The developer of Fist Puncher has an insightful "Promoted Comment" now on the Ars Technica article:

therealmattkain I'm one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio's Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up "Transferring Applications" in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.

This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users' libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to "double dip" and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).

Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don't like and don't care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am

The developer of another game distributed by WB, Fist Puncher, commented on the Ars Technica story about this.

Found it, it's the "Promoted Comment" now.

therealmattkain I'm one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio's Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up "Transferring Applications" in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.

This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users' libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to "double dip" and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).

Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don't like and don't care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/its-kind-of-depressing-wb-discovery-pulls-indie-game-for-business-changes/

Curious on what Tencent's attitude to the OGL would be. I imagine Larian Studios to be respectful, and it sounds like Larian is the Tencent subsidiary that would be taking over the TTRPG.

Also, "back in my day" it was D&D, not DND.

Interplay, Microprobe, Sierra On-Line, Bullfrog, Dynamix, Origin, all long gone.

Activision is still around, but it's something completely different. Same with Atari (although theres a nostalgia brand now, so maybe back).

Of them all, I think is have to say I'm most nostalgic for Sierra On-Line, although Origin gives them a run for most nostalgic.

It's kind of how the US is lauded for how much they donate per capita... when GoFundMe is the largest provider of "medical insurance". I don't want to dump on charity, or people who are proud of how much they donate, but I also want to emphasize that charity shouldn't ever be necessary.

Valve better have Steam Deck 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. Valve doesn't do 3 well

AI has been the name for the field since the Dartmouth Workshop in 1956. Early heuristic game AI was AI. Just because something is AI doesn't mean it is necessarily very "smart". That's why it's commonly been called AI, since before Deep Blue beat Kasparov.

If you want to get technical, you could differentiate between Artificial Narrow Intelligence, AI designed to solve a narrow problem (play checkers, chess, etc.) vs. Artificial General Intelligence, AI designed for "general purpose" problem solving. We can't build an AGI yet, even a dumb one. There is also the concept of Weak AI or Strong AI.

You are correct though, ChatGPT, Dall-E, etc. are not AGI's, they aren't capable of general problem solving. They are much more capable than previous AI technologies, but it's not SkyNet (yet).

Trump just wanted everyone to spend more on the military. He wasn’t a threat to nato.

Not US-ian, so I'm going to have to disagree hard. Back in 2016 and 2017 he called NATO "obsolete", although he later changed his mind and said it was "no longer obsolete", as well as taking a while to affirm US support for Article 5, and even saying “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” when asked if the US would defend the Baltic NATO countries.

Now you could argue that he was using this to push the NATO defence spending requirements, which is a fair critique, but it sent a pretty clear message that under his presidency, the US honouring article 5 was conditional. This wasn't just a message to the other NATO members; it was a message to Putin as well whether intentional or not.

I believe that the silver lining of Trump's presidency is now being felt as Europe is seriously taking it's ability to autonomously defend itself seriously. This is probably why Petr Pavl is musing that it may be necessary to go beyond NATO's 2% spending targets, because Trump could get elected again, or someone like Trump, and there could always be more conditions added to US NATO commitments.

Or a renewal step. If it's not worth renewing, let it into the public domain.

This is why It's A Wonderful Life became a Christmas classic. Because it was in the pubic domain, it was used as late night filler.

The MPAA and RIAA miss the point. If It's A Wonderful Life was still copyrighted, it wouldn't have become a classic.

It's like the concept of Abandonware. If video games had a large copyright clearing house like the MPAA or RIAA, Abandonware wouldn't work, but abandoned media will disappear. Heck, non-abandoned media also disappears because profits don't reward preservation.

Twitter had an outage at the same time Threads: An Instagram App was launching. Threads now has something like 100 million accounts in a matter of days.

So apparently lots of people and businesses are replacing Twitter with Threads. It's just over here on Lemmy, most of us seem to be Reddit refugees. There is a lot of discussion about Threads federation via ActivityPub (if you are on the right communities at least), but otherwise I think we are all mostly just happy to leave all that corporate BS behind.

Women's reproductive rights are strongly supported in Canada, but that doesn't stop one of the main national parties playing coy with a commitment to not reopen the debate.

To be fair, it seems most Americans support women's reproductive rights as well, with a referendum in Kansas passing with 59%.

It's gerrymandering and the Supreme Court that are changing things down there.

Yeah. When Apollo, RiF, Relay, et al stop working, a large amount of people who just use Reddit on their phones and don't really engage with the hows and whys of the platform itself will suddenly get pushed to either figure out the Reddit official app or try something else. There will probably be a bump then, via whatever is available on the App Store/Play. I expect most will just stop using Reddit and continue using whatever other apps they already use that work (ie Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon, et al). A significant amount will just use the official Reddit app. A substantial minority will start to look for Reddit alternatives though.

Of those who stick with Reddit, or just abandon it; there will be a hole left, a Reddit shaped hole in their heart (or at least their bathroom doomscrolling). Even new Reddit won't fill that hole after July 1st. As more and more abandon Reddit and find their way to Lemmy and kbin, that hole can be filled better here.

I think Lemmy and kbin already have that critical mass. They'll be interesting enough to maintain their communities and organically grow, so the continued influx of Reddit refugees will just accelerate their growth.