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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • The case seems like such a reach. At worst it’s an effective monopoly for devs, not consumers. Devs have a really hard time selling elsewhere.

    That said, I love Steam and think it’s genuinely one of the best companies out there. And whilst it’s not great that they’re so big, they aren’t that big due to anti-competitive behaviour. It’s quite the opposite. You can add non-Steam games to your library and use Steam features. The fucking Steam deck isn’t locked down, and you can install non-Steam games. Just because Uplay wants to log me out every time I reboot doesn’t mean Steam should be sued.

    There are so many other companies more deserving of the lawsuit


  • Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.

    If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.

    Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid


  • It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.

    Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.

    FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.

    New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.

    Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.

    Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.

    Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.

    It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.

    Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.

    The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.

    TLDR: Gamers People love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted world





  • Thank you, it’s very valuable to correct that misinformation.

    It seems like an easy mistake to make as the original post being replied to is framing it explicitly in terms of economics.

    It’s just a bit of shitshow of weird communication. How hard would a tweet like “A problem with solar panels is that they produce too much electricity during the middle of the day, putting strain on the grid and requiring increased power consumption”.

    That’s not as sensationalist but I’m also not a headline writer. It just seems like this shitty piece of journalistic malpractice was made to stir up outrage


  • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzMalaria
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    8 months ago

    Fair, in this example Bill Gates isn’t exactly the best one to pick. And the clarification on the lobbying rules is definitely a valuable bit of information, so thank you for adding that.

    I was more trying to point out that the original comment wasn’t saying that the tax break “made money”. It’s all about shuffling it around to avoid taxes.

    At the end of the day, it allows Bill Gates (or other billionaires) to spend otherwise taxable income on whatever they deem important. Whether or not you agree with how they’re spending their money is irrelevant