Free to play isn’t something that had been done. And htf were they gonna do that otherwise? Give out the game for free and operate at a loss? Clever.

The game wasn’t free until 4 years after release in 2011. Loot boxes were introduced in 2010.

Also when it went F2P, it surely has been done before, for example by League, which went F2P about two years before TF2 in 2009. So that timeline doesn’t track

The problem with their loot boxes isn’t only the content, but the fact that it’s designed to entice people to gamble on it while masquerading as something else. It’s predatory, and while there are other predatory systems in other games, theirs is quite devious; this is an opinion I’ve held since the matter gained public attention with the Belgian regulation in 2018.

There’s literally no way this goes tits up

It is founded on the fact that Valve was one of if not the first companies introducing predatory loot boxes via TF2 and only changes the system to skirt regulations on gambling. They’re just doing enough to pretend that all this isn’t a virtual casino where they always take a cut. It is not only exploitative, but also dishonest.

Let’s not forget that their argument that what they’re doing isn’t gambling was the exact same thing casinos did to skirt laws (showing you the prize of the next spin). You lose a lot of goodwill with such behavior.

There’s no need to defend it, they’re doing just don’t, and they would even without these scummy systems

Just reminded me of this copypasta:

Don’t even ask the question. The answer is yes, it’s priced in. Think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That’s already been priced in. You work at the drive thru for Mickey D’s and found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in. You think insiders don’t already know that? The market is an all powerful, all encompassing being that knows the very inner workings of your subconscious before you were even born. Your very existence was priced in decades ago when the market was valuing Standard Oil’s expected future earnings based on population growth that would lead to your birth, what age you would get a car, how many times you would drive your car every week, how many times you take the bus/train, etc. Anything you can think of has already been priced in, even the things you aren’t thinking of. You have no original thoughts. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a product of the omniscent market. Free will is a myth. The market sees all, knows all and will be there from the beginning of time until the end of the universe (the market has already priced in the heat death of the universe). So please, before you make a post on wsb asking whether AAPL has priced in earpods 11 sales or whatever, know that it has already been priced in and don’t ask such a dumb fucking question again.

Also a lot of these jobs aren’t what you’d previously think of, which contributed to the miscalculation in the first place. Previously, from my understanding, the BLS assumed a company would eventually hire X people, based on previous averages. However, a lot of new companies are just self-employed gig-economy workers who won’t hire.

Anyhow, I’m European, so my insight into that market is somewhat limited. But the signs are there: more consumers defaulting on debt, resulting in stuff like car repos… It’s no coincidence BNPL for small purchases is booming. And with it, so are defaults on them.

This is why I’m so surprised European leaders are so keen on keeping tariffs low, I expect US sales to plummet significantly, especially for goods from Europe as these are typically either essential anyways, or optional and even without tariffs expensive enough to not be purchased during recession. I mean yeah it’s not black and white but you get the point.

The US is in a position that can’t be fixed by monetary policy, lower rates and you create jobs (though in my opinion, most of that money vanishes into speculation nowadays), but then inflation goes up, which continues to be an issue; or do the opposite with opposite effects (jobs go down, inflation slows). I think the latter combined with social programs to soften the blow would be the way to go, but the US has voted for bootstraps instead of helping anyone but the richest.

I suspect this will be worse than 2008, again with a lot of sub prime debt that has been accrued and can no longer be repaid. Just this time, all the substance is gone.

Arbitrage? You mean like borrowing at one rate somewhere and pending it somewhere at a higher rate? Against credit cards? That sounds super dangerous

Surely this corporation is my friend

It couldn’t be more on the nose.

And yet

And they said AI wouldn’t boost business. Who’s laughing now, haters?

The whole thing is just embarrassing. Anyone with a bit of understanding knew that the technology comes with huge risks (after all, there is no understanding, just the imitation of it). Billions have been poured into a glorified autocomplete in one of the biggest corporate FOMOs I can remember. Nvidia is (as much as I hate them, rightfully) laughing all the way to the bank. Crypto and now this allow them to practically buy Intel - back when AMD bought Ati, people speculated it’d be Intel buying Nvidia! Granted, Intel did their part too, but Nvidia selling cards that will be completely outdated in two years in unthinkable amounts is wild. And the best part is, except for them, everyone else lost money, like not even OpenAI themselves are making any, and this is with Microsoft subsidizing them. Absolutely insane!

It depends on the context. Let’s say their is a hard boss that you need 10 attempts for. It makes a huge difference if there is a checkpoint before it or if you have to do 5 minutes of chores again (I agree that these are extreme examples…)

Pretty sure it’s just that Steam will no longer function on 32 bit machines, not that it will no longer be able to launch 32 bit binaries. The latter would make it impossible to run your old games. The fedora proposal would have running 32 bit libraries on 64 bit systems impossible as well, as it included dropping multilib.

I recognize him! He sat on the couch while you picked up the food that I delivered. He seemed like a funny guy

Fortunately, it was the imaginary half, dislocated from the real one

Every other doctor agreed

The 4k you find on streaming services can’t really be compared to the 4k you find on Blu-ray. It’s a different league. Turns out bitrate actually matters

Maybe if we curve the TV?

The difference is that tourists are not a somehow disadvantaged group. My livelihood isn’t endangered because I can’t go to a tourist spot in Spain somewhere without being heckled (though, when I actually was in Spain, everyone was nice, but Madrid isn’t that much of a tourist spot compared to others).

Also, in some cases, it isn’t “the rich” – I too love to point out the issues they cause – but sometimes, it’s just ordinary people hoping to make a quick buck buying up property to rent it out on AirBNB. Yes, it’s also rich foreigners getting property everywhere for themselves, which is a problem. But “the rich” don’t bother with AirBNB, they just build hotels, and these normally don’t compete with normal housing.

Raceism, specifically centering around skin colour and related features, is actually pretty recent and pretty Western.

If I may take a guess, it’s also because up until historically recently, larger groups of ethnicities didn’t know that other such groups existed. To be racist, you need to be aware of people you’d clarify as another race

It’s not like homophobia (or, say, racism) is unique to western civilizations.

It’s funny how the bigots insist that only what your birth certificates states is relevant for anything except for when they don’t like what it says.