You can call whatever this bizarre and obviously false claim is what you want, but this entire subthread is very transparently an attempt to justify using a slur. It has very "why can't I say the n word" energy.
This is an extremely poor faith interpretation of a reasonable argument: if someone asks me to call them a word that is often perceived as a slur, because they belong to a member of that group and would like to "reclaim" it, should I do so? Am I being racist by using the word? This is not a clear question like you present it to be, and has absolutely nothing to do with an inherent desire to use slurs against marginalized people.
This is absolutely not the situation that he has presented it as. Someone else has already stated what is going on here. These people do not identify as a slur. His entire argument hinges on this insane idea that people identify as a slur.
Reclaiming != identifying as.
The person you're defending even went on to say that his mentality has gotten him into hot water. The fact that you didn't read into that as "I have no idea what I'm talking about and these people clearly didn't want to be called this" is disconcerting.
And yes, if you are not a person of color and you use a slur traditionally used to describe a person of color to describe or talk about a person of color, you are racist. Full stop. The very fact that you're concocting some outlandish situation where you'd magically be allowed to use slurs is extremely telling, though. If you had any idea what you were talking about, you wouldn't ask that.
Maybe you should stop opining on things and listen to the parties these things affect. The usage of slurs isn't yours to have an opinion on if the slurs aren't words for you.
No, I actually think it's more complicated than that. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but if we go by your interpretation it really seems like they're coming to Hacker News to justify their use of slurs against people who do not appreciate it, which honestly just seems very unconvincing. If you really wanted to use a slur, you'd just use it…there's really no reason to come here to discuss it with people who are going to be overwhelmingly against what you are claiming you want to do.
Slurs are partially the actual word and partially the intent behind them. Once you get to know someone very well, it's typically the case that there is an understanding of no mutual malice between you and them. It is this context that "reclaiming" comes into the picture, because you have a shared perception of what the intent is. You might've heard of the "n-word pass"–it's kind of a meme, but before it was the concept was legitimate and the sentiment was that you're on good enough terms with someone that they know you're not trying to be malicious to them when you use it. It's a sign of trust, and to put it in vernacular, you can't
"transfer" a n-word pass because it's a product of your individual relationship.
Putting it a in slightly different context, I (jokingly, of course…) call my mom old and senile when she forgets something in a dumb way ("Where did I put my phone, I've searched the entire house…oh, it was right in front of me where I put it down seconds ago"). She knows I am not directing hatred towards her. With that said, just because I can call her old and senile doesn't mean you can do it, or that I can go do it to any middle-aged woman. But because both of us know each other, it's totally fine to say this among ourselves because it's shared language to us.
Now, with that in mind, I don't think the commenter actually was trying to justify being able to go around calling any person they saw a slur. How would they get in trouble for this? Well, I look different enough from my mom that our relationship isn't immediately evident all the time. If called her old and senile within earshot of someone else, it could definitely look like I was being a jerk if they weren't aware we knew each other beforehand. If I did it around other women of the same age, it could really cause issues. I would certainly not consider either of these a wise thing to do, but in my eyes these are really more a lack of tact or maybe misunderstanding of the context you're in rather than just a racist person wanting to be racist.
(You might be wondering why I would choose to use these words at all…I think the answer to that is really what reclamation is about. Nobody wants to be old and senile, but it's a thing that happens. My mom appreciates it that it's something we can joke about, and I think it helps her deal with it in a way. My understanding is that mutual use of slurs on friendly terms has a similar effect. There's a more extreme form of reclamation of "I think anyone can call me these words, even if I don't really know them, because I'm just really confident/proud of this" but I understand that's not for everyone, and it's definitely something that you can't just assume about people.)
Anyways, to circle back to the original topic, I don't even think my interpretation is a good faith interpretation, it just seems like the more likely interpretation, which is that the commenter has situations where the slurs is normalized and even encouraged by the people who they apply to. You seem to have interpreted this as "the commenter thinks that this means its OK to use them generally because they are racist" but this just doesn't seem to be the case to me. (And if it is…I definitely don't support that.) That's basically all I wanted to bring up.
(One final thing that has more to do with the sentiment of your comment rather than its content, which I think is solid: it seems like you wrote it from the perspective that I'm, at best, woefully misinformed and isolated from marginalized communities, and at worst some sort of closet bigot which you can discern from my comments. I'm a real human being with real empathy and real experience and real faults! I understand that this is a topic you're passionate about, perhaps maybe one you're tired of discussing, but you don't have to attack me to express your opinions on it. Even if it sounds like I'm disagreeing with you, I'm here to interact with new perspectives and learn from them. I only ask that you don't immediately dismiss me as close-minded, as doing so from the start only makes that more likely, rather than less.)
> Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about ([...] lgbtq [...]) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
Does this cut both ways, where LGBTQ+ people also don't have to listen to how straight everyone is? I doubt it. So yeah, how about no? How about there is agreement or nothing? Because there's no way straight people are going to agree to disagree about whether they should be allowed to discuss their sexuality.
I'd be fine with either not discussing relationships in public, or openly discussing both straight and non-straight relationships. Not sure which is more likely though.
You constructed a straw man out of his comments very effectively. I didn’t gather that he meant you can’t mention your life, significant other, etc. I read it as maybe don’t discuss the political aspects of LGBT issues, etc
If you don't understand that the problem is that detractors have made simply being LGBTQ+ a political issue, you are not qualified to have an opinion here.
I'm curious what you think you mean because there is no good answer.
I also wouldn't have had to comment at all if people weren't casually asking people to instate don't ask don't tell in social settings.
Remember to interpret someone's arguments in the strongest possible sense. Chastising others is great for moral superiority but it is a poor tool for discussion.
You know, telling people they're acting morally superior when they're confronting the fact that people are calling aspects of their identity controversial and acting like said parts of their identity simply shouldn't be discussed in public is not a good look.
No, you didn't. The original person did. You then told me I was making a straw man by calling him out for it.
You could have just as easily not commented and I could have been dealing with the original commenter. You decided to comment, defending his absurdity. You don't get to now tell me I am "looking to be offended," especially when you take the side of the less reasonable position.
Do you really think the whole spectrum of LGBTQ identities isn't controversial?
We aren't saying good or bad, we aren't assigning value, we are simply saying controversial. Like, obviously you feel you have to fight everyone if there is so much as a chance someone is attacking you - that sort of supports the argument, no?
And no, my original argument was not that LGBTQ aligned folks should go back into the closet or any such nonsense as that. It was mostly that if you have hot takes on deep in-community debates (I give several examples above), maybe don't share them on twitter and disown everyone around you who disagrees.
Again, read arguments in the strongest possible sense. Read the entire context.
So, there are two points that you've yet to address and I doubt ever will, which casts an extremely negative light on your argument:
1) You have yet to provide any concrete examples of what it is you mean. You keep going "but I swear this isn't what I mean." Thus, I can only conclude that you mean the whole.
Am I to think you're saying that LGBTQ+ people shouldn't be allowed to discuss marriage rights, even though straight people have been afforded that right and freely talk about their marriages in front of people who are affected by laws outlawing their unions?
Am I to believe that you're saying that we shouldn't talk about whether trans people should be allowed to change their names without gender/sex reassignment surgery, even though straight people regularly change their names, get plastic surgery, and what-have-you?
There are no good answers. The very fact that you've not acknowledged that there is no good answer is the problem here. You could just accept that you're wrong, that this is offensive no matter how it is interpreted. But no, you feel an incessant need to defend yourself because you, as a straight man, couldn't possibly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues and, thus, couldn't possibly be offending people.
2) You have yet to acknowledge the fact that you could just casually throw that in there without a second thought is the problem. The fact that you didn't need to think "does LGBTQ+ really belong here?" Your very doing that contributes to anti-LGBTQ+ and "don't say gay" mentalities.
> Am I to think you're saying that LGBTQ+ people shouldn't be allowed to discuss marriage rights, even though straight people have been afforded that right and freely talk about their marriages in front of people who are affected by laws outlawing their unions?
Are we to think you're honestly too stupid to see that discussing marriage rights is something totally different than talking about their actual marriages? We can, if you want. If not, we'd have to conclude it's a conscious tactic; twisting facts and your opponent's words into something they didn't say or doesn't happen.
We could then think this is a constant tactic of yours... But I'd prefer to ascribe it to temporary rhetorical overheating in discussing a burning cause. Hope you've put out the flames and cooled down now.
We live in a world where gay people still have to worry about being arrested for merely being gay in several countries! God help you if you're visibly trans and in a bad neighborhood!
What world do you live in where being _any_ of the LGBTQ spectrum is some overall totally safe and hunky dory existence!?
And if that wasn't bad enough, your fellow LGBTQ friends likely have all kinds of "ready to rip your throat out" hot takes - or did we already forget the shunning and rejection of Buck Angel?
It's incredible how men, especially straight white men, can demonstrate their understanding of the point by using all of its parts in twisted fashions to support their argument, but will never concede that the point was correct.
Yes, it is unsafe to be LGBTQ+. That is exactly why you can't put it in a box and go "you're not allowed to talk about these things in social situations because my game of Catan is more important."
Really ruminate on that last point. Your game of Catan is more important to you than whether the people in that game are comfortable being around you.
That is not what I said. Go back and read the original post.
It's amazing how strangers on the internet can just star gaze and determine my gender, sexuality, race and so on. It's less amazing how often wrong they are. I'd really take a moment and think whether predicting someones identity is aligned with your ethical beliefs on those topics.
If you want to fight straw men, please have the courtesy of doing it in private.
To be completely fair, if you're not a straight white man and people are regularly mistaking you for a straight white man, that generally means only one thing: you're on the wrong side of history.
And no, I think you should think a bit harder about what it is you said and how you said it. It's easy to claim that isn't what you meant, but you've yet to provide any concrete examples of what you mean, which I called you out for and you proceeded to be flippant. This is also a sign that you know your argument is lost.
You can continue to claim straw men, but you've yet to provide evidence that I've actually created a straw man.
EDIT: Moreover, if you want to say we should just not discuss LGBTQ+ issues in public and try and justify using a slur and then call LGBTQ+ people the problem when they get angry, maybe you should have the courtesy of doing that in private.
> To be completely fair, if you're not a straight white man and people are regularly mistaking you for a straight white man, that generally means only one thing: you're on the wrong side of history.
Because straight white men just are "on the wrong side of history, everyone knows that", or what?!?
Or perhaps it's just an attempt from straight men to not have to confront the fact that what they say is harmful.
Again, it's easy to say that I'm creating a straw man, but the facts are thus.
The OP said:
- My games of Catan work because we don't talk about things.
- Social media is bad because I have to confront the fact that I will disagree with people on things.
- These things that I will disagree with my Catan buddies on should either be "agree to disagree" matters or matters that don't get discussed.
- LGBTQ+ issues were one of the examples of such topics. Neither option is acceptable for LGBTQ+ people.
No examples of what sort of "LGBTQ+ political topics" either of you might mean have been given and yet I, the one providing examples and countering them, am the one creating the straw man?
All I can say is that, once again, you need to listen to the people affected when they say that what is said is harmful and stop acting like the LGBTQ+ people are the problem for telling you that it is, in fact, harmful.
EDIT: You're also defending a man who actively tried to justify using a slur. Doesn't reflect well on you, does it?
Nobody can stop you from trying to shut down arguments by telling people that the insinuation that their existence is somehow so controversial that people can just casually suggest that discussing it in public is akin to discussing abortion and gun laws somehow isn't a form of oppression that is above and beyond what would be called a microaggression, but, if you did, I'd hazard a guess that you aren't part of the oppressed party and aren't qualified to speak on their behalf.
> telling people that the insinuation that their existence is somehow so controversial that people can just casually suggest that discussing it in public is akin to discussing abortion and gun laws
Discussing your existence?!? Who the F said your existence can't be mentioned?!?
You're really not doing your cause any good with these ever more ridiculously hysterical arguments.
> If I steal from you, you no longer have what I've stolen. If I copy your software, you still have it; I might just have deprived you of profits (if I had otherwise bought the software).
Okay, so what is your suggestion here? Make it legal to make the copies? You know that that will only make more companies implement more aggressive DRM, right? Because, if you can't legally stop people from copying your software, you have to stop those who copy it from being able to run it.
This is also why cloud applications with web interfaces are on the rise. They don't have to worry about piracy because it's literally impossible unless people break into their servers, which I'm sure no one is going to argue isn't a crime.
This is a bad example because Steam's DRM is notoriously terrible and even multiplayer games that use Steam's multiplayer services can be played entirely without Steam with a particular open-source emulator (granted they don't also have their own servers that you connect to, which is an entirely different issue).
Windows 11 and TPM are definitely points towards most computing moving in the direction that Mac OS has. The thing to remember, though, is that most users don't actually care. They only care if your bog standard apps run.
>This is a bad example because Steam's DRM is notoriously terrible
You don't grasp Valve and the industry has already won any game where the networking code has been pulled out already acts like DRM, any client-server app requiring username and login accounts, or has some piece of code living on some remote server, means you no longer own your own stuff.
Valve and the rest of the computing industry is boiling you all slowly. AKA look at this list of games from crackwatch.
You'll notice more and more games are "online only". Diablo 3 is literally diablo 2 /w drm, they wanted to kill piracy.
Starcraft remastered, and reforged require internet to play, that means we've lost the battle. The public has eaten up client-server back ended games. You don't get that the whole point was to monopolize their own products and kill the local infinitely copyable binaries PC games used to be coded as, AKA PRe steam 99% of games were complete you got singleplayer+multiplayer inside the same game.
MMO's/F2P are literally just PC games with their multiplayer ripped out, don't think so? Listen to the ultima devs here, when Ultima online was successful, publishers and devs went over their entire PC game list to convert their local apps to client-server apps and stuck "MMO" on the front so they could steal PC games from the public.
EA killed ultima 9 when the UO beta got massive interest, that lead to the death of PC games as local applications, the industry from then on there was a massive war to back end all PC games, they couldn't immediately do that to quake and urneal because we'd been treated too good with Warcraft 1-3, Descent 1-3, Quake 1-3, and build engine games like Duke 3d. The entire industry has always wanted to kill piracy and Ultima online gave the entire industry the go ahead once they realized that many of our fellow programmers and gamers were irrationally stupid beyond their wildest dreams.
Anyone playing quake and Descent at the time fear the loss of dedicated servers and level editors which used to come with the games, we knew if Ultima online was successful that Publishers would want to back end every fucking PC game and that's the end of the personal computer and the return of IBM and mainframe computing.
"Signed exe's" and trusted computing is the return of mainframe computing of the 60's in new bullshit language but I don't expect the mmo/steam generation to do anything but froth at the mouth. When they were the ones killing gaming and gave birth to microtransactions.
You can't put MTX in diablo 1, warcraft 1-3, or starcraft 1 because they are local applications that run entirely from your pc. None of the code has been stolen out of the game carved back behind a user account and login requirement. Like with most PC games these days.
We're losing gaming history and generation mmo is to blame for their general cluelessness of the evil of mainframe computing.
Ummm...more and more games are forcing you to be online during play because, in reality, that's what people want. People want their universal auction houses that connect with other players and feel more "alive." People want their Wonder Trades and other seemingly inane social features. Do all games need it (eg. the StarCraft and WarCraft III remasters)? No, but that has less to do with "ONLINE GAMES ARE EVIL" and more to do with them wanting to keep people firmly in the Battle.net ecosystem. There's an entire player retention strategy that goes into that that has nothing to do with piracy.
Moreover, MMOs in general necessitate a central server. They're a completely different genre that is isolated from the fears you're expressing and, more to the point, they're not a particularly popular genre when compared to session-oriented competitive multiplayer games, so they're not actually why those games are forcing you to connect to a central server.
The main thing you're missing when complaining about the "loss of dedicated servers" is that centralized services consolidate the userbase, allow them to programmatically split the userbase by region, and ensure that, as long as people are playing, they can always be found. But, more importantly, you're never locked out of the "populated" servers for an arbitrary amount of time because they're perpetually full, which has been a problem in a number of games with dedicated servers.
Also, you have to remember that the games industry is approximately 5x larger (by revenue, probably more by userbase, especially considering the rise of f2p games and increasing prevalence of deep discounts) now than it was in 2000. What the majority wants inevitably changed because "the majority" changed purely by virtue of there are 5x+ more people with their own opinions.
So, sure, things are changing and are moving away from self-hosting, but there are a lot of cultural factors (and undeniable conveniences) that have influenced it far more than "companies are evil and they just want to control us."
> So we know the ability to have dedicated servers and in game server browser exists inside the engine.
You can continue to spout conspiracy theories if you want, but the fact of the matter is that dedicated servers are a completely different archetype. If you connect to a server, your connection is retained until you disconnect, meaning that you are in the player pool until you disconnect, which means no one else can take your slot in the player pool until you disconnect. This worked when communities were smaller, but it's completely incompatible with having 100k+ people online at any one time. The server lists would be massive, especially in a game like Halo Infinite, where lobbies cap at 16. No one wants to deal with that.
> Sigh, go listen to the post mortem devs of ultima online, as soon as UO beta was successful, Ultima 9 (the local app) was axed, for client-server ultima, aka "MMO's" are just back ended rpgs, they re not some different kind of game.
Ultima IX was, from the ground up, awful. Not to mention, you're completely misrepresenting this. It's not like they killed Ultima IX and reused its code in Ultima Online. They're completely different games.
And yes, MMOs are different. They literally have different mechanics. No Ultima game played like Ultima Online except Ultima Online. The entire appeal is that the entire userbase is all on one server.
But, more importantly, at any given time, the servers are too complex to manage for individuals and, at the time that Ultima Online was released, it would have been literally impossible to run on the average desktop computer. A RasPi can barely manage 8 people on a Minecraft server. You think that your 1997 Pentium could have managed Ultima's server? Alternatively, look at Ryzom's open-source release. There are like four different interconnected servers. What average user is going to be able to adequately manage that for other users?
I literally didn't say the network code was different. But server load, internet requirements (have fun hosting an Ultima Online server for your friends on a 56K modem), and more make it impractical for any single user to host a server.
Quake II is literally not the same as an MMO. You have a small map with a maximum of, what, 32 players? MMOs can have thousands. Most modern MMOs can handle hundreds in the same zone before they become unplayably laggy. Most can't handle thousands in one zone, even on the machines the servers were built for. You can't do that as a consumer.
It's not about the code. It's about the game itself and its requirements.
Emulating servers doesn't change that.
Again, it's all about being able to connect everyone that is playing and the difficult parts being managed for you. You never have to worry about spinning up a dedicated server to play with your friends. You just load in, invite them to party, and queue up. These conveniences are why this model is popular, not because of this bizarre conspiracy you're pushing.
Okay, have fun in your alternate reality where users host all of your data and you regularly lose characters or accounts you've spent months on because they decide they can't be arsed to host the server that you were on anymore. After all, you can't allow users to brings their characters/accounts cross-server because that's a cheating risk. :)
I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their points, but there's no denying that certain games have been online'd purely as a means of copy protection. Diablo 3 is a great example. It's a game that's perfectly enjoyable in single player, but they specifically moved parts off onto a remote server to prevent you from giving copies to your friends. They could have just as easily (in fact, probably more so) put everything the single player mode needs in the executable and required a login for multiplayer, as was done for Diablo 2, but they didn't. Even if you have no intention of playing online, you don't have option not to connect to Blizzard.
Can't you use the auction house from single-player? If so, this is part of my point. This isn't some grand conspiracy to limit ownership of games. This is the kind of thing that more people want. They want the interconnectedness and that is an understated part of why gaming has been taking off as of the last decade.
There are a lot of things that are designed to limit how you can use your software, but gaming is one of the places that companies genuinely don't have to do that because the features that necessitate limiting how you use said software (eg. introducing anti-cheats and forcing you to be online) is stuff that people actually want.
I'm not saying players in general don't want those features. I'm saying companies are taking advantage of that fact in order to require connectivity.
I never played Diablo 3 (because it's online-only) so I honestly don't know if the auction house is available on single player or not, but I'm going to assume that it is. OK. What if I have no interest in the auction house? What if I'm somewhat interested in it, but would much rather not be forced to connect to any service in order to play and consider not using the auction house a fair trade? It would be trivial to design the game so that it only connects when you try to use the auction house and to remain offline otherwise. In fact such an implementation is much simpler than to arbitrarily move critical components of the game onto a remote server. The only reason to do that for an optionally single player game is copy protection.
So yes, people nowadays expect online features, but this is a fact that's convenient for companies. And no, it's not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is an agreement between parties to perform an illicit act. What we have here is various separate parties independently converging on the idea that eroding private property rights (namely, your ability to play the games you bought unimpeded by any external factors) ensures future profits. If you haven't seen it, I recommend Ross Scott's series on dead games, to see how destructive this practice is.
I mean, I know it's convenient for companies, but there are other ways to look at this, namely that it obsoletes actual DRM and provides you with something in return, which DRM doesn't. Or, to say it another way, there are worse fates.
That being said, even now, there are few genuinely single-player games that require an online connection to play. It's not a fast-growing trend by any means and, thus, not a threat. People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May. Or, to say it another way, if you're going to complain about something, maybe you'd better keep your references up to date.
Most games these days are on Steam. You can trivially make any game that uses only Steam's DRM playable without Steam and even trivially remove SteamStub. That emulator that I mentioned even lets you play "online" with friends via P2P, sans Steam or any third-party server. Is it entirely legal? No, but neither is making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD. Or, to say it another way, if you're so committed to that ideal, why aren't you doing what you can to make it possible to stay committed to that ideal?
>People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May.
Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.
>making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD.
If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.
> Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.
If this is that big of an issue, shouldn't you already know the examples and be able to list them off?
> If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.
Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.
I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew. Yes, there's not that many, but I never said it was a huge problem, I just responded to your assertion that the only reason such games are online only is because of what players want. That's plainly false.
>Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.
You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point. That point being: when you own something you're free to do with it as you please. You don't need to ask for permission to read a book you own, although you do need to physically have the book on you to do so, and it needs to be intact enough that you can understand what's printed on it. A PlayStation game on a CD follows those same rules. Always online games don't.
> I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew.
I don't know enough about Planetary Annihilation, but Elite: Dangerous and The Crew were definitively designed to instance you to make it feel like things were going on around you. The only functional difference between them and MMOs is the amount of players you see at once. They were made to be played online, allowing you to seamlessly move from going it alone to playing with others. This goes back to my "people want the interconnectedness" point. Allowing you to instance yourself out doesn't change that.
> You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point.
No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.
Elite Dangerous has a multiplayer mode, but also a single player mode. Single player is single player, there's no reason to be connected, other than to make sure the player has not done something naughty with their copy.
>No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.
And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie. In practice most online games don't even to ten years before the developers shut their servers down permanently. If you really love Elite and you think it's the best game ever, you can take measures to continue playing it today, 38 years after it came out. Do you think Elite Dangerous will continue being profitable for another 30 years?
> And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie.
You are now actively misrepresenting my point, which was that someone is going to have to reverse engineer something in order to maintain software. Disks don't last forever. They rot. Your copy of whatever in your PS2 for 30 years will potentially not come out unscathed. Other media has its own issues. PC games from that era simultaneously are getting harder to run and have their own DRMs that need removed.
Emulators are the only future-proof solution and they will undoubtedly need to be ported to new architectures in the future. The maintenance cost is somewhere. In this case, it's in removing ore reverse engineering the online-only components. You don't even have to reverse engineer everything - just enough to get it running. Look at Teknoparrot. Multiple games only barely work because they don't emulate the entire multiplayer backend.
This isn't an insurmountable task and you weren't about to be the one writing a PS2 emulator, so I'm not sure why you're so insistent that it's different. For you, anyways.
Yes, all physical objects degrade with time. Different pieces of software can change in incompatible ways. This is all well-known. That doesn't change the fact that if the only way your property can stop functioning is if it breaks down at the software or hardware level, it will likely continue working for a longer time than if it additionally needs someone else to continue powering a server somewhere.
>I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their point
Then you're going to have to answer: why did we lose dedicated servers in fps and LAN in modern games like starcraft 2, and many others.
Things that used to come inside the game, Descent 1-3, Warcraft 1-3, Diablo 1-2, quake 1-3 Doom 1-3.
All those games had multiplayer built into their exe's. So you have a lot of explainig to do why multiplayer networking has been ripped out of games like
Games from pre-steam era, multiplayer still work because they were embedded inside the exe. So you have a lot of explaining to do claiming "your mmo's" are special and I'm wrong, the easiest explanation is mmo's are just stolen PC games and they've been ripping out networking code once they realized you were computer illiterate/irrational to an insane degree in 97 with the advent of ultima online, lineage, everquest, guild war 1, asherons call and wow.
FoC is an unreal engine game, so why would we need to sign in to a remote computer to play multiplayer, when unreal 1, UT2003, UT2004, didn't require that? Or could it be those were all honestly coded local applications before the mmo-backend apocalypse infected all of gaming.
You're responding to an argument I did not make. I specifically agreed with you that certain games have been crippled as a means of copy protection. Please try to read more carefully.
>You suggested there is a place for client server games
Sorry, but I simply did not say that.
>So the only way to keep ownership over your PC is not to buy any client-server software (no mmo's, no steam, no overwatch, etc). Why? Because client-server apps are the ultimate security risk
If you believe that, why are you using a web browser and posting on Hacker News? At the networking level there's no fundamental difference between using an online forum and playing an MMO. Did you audit your web browser and HN's code?
1. Their shareholders would be happy. And the CEO will get attaboys from board members. Taking a tough stance on Piracy costs a CEO nothing. Anecdotes matter little, but I have seen in many cases, when gaming companies adopted new DRMs, people actually bought their shares. And not dumb people, too.
2. There are some assholes who don't want poor people having their things. Some do it for the image purpose. Think of Apple hardware. Older models can easily be sold at a much lower price. Save some very old iPhone SEs, they don't do that. If every Tom, Dick, and Harry owns something, it dilutes a product's value to many people. People want to own rare and exotic things.
They still don't like that people can pirate, whether or not in impacts their bottom line. Also because they're so vigilant about protect their IP, that's kind of an extension of the behavior
I think this is the wrong way to be looking at it.
WINE is an open-source project that explicitly wants to run as much Windows software as accurately as possible on non-Windows systems. If something's broken, anyone can fix it.
This isn't true for the proprietary software that is Windows and C&C, albeit C&C Remastered is partially source-available now, so that could improve matters somewhat.
...except the non-deterministic parallelism that this offers.
That's the thing. Smalltalk is historically extremely bad at utilizing multiple cores (not because it can't be done, but because no one has - multiple people have thought that an actor-oriented VM might be a good fit). This utilized multiple cores by embracing non-determinism. No other Smalltalk VM offers that.
