Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there's still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer's interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).

Software patents are a thorny topic, and it's worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There's risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon's offhand comment about how Nintendo's ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.

It's easy to forget the negatives involved here (or some you maybe never knew as a kid). Games used to be very expensive for 80's kids. Adjusting for inflation, you can get two full-priced AAA games now for what A Link to the Past cost in 1992. It's part of the reason there's so much more choice now. Also, games came with manuals because they were so strapped for storage space that they couldn't put tutorials and instructions in the games themselves. Kids that rented games or purchased them secondhand often didn't have the manuals available, so they'd get stuck (before Internet info access).

I agree with the others that you should look into PC gaming; aside from the occasional live service game, I've only ever updated my games when I want to. In general, indies are a good way to go to mitigate many (if not all) of the issues brought up, but so are quality PC ports. For example, I just bought Trails through Daybreak from GOG, which so far looks like something I'll never have to update, I can be in the game action within literally four seconds of launching it, and it's mine forever.

That's setting aside all the value considerations like access to mods, full control of your save storage, getting to play with the gamepad of your choice, supporting small devs/publishers, etc. Even without diving into indie gaming, there are tons of quality AA titles around, too. Compared to a console, It's trivial to offset the larger hardware costs with cheaper games.

That there are divisions and prejudice within the community. It's better for everyone involved to put on a united front, but unfortunately people get put down and marginalized even in supposedly queer-friendly spaces all the time. In my own circles, it happens a lot with bisexual men and non-binary/gender non-conforming persons in particular.

Much of this isn't unique to PC gaming. And if there ever was a dark age for PC hardware, we've recently crawled out of it, thankfully.

What bugs me the most right now (and doesn't quite get addressed in this article) is low performance standards. Everyone's pushing 4K and ray tracing, which makes it hard out here for us framerate nerds. It's starting to feel like every major release that comes out is Crysis, something for my hardware to grow into. Only with blurry anti-aliasing/supersampling techniques now.

One new, big positive I'm not seeing talked about much is a growing variety of Japanese publishers are taking PC seriously now, and that hasn't happened in over thirty years. I'm including Sony in this, even with their recent missteps in the space, and Square Enix's recently announced restructuring suggests simultaneous PC releases in the future for their games. That will inject some competition in PC gaming, although be aware that Japan has its own share of publishers that release broken ports.

One regime's political-dissident-by-speech is another's dissident-by-drug-addiction. America's "War on Drugs" was purely political disenfranchisement along racial lines, and it's a major reason why the US continues to have higher incarceration rates than the USSR had in many of the years the Gulag system was operational.

By the way, prison rape jokes have long been a part of those late night comedy shows, to give you an idea of just how ingrained the American prison culture is.

Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush.

Talking up the demerits of capitalism in the massive gaming industry has been more common as of late (perhaps especially so on Lemmy), and I do think there is nuance in that conversation.

There's no reasonable nuance here. Microsoft clearly wants insane return on investment from their studios, and I don't see how that leaves room for the art of video game design.

There's a reason https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ exists after all

So if you're in the Underdark, you're not actually in Act 2 yet. If you need the main story to drive you forward, you have a little further to go. The Underdark doesn't advance any personal quests, at least not in a major way, even though there's plenty to do.

The difference between this and D:OS2 is that while Reaper's Coast felt open, the level scaling still had the zone on rails, more or less. Here, you have a couple different ways to go. If you want to move on (I suggest level 5 if you aren't already first), there is a way forward to find. If you want a more straightforward road, try the path on the surface.

It's tough to sell some of the niche communities without proper spoiler tagging, too. Need something easier to use that works on all platforms.

I'm amazed it took this long, honestly. These are like gaming chairs: overpriced configurations with a combination of features that result in lower quality/durability when put together. I switched to a separate desktop mic years ago (paired with a fantastic set of Sennheiser headphones, coincidentally) and haven't looked back.

I highly recommend a dedicated mic. The low-end options are very affordable and you'll still sound way better on Discord (or Zoom calls!) than you will on a gaming headset mic or a webcam mic.

To me, the biggest improvement in BG3 is how much looser the gameplay progression is. Since being just two levels behind meant death was all but certain in D:OS2, the path even on an "open" map like the Reaper's Coast was still very much on rails. XP gain was so tight that side quests weren't really optional, even to the point of discouraging roleplay by doing things like passing persuasion checks and then killing everyone anyway to squeeze every last drop out of the map. The first D:OS also really struggled with this until later in the game.

BG3's first large map is a little tight, but even a new player can easily go off script and pick and choose what quests they want to undertake once they hit level 5. Encounters with enemies two levels higher can still be comfortable after that point, even three higher if the player has a good party build or has mastery of the battle system. And the player will want to, because the game is huge. It's such a delight to just go, and it's exciting to see Larian turn a major weakness into a strength.

But essentially, BG3 meets or improves upon every system in D:OS2. The dialogue scenes are the most flashy improvement, supported well by good writing, voice acting, and mocap. The only thing I found to be a step back was the soundtrack. I don't think it's bad, and there are some standout songs for sure, but D:OS2 really excelled in that area both in terms of the quality of the music and how it was used in battle (but then I'm a sucker for cello). It also won't compare favorably to D:OS2 in its current state in terms of polish, but D:OS2 wasn't exactly bug-free on release, either.

A big part of why this game is so big in the zeitgeist right now is because Larian was able to pounce on a lull in the release schedule. I'd call the pre-release hype for this game average at worst for that reason alone. Early reviews were beyond glowing, marking a studio's successful graduation to AAA development with a game that has no aggressive add-ons or DRM. That will spur gaming enthusiasts to generate all the marketing you need.

I had a $200 gift card to Google Play that came with a Samsung TV. I redeemed the card and wasn't spending the balance very quickly. Next time I checked, the balance was gone. I contacted Google support and they tried to tell me there was never any credit on the account to begin with. They tried to get me to contact Samsung. I asked them why Samsung would have information on my Google Play balance after putting a Google Play-branded giftcard on my Google Play account (never got an answer to that). After multiple escalations, they finally told the balance was either zeroed for inactivity or expired (it had been a year-ish). I received no warnings, no notices in change of terms (this info wasn't on the gift card), nothing. All the credit was just gone one day.

I requested clarification/explanation (including a copy of their gift card expiration policy) but they simply stopped responding to emails. The whole process took over a month.