For public ones, depending on what people started getting, it’d really strain the AIs. You could go in like 1 or two ways, probably different people getting both.

Something very uniform but still unique, like a QR code kind of deal, AIs would hallucinate the crap out of that. Or abstractions, like people do to change the way the shape of their face to combat facial recognition.

For private ones, just don’t ever get it photographed, any image showing that area without it would be probably fake.

I am waiting for people to start getting both public and hidden authentication tattoos, so they can prove generative images aren’t actually them.

While that’s part of it, it’s definitely not “just” that.

Sadly, part of it is that the game has released in a fairly stable/polished state, which is considered a positive in the world of broken releases. The multiplayer also just works with little issue as opposed to some problems of yesteryear.

There’s also a perhaps surprising pent up demand for good co-op PvE focused games. They blow-up hard but tend to fade out depending on gameplay quality. Part of this is the streamer effect, streamers like to play group games with other streamers because it helps cross-pollinate their audiences. Sales are also improved due to group/peer-pressure, if someone can pull in their friend group, that’s a lot of sale multiplication.

I also think that the developers tried to make a game that’s fun. A lot of decisions seem to have followed the rule of cool for this type of game e.g. pal mounts, firearms, catching people, automation of survival elements via slavery.

It also manages to have both a clear and guided progression system while maintaining the freedom for the player to just fuck off and do whatever they want while still at least partially progressing.

My only honest gripes with the game are how world saves are handled (they should use the Grounded system in addition to having dedicated servers) and that I for some reason can’t find the exit button on the title screen so to quit I need to alt-f4, for the rare times I need it.

Back in my teens one summer, I was playing Resident Evil Code Veronica by day at my friend’s house and Doom 3 alone in my basement at night, got about halfway through both but quit because of the constant nightmares. Lost to the psychological damage I guess.

To quote my best friend, “If I’m going to spend hours staring at an ass, it might as well be a girl’s ass.”

I still default to Hanlon’s Razor.

From Wikipedia, Mediatonic created the international remake of it, which presumably included some kind of licensing fee from the original developer, which this tweet implies is at least partially based on number of sales. Seems like someone involved in contractual obligations at Epic dropped the ball on at least this game.

The proprietary/cloud based threat bit me already. Installed smart vents in my home several years ago. They weren’t perfect, but they did really help even out my 3-bedroom, 2-story, 1-zone home. Now the app fails to login, the site doesn’t even attempt password recovery and I’m back to dumb vents… Customer support is a black hole and basically every product is and has been out of stock for years, so I’ve no hope of any happy resolution.

They apparently used to be supported by SmartThings when it allowed custom stuff, but that’s dead now too because Samsung didn’t want to allow it. I even tried to use their proprietary hub which said it could connect to them, but that shit didn’t work either.