Heh, more of this shit.

Remember, the only reason we can still watch the highly influential 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu today is because some people didn't destroy all their copies despite a court saying they had to.

DISOBEY DESTRUCTION ORDERS.

COPY ALL THE THINGS.

I feel like this whole hobby has always existed on the verge of being deleted for whatever reason, and I am forever grateful that there are people who put this stuff up in the first place.

Still need to work out a way for me to help out.

Hot take: the internet was better when it was simpler like that.

Yeah this is the kind of crap that encourages people to pirate simply to spite them.

If it has Denuvo it's basically asking "please, get a pirated version if you want this, because the official version sucks".

The fact that you have some sort of plan for managing your photos is one step ahead of me. I have no plans and my photos are a very messy collection.

I would caution against using a flash drive (a.k.a. pen drive) for any permanent storage. I've had multiple flash drives fail on me. Usually it's this super cheap kind that gets distributed as branded swag, but I've had some others fail too.

I always knew that funding the internet using ads wasn't sustainable in the long run.

zing

Well, it's not too surprising; if people are like that, and AIs learn from people...

I would hope that's the case, but as I mentioned in another comment, I've actually seen a case where a Denuvo-addled game was cracked, then the cracked version stopped working at some point (seemingly after a certain calendar date or a certain time after installation, because it definitely wasn't based on in-game progress), necessitating an updated crack.

The game is Shining Resonance Refrain, if you're curious.

Maybe the new crack actually succeeds at really defeating the DRM? Who knows. (Though I also remember it saying something like you gotta skip a certain cutscene or else it'll crash. But, let's say we excuse that.)

An admirable sentiment.

The fact that a game is Steam-only is good enough reason to pirate it.

Yeah, I agree, I can understand wanting higher resolutions but there are diminishing returns and even 1 GB for a half-hour episode is pretty absurd.

Plus, you can't seed what you can't keep.

Yeah, I read. I don't have much sympathy for him. He sounds like a jerk.

IMO preserving the content is more important than honoring him (or, for that matter, humiliating him).

Pardon me for living under a rock, but what's wrong with uTorrent?

Y'know I think another possible analogy here might be the difference between a videogame and a tabletop game. Especially if we compare RPGs specifically.

It's one thing to play a computer RPG. It's another thing to play with a human GM who can reshape the story as needed and who can interact with the player in an open-ended manner.

Well torrenting is also P2P but people generally recommend VPNs for that.

You can add literally anything, and all Steam does is launch the executable you specify. And maybe take screenshots if you use the overlay.

Valve could actually look through the games people have added and do some sort of major crackdown, but for better or worse they seem to have left this alone. Still, though, I'd consider it a vulnerability, and I also recommend against using Steam because Steam is basically DRM. (Yes, this varies by game and can be argued over. But it still definitely tries to lock you into using it, one way or another.)

I had poked all over the megathread, but didn't know about the github repo. Thanks.

But yeah, you're right about it being a matter of luck sometimes.

• Saving files for offline enjoyment/no dependence on internet connection.
• More player and playback options: easier rewind/fast-forward, chapter controls (for many releases), etc.
• Fewer ads/pop-ups/phishing/etc. nonsense (depending on how effective your browser's adblockers are)
• Often, choice of subs and dubs. Generally better ones than the generic DVD release subs. And sometimes, even commentary tracks.

Frankly speaking, it's not like anyone on the internet can tell the difference. And, at least speaking personally, it's not like I need to know. If they crack stuff well they crack stuff well. If their political views suck their political views suck. So be it.

"We own everything", basically. All they want is for them to control how everyone else does things.

Also, a hearty "fuck you" to all those folks out there (I've run into them before) who claim that publishers should get to have absolute control over how consumers use stuff they put out.

"Count Dracula rises but once every century, and my role is over. But if I were to resurrect him, the battle would last for eternity!" - some asshole named Richter Belmont

lmao i misread the header and spent a hot moment wondering "what's an illegal sports team?"

Ah, I see.

Hell, Crunchyroll was a pirate site until it converted into not being one.

And I've seen Steam fanboys on the Steam forums who insist that the rumors of performance problems are baseless. They can go pleasure themselves with rusty cacti.

Thank goodness. Have those copies resurfaced and gone into the possession of proper archivists and/or research collections?

Yeah, YouTube was better when it was a bunch of amateur cat videos.

Back when Mastodon was more in the news I told various friend groups to jump on it. I wrote up guides for them too. They largely didn't, and some of them even got annoyed at me.

Nowadays I see they're still somewhat mostly using Twitter though some of them have started to slowly warm up to Bluesky. Sigh.

What with all the stories about the companies taking pretty hefty cuts for things, I'm gonna bet that the "supposedly" is doing some heavy lifting there, heh.

So they lied in court and got away with it? Sheesh.

And what exactly is that NFT, as distinct from the media it's linked to, useful for? Aside from simply saying that it is unique and one can have ownership of it.

Steam can definitely remove your access to games in your account. Though, to be fair, it generally doesn't, as it has little incentive to do so (outside of such cases as credit card chargebacks). There are a few cases though.

(Note of course that games delisted from sale in the store are generally not removed from accounts.)

To be fair, other stores certainly could too. But something like GOG is limited in what it can do, if you've been properly backing up your files, since you can still access your own offline installers even if you completely lose access to your account.

That said, as far as dangers to your Steam account go, I'd say that individual games getting removed is probably less likely than one of the following:

• you losing access due to not being able to login for whatever reason (e.g. forgot your stuff and also lost your phone but you had Steam's 2FA going so you can't login)
• getting your account stolen by a hijacker (which there are TONS and there have been for years due to the profitability of virtual item fraud and account fraud and the synergies between these two activities). If Steam screws up their side of things, this might even happen through no fault of your own -- for example, a bunch of people got hijacked several years ago when hijackers discovered that Steam's password recovery page would accept a blank input.
• having your account banned for whatever reason. Probably less likely if you're well-behaved and don't cheat and don't talk about piracy on Steam, etc., but it's worth noting that this could happen. Also, if you dabble in cheats and your account gets VAC banned, I'd imagine that having to use a new account ends up being kinda similar to being banned from your old one, due to the hassle of having to switch accounts.

There's an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there's a few problems with this:

• It's not actually in the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
• This is old info anyway.
• Given how big Steam is, it's more likely to be sold off than to go dark if Valve finds itself in financial trouble. And even if GabeN has truly promised this, the new owners of Steam are not beholden to such a promise.

As for Steam emulators, like SmartSteamEmu, I'm pretty sure they're not allowed but Valve just largely turns a blind eye to them and will do so unless they become a very significant issue in some way.

Update: It looks like it's handling the offline installers in game-by-game batches. I told it to download the offline installer for a game that if I used browser I'd have to download two files; it shows as just one item and one download in the client, and I verified that it actually does give me both files.

Oh, it's not proprietary. Then that's a lot less bad. Thanks for the guide; I'll try this later.

It sounds like bluffing.

In other words, it could very well be complete and utter bullshit.

On the contrary, I think the incentive would be for Unity to let the pirated install keep existing because that would mean more money they can extort from developers/publishers.

480

I'm pretty sure I started watching on 360p.

one day the search bar showed back up even though I’ve told it many times to not have it.

This sort of behavior (and other nastier things, such as introducing advertising for Microsoft services) is why I don't trust Windows Updates and am increasingly distrustful of Windows being a satisfactory operating system.

Also I'd like it to be less bloated. Sure, fancy bells and whistles are nice to look at, but if I could make things look like Win98 again I totally would. I don't actually need things like transparency or 3D rotation/resizing effects.

Videogame Piracy, no-install % WR strats

Amusingly, when I went to check whether the two addresses were the same, they were. I totally thought they weren't. Maybe there's some magic going on.

But hey, as long as it works.