Iirc, they knew that it was stupid, their publisher forced it on them. They weren’t happy about it either.

Personally I’d call it buy to play with an unlimited demo and optional mtx. Back when I played it, the default stash tab wasn’t remotely enough, but after spending 20 euros I had enough tabs for all my needs and I then played several seasons without spending anything more. It’s still the best freemium model that I’ve ever encountered imo.

And I’m not saying that you are. I tried to show with a parable that they do not need to see their machine’s actions to know that some of it’s actions are illegal. That’s what we were disagreeing on: that they know.

I made an automaton. I set the parameters in such a way that there is a large variability of actions that my automaton can take. My parameters do not pre-empt my automaton from taking certain illegal actions. I set my automaton loose. After some time it turns out that my automaton has taken an illegal action against a specific person. Did I know that my automaton was going to commit a illegal action against that specific person? No, I did not. Did I know that my automaton was sooner or later going to commit certain illegal actions? Yes I did, because those actions are within the parameters of the automaton. I know my automaton is capable of doing illegal actions and given enough incidences there is an absolute certainty that it will do those illegal actions. I do not need to interact with my automaton in any way to know that some of it’s actions will be illegal.

You can’t create an automated machine, let it run loose without supervision and then claim to not be responsible for what the machine does.

Maybe just maybe this was the very first instance of their ai malfunctioning (which I don’t believe for a second), in which case the correct response of Brandshield would have been to announce that they would temporarily suspend the activities of this particular program & promise to implement improvements so that it would not happen again. Brandshield has done neither of these, which tells me that it’s not the first time and also that Brandshield has no intention of preventing it from happening again in the future.

If it had been phishing, then going to the registrar would have been the right call, because you want to take that down asap. But according to itch.io it wasn’t, instead it was a a real fansite that was linking to the real website of funko’s game (according to itch.io). Something which most media companies allow since it’s basically free publicity and goodwill, but if they did want it taken down for copyright reasons, then a DMCA takedown request send to itch.io would have been the correct first action.

In the response statement by Brandshield, Brandshield does not deny having send a takedown request for phishing to the registrar (confirming that they did), nor do they dispute itch.io’s statement that it wasn’t a phishing site (confirming that they know that it wasn’t), instead they only speak about “infringement”.

So now we know that Brandshield is knowingly making false accusations that have potentially serious consequences for their victims. And it’s not going to be the first time that they’ve done this, but even this high publicity case will probably not have any legal consequences for brandshield, so it looks like they will continue getting away with it. Unfortunately they’re not alone, it often seems like the entire DMCA industry is rotten.

Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?

Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D

For a single isolated offence, Brandshield’s first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it’s about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.

So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.

No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.

Edit: while under the shower I realized that Brandshield’s posts do contain some kind of news: Brandshield does not deny having used fraud & phishing as reason for the takedown request, thereby confirming that they did. Before we just had itch.io’s retelling of the events, which might have been a misrepresentation by itch.io or due to a cock-up by the registrar, but because of the lack of denial by brandshield, we now have confirmation that it did happen like itch.io said.

I was wondering what “feminist propaganda” was and apparently it’s talking about misogyny.

Another forbidden topic seemed to be targeted at criticism of misogyny at Game Science. The company has come under fire for lewd and sexist comments attributed in media reports to its founders as well as recruiting materials from 2015 replete with sexual innuendos. Those original job postings and comments were deleted, and the company has not commented. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/world/asia/chinese-videogame-wukong-censorship.html

But this anti feminism attitude is not limited to this 1 gaming company, but government policy under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/feminism-in-china-internet-crackdown-erase-womens-voices/100165360

Gamer’s Nexus did at least one video on bad Newegg sale practices and customer service about 2 years ago. A fun watch if you like trainwreck stories.

A few years ago Newegg was bought by foreign investors and it’s now a prime example of the various ways in which bad leadership, focused on short term profits, can damage a company in the long term. Newegg isn’t the only company that is suffering from that short term thinking, but as it turns out, the audience for computer parts is a bit more critical and mobile than people who shop on Amazon, so Newegg has had a fast decline.

This reads like a case of game design by spreadsheet to me. Instead of the lead designers being creative persons making creative decisions, these are accountants that are designing a game by ticking boxes. They didn’t try to make a game that they would like to play, they tried to make a game that they think others would like to play.

Strategy games are still my mainstay, but I’m always returning a few old familiar games. I’ve not bought any new releases in a long time. If too many other players are like me, then strategy game development is going to be in dire straits indeed.

Which company?

Not ibm. You might be thinking of Bell: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

Here’s an complaint thread (not mine) with a screenshot: https://old.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/suurzs/paradox_this_is_unacceptable_in_a_paid_product/

I personally get more annoyed by in game presentation of features and then getting hit with a “you need to pay extra to use this”, that’s basically an ad as well and it’s constantly there in the main gameplay loop. Bye bye immersion. It’s an annoyance every time that you are confronted with it, which in most paradox games is basically all the time. It’s like buying a car and then having to pay extra to unlock the seat heating that is already installed.

I could probably work around it by not auto updating paradox games and installing mods to remove some of the ads, but for 1 campaign every 2 years that’s just not worth the hassle for me. So I simply don’t play paradox games anymore.

Paradox DLC policy is why I don’t play Paradox games anymore.

If I were to only play 1 game ever, then the DLC system might be ok, it’s basically a subscription system. But since I’d only play a campaign every other year or so, I’m not going to fork out that much money for 1 campaign. And it’s way too annoying to play some game with obvious parts missing + in game ads, so now Paradox gets no more money from me.

The gtx 1650 only has 4gb ram, I wouldn’t call that similar to a 1060, I call it worse :). It’s an entry level + 2 generation older card, it’s going to be good enough for many titles still, especially indy ones, but new games that push graphics to new limits are just not going to work. Even when it was new, it was only really suitable for 1k gaming with compromises in the graphic settings.

Tbh, I don’t get why you’re so set on getting an Nvidia card. Unless you’re into vr or ai, amd and intel really aren’t bad choices. And since all current gen consoles are using AMD GPUs, all game engines + fancy games will be optimized for AMD gpus anyhow.

The 1060 is a 3 generations older mid tier card, released almost 8 years ago. Is it the 3gb or 6gb version? 3gb will be very gimped by now. If you want to keep playing demanding 3d games, then at some point you have to upgrade. I don’t think you need an overpriced current gen Nvidia cards to enjoy any modern title, but 3 generations might be pushing it a bit 😉

If you want to stick to Nvidia and want a reasonably priced option, then I would look for a second hand rtx 3060-12gb.

Are there games for which you need a current GPU for to be able to play it with more than acceptable graphics? If you want to turn on all the fancy dongles to maximum, then there might be a few, but realistically, you don’t need that maximum fanciness to be able to enjoy the gameworld.