I was a pretty heavy Twitch user for a while, even streamed for a couple years myself. The biggest draw for me was the community. Most of the time I couldn't care less what the person was playing, I was there to interact with them and their communities. It was about the only social/entertainment outlet I had at the time.
So that game developers don't have to rebuild all the rules for their game universes for every game, they use Unity which is one of several products that offers pre-built frameworks to build their games on top of.
This offers several advantages, the main ones being:
You don't reinvent the wheel or the physics for angular momentum for every game, so development time is massively reduced.
You only develop your game once, but can compile it for use on many platforms. So a single developer can be writing code that can be used for the PC, Play Station, XBox and so on.
Skills learned in one game's development transfer to quicker development in your next game.
The way that Unity were paid historically was that you paid a subscription for each developer that was using it to write your game. There were several tiers of subscription, that met the needs of developers in small indies right through to huge multinationals.
It didn't matter how well your game sold, your cost was limited to the subscriptions you paid for. And you released your game bundled with the framework's 'run-time' from Unity that supported your in-game universe.
This changed recently when the executives at Unity had the spiffing idea of charging 20 US cents per installation of the run-time too, while also killing off the cheapest tier of the model subscription.
This meant that the indies suddenly have to pay more for each subscription, and they get to pay a fee for every installation of their game - not every sale - every installation. So every pirated copy - extra charge, every second install on the Steam Deck - extra charge...
What extra has Unity done to deserve the extra cash? In a nutshell - nothing. They just decided to unilaterally change their terms and take a bigger chunk of the pie for doing nothing more at the expense of the customers making the mistake of building on top of their product and being tied into their ecosystem.
As an analogy, imagine buying a season ticket to travel on the train to work each day, you pay €200/month for unlimited travel between the station closest to home and closest to work. This carries on for several years, and then suddenly the rail operator announces a 'communal rolling stock fee', every time you use your ticket there's a €1/passenger fee for each passenger boarding the same train as you whenever you travel! The more busy the train, the bigger the amount you have to pay!
What was a fixed monthly fee could be anything, you have no way to budget the cost, and you have to trust the same people screwing you to get the count right each time with no way of being certain they got it right...
What extra work is the rail operator doing, nothing they are just charging more for the same service.
And what did you do to deserve this? Nothing you just trusted the company you were dealing with to remain reasonable, and not invent bullshit charges.
Back to Unity...
As a result a lot of developers in late stage development plan to switch to a competitor for their next game. Those in early stages are looking at starting over. And there have been reports of publishers walking away from deals with developers because of the unknown risks of a new game because it was developed using Unity.
The easily predictable end result: many if not all of Unity's customers are vocally incandescent with justified rage.
TLDR: Software library company got greedy; they shat in the pool and tried to charge their customers a 'poop in the pool' fee, and every last one of their customers is very (very) loudly incredulous at such ass-hattery.
Curious what resources you've consulted that state Unity can or will charge for every pirated copy. How is the feasible and by what legal mechanisms would they enforce this?
I'm truly a neutral party, I don't play many games but I understand what's going on here a little bit.
You clearly have a jaded viewpoint to it for better or worse and I'm not sure that's warranted and is a bit disingenuous.
Credible sources: multiple online reports from various media outlets, and reading the official announcements when combined with 30+ years of experience as a professional software engineer, software architect and software designer.
As regards the technical side: Well the only way you would be able to track installation would be to make the run-time 'phone home' with each installation so that Unity could increment the count on the developer's account. And the only way to know which developer/game to update is to have a unique identifier baked into each run-time that is sent with the call home.
A pirated copy is still an installation of the run-time unless the person who cracks the game goes to the trouble of intercepting the call home too.
And given the above described mechanism, it should be relatively easy to spoof installs that aren't really happening if you have impulse control problems, some technical ability, and a beef with the developer.
As regards legal mechanism, that's simple, Unity update their contract, invalidate their old contracts (they deleted their public copies of old contracts that allowed users to stay on old copies of the runtime). The new contract just needs to include terms that include their fee being due for each call home they receive.
And once you have a contract you can persue a breach through the courts using contract law. That's why contracts exist.
As regards neutrality, I haven't got a horse in this race, I'm not a games developer, but it's pretty easy to see an abuse and call it out when you see it. The Unity complany had a profitable business model that was working for a decade or more, then they decided they wanted some more of their client's income without actually offering any more for the additional charges.
The stance taken by the execs at Unity is just an ongoing part of the corporate greed trend we are seeing causing the cost of living crisis worldwide.
I don't think I'm jaded or biased, this is just my honest summary and appraisal of the situation for the consumption of someone who wanted to know the salient facts and implications.
Almost all pirated games are is removing the phone home ability? Like 90% of why people pirate is offline only mode (name 1 pirated game that can connect to official servers)
Seems like otherwise it'd be pretty simple to not boot without confirmation.
On the other hand it'd probably be a hell of a lot harder to make a pirated copy that looks legit - has the proper phone home, store authentication and account tied to it.
Cause like otherwise it'd be dirt simple to track who's cracking your games, just check who's phoning home way too much and send the authorities at that account.
But also not to be on unities side but they did say they'll not include pirated copies (if they somehow ever could)
No, The whole point of pirating the games is to make sure that you can install it and play it. They're going to remove any calls home that will stop them from running or any checks that make sure it's genuine. But they're not going to bother themselves with the unity call home unless it keeps the application from running.
He has been accused of drugging and raping underage girls for decades. Recently, New York allowed anyone who has been a victim of sexual assault to sue their assailant no matter how long ago it was. Diddy was sued by a woman which caused more people to come forward. The claims being made are horrific. He would essentially pay his staff to trick/drug/kidnap girls and fly them to rape dungeons. Recently his properties have been raided by a department that investigates human trafficking. He is now in hiding seemingly to avoid arrest.
I don't think there ihas been any official statements, but at least two of his properties were raided by DHS, and when they conduct raids it is most often for human trafficking cases. While the raids were ongoing, PD was flying to (I believe) NYC, but diverted to a Caribbean island.
He's in Russia now being used as a propaganda mouthpiece against the West, that's how he survives, by doing whatever Russian intel tells him to do.
This isn't totally a knock against him, he was caught between a rock and a hard place, and chose the "be used by dictators" route, rather than the "definitely go to prison for a while" route.
We just need better whistleblower protections and oversight here in the states, but if anything the spying on us has gotten worse since Snowden, while also still allowing for Internet Nazis to spread like a cancer with almost no pushback.
Your 1st paragraph, do you have actual proof of that? Serious question.
I think it makes sense given the situation, and would be completely unsurprising since it's Russia and they torture people. And his wife and child (multiple kids now?) are there with him. In his case I'd just do exactly as told out of fear.
But just curious if there's any tangible evidence of this or anything he's doing over there.
This blog post is kind of biased but it has good links to some of the articles about the times that Snowden has "toed the party line" for Putin's regime. So mamy articles coming up in those useless garbage we now call search engines just pull up where Snowden has sworn an oath to Russia and has been given citizenship so therefore he's eligible to go fight Ukraine now, rather than things more related to my search.
I'd say this is more than kinda biased, and is heavily biased. They link to a 2015 article that says only 2% of documents have been publicly disclosed through journalists, and then make the claim that Russia and China have the other 98% with no source at all for the claim.
I might be misremembering the timeline in Citizen Four, but I remember that he had given the journalists all the documents and made a point that he didn't have access to anything before leaving for Latin America.
It's unfortunate that Snowden's passport was revoked while he was in the Moscow Airport, and that he's stuck there now. For a guy who didn't want to go to jail or be executed for speaking out against the government, I don't blame him for not speaking up against Putin.
Because in Hockey players have three deadly weapons on them and the thought process is that if you let them have fist fights you reduce players taking out their frustrations using their sticks or skates.
Not a hockey fan either, but I’ve often asked this question of my friends that are. They all same the same thing: The fans enjoy and expect it. To me, it’s dumb. One team ends up a player (or two) down, and that’s when a lot fo the scoring happens. Ergo, you fight and you are more likely to lose. Pretty much any other sport in the world and you’re off the field of play, and often for a long period of time.
You seem to misunderstand how the penalties work out. 95% of the time after a fight happens, both teams get offsetting penalties, and so neither team is at a disadvantage because of the fight alone. There are instances where one team ends up with more penalties after a fight, but it's usually because of something that happened before the fight and prompted the fight (and should've been a penalty anyway)
They added the instigator penalty to cut down fights as well. The player deemed responsible for startibg the fight gets an extra penalty, and that does indeed give the other team an advantage.
Instigator penalties aren't given out every time people fight, they are only given in cases where one dude goes waaaaaaaay out his way to start a fight. The rest of the time the fighting penalties are even which doesn't result in a power play for either team.
As the other user commented, instigator is hardly ever actually used.
NHL reffing is... not great most of the time. Despite being a fan of the sport, I would like to see changes that would reduce the future rates of TBI among players. Refs actually enforcing the rules would probably help a bit there.
All good points. Just a minor thing, but when you say "you fight, you're more likely to lose," I'm not sure if this is true, because for a team to lose, another team has to win. So you could very well aay "you fight, you're more likely to win."
Now, you could make a case of a team that could easily and overwhelmingly beat the second team, and if they fight, they're more likely to lose players, and thereby, they're more likely to lose. Because if they fight, the other team could lose players, so if they fight.... they would win anyway, so the likelihood of winning doesn't increase.
One team ends up a player (or two) down, and that’s when a lot fo the scoring happens. Ergo, you fight and you are more likely to lose.
FWIW, this is also why I’m not a hockey fan…
I think you have a misconception about the rules. Hopefully if I clear this up, you may give hockey another shot.
One team ends up a player (or two) down, and that’s when a lot fo the scoring happens
True. In hockey this is called a power play. It's a well known fact about hockey that most of the scoring in a game happens during the power play. Power plays are a common occurrence in every game as a result of standard penalties (ie not fighting) such as high sticking (hitting a player above the shoulders with your stick), hooking (using your stick to 'hook' a player to try and slow them down), slashing (using your stick to whack someone, usually across the hands), etc.
Ergo, you fight and you are more likely to lose.
False. When players fight, they are given equal concurrent penalties. Both of their teams remain at even strength and there is no power play.
It doesn't need a point, just like why is there a 3 point zone in basketball, or why does a football look like an egg and is played with the hands 99% of the time. I grew up playing hockey and the fighting is just tradition. You don't watch it or play it so of course you don't understand. I don't play cricket and can't understand why anyone would want to watch it but it's the most popular sport in India.
I mean if brawling in an NBA game is normal then I would not find it weird in NHL. Different sports have different rules. I get that but fighting in-game? This doesn't happen in other sports (at least in NBA, football). If players started punching, refs (and/or the court security guard if necessary) will stop the fight right away.
Boxing, MMA, sumo wrestling, lots of sports have physical contact. From the beginning it was in hockey. Not the same for basketball. If hockey was invented today I can guarantee it wouldn't have it now but it wasn't. It was part of the rules from the beginning and the people who play and watch it don't want it gone. To be honest I can't stand to sit and watch an entire basketball game, too slow and boring for me.
Yes, the fights are fun for fans, but they happen for a reason. Hockey is fast-paced and dangerous. Highly skilled players are targeted, and it's not difficult to cheap shot a hit and put a valuable player on the injured reserve list. Enforcers are players whose main job is to bring a physical presence and protect their teammates. Fights most often happen as a response to a questionable hit. If you are the type of person who wants to rough up another player, you may think twice about it if that team has a big dude who will punch your face in for being dirty.
It's also a morale thing. Sometimes when a team is getting pounded and underperforming, a fight will ignite and inspire the rest of the team to continue that energy. Sometimes teams simply hate each other due to rivalry or history, and their players are more likely to take offense to something.
Love it or hate it, it is a cultural norm in the game. The NHL made moves years ago to try to phase it out, but it seems lately to have come back with a vengeance. I'd personally rather see fighting than cheap-shotting, as injuries very rarely result from a fight.
Plus, if you really hate a player, it's so satisfying seeing them get punched in the face.
Weird seeing a fellow Preds fan in the wild of the fediverse! Only thing I miss about reddit is r/predators, lemmy just doesn't have the numbers for niche communities.
Just wanted to add it's not always a big dude doing the face punching. Go watch some videos of Jordin Tootoo in his heyday. Dude was tough as fuck and didn't back down from anybody.
I had the privilege of watching Tootoo ravage someone live and in person a few times, haha. I was just talking about him the other day as an example of small but serious. I miss the Tootoo whistles.
It's so great to find another Preds fan on Lemmy! So glad we broke the streak last night against the Blues, and I'm becoming cautiously excited about the playoffs. I went down to Nashville when we lost in the finals in 2017 and am still recovering from the feels.
I didn't think that 2017 team was going far in the playoffs and they shocked everybody. Maybe this team can make a run like that again. Nothing better in sports than playoff hockey!
One thing that I didn't see mentioned is that, unlike in other sports, the players are on ice. This makes it much more difficult to throw punches, and players can usually go back and forth without getting seriously injured.
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