but can that content be removed without changing the game? they already changed her from a kid to a grown woman, because it fit the story and the message better, apparently. but would removing that entirely still work?

idk, i haven’t played or analysed the game. i’m guessing that it’s there for a reason. but i do know that demanding content be changed because it makes us uncomfortable is not a good thing!

it works, but it’s far from ideal. a lot of features are tucked away behind unintuitive context menus, and on some systems you need to do a bit of configuration for it to look right. for example, it uses bitmap icons by default, so if you use a hidpi screen the icons will look atrocious until you figure out how to switch them to vector icons.

and an ugly UI is a problem by itself. it’s uninviting, unwelcoming. it gives a feeling of jank, of amateurism, and not in a good way. if you open the app for the first time and immediately think “this looks like it was last updated in 2003”, it’s not a good thing.

iirc the game was refused by steam before the payment processor thing, and even then, you don’t scrap your whole project because of one moral panic. not only is it bowing down to pressure, it’s also just a terrible idea financially

i’m saying this because the nazis were greatly inspired by the usa’s genocide of Indigenous people for the holocaust, that’s why i wrote “partially” (as opposed to the Gaza genocide, where the usa’s responsibility is much more direct)

obviously I’m not denying the agency and responsibility of germany in the holocaust

it’s even (at least partially) responsible for the other two!

i’ll note that, as the article mentions, even apple and google haven’t removed the game in russia (at least not yet)

are valve complicit, or just cowards?

well, many games are tied to the steam client (through the steam runtimes, steam DRM, steam input, needing a steam account for online play…). for most games, no, you can’t just take the executable and do whatever you want with it. you’ll need the steam client, and this creates a lock-in effect. because you need steam open to play all your steam games, you won’t look elsewhere for games, and you won’t see games not on steam, unless they’re big enough.

imo, the solution to this is to break the lock-in, have interoperability between clients. there’s no good reason why cross-play between steam and GOG, for example, is an exception and not the norm. there’s no good reason why the steam client is required for so many games, there should be offline installers. there’s no good reason why steam input only works with the steam client. part of the reason why proton is so amazing is that it’s open-source, other steam technologies should be the same!

there is another way, games shouldn’t be tied to the store you bought them in

like, for physical objects, you can buy a thing from one store and another thing from another store, and they’ll be in your house no problem, you won’t even have to think about which store you bought which thing from (unless you need to return it or for customer service). it’s fundamentally decentralized. why shouldn’t digital distribution work that way too? it’s entirely possible, but obviously vendors benefit from locking you to their platform (that goes for steam, but also to epic games and, to a lesser extent GOG as well)

there should be no company with power to abuse in the first place. steam refused to sell your game? alright, you can sell it in other places and it’ll be fine. but that’s not how it works right now, most people buy on steam, and ONLY on steam, because it has a dominant position. so, if you can’t sell on steam, you’re done for!

and we can analyse each ban on a case-by-case basis (there’s many steam game bans I am glad happened), but there’s also cases like VILE: Exhumed, where steam caved to pressure from payment processors (which are also very centralized, that’s another honestly bigger problem) to ban a game with progressive politics simply because it talked about stuff that makes reactionary prudes uncomfortable.

we can’t just rely on Good Guy Valve to stay good forever

i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not.

the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, VILE: Exhumed (a game about sexual assault, among other things) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release

game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.

steam has a 75% marketshare of PC games distribution in the US. the 2nd biggest player, epic games, has a market share estimated from 3% to 7,5%. i can’t find data for steam’s market share outside the US, but i’d expect it to be even higher.

if google can be considered to have a monopoly on web browsers with 73% of the marketshare, even as alternatives (like safari, 13%) exist, i don’t see why steam wouldn’t count as well.

21 is also 10+9

the game was bought back by Simon (the guy who owns Hypixel and sold the game in the first place) and it looks like it’s back in development!

proton without newell is proton, but with maybe a different direction

proton without valve’s workers and WINE/DXVK contributors is nothing. it’s literally nothing.

the same goes for basically any projects. the billionaire CEOs are (sometimes, not even always!) the people who take decisions. everyone else does the work. without the CEOs, the same projects would have decisions taken in other ways. without the workers, there would be nothing.

stop licking billionaire boots.

erhm i’ll let you know that the soviet onion killed six hundred million bajillion stalinnion people so ☝️🤓

“single-handedly” lmao, as if newell is the guy doing all the work and not the valve employees who work for him… or, yknow, the contributors to all the open-source projects steamos is built on

proton and steamos would be nowhere today without the decades of work by the WINE/DXVK contributors, and the myriad of other open-source projects that make Linux into what it is. all valve did was add their proprietary client on top of that (as well as fund the development of proton, tbf, i’m thankful for them on that one… but again, that work was done by valve employees and contributors, not the billionaire CEO)

even then, “he used to make games”… was he alone? did he not have a team with him? where are their billions?

valve is an alright company all things considered, but it’s baffling to me how many people act like they’re the second coming… people should know better. valve is a corporation operating under capitalism. they’re not above doing shady stuff for profit.

that moment when the One Good Billionaire™ casually orders a boat that costs several times more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes 🙃

i get that there’s worse out there but i’m tired of people acting like newell is a saint… he’s just another billionaire.

they don’t even run their servers anymore, it’s not like the fan servers are competing with them…

is sony turning into another nintendo/disney? flexing their copyright muscle just because they can?

can’t speak to the difficulty but it is 60 FPS now!

…if you play it on switch 2 that is

hopefully this makes ARM-based Linux handhelds more suitable too! that would be awesome