Age of Empires is a bit different, because I don’t think they’ve moved the same game around between different studios in the midst of development. ES got shut down in 2009, with all existing Age of Empires games having long since ceased development. Then in 2013 Microsoft decided to release an HD remaster of the 1999 Age of Empires 2, and they brought Hidden Path on to do that. And then with the 2019 Definitive Edition they brought on board Forgotten Empires (who had also developed the official expansions in HD). The new development team in each case was being brought on to create a completely new release.

The KSP2 and Bloodlines 2 examples above both involved unreleased in-development games being given by the publisher to a different development team, and Skylines 2 is a still-supported game being given a different developer for future updates.

Bloodlines 2 came to my mind. And it even has the same publisher as Skylines.

We can just do this.

outlaws anonymous communication by requiring every citizen to verify their age before accessing a service

This is likely to be the case in practice, but technologically, it does not have to be the case.

If the age verifiers (which IMO should be the governments themselves^[1], but could also be a private third-party, as long as it’s not the same as the social media company) only ever receive a blinded token representing the user, verify the user’s age, and then the user brings that token back to the social media site, unblind it, and present them the signed token, there is no way for the age verifier to track which sites a person visits, and no way for the sites to have any detail about who their users are (other than what they already have).

I’m not sure what “piece linked” you’re talking about, since none of the parent comments of this comment actually have a link in them.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard of FUTO, but I did read their statement about open source and it sounds pretty good to me. I actually think they’re capitulating a little bit too much by deciding not to call it open source anymore. As far as I’m concerned, if the source is available and anyone can contribute, that’s open source. I don’t particularly care whether or not it’s free for Google to incorporate it into their increasingly-enshitified products or not.

Creative Commons (an org to which FUTO says they have donated) doesn’t like their licences being used for software, presumably for finicky technical legal reasons. But if you imagine the broad spirit of their licences applying to software, all the main CC licences would be open source in my opinion. All combinations of Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike, and No Derivatives, as well as CC0 respect the important elements of open source.

Visitors with UK IP addresses*

FTFY

Ludo? I haven’t played that since I was a tiny kid! I can’t say I remember much about how it’s played.

As a reminder, the order of community moderators in the sidebar has direct impact on the moderator hierarchy, where a moderator listed earlier is able to remove any moderators later in the list.

A reminder that mod order does not always federate correctly, so you may need to head to LW to see it correctly.

I think that was their point. If not, it’s a good one. The argument could be made that the devs think that their experience, though lesser than BG3 in scale is equal to it in overall value, when you add in quality of writing, worldbuilding, game mechanics, etc.

I think that’s unlikely to actually play out in practice, but it’s perfectly consistent with what they’re saying here.

By analogy, I could buy a setting book like Paizo’s Lost Omens: Shining Kingdoms. Or I could buy an adventure like Claws of the Tyrant, and there’s no particular reason to expect the former must cost more than the latter.

They’re partly trying to put a good spin on it, but I really appreciate that most of this article is trying to be transparent and open about the fact that their game just isn’t the same scale as BG3.

I mean, based on the source, they’re still even on Twitter which is a lot more overtly fascist than WhatsApp. So…yeah…

Paradox are the publisher here, but not the developer.

Maybe, I’m not sure. I’m not familiar with Redemption, and this article is all I’ve got to go on for Dawnwalker too.

If it weren’t for the fact that it’s set in the mediaeval era, this sounds like it might have been more like the successor to Bloodlines that fans wanted than Bloodlines 2 is going to be.

And for this game it doesn’t matter, unless you’re doing multiple playthrough

But that’s the thing, they’ve put the most popular option behind the DLC paywall. And popular because it’s a good standard option. It’s not like the Nosferatu or Malkavians, which are popular as secondary options for a weirder later playthrough. That would be bad enough, as a day-one DLC, but doing it with the Toreador is so much worse.

I’ve never really been a Nintendo guy. Is Luigi very noticeably the post popular (or maybe at worst a very close top 2) racer in Mario Kart? I admit, I’d have guessed it was Mario.

I mean, because I already knew which two clans it was. If I had had to guess, it’d have been a tossup between Toreador and Ventrue for me.

Additionally these aren’t new clans they chose the most popular clan that most people chose for their first play through

That’s what gets me. Just looking at the original game and projecting it forward, if the Nosferatu or Malkavians were the ones locked behind a DLC, it would still be shitty, but it would at least make sense. They might be fan favourites, but even then they’re still clans that people usually recommend for a second playthrough, not a first. But the Toreador? Come on! That’s just extortion. Why not lock the Ventrue as well, while you’re at it?

Yeah that’s my feeling precisely. I have high hopes, but rock-bottom expectations, and with those expectations, the cost of the game and the shitty business practices with this day-one DLC are just not going to sell me on the game. I’m going to be waiting for reviews from dedicated fans who have had months to digest the game at the bare minimum, and for any inevitably-necessary patches (whether they come from the devs or from fans). This game and this developer and this price just have not earnt the trust necessary to buy the game at full price shortly after release, let alone pre-order it.

Oh, I see! I didn’t make the “investigator” connection!