Lvxferre [he/him]

Can I post a potentially controversial opinion?

NO, YOU CAN’T. (just kidding.)

Serious now: if I got it right, this game bar is an overlay showing FPS, CPU/GPU usage, screenshots/recording, stuff like this. It doesn’t look too hard to implement in Linux, and apparently there’s a GNOME extension in the makes for that. (If it’s compatible with Cinnamon I’ll be a happy camper. I’d rather not touch GNOME directly with a 3m pole, but the tools for GNOME are sometimes OK.)

The catch is that Intel will pay the tariffs either way.

Currently they can’t simply rely on the local industry for the semiconductors used in the hardware they sell, so they’re paying tariffs for them.

And, even if they eventually are able to rely solely on the local industry, the tariffs are inducing a supply shock - so even the price of locally produced alternatives will raise as a consequence.

Others are also paying the tariffs, but unlike Intel, they have a bit more wiggling room to deal with lower profits.

(I’m watching the video now, I swear! I know I shouldn’t comment on the topic before watching it, but…)

I did not watch the full video, so this might be potentially mentioned somewhere, but: Trump’s tariffs are definitively not helping Intel at all.

Intel needs things produced in countries that were heavily tariffed, like Taiwan. It can’t produce them at home, those chips aren’t maize tortilla chips dammit. This additional cost needs to be paid by someone - whom? If Intel (price stays the same), now their margin of profit is smaller. If the customer (price is raised accordingly), now the demand drops, and Intel is selling less CPUs. Either way Intel loses money.

I’ll go further: AMD and nVidia are not safe. Once the AI bubble bursts, nVidia will crash really bad. And AMD is also paying the same tariffs as Intel, so while it might feast on Intel’s carcass - much like a vulture - eventually it’ll kick the bucket too.

Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.

Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.

GOG is making some amazing advertisement for itself, for the cause, and for the games. Genius move.

(I don’t know a single one of those games, but I’m redeeming the code anyway. Just to show support.)

Ditto.

Did they even have the option not to go nuclear?

Yes: hide only the games tagged “adult” (subset tag), instead of all games tagged “nsfw” (superset tag), to reduce the disruption. And then work swiftly to relist the adult games with content not being targeted by the payment mafia. Even if itch.io showed one or two false negatives, it would already be a clear sign of good will towards the mafia.

I’m glad the people working there did not do this though. I hope itch io lets the disruption stays on, for as long as possible; preferably affecting as many non-adult games as possible.

Yay!

I wish it had a Linux version, but nowadays Proton works rather well, so not going to complain about it. I played a bit the earlier versions, and so far it looks like a genuine improvement over SR1 - a fun game already.

I criticised how apologetic itch.io’s statement was towards the payment mafia, but credits where it’s due:

Going nuclear was the smart move. I seriously doubt this censorship wave would’ve gathered so much attention if itch.io only delisted games with the content the mafia is currently going against. It helps to avoid that slippery slope, where people turn a blind eye to small violations of their agency until it’s on something that personally matters to them.

It’s also sensible to look for alternatives, so it doesn’t need to rely on the mafia on first place. A bit too late, but better late than never.

To add to that: my ship-of-Theseus computer is probably older than quite a few adult Lemmy users.

All current pieces are relatively new, as last year I felt like splurging and had money to do so. Except the hard disk - it’s a few years old, I think.

I remember when I installed the predecessor of my current GPU. I put the computer on the floor, and my nephew was crawling in the way, curious. Nowadays my nephew has a stubby beard, and he’s taller than me.

My old case was even older. It had a hole, where I glued cardboard. That hole used to hold a 3½ floppy disk drive. It saw the predecessor of that GPU I mentioned above, that I bought in 2004.

I had to websearch this so might as well share it here: 6DOF = six degrees of freedom. You can move and rotate in all three dimensions.

Accurate for Descent. I played this game as a kid. At the start I hated it, because unlike Doom you need to aim vertically (Doom has three degrees of freedom: X axis, Y axis, rotation). But eventually it grew on me, it’s like going from stale bread to a buttered toast - harder but nicer.

What’s profitable about losing sales of adult games?

From Visa/MC’s PoV the situation looks like this:

1. force itch.io - lose sales associated with that content
2. leave itch.io alone - lose sales associated with anyone who takes Collective Shout’s noise seriously, while Collective Shout starts smearing shit on Visa/MC by saying “they finance rape!”

Visa/MC likely determined #2 to be more than #1. In other words it’s more profitable to do #1 instead.

Also, what leverage do these groups have over banks and payment processors? […] I just don’t get it. Some random group in Australia has leverage over Visa and MasterCard - American companies - is that what we’re saying here?

It’s mostly their ability to cause brand damage (reasons people avoid your brand because they see it negatively - like #2).

Visa and MC know that, when it comes to sex, people become really irrational. They take insane troll logic seriously, even if they wouldn’t otherwise; and those religious groups like Collective Shout are really good at weaponising that irrationality. The way those alt right groups work is that you don’t even need to know about the group to repeat their talking points, and spread support to those talking points.

I think you might have too much faith in government.

I don’t. I’m picking the lesser of two evils here: a government is less worse than those megacorporations.

But ironically, I think YouTube and many other platforms quietly accept that if we want to live in a somewhat harmonious society, we can’t leave it to the government to make all the rules. (eg. YouTube banning vaccine misinformation and disinformation during a public health emergency.)

They didn’t ban vaccine misinformation “because it’s misinformation” or “because society would be better without it” (even if both things are true). Truth and morality doesn’t matter for those platforms; what matters is brand damage.

but there’s a lot of lawful content that is really undesirable (scams, spam, deepfakes, hate speech, etc.)

• scam - AFAIK already illegal in most of the world.
• spam - should be illegal, at least in the most egregious forms.
• deepfakes - it depends a lot on what is being done with the deepfake in question; plenty of them (like non-consensual sexualisation of someone) are either illegal or should be.
• hate speech - it targets the dignity, well-being and often the lives of marginalised groups. Should be illegal.

Are you noticing the pattern? Those are things that should be handled by a government in defence of the public interest of everyone, not by a platform in defence of private interest of its shareholders. Even if a population has weak control over its government, it’s more than it has over a corporation.

The law isn’t fast or flexible enough to keep up and every country has different (or laughable) definitions of some of these things.

This problem is not a good reason to create an even bigger problem. Like the one we’re seeing - private interest dictating what should be allowed or not in the public sphere.

And, seriously, if the problem was just porn who would give a fuck. (Okay, some people would, some wouldn’t.) The problem is that those corporations will happily target any group, any interest, any person, as soon as they deem profitable; because they have the power to do so, so porn is in this context only the canary of the mine. And this power needs to be curtailed.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that implementing such a wide law would be unviable. Well, focus on financial service providers then - banks, payment processors, and the likes. Problem solved.

Sorry for the double reply.

In the short-ish term, I think a good way to address this would be if governments across the globe had laws like “a service provider cannot refuse to provide services to a platform based on the nature of the lawful content within that platform”.

Odds are Visa/MC/PP wouldn’t even try to fight against such a law - they don’t really mind servicing itch.io, from their PoV it would be yet another customer; the problem is pressure exerted by those Protestant nutjobs in Australia, but once a law is present they can’t exert that pressure.

Right, that’s why they CAN do it, but I’m talking about why they WANT to do it.

The reason why PP/MC/Visa “want” to do this has zero to do with “porn saturation” or whatever. It’s basically “brand management”; they’re seeing servicing sites with specific types of adult content as “brand damage”, so they pressure those sites to not do it. That’s it; if they believed the opposite they’d gladly force itch io to show a dick in the front page.

In turn, the reason Collective Shout is pressuring PP/MC/Visa through “brand damage” mostly boils down to conservative babble. Check this, regarding the group’s founder and take your own conclusions.

I don’t think it’s just a matter of personal responsibility; it’s part of the socio-economic system, whoever controls the capital can force others depending on it to do things they don’t want to. In this case PP/MC/Visa forcing itch.io.

I don’t care about porn games, but:

The fact MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal can censor lawful content is problematic, to say the least.

So do I, but plenty people want MP.

However adding MP to a game is never as simple as those people claim it is. Now your game has to handle the connection, data sharing, making sure all MP players are seeing the exact same thing. And it needs to do it with good performance, because laggy MP is hell. It’ll probably need a server too, either external or one of the players - the later having performance costs. Balance is often thrown out of the window and needs adjustments, because as soon as you add another player into the game they gather resources 2x faster together.

“just add multyplaier lol how hard is that lmao” - spammed in every bloody community about every SP game ever.

The Minecraft modding scene was always insane.

Forge in special has always been a hotbed for drama, since inception - Eloraam (RedPower) and FlowerChild (Better than Wolves) were both founding members, they started fighting because Eloraam was copying BTW features, FC left, booom. Eventually Eloraam and Spacetoad left, and LexManos - not a founding member, but someone invited into Forge by Eloraam - became the head developer, and he makes Arthmoor look nice in comparison.