way the shadows fell. The garbage can doesn’t look flat against the wall. If you look in the reflection of the mirror, one corner is closer to the wall than the other, which would account for the distortion you mentioned. The blue coat of the back of the chair might just be a coat. The chair legs seem like they should be behind his leg and the trash can. The foot pedal on a plastic trash doesn’t seem like the sturdiest thing and can just bend. The lid seems symmetrical to me personally. There just aren’t enough pixels in the image for me to see if there are buttons or not.

  Maybe I’m completely wrong and it is AI, but it seems to me like too many of the fine details match up with reality. It may also be the low resolution that makes things seem more realistic. If it is a fake image, I think it would be more likely that the photo was taken out of context or staged.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This world is cruel…⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if it is fishing itself that they don’t like, or if it is the prevalence of fishing photos on dating sites. I know that a lot of guys post fishing photos on their profiles (probably because most men don’t take many photos of themselves but will take photos with a nice catch), so maybe it just seems unoriginal or low effort. I’m honestly not sure, but my only point is that it may not be the hobby itself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I make games and this literally happened to me this morning⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re correct on the two thoughts you listed. Wishlisting also makes the game more visible before release. For example, highly wishlisted games appear in the “Popular Upcoming” section, along with some other spots. This increased visibility before launch then feeds into the two points you made. I believe games that are highly wishlisted before launch are also more likely to appear on the frontpage right after launch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨when AI tries to get in my way⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t used it often, but the few times I have asked it very specific programming questions, it has usually been pretty good. For example, I am not very good with regex, but I can usually ask Copilot to create regex that does something like verifying a string matches a certain pattern, and it performs pretty well. I don’t use regex enough to spend a lot of time learning it, and I could easily find a few examples online that can be combined to make my answer, but Copilot is much quicker and easier for me. That said, I don’t think I would trust it past answering questions about how to implement a small code snippet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"what happened??"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, their business practices regarding selling games are fairly consumer friendly, but overall they have quite a few issues themselves that aren’t great. I wouldn’t hold them up as a great company but rather a better company than the competition, which is a fairly low bar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox gets banned indefinitely in Turkey over “child exploitation”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I watched a video a while back about this, but the details are fuzzy. I think it was the one I linked below if you want to look more into it. In essence, there aren’t a ton of cases where kids are actually being forced to work. However, there are strong incentives for kids to work on Roblox projects that the developers themselves push. The devs want a constant stream of content and money coming in, but they don’t want to pay adult workers at adult wages, so they offer Robux to players who make games. It is difficult for people to convert Robux to actual cash, and the money they receive is often significantly less than they would if they put the effort into any other form of work, so many of these kids are essentially making content for the developers for free or significantly less than they should earn. If there was no payout for content creators and the kids were doing that development just because they had passion for the game, it might be a different situation, but there are quite a few kids that believe they can make serious money doing this and don’t understand that the developers are exploiting them and paying very little. Adults can probably do more research and better understand the situation they are getting into, but kids often don’t have the same critical thinking skills as adults and will accept the lie being pushed by the developers and community that they can get rich by contributing to the game they love.

  Video: youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ

  Follow-up: youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't even think about it⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I worked IT, I went to a local fire station and said I was there to update their computers. The person I talked to didn’t seem to know that this was scheduled, but they led me to their office with the computers and showed me how to log on. I’m pretty sure they just assumed I was telling the truth because I spoke confidently and was wearing a polo, but I could have literally been anyone.