Personally, I'm not much of a PC gamer, so I don't have a lot of personal experience with Denuvo; but this sounds pretty concerning.

My understanding is that by Denuvo LoJacking into every part of the game, it seriously hampers performance; and the Switch is underpowered enough as it is. I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.

Plus, from a preservation standpoint this is terrible too. Even if the studio drops Denuvo down the line, it will forever be included on the cartridge. This means that in the future, the only way to play this game will have to be an emulated copy, since you won't be able to get the update to clear the (no longer supported) Denuvo from the game.

It seems like it there might be a number of updates about the FTC leak, but the notable highlights of this email from me are the plotted purchases of Nintendo and WB Games.

The way they discuss the purchase of Nintendo as if it is an inevitability and how they may need to purchase it in a hostile manner really cements to me that they are utilizing Microsoft's immense capital to obtain a gaming monopoly.

I know it is an unpopular position because of how beloved a Gamepass is, but this really solidifies how shady Xbox/ Microsoft is; and I really hope the acquisition of ActiBlizz is blocked.

Remote work is such a boon to workers, and from my perception there is not a lot of benefit of mandating in-person work.

It really feels like the push to return to in-person is primarily driven by a combination of propping up the industrial real estate industry as well as managers not trusting their employees, and perhaps some level of maliciousness towards employees.

The return on investment on operating an office space for the nominal increase in productivity really makes in-person work feel like it's only for the managers' egos.

The fact that the Zoom CEO is pushing for this to me does not represent a lack of faith in their product, but a strong desire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their employees regardless on quality of life and regardless of return on investment of the cost of operating the office.

When this news dropped a little while ago. I saw a lot of speculation that basically Elon got mad that a woman said he was wrong and laid off possibly Tesla's biggest asset in a tantrum.

Honestly, at this point, the most surprising part of this situation is how unsurprised I am at that being exactly what happened.

Hopefully, this will not set back a widespread EV charging network (Tesla or otherwise) too much; but it definitely sounds like damage has been done.

It really feels like a lot of social media platforms are intentionally self-sabotaging themselves. I keep expecting them to die off every time something like this happens, but they appear to continue on regardless.

I think that social media sites actually dying off is actually impossible with enough inertia (even if their base decreases) and that's why they are emboldened to do such anti-consumer practices.

All this to say that I'm sure Steve Huffman has immediately started furiously texting everyone he knows about his new idea to charge for Reddit as well as a boosted version of Gold called "Alien Orange" or something.

This move seems absolutely wild, and I think Match knows it; which is why it's only available to such a small segment of users.

If too many users have this feature (and who knows how many that would be?) it''s going to scare away all the regular users. What's the point in swiping no if that user can just veto your decision anyways?

This move reminds me a lot of what I've heard about mobile gaming. The 500USD/month users are whales, but the whales need regular people to play with or they'll get bored and leave.

Right now, keeping the number of whales to a minimum is important to keep the regular users happy, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the future some cost/benefit analysis shows that they can take the hit on regular users to squeeze out a few more whales.

It also seems like a bonkers move to pay 500 dollars to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you, too. (But that's a different issue.)

It's honestly pretty frustrating to see the Lemmy Devs' responses whenever basic moderation tools are suggested.

While I think Beehaw does get a lot out of the wider federated community, it's really hard to make the case to stay when the devs are practically begging Beehaw to leave.

It sounds like (if I understood correctly) Beehaw is looking at an alternative platform that can still federate, which sounds like the best solution in my opinion.

It will certainly be very interesting to see what the future holds for Beehaw.

I think a lot of people have noticed clothing quality going down for a while, especially if shopping fast fashion brands; but I thought it was especially interesting how the decline in quality permeated through the high end brands as well.

When I saw the Ben Schwartz photo referenced in the article, I had assumed it looked worse since it was probably not as nice a brand as Billy Crystal's sweater. I was surprised to see it was likely a 400USD sweater that looked like that.

As the article notes at the end, it is still possible to find fully natural clothes, but I wish they were easier to locate.

Fingers crossed that we get Net Neutrality back. If I'm being honest, I'm less than optimistic; but I would certainly be thrilled if this went through.

I've never been one to play competitive online games since I have the hand/ eye coordination of a house plant, so I can't weigh in on the advantages of blocking controllers that are "unfair"; but as someone who hated button mashing "A" in Animal Crossing, I can say that custom controllers can definitely have a place with a console.

In my opinion, this feels like Microsoft simply wanted more licensing money and is doing it under the guise of fair online play. It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.

Hopefully this does not negatively affect too many people.

While this is specifically for SAG; anecdotally, it seems the WGA/ SAG strikes have inspired other unions to stand up for themselves too (auto workers and flight attendants unions).

Hopefully this might inspire the video game industry workers to unionize as well.

I remember hearing about "Pebble" for the first time about a month ago when it showed up in an article in my "all" feed (https://pawb.social/post/2688668).

Its name before its rebrand was already questionable as I think T2 already has strong associations with the Terminator franchise; and its new name was not any better. "Pebble" is too generic a term to get people to understand the platform's concept and in the tech space, I think everyone would think of the wearables first.

All this to say I am zero percent surprised they went out of business. I'm only surprised it happened so shortly after their rebrand (though at this point I'm starting to think that must have been some sort of Hail Mary).

It seems like Twitter is really trying to find a value-add for Twitter Blue, but I can't see this enticing anyone.

What is the overlap between people you met on Twitter that you want to have a video call with that you don't trust with your phone number/ other contact information?

This feels especially value-less when you remember you would only be able to call people who are also Twitter Blue subscribers (approximately 1 in 550).

The leaks emerged from attachments to a single court document uploaded to a website hosted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where the FTC is suing Microsoft over the $69 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard.

In a new court order posted today, the judge in the FTC vs. Microsoft case, Jacqueline Scott Corley, confirmed that Microsoft seemingly accidentally provided the court with a version of the documents that "contained non-public information" to the link that held public documents in the trial. The documents have since been removed from the link.

What an incredible own-goal. I've felt this acquisition was severely monopolistic from the start, but I know not everyone felt that way. I have to imagine/ hope this helped convince more people how dangerous Xbox/ Microsoft is. Hopefully the acquisition will be blocked now

I know it is a popular sentiment that people should migrate to Mastodon, but I personally think people will migrate wherever the people they follow migrate to.

With this in mind, I suspect Bluesky will be the platform to usurp Twitter; but with Twitter chasing off all their users in the near future, it may go to whichever platform is readily open at the time.

I'm very curious to see if Bluesky or Spill open up when Twitter closes the door on its users. If not, Mastodon may have a shot at being the next large platform...

Primarily the manner in which they contemplated the purchase of Nintendo. It was not presented as wishful thinking, but an inevitability. Microsoft has the money, and all they need is a moment of weakness on Nintendo's part in which to spring a hostile takeover (or at least, that's how the email reads).

The fact that Microsoft could leverage its considerable wealth from being the market leader in a different market segment to buy out an entire competitor that makes up a very significant portion of the gaming market, and that doing so would not be for any reason than to be a feather in the cap of the Phil Spencer makes them very dangerous.

Xbox/ Microsoft clearly have money to burn and are on no uncertain terms willing to use it to bully their way into a monopoly of the gaming market.

Regardless of how realistic their plans to take over Nintendo really are. They think the plan is feasible, and they have the money for it. They are incredibly dangerous.

It's honestly very sad how corporations can just throw their work in the trash if they think it will make them more profit there. I'm glad Deery was able to release it on his own for free so the game won't be lost, but it's unclear if all the developers will be able to do that.

I can't imagine how frustrating and disheartening it must be as an artist to create something to share with the world only for it to be essentially buried underground because someone decided they could make a little extra money if no one ever sees what you made...

The Reddit blackout had more of an effect than it appears. I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that showed commenting and posting was down ~50% since the blackouts; and I can safely say I haven't gone back to Reddit since, and I'm sure others have made similar choices as well.

People can have trouble "voting with their wallets," but I genuinely believe it is possible and does have an effect. Hopefully people do not forget the choices Unity has made here; but even if they do, Godot has already gotten a significant boost from this catastrophe.

Especially since I believe the estimated cost of agreeing to the requests would've been ~47M USD, which is literally less than a tenth of their current losses.

My feeling is this is not about the short term costs, but is about:

• Crushing the idea that strikes work, and workers hold all the power
• Making sure they can use cheap AI generated assets/ scripts in the future

Honestly wild they would close Tango, of all developers, after they delivered maybe Xbox's only coveted exclusive (though it has since gone multi-platform). Redfall and Starfield were both duds, and I'm not sure if Xbox has had any other exclusives at all (coveted or otherwise).

Having said that, it's pretty bad that Xbox is closing these studios regardless of if they have put out a hit recently or not. As Arkane Lyon chief Dinga Bakaba points out:

You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.

Microsoft certainly has the money that they don't need to be making these cuts. This is clearly the result of Line-Go-Up syndrome, and will only hurt them in the long run.

PlayStation is already eating Xbox's lunch since Xbox has no console selling exclusives. How are they going to make any good exclusives after cutting so much of their staff? (Also as a side note, I find it wild how much Microsoft spent on Bethesda just to cut so many of those studios.)

Overall, a cruel and short-sighted move from Microsoft.

I'm pleased to see some Gerrymandering being undone, and I'm very surprised not to see the Supreme Court block this. Hopefully more Gerrymandering can be undone in other states as well.

I'm glad to see SAG is standing up to the video game industry, which is notorious for mistreating its workers.

Hopefully, after seeing the damage from the WGA/ SAG Hollywood strike, the video game studios will take this threat seriously and negotiate in good faith enough to not warrant another strike.

I also hope that SAG standing up for themselves may inspire other game development employees to unionize and stand up for themselves as well.

I do find it a little interesting that Phil Spencer is ignoring the content of the leaks and instead just focusing on the fact the documents are out of date. I would imagine the contents of the leaks are likely still pretty close to accurate, even if plans have changed a little, as a result.

I also wonder if Xbox will use the reaction to the leaks to determine potential changes going forward (ie: reactions to the console being all digital, reactions to the next gen console processor, etc).

I may be misunderstanding their new fees, but this still feels like a major disincentive for using Unity. Even with revenue sharing instead of per-install fees, it is still being sprung on all the developers. Unity is now being upfront about not needing to use the newer Unity versions; but if there are engine bugs in the older versions, there is not much choice in if they have to update.

I would certainly think twice before choosing Unity at this point.

That's actually a good point about how some services do require payment to provide safe service to their users. A very close to home example would be your local Lemmy instance. In order to run the servers and keep it ad (and tracking) free, each instance needs donations from their users. The same is true for Mastodon, as you mentioned.

The problem is, I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well, but they all basically boil down to most users not wanting too give money to Twitter, and if they were ok with that, they would already have purchased Twitter Blue.

I think we all knew this was coming when Nintendo discontinued being able to purchase 3DS and Wii U games on the eShop, but it is still very sad to hear.

Many 3DS and Wii U games have been ported to the Switch over the years, but there will be several games that will likely never get ported because they were incremental series games. Why would they port Super Smash Bros Wii U when they already released Super Smash Bros Ultimate?

A lot of people will probably not care much being on the newest console, with the newest games, but it is truly sad to know that you will never be able to revisit these games again in a few years when you're feeling nostalgic, or if you just like the old version better.

I can only hope that homebrewers figure out how to spoof their own servers to keep online functionally for these old games.

I think regarding the app question, the necessity of the app is dependent on how good the web interface is on mobile. If the web interface is strong/ customizable enough, an app would not be needed. If you can keep Beehaw compatible with the Lemmy apps, you could invest less energy into the mobile web interface, I think

I do think it's interesting that in two seasons of addressing "hot-button" issues, Apple had no concerns; but drew the line at AI and China. I really wonder what it was he was going to say that made Apple take such a hard stance.

Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show for so long, I'd honestly be surprised if he ever needed to work again. To me, this means he only started the show because he really wanted to; and as such he can walk away pretty easily. I'm sure Apple knew that as well, so this must've been VERY important to them...

Hulu does not seem to have a good track record of keeping mid-tier comedies afloat. Last year they cancelled "Reboot" after a single season, and I thought that show had real potential.

I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility that Hulu wouldn't be getting the "A" material, and what they get would be more cancellation prone. After all, Disney has several different TV branches that any given show could be funneled into: ABC, "Freeform", Fox, FX, Disney+, and finally Hulu. It's very possible that Hulu is getting the bottom of the barrel picks, but I thought that Reboot was quite solid, and HIMYF was OK (though certainly not great).

It really feels like Hulu is just very cancellation happy at this point.

At this point, I've lost count of the number of times Elon should have been let go. I recall him recently saying that dosing himself with cat tranquilizers was cool and a good business decision actually.

That's not even getting into turning Twitter into a Nazi bar (and throwing out its extremely valuable branding) or pushing for the cybertruck that cuts its passengers, looks like a dumpster, and corrodes if you look at it funny.

The fact any board of directors considers this man employable at all is mind boggling to me.

While I personally really enjoyed playing Stray, I'm having a hard time imagining it as a straight narrative.

While the setting was immersive and gorgeous to look at, and the gameplay was quite enjoyable; the narrative was quite light. The cat cannot speak and doesn't have much motivation beyond going home. Though the robot companion does have motivations and the ability to speak, it is not the main character of the game.

Regardless, I will be interested to see how the movie turns out.

Part of this article just feels like the capitalistic notion that profits should only increase and anything but that is failing:

"Expectations for Devolver this financial year were $115 million to $120 million, and they've had to go back to $90 million. The majority of that is the delay of big releases into 2024. I think those are decision for the right reasons, although investors won't like it in the short term.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription model WAS actually hurting smaller developers. I remember hearing people hypothesizing that would be the case for a long time.

If you have Gamepass or PlayStation Plus Ultra, you can play almost any small publisher game for free. With that set up, there's a very large incentive to only play the games on the subscription service, instead of buying a full priced game to try out.

The problem is that once a small game is on the service, a large number of potential sales are going to be cannibalized by people playing on the subscription service instead of buying the game.

This leads to a scenario where your game needs to be on the subscription service and you have less sales because of it. This means that Microsoft and Sony have a large amount of power over the small publishers' vitality, since a lot of money now needs to come from deals with them.

As Microsoft starts tightening its purse strings trying to make Gamepass profitable, I wouldn't be surprised to see more small publishers suffering as a result.

I'm sure I'm saying nothing new with all the comments here, but I thought I'd comment anyways:

I don't think it would be the end of the world for Beehaw to migrate to a new non-federated platform, and I would probably maintain my account there as well. I honestly think Beehaw and Lemmy might both be worse off for it though.

When Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works a while ago I made a second account to browse the defederated side of Lemmy; but I've found I rarely use that account anymore. The number of bad (and often hurtful) takes I've seen coming from the wider Lemmy community are exhausting and I can't be bothered to look through them most of the time.

Right now I feel (aside from all the work our overworked admin team deals with) Beehaw is in the perfect sweet spot. It has the welcoming and protective environment, which I feel is absolutely necessary; and it has activity from select instances that helps keep it interesting and fresh.

I think if Beehaw left Lemmy, I would miss activity from the friendlier instances, and I'm sure they would miss the activity from Beehaw as well. If Beehaw left, I genuinely think the whole of Lemmy would be just a little less safe and a little less friendly.

Having said that, it sounds like the current model is simply unsustainable, and maintaining the integrity of all of Lemmy is not your job. I hope you can find a solution that makes everyone happy while still maintaining your sanity.

My personal suggestion would be to contact the admins of some of the friendlier instances and maybe try making a shared suggested whitelist that just has confirmed friendly instances with admin teams you trust. Each instance could obviously alter their own whitelist, but it could be a good starting point for any new instances who are looking for safe instances to federate with (pending approval).

Good luck to you all in navigating this issue

I'm not saying that the game would've been kept off Eidos was still at SE, but I'm so tired of big corporations acquiring companies just for their IP while killing their projects and laying off their staff.

Embracer has a long history of acquisitions, and I am kind of wondering how long it will take until they decide to just "loan" out the IP they've bought instead of putting out any games at all.

While I greatly enjoyed John Wick, and have been a fan of Keanu since Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, I wish they had not left it ambiguous (even if only 10%). It would have been a stronger ending than leaving it a little open.

On top of that, I think the best way to make sure a story is well liked in the future is to tell the story you want and end on a high note. Unfortunately, Hollywood is very interested in franchises and would be remiss if it allowed a potentially milkable franchise to end. Not leaving it open 10% would have prevented a sequel that tarnishes the rest of the franchise.

Finally, one of the reasons I think everyone was drawn to the original John Wick was its simplicity in story. John's motivation was simple, and the story wasn't bogged down by movies of lore/ canon. I would rather Keanu/ Stahelski come together on an entirely new project than make a John Wick 5.

If this is to be trusted (which is a big if), it's very interesting Nintendo would not continue with the OLED screens. I've heard people theorize Nintendo is choosing to keep the OLED screen for a mid-cycle refresh, which I would believe; but would consumers be happy with the graphical downgrade?

Either way, assuming this is legit, it sounds like Nintendo is likely keeping the Switch form factor if they are still using small (ish) screens for the console. If this is the case, I wonder how likely a Wii U situation would be (where customers think it's the same console they already have and don't buy it)...

I suspect it's because they left the tech sector alone for too long and now major damage control is needed.

It seems like laws and politicians are always a little late to the game with regulations on new technology because they don't fully understand a new technology or its implications until it's been on the market for a while.

Unfortunately, that means by the time the technology's implications have been determined, a lot of damage can have already been done.

I think, similarly, politicians were not examining the tech sector closely when it came to acquisitions; but they realize, now, that they let it fester a little too long.

Hopefully the FTC continues to break up any monopoly it can identify (tech or otherwise), but there's certainly a lot of work to be done.

Basically you can only view content from instances your home instance (in this case Beehaw) federates with.

Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Beehaw had to defederate from Lemmy.world and Shitjustworks due to a lack of moderation tools.

This means you will not be able to view any Lemmy.world content with your Beehaw account until Beehaw refederates.

You may still see old content from Lemmy.world from before the defederation, but no new content will show up.

My personal recommendation if you want to see Lemmy.world content would be to use the Lift-off app for Lemmy; which can combine multiple accounts' feeds into a single feed. Then you can use a Lemmy.world account to view their content and your Beehaw account to view their content at the same time.

I hope this helps.

The all digital design would certainly prevent me from buying an updated model, which is unfortunate since I do appreciate the backwards compatibility.

It's a cynical move to get all game purchases done through their storefront and eliminate game reselling, and it will lock out a lot of price-conscious consumers who need to wait for a good sale, or buy used games.

On top of that, it's a huge blow towards game preservation, since the logical next step would be to stop producing physical games. Even other publishers might think twice before producing a physical game if only a third of the base can even use disks.

Often people bring up that games can ship incomplete and need updates; but even a non-updated game is still more playable than a digital one when the servers aren't maintained, and there's no reason to remove the disk drive. You can still play digital games on a console with a disk drive.

All in all, this is a pretty disappointing update for me.

I was able to track down the article (Garbage Day URL, Archive.today URL).

The portion I was referring to was:

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.

Personally I was not contributing much there; but I suspect the users they offended most were the power users, which is where most of the content comes from.