Let’s get MasterCard on the case

I can’t help but wonder if Itch is intentionally going for a malicious compliance route. As you say, it’s tougher to defend rape and incest content, so if they’d opened with that they likely wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much media attention. But by doing it this way, half the internet is talking about payment processors forcing itch to delist NSFW games, even giving juicy headlines like LGBTQ games being disproportionately affected. Then Collective Shout of all groups was forced onto the back foot and forced to say “wait no we just wanted the rape and incest games gone” but now that the story is out there it has a life of its own.

Even if they didn’t do it on purpose, it seems like it’s created a much more effective movement than if they had done it “properly”, regardless of the reason for why it worked out this way.

I think you’re mixing multiple endings. Far Cry 4-6 all have quick endings like that but none of them I know of fit your description?

I wouldn’t mind if Valve did. It’s the unaccountable payment processors deciding morality that’s spooky, because there’s no meaningful alternative.

Classic

How is that relevant when this patents are new, just backdated, and clearly filed primarily for this lawsuit?

I prefer to stick to uncontroversial works made by politically conscious creators, like H.P. Lovecraft!

But no, I get it. I like art made by people who are or weren’t great. And that’s before considering my participation in the vast system of capitalism which necessarily involves systemic evils far beyond what JKR personally is capable of.

It just hurts to have a person who is loudly transphobic like JKR, who uses all support of her IP as support of her views, and then all the majority of society has to say is “I love HP tho”. It hurts especially when society is increasingly hostile towards trans people right now.

There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. And it’s not like HL was handmade by JKR herself, there were plenty of people working on it who I’m sure aren’t transphobic and whose livelihoods are connected to the franchise as a result, some of whom are probably trans themselves.

The “separate the art from the artist” argument just always rings a little hollow to me. I tend to be put off when people cling to a franchise that is owned by a person who profits off hateful rhetoric and contributing to an unsafe environment for us. It feels like continuing to enjoy her art continues to platform her hate and shows people that being transphobic not only isn’t a deal breaker, it’s acceptable and profitable.

Anyone can have shares of anything, so that’s kind of moot. Even if suddenly Minecraft stopped making money, it would not affect Notch in the least. From what I can tell he might kind of like it, he seems to be kind of bitter about it. Though who knows what’s legit and what’s a grift at this point.

Art vs artist doesn’t apply when the artist is making bank off their art.

A better example would be something like Notch and Minecraft. Notch made Minecraft, Notch sucks, but he sold it and makes no money off it anymore so who cares if he’s the worst. JKR is a different story, and every new Harry Potter thing supports JKR.

Not familiar with the game or the publisher at all, but this definitely feels like engagement bait.

I do think people get caught up in hating Epic, but the difference is that if any of those developers felt like releasing on another platform, they could. The “exclusivity”, such as it is, is just happenstance. Whereas Epic’s exclusives are largely actual contracts.

99% of the games on that list are small-time indie games that only release on Steam because that’s where the market share is, and they probably only have the dev capacity to support a single platform. Steam also has a lot of API support for devs. Those games exist on Epic too, but when people complain about Epic they aren’t complaining about those games, they’re complaining about bigger games that are artificial exclusives, timed or otherwise.

Steam offers the better customer experience, and Epic can’t compete with it, so instead they just buy exclusivity rights to games. It’s arguably anti-consumer, and definitely different from those games that just happen to only be available on one platform or another.

Technically the US annexed Canada in the Fallout universe, so you could have a Canadian Fallout and still be “in the US”. Vault-Tec even started building vaults up there.

Probably won’t do that, but it would be interesting. A potentially cool idea would be to set a game on the former Canadian border. Maybe then a DLC could be in Canada proper.

I don’t know about the other games, but The Expanse: A Telltale Series released this year.