There’s a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.

I think the first stat in the graph is the most important one and really speaks to the reason for the last one. I said this is another post about this article, but video games have become their own kind of third space. Going out with friends has become so expensive, whether you’re going to a movie or something else, and in a lot of places you can’t go to hang out without having to spend money anyways, so video games have become a replacement way to hang out with friends. And that’s before you start talking about stuff like friends who moved across the country for work or something.

This is an extremist take on a correct conclusion. Just like how “vote with your wallet” and “no ethical consumption under capitalism” can co-exist, so can the idea that there are people in these jobs who simply don’t care about the harm as well as people who do but don’t have the power to do anything about it - even something as simple as changing jobs.

An easy example is the people left at Twitter. When employees started quitting in droves after Musk started tearing the company apart, I saw people quickly theorizing that the people still working there fell into 2 groups: those who were morally bankrupt enough not to care, and those on work visas who couldn’t quit because they risked being deported.

The majority of these companies are based in the US, where workers’ rights and protections are often tenuous at best. Whistleblowers have almost no protections and, more often than not, end up serving years or even lifetime sentences in federal jails for their efforts. In most states, it is completely legal for companies to fire you for whatever reason they feel like, and even if you get severance, it can take years of legal battles to get what you’re owed. Add to that how long it can take to find a new job (the average time in the video game industry is 2 months), and it’s easy to see how that can quickly spiral into putting people into a dangerous financial situation for daring to speak out.

It’s easy to lay the blame at other people’s feet, but just like saying, “Well, just don’t use their products then,” it’s never that simple.

“No ethical consumption under capitalism” is the new “just following orders.” If you can afford the product, you can afford to buy something more ethical.

Sure, but if you really cared, then you’d put in the effort. Or are you “just following orders”?

The point is that he blames the people working for these companies with a blanket statement while not taking any responsibility for his own agency in the situation. It’s a lot more nuanced than just “why don’t these other people do x.” It’s like “vote with your wallet” vs. “no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

There are some major exceptions to that. Many people on work visas have almost no choice, like the theorized majority of people who stayed on at Twitter after Musk ruined the place. Their choice basically boils down to keep working for the company or be deported.

TIL Carmen Sandiago works in IT.

I thought it would’ve been for you and the Linux guy to grab the people in first class to feed to the wolves…

Don’t forget that it’s also effectively a pay cut due to the added expenses and time lost in commuting. They should ask if the company is going to at least pay for the maintenance of the car if they aren’t going to pay for the time spent commuting.

I think it’s “legally grey” in the sense that governments have largely made no policies one way or the other on the data harvesting. It’s not banned, but it’s not openly encouraged either, and there’s no real legal precedent to point to for this specific matter besides the general data harvesting big tech does.

The area with the largest similarity I feel is music sampling, and as far as I know, the music industry was very quick to ensure that data harvesting for AI had to follow the same copyright laws as sampling.

I wanna say it became a thing from Twitch streamers when e sports was a big thing, but I’m by no means sure that that’s correct.

I think it’s a high fructose corn syrup joke, but that’s more like squeezing all the sugar out of a cob of corn and pretending it’s juice concentrate in my mind.

The weirdest part is how the game was sold in tons of regions where you can’t even make a PSN account. That sounds refund worthy, at least, if not a class-action lawsuit in the making.

PSN accounts, in particular, are pretty bad. In some places, they require a photo ID in order to make an account, and in many regions of the world, you can’t make one at all. Something like 50 of the regions where the game was sold can’t make PSN accounts, and using a VPN to make an account or lying about your region is a bannable offense.

It’s a valid concern, both from paying for something that you can’t even use and a privacy perspective.

From launch until now, creating a PSN account was optional due to technical issues. And while this wasn’t properly conveyed to the playerbase, the game was sold in tons of regions where you straight up can’t make a PSN account. Something like 50+ out of 123 regions where the game was sold cannot make PSN accounts. And using a VPN or lying about your region to make an account is a bannable offense.

The privacy complaints I have more of an issue with since GameGuard, the DRM used, is just as much, if not more, of a privacy issue compared to Sony’s horrible data security and invasive data harvesting. GameGuard has kernel level access to the entirety of your system while it’s running, usually installs itself as an on boot up background process, and has been caught by anti-virus software editing files outside of the game directory.

The first is a genuinely refund worthy issue, if not a class-action lawsuit in the making, while the second one is people being ignorant to how much data they’re actually giving away.

How many fingers am I holding up? If your answer is 6 or more, I have bad news for you and your data set.

I agree to some extent, but even before then hardware was getting expensive thanks to stuff like the Bitcoin mining craze. Harddrives have been getting cheaper on a dollar per TB basis for a long time (as they should), but I remember the days when it was cheaper to build a gaming PC than to buy a new console, and those days are long gone. And after COVID hit, greedflation set in to declare what the new normal is.

Not to sound snarky or anything, but since when do prices go down? If people were willing to pay the inflated price, there’s no incentive for them not to make that the new standard.

Do this have something to do with the ducks I always hear about?

Not a dev, but I have 3 monitors on my rig that I use for work and play.

A 24" 1080p as my main monitor for stuff like games or Blender, a smaller 18 and a half inch 720p for secondary stuff like Firefox, Discord/TeamSpeak, and monitoring Cura when the 3d printer is going, and a 21" 1080p Wacom on a monitor arm. The Wacom is kinda outside my field of view unless I’m actively using it, so most of the time it just has a performance monitor running so I can see what’s hogging my resources. Having Spotify on there is nice though, the touchscreen/stylus makes running it quick and easy.