BadlyDrawnRhino @ BadlyDrawnRhino @aussie.zone

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2 yr. ago

I think the government could definitely be doing more, but I don't think it's a bad thing to force companies to clearly disclose the nature of their products so consumers can make informed choices.

I think the major difference between the two is that in video games, the cost of the loot boxes is deliberately obfuscated through the use of whatever single-use currency the publisher has dreamed up, and made worse by the fact that the currency is only purchasable in select denominations, meaning you're always spending more than you're going to use.

You're not wrong that there are plenty of examples of physical "loot boxes" marketed at children, but at least with those you know exactly how much it costs straight up.

I wish our government would look into the actual predatory practices that these publishers are using in these games, but this is a good first step. At least the EU is looking into it.

Just want to point out that it might not be OP's fault. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the one folks in the US will be used to) has a habit of switching the headline depending on whether you're viewing on mobile or web. I wish they wouldn't, the clickbait headlines can be a bit of a distraction from otherwise generally high-quality articles.

Just make sure your family has a way to access your account. I very much doubt that Valve or most publishers will care that your kids have access to decades-old games after you're gone. Although I could see Ubisoft trying to take action out of spite, but that's only if they're still around by then, they're on pretty shakey ground at the moment.

Better option if this is an important issue for you is to only buy DRM-free. You'll have to wait for most AAA games, but most AAA games these days are increasingly not worth it anyway.

I'd love that link too if that's alright. Last time I tried to read Konsi in order, I kept getting sidetracked and reading all your other comics. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it's not what I set out to do.

To be fair, half of the AAA gaming industry is all about trying to clone the latest successful game with a new coat of paint. Maybe using AI to make these clones will mean that the talented people behind the scenes are free to explore other ideas instead.

Of course in reality, it just means that the largest publishers will lay off a whole lot of people and keep churning out these uninspired games in the name of corporate profits, but it's nice to dream sometimes.

Just wait until some oil baron says that sloth-dug tunnels is the way to "deal" with climate change.

The real conspiracy is that there's only one recognised holiday per year for most species on the planet, except for humans that get several per month. Seems to me that humans are trying to keep other species from having enough free-time to plot the revolution.

I also believe a lot of the hate stemmed from an undercurrent of real-life red-pill misogynists, but that's not to say all criticism was invalid.

The social commentary around She-Hulk was wild. The fact that certain parts of the fanbase were losing their minds over a silly post-credits twerk with Meghan the Stallion was both unsettling and entertaining to witness. If anybody had a problem with that but not the recurring America's ass joke in Endgame, they really need to go and take a good long look at themselves.

Thanks for this, I'm going to try this out on my way home. My main use for Gmaps is to determine the quickest way to and from work during peak hour, so keen to see how Magic Earth's traffic data compares.

Trebuchets aren't really a tool for defence. They have tremendous range and aren't exactly speedy to load, aim, and launch.

Unless you meant defence in the same way that a country's military operations are known as "defence forces" regardless of intent, in which case carry on.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear. The country's power needs are only going to keep growing, and I could see an argument for having multiple options for sourcing that power. It's a very expensive argument though, and one that's hard to swallow when all the experts are saying renewable is the way to go, and I haven't seen any projections that show that we'd necessarily need anything other than renewables in the foreseeable future.

The thing I'm strongly opposed to with regards to nuclear is rerouting funding away from renewables to pay for it. It's an expensive technology that won't be ready for decades, so I just don't see the need to pivot to it. If we'd started the transition to nuclear three decades ago things would be different, but the LNP was strongly opposed to the technology back then, funnily enough.

And it's absolutely absurd to then announce a cap on renewables spending as part of their plan to get to net zero by 2050.

The whole thing is a farce, and the LNP hasn't given any good reasons why nuclear is the way forward over renewables. They haven't said much of anything other than shout about it being the better option, but then that's been the LNP's go-to political strategy for as long as I've been old enough to vote so no surprise there.

I think PwC should have had to return whatever they'd charged the government for consultancy, as well as a massive fine on top of that. Governments around the world need to start giving penalties to corporations that actually deter them from doing the wrong thing.

I'm playing through New Vegas right now. I have one of the back buttons assigned to quicksave. I also changed the default camera button to one of the back buttons, because I don't use it often enough to warrant it being on the bumpers. And I have just assigned one to toggle collision, because sometimes you need that when playing something built in the Gamebryo engine.

Hifi Rush is in Humble Choice this month, and I noticed they have a redemption deadline which is a bit out of the ordinary. So it's possible it'll get delisted, or maybe Humble is just playing it safe with the keys they have.

Yeah, replying "Get fucked" to a response that brings up a lot of good counter-arguments to your original point will certainly make it look like you were bringing up immigration in good-faith.

I never owned a NES, but had a SNES and my brother also borrowed his friend's Mega Drive (Genesis for those of you in the US) from time-to-time. All of us would blow the connectors on the cartridges, regardless of console. If anything went wrong with a game, the first step to troubleshoot was to take the cartridge out and give it a good blow.

It was never about how the console actually worked, a five year-old isn't going to logically think about that. It was all about a perceived performance increase by doing it.

Is that a slur? It has a racial component, sure, but I hardly think it is actually a racist comment, and definitely not a slur. And to label it as "racially motivated harassment" is laughable.

If this is actually what Kerr said, it's pretty indicative of the systemic issues that have been popping up in the UK for awhile now. They've been travelling further and further down the fascist highway since Brexit.

At least with Metallica, we could laugh at the irony of a band regularly releasing songs about anarchy crying about piracy.

In a few years: "Grandpa, what the fuck is snow?"