Sure, I am not saying trust him, it’s more like a morbid curiousity thing.

Correct.

That’s not the same thing as what you are claiming (that I wish bad things for those Americans who oppose the current regime).

It is a mischaracterization! What have I said that makes it seems to you that I support the US oligarchic regime and wish the worst to those Americans that oppose it?

That’s simply not true!

That’s a mischaracterization. Trust me, it brings me no joy to see the US become a chauvinist, criminal oligarch regime. It’s a disaster to be honest.

That being said, you do not want to send money to a regime that wishes you harm and is composed of criminals. Nor is it unreasonable to make an assumption that the dominance of criminal elements is permanent and American civil service will get permanently debased and hollowed out.

Mind you, this sort of outcome is not surprising and a foreigner living in the US could notice the foundations of such an outcome a decade before Trump.

I was curious about this game, but I don’t do early access / paid alphas for MMOs. There were many warning signs over the years; sales of Star Citizen style expensive JPEGs, the CEOs deep involvement in MLM and the decision to temporarily pivot to a BF game.

If what is being reported is true, the CEO is indeed a full on scammer and liar.

The funny thing is the main victims of the Intrepid CEO were other MLM hot shots (one of them sounds like he barely knows how to use a computer, let alone MMORPG gaming).

I wish them luck (I genuinely do), but the existence of such people doesn’t change that the US will almost certainly remain commited to crime, corruption, chauvinism and demagoguery in the coming decades.

From my experience this is not purely a US far right issue. As I mentioned in my reply, much of the centre right might oppose the current administration, but they are still opposed to anti-crime reform (if not supporting crime out-right).

Why is that important?

As someone who has lived in the US for several years (and who still talks to close friends from there), I think it is reasonable to make an assumption that in the next ~20-30 years there won’t any change with respect to support for (and dominance of) crime, corruption, authoritarianism and demagoguery in the US.

Yhe US centre right party leadership is too corrupt, but also have no experience (or even theoretical interest) with anti-corruption/crime reforms. The party base is too well off (by relative global standards) to ever risk rocking the boat and getting serious about crime, not to mention a non-minuscule percentage of the US centre right voting base (similar to a large proportion of the far right), look up to criminals and oppose improvements to governance.

In that context, it is reasonable to drop US purchases whenever possible.

People pay for Discord Nitro?

That’s plenty of competition, it’s just that they suck at actual competition or are comfortable in their niche market.

I am not talking about the mere presence of competing entities. I am talking about market forces (in the real sense). If they were subject to market, they would not be able to charge an arbitrary 30% (because this figure would undercut to gain market share).

I am surprised how easily people are siding with Valve. I say this as someone who’s last console was the SEGA and is happy to see Valve improve Linux gaming.

That being said the 30% fee cut is clearly only possible due to lack of competition. In a competitive market, the cut would go down to service cost + some margin (subject to competition).

I don’t believe Valve or any other platform providers ever argued around economic reasoning for choosing specifically 30.

It most definitely does cost the customer more.

What your describing us not how pricing and economics works.

I was interested in AoC as I prefer sandbox MMOs. I just can’t play themepark MMORPGs, I always feel like I would be better of playing a single player RPG or multiplayer game of a different genre.

That being said their monetisation policies were a massive red flag (including selling Star Citizen style JPEGs of MMORPG items) and their CEO was disengagous.

I would much rather AoC was a success, I would even be willing to try out a 1.0 release, but such a complex sandbox MMO is difficult to implement form a financial perspective if you have ~250 employees based in the US (and in a very expensive region too).

I apologize for the broad generalisation (in my defence, the use of demonyms in such a context doesn’t always suggets complete generalisation). That was uncalled for.

I’ve lived for several years and travelled a lot around the US (both while living there and during subsequent visits). The impression I got is that corruption is not purely a far right thing and a far larger proportion of say the centre-right voting public enable it than would think. They might not be as openly committed to crime and corruption as say the far right, but much for the centre-right voting is simply too well off to risk rocking the boat and pursuing true anti-crime measures.

Let me give you an example of the latter. Meta has been found to knowling enable and support fraud to the tune of $16 B (10% plus of revenues) in 2024 alone. They even had a playbook to enable this scheme, so there likely entent to engage in crime.

This is a more pedestrian example, there also the enablement of Rohingya genocide (I don’t support capital punishment, but I would be willing to consider exceptions for egregious crimes against humanity, but let’s go with a more clear cut case.

Am I being unreasonable in stating that the vast majority of the centre-right voting public may vaguely believe Meta’s action to be criminal, but they fundamentally oppose any actions that might address such criminal activities. Things like immediate internment of all Meta executives and senior operational staff involved in this scheme, raids on their properties to uncover evidence, asset seizures for any entities involved in crime (so Zuckerburg would lose ownership stake in Meta if his engagement was proven during criminal proceedings)

The facts are pretty clear in this case, Meta didn’t even deny it, they decided to try PR their way out of it, hoping the issue would be forgotten.

There may be structural reasons for not pursuing such crimes, but that’s a weak excuse. Every country has problems (some far more challenging than American structural issues),

I stand by what I said, tech platforms (especially B2C, but not only) run by entities either based in the US or being subject to American influence cannot be trusted.

I will happily change my stance; it brings me no joy to see any country become a bastion of negative forces such as oligarchy and global promotion of crime and corruption. But there are limits to open mindedness and a desire to emphasis the positive elements of a given culture/nation.

At some point, there has to be real world changes and impact. I do not believe a hypothetical win by the centre-right in both legislative and executive office will change anything (FWIW, I actually lived in the US under Obama). I will also note that the issues with Valve were implementing during Obama’s terms.

Apologies, in retrospective that was wrong to say.

I should have said “entities based in the US jurisdiction (or that are influenced by American-style corruption)”.

You are correct that the nationality plays no role in this.

That being said, it is fact that all major US B2C tech platforms support corruption, engage in crime, engage in spyware activities and leverage shallow pompous PR copytext about alleged belief in free speech and “government official this or that”.

That ship has really sailed.

Funny thing is I don’t support Valve or Tim Sweeney. While by American standards, Valve are angels, that is a very low standard. Sweeney is your stereotypical American corporate degenerate:

But honestly Valve is no better. Europe (and other countries/regions) should either force Valve to have to de facto white label their store for Europe (where they are a junior partner and hold minimal control) or kick them out. And I am not saying there can’t be collaboration on common goals; e.g. investing into Linux support and open platforms, but you can’t have Americans in charge of major platforms. That ship has sailed.

There are many massive issues with Valve:

• They made a huge contribution to the rise of lootbox gambling schemes
• They initially attempted a fraudulent scheme on local consumer laws on refunds
• For most of Steam’s life their TOS had mandatory arbitration requirements which is a local corruption scheme that is not too different from Soviet kangaroo courts. In their defence they did add that “as far as your country’s laws permit”.

I will admit that the overall logic of the case doesn’t make sense.

The studio that made it pushed so hard to not call it VM 2 for that very reason…

That’s not the impression I got from following the new on VTMB. That’s what they claim, but their actions speak otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, I think TCR make some solid games (although often with subpar gameplay), but that doesn’t mean I am going to uncritically accept their PR narratives.

I have yet to try it, but if you like city-builders / economic strategy games, Microlandia seems to be well liked.

The sad thing is that on some level indie games do get pushed out by shovelware on a certain level.

Even with AAA, mid-range hardware from 5-6 years works fine at 1080p if you tune down the settings.

That’s true, but I think we need to move beyond half measures and in a way, now is the perfect time to do this.