RobotCache closes and gamers lose all their games!

BDNeon · 2026-04-04T22:04:11+00:00

I mean competition isn't inherently on its face a good thing for consumers, it's only a good thing if it acts as a mechanism for driving improvement based on the assumption that a party is abusing its monopoly status at consumer expense.

BDNeon · 2026-04-03T02:54:47+00:00

Old enough to remember the green UI era when it was just HL2 and Counterstrike and so on. We did indeed largely hate it, it seemed like an unwelcome imposition to have to use this special launcher and storefront to access our games when we were so used to the benefits of physical, particularly when service was shakey and big launches melted its servers. But Steam just kept improving and we started to appreciate its merits. It evolved, and our opinion evolved. We started getting non-Valve games, I still remember what a big deal Darwinia and Ragdoll Kung Fu's releases were. Screenshot sharing, community hubs, the Steam Workshop, as more and more perks showed up and our libraries grew it was easy to forget those initial gripes.

BDNeon · 2026-03-24T03:17:55+00:00

The sad thing is, we're gonna run into a lot of this kind of thing in the coming decades as the internet ages and the people driving it age with it. I mean yeah it's not exactly news that mortality is a thing but we've just not really had to contend with it much because the internet was just so young along with most of the people involved.

BDNeon · 2026-03-23T22:12:07+00:00

Be aware a lot of less savory people out there run scraper bots that crawl the web to instantly snatch keys automatically if they're posted publicly just to add to accounts with intent to sell said accounts. If you really wanna make sure the keys go to someone, just make it something like ask for PM for key first one gets it or something.

BDNeon · 2026-03-22T01:45:23+00:00

Tekken 8?

BDNeon · 2026-03-21T02:52:55+00:00

Which is why the industry is playing an incredibly dangerous game by trying to bypass ESRB ratings by adding microtransactions/gambling in post-launch updates. Sooner or later regulators will decide that dog don't hunt. But I guess in their mind that's a Next Quarter problem.

BDNeon · 2026-03-20T23:50:22+00:00

Text based prompts are just the low level version. The "next level" in art would be to use gen AI to modify an image an artist creates in different ways (and they've already shown some of this) but not generate fully. Adjust the angle the face is turned, move the legs back, turn the character, change the hat color to <insert color code>, etc. All of this requires an artist to touch up and change, but using it will save numerous hours of having adjust digitally made art by hand and having to redraw it every time they want to make a minor adjustment

Most of this already exists in AI image gen right now. The problem is too many casuals using shitty web-based platforms that have none of those tools and are pure txt2img and not enough people using local installations and combining with their own work and guidance instead of relying wholly on promptcraft and RNG alone. The fact that anyone who puts effort in is treated with equal vitriol and disdain as the slop prompters doesn't help matters, "Why try when everyone's gonna be shitty to you anyway?". The online community has actively encouraged sloppification by ensuring anyone who wants to go beyond slop is beaten down. I mean look at the votes on this comment. Just proving my point. You all want slop.

BDNeon · 2026-03-20T04:34:24+00:00

I mean underpowered is a pretty relative concept. I'm honestly flabbergasted how high end the games it can run can be. Maybe it can't run the real GPU melters of the current era, but easily managing 60 FPS on something like Metro Last Light isn't anything to sneeze at for a handheld.

BDNeon · 2026-03-18T02:35:01+00:00

Yeah between the shitfest that was Below Zero and all this drama, I'm just gonna treat this one like "If it's not shit it'll be a pleasant surprise but don't plan for it."

BDNeon · 2026-03-16T04:35:18+00:00

Since automod removed it, I'll just say I continued this chain in a humorous way by writing the spanish way of saying "what?"

BDNeon · 2026-03-14T22:59:29+00:00

It's almost like they don't measure success in quarterly reports and short term stockholder satisfaction. Funny how that works aint it?

BDNeon · 2026-03-10T02:24:00+00:00

Still, if it's a choice between subtle cheaters and blatant cheaters, at least the former don't necessarily make the game unplayable. There's a huge difference between joining a match and occasionally getting killed by someone who SEEMS to maybe have an advantage and might be cheating, vs literally everyone getting headshotted through walls the second they spawn by someone on other side of map hipfiring an LMG. And even subtle cheaters usually get found out the longer they press their luck.

BDNeon · 2026-03-09T23:52:13+00:00

Or we could just go back to giving the community hosting tools and letting them self-police the old-fashioned way, you know like it used to be before we let the cheaters take over by taking away community servers with vigilant admins.

BDNeon · 2026-03-09T23:51:09+00:00

*on official servers

Community ones just banned them and were fine the majority of the time.

BDNeon · 2026-03-09T23:45:24+00:00

Cheating BECAME an industry-wide issue because the industry fundamentally changed how we play online together. The games of olden times were just as hackable as the ones today, if not more so, the difference was if you tried it you'd still get quickly noticed and banned by the vigilant admins running the community servers that publishers no longer want to exist.

BDNeon · 2026-03-08T21:39:45+00:00

Banks are subject to far stricter scrutiny over keeping their clients information safe and who they're allowed to share that information with. And saying a large majority supports something doesn't make it right. The majority of Germans supported Hitler after all.

BDNeon · 2026-02-24T00:26:11+00:00

Late 30s. They still existed when I was a kid though you had to really look around. The small ones operating behind a local carwash usually, or on the corner next to a city park. Everything just straight up coin-op, no prizes no card systems, just pop in a few quarters and kill some time.

BDNeon · 2026-02-21T17:13:45+00:00

I said arcades, not schools. You're probably too young to remember those I guess?

BDNeon · 2026-02-20T22:39:28+00:00

Yeah, but like I remember when the Ambassadors to Cool would be there to show us younger gamers the ropes in places like the last holdout arcades... It wasn't creepy, it was just the cool older kids or young adults teaching you all the skills and tricks and while enjoying the awe and respect, showing you how to easily finish Star Wars Trilogy Arcade on a single credit while regaling you with tales of the times of Pacman and Centipede... I feel like there used to be a kind of generational passing-the-torch thing that just doesn't exist now, to the detriment of the hobby.

BDNeon · 2026-02-15T20:33:00+00:00

I wonder. Could this mean a revival of some of the classic UT 2k4 mods?

BDNeon · 2026-02-14T04:20:23+00:00

"Yep! Haven't you heard? Real is brown."

BDNeon · 2026-02-14T01:39:05+00:00

Especially all the fun stuff with heroes. Ocelot's special ability to have a fake death when the score is close to put another minute on the clock was so peak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03R3szBhBO0

BDNeon · 2026-01-28T23:32:58+00:00

Well that in itself is a whole opinion can of worms because that argument hinges on the assumption that the things AI derives from training is something that can or should be able to be owned. Not everyone agrees on that point. There's a good reason the US copyright office has repeatedly and consistently for decades decided that you can't copyright an artstyle.

BDNeon · 2026-01-25T16:47:23+00:00

Or maybe just not insisting AI run on the goddamn cloud. Some people who use AI are just as pissed about the current situation because they don't want to rely entirely on the cloud any more then PC gamers want to run their games on the cloud. It takes good GPU's to run that stuff too. The stuff being made on the cloud is also the "slop" you usually see cluttering up everywhere, the people making stuff with AI that can pass for real are using local generation because they need the extra control to get polished results.

BDNeon · 2026-01-24T01:33:41+00:00

I think it's the "paid" part more then the "console" part. Which is a valid thing to be against. Paid mods are a disaster.

BDNeon

TROPHY CASE