The copyright industry has pushed the “making available” narrative for so long, that’s sort of become the dominant talking point. IANAL, but as an internet user, I have opinions*:

a. That seems entirely backwards from what the law intends. “Making a copy” is done by the downloader, which is explicitly what the law is about.

b. The industry only went the other way because it was more convenient from a litigation perspective. It’s far easier to sue one person for seeding to 100 peers than to go after the 100 individuals who downloaded from that seeder. They got a few courts to go along with the more loose interpretation to get precedent for the next and the next suit.

* always be aware of your local copyright laws before listening to some rando online.

It’s always amazing to me how consistently it’s in the top 10 best sellers on GOG.

You’d think at some point everybody would have a copy, but month after month it’s in, or near, the top of the list.

Awww, the tiger-coyote thinks he’s a stegosaurus.

Give me the full game in one package at a reasonable price* and we’ll talk.

* Being Square-Enix, we won’t actually ever talk.

The Watchers

It is difficult to describe how exactly it met my expectations. Truly one of the most -whelming viewing experiences.

I haven’t played the remake, but the original AoM is the only RTS I’ve ever played for more than a game or two. Is the Retold version a real upgrade? Worth the cost of buying again?

Folks pointing out GCN/Wii internet abilities are missing that the experience was awful. Like sure, the guts of broadband were there, but actually playing a game with friends online was way more trouble than it was worth.

So to your point, real online gaming was indeed way behind other consoles (IMHO).

The Future™

I go by my middle name, and the number of people this confuses is amazing.

41 games played, top 2 make up >80% of play time. Sounds about right.

Nuclear block plus a culture of not feeding the trolls means the only toxic accounts I’ve run across are just a day or two old. Block and move on. The experience can only be as negative as each user lets it be.

Actually explains a lot of decisions by game publishers the last 5-10 years if their official position is that games are meant to collect dust on a shelf rather than being played.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

They’re streaming in the 3d world detail, but the rendering engine is installed locally.

Playing on xCloud will just stream in the visuals that are rendered remotely, so a lot less bandwidth, but then you have the lag, and need a subscription.

SPF-1701

Legally, it’s still a license, it’s just effectively impossible to revoke.

Edit to expand on this: A truly offline forever-purchase of physical goods can be re-sold. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine (this is the US-specific version, other jurisdictions may have similar doctrines).

American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.

A digital “purchase” is usually non-transferable, even from GOG. It can’t be removed from your own HDD once you download the installer, but there are still restrictions attached on what you can do with it, even if those are limited and hard to enforce.

Tencent and Guillemot combined are considering a buyout of other shareholders. Most of that is Guillemot, with Tencent increasing their share very slightly from 9.2% to 10%.

Foreword written by Georgia O’Keeffe.

A rather obtuse reference to removing the OtherOS feature well after purchase. I tried to adapt it to game terms, but admit it’s a stretch.

Out of all the boardroom discussions, raising the price was actually the most consumer-friendly suggestion from Sony. Others included:

• Deleting the original version from users’ libraries.
• Re-printing the original on disc, but including a rootkit.
• Compiling a list of original version owners and leaving their personal details in plaintext on the web until they upgrade.
• Downgrading the original to 480p, telling users the original graphics were just a bug, and selling the higher-res upgrade.