I mean, it’s Valve. But it will be funny when #saveTF2 happens for the third time next year, and Valve does their now-yearly ban wave again and everyone repeats wondering if the problem is solved.

I enjoy the idea that some shitass mason hated whatever king hired him, built all the stairs as quickly and poorly as possible, and then to save his ass later had to be all “oh hmm yes the stairs? That’s a feature actually” and somehow it winds up catching on

That’s a nonsense reason to ignore community creations. New players aren’t drawn to games because of whether the community is making things; they’re drawn because there are fun things in the game, regardless of where exactly they come from. That the community was allowed to contribute is not what drew so many people to Fortnite or Minecraft. Cosmetics make a lot of money, and mods can help with player retention as people get bored of vanilla, but they still need to be drawn in by the base game. That goes for Fortnite as much as it does League.

Besides, creators aren’t generally drawn to making things for a game solely based on the tools available for doing so; they do it because they like the game. Even if that were the case, creators aren’t a big group of people, nowhere near enough to move the needle on “having enough new players.” That isn’t part of the calculus Epic did when deciding support them, and it shouldn’t be for Riot either.

Attempting to include community content doesn’t put Riot in competition with other studios any more than they already are. Again, if they don’t think their existing, massive community can make interesting content, that’s one argument for not putting resources into it, but avoiding it because they think they’d have to draw people from other studios’ communities is silly.

Wringing them dry of what?

If they don’t think their community would create items that other players want to buy, that’s a different thing. The players and creators are already invested in their game; they have a playerbase of millions. Hand picking a few community created things to resell to their customers in the same vein as Valve with CS2 and TF2, or Epic with Fortnite, doesn’t make them competitors any more than they already are.

I don’t understand. There’s no competition to be had in this space. The people who play your game are the ones who’d be generating the content; those who make stuff for Minecraft or whatever can’t be competed over because they already don’t play League.

I don’t know what alternate reality these people live in where offering their players the opportunity to contribute is some secret sauce that would put them in direct competition with other tech giants.

Yeah this seems common. I had a friend who grew up with parents who alternated between English, Portuguese, Italian, and French, and he told me he wound up not being able to speak at all until he was over 2 years old. It didn’t affect him badly later on, and he always insisted it was worth it

Has begun? Didn’t it happen like a year or two ago, resulting in Valve tweeting about solutions coming “soon” and then predictably doing nothing?

Just as dumb? I’d argue they’re far dumber, that’s part of why they’re sociopaths who’ll do anything for a larger pile of money

Turns out corporations can manage long term planning when the plan reduces quality of life for customers. Crazy!

I’m on voyager and it still takes up quite a bit of real estate. Wish there were an option for it not to open at all unless I tap it

Nope, it’s just that way by default. Drives me nuts too.

While simultaneously opposing any form of gun control so they can fight… something?

Apparently the only protest worth anything is one where you’re shooting at someone

Used to be if I found the site of a newspaper I thought I liked, I’d turn off my ad blocker to see how it goes.

I don’t even try any more. Again and again and again, every time I turn it off the page gets so cluttered that following the article becomes a chore and takes up so many resources that even scrolling slows to a crawl. Ludicrous nonsense.

This girls team was winning because the boys haven’t gone through puberty yet. Not saying it was ok to ban them, but it’s false to claim that differences in bone mass and muscle density are imaginary. It just doesn’t happen until after puberty.

And chess isn’t exactly segregated by gender. The women’s league exists to make women in chess more visible, to make it easier to pursue sponsorships, and to encourage more women to join the game. But women are free to compete in the “men’s” category (which is actually called the “open” category), and often do. The reasons women haven’t gotten to the top of it yet are cultural; women are discouraged from starting to play the game at a young age as all the top players do, and so far fewer women attempt the climb in the first place. But it will happen eventually.

Now if you want to talk about how transphobic FIDE is, there’s some real merit in those accusations. Their rules around people who are transitioning are nonsensical, punishing people for absolutely no reason. But the women’s league itself exists for good reasons.

If you can slog through the gonarch, I’d recommend it. There’s a sequence near the end where you start vaporizing everything with unlimited gluon gun ammo; it’s one of my favorite parts of the game.

Forreal, especially because they don’t telegraph that she’s unkillable at certain points. You don’t find out until AFTER you’ve wasted all your ammo, but up until then your shots are still visually appearing to do damage and she still whimpers. Really dumb design.

This is a stunningly ignorant take.

Being a modern so-called “wage slave” sucks, no doubt. But equating it to actual, literal slavery belittles what those people actually went through to a disgusting degree. No one today can whip you if they feel like it. No one today can separate you from your spouse and children, selling them to some random asshole two states over, never to be seen again. If you decided to try to make it on your own and move, no one can sue to have you brought back to your workplace in a cage. If you break your leg, no one can shoot you in the head like you’re a useless animal.

The closest thing to slaves we have today are convicts. There’s a whole different discussion to be had there about how immoral it is to use prison as a punishment instead of rehabilitation, allowing a court to take away someone’s rights, exploiting time behind bars for labor, the incentive that provides for pronouncing people guilty, and removing felons’ rights to vote. But poor wage workers are NOT slaves.

Everywhere I go… I see his face…

Do you really think that’s sustainable

At $15 a month? Yeah totally. The vast majority of that 2.7 billion probably cost a few cents at most to offer service to. Very few people actually upload anything and streaming video is way cheaper than the various streaming services would have you believe. It’s expensive to get off the ground, sure, but it scales well.

Tens of millions of people can and do pay. This isn’t about covering costs, this is about making line go up faster than last year, every year, no matter what.