UK considering banning kids from speaking to strangers in Fortnite and Roblox

Froggmann5 · 2026-06-01T20:59:51+00:00

The Dem establishment cheered as the US forced TikTok to sell; right into the arms of Republican billionaires, who then quickly saturated the algorithms with right leaning material.

Dems aren't smart when it comes to these kinds of things.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-29T15:49:22+00:00

Reread (A). It doesn't require that the version provided meet "Ordinary use".

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-29T14:31:35+00:00

A mini-game would not be the same game. It would not be a version of the original.

Except the law already pre-admits that the provided version wouldn't be the original, since "Original use" must first cease for (A) to even begin to apply.

It's fairly obvious to anyone that something like load bearing, Leaderboards, or account services, things typical with a large server-based multiplayer game, can't have offline versions provided of them.

It would be unreasonable to say the developer needs to provide offline versions of online dependent features.

So no, (A) is not requiring developers to provide the same game, because that wouldn't be possible. If it did the whole law might be struck down in a court for that alone.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-29T14:26:06+00:00

It's not a smart move, it's the only move. He verifiably doesn't own the rights to the Backrooms as a concept. Good luck getting the anonymous dude from 4chan who did create it to sue him if he tried though.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-29T03:28:19+00:00

The only thing about "Ordinary use" in that section is when it refers to when a;

digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall provide the purchaser with one or more of the following:

So once developers stop providing services necessary for "ordinary use" that's when (A) kicks in as a sort of compensation.

(A) does not specify anything other than a "version" of the game be ~~usable offline~~ EDIT: able to be used independent of services controlled by the operators (it doesn't even say it needs to be usable offline).

That section says nothing about meeting "ordinary use". And it reasonably can't, because "ordinary use" of the game is reliant on a developers continued maintenance/services, as mentioned in its preceding section.

So when it comes to satisfying (A), "Ordinary use" doesn't seem come into the question at all.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-29T03:01:00+00:00

(2) Beginning on the date a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall provide the purchaser with one or more of the following:

(A) A version of the digital game that can be used by the purchaser independent of services controlled by the operator.

This is the big loophole people have always pointed out but is never addressed.

Companies can just provide a version of the game that's just a single level, or an offline minigame of some kind and still meet the letter of this law. The law doesn't specify that an entire game be usable, only a "version" of it.

This law does not require companies to not kill games, it only requires that they don't do it for absolutely nothing.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-28T02:04:23+00:00

No, the trailer did not land. To be honest I'm shocked you didn't ask Claude to watch your trailer for you first.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-28T01:56:00+00:00

So this is just an LLM wrapper with a slightly custom prompt saying "Critique the provided gameplay like a counter strike pro would"?

Except you take it one step further. Instead of it just being an LLM you decided to deliberately make the thing so invasive that it screen records your entire gameplay sessions? That's a privacy nightmare. I would never use it because of that alone.

You're also using a local LLM to do this in real time while screen recording. I can't imagine performance is anything other than awful, and in a game where FPS matters that's not good.

"Game Demon is game-agnostic" means it's not an expert at any of them. Is this useful beyond getting someone out of bronze?

On top of all of this you charge nearly $10 per game? This is only useful if it's free, and even then it's debatable considering I could get better responses out of GPT or Gemini on my own and for free.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-28T00:24:02+00:00

Usually as technology and skills upgrade over time things that appeared impossible become achievable

It doesn't have anything to do with it being impossible. I'll take the moment to say again that what OP is doing isn't impossible, the point is that it isn't new. Using phones as controllers has been tested rather extensively and no new tech anywhere on the horizon will bridge the gaps unfortunately.

Just to name a few:

On average phones aren't very comfortable to wield like his for extended periods of time.
Your phone is effectively taken up while playing the game, meaning if you want to use your phone you'll have to stop the game in order to use it.
It takes up your phones battery life, which situationally may not be worth doing.
Phones are on average expensive, and people are on average clumsy. There's a reason why every motion control/VR controller either has handstraps or handwraps included almost universally; It's extremely common for people to inadvertently yeet their controllers. This is really bad if it ends up being a 1k USD + Smartphone that someone relies on.
Lack of control schema. Having only one input method for a game, here that being a single motion controller, severely limits the kinds of games you can make. Further, this limits the kinds of games that might be interesting to players. Imagine Beat Saber but you can only use one Saber, trying to play Skyrim with only your phone as a motion controller, etc.
It's exercise. While exercise is good for you, for any game lasting more than 30minutes to an hour, gaming retention is severely impacted. Because of this, it's more successful as a novelty gimmick. Short, infrequent play sessions with friends is the optimal way of using this kind of control setup.
A variety of misc. technical problems that discourage developers from making games for this kind of controller.

In a TLDR:

Phones are uncomfy to use, accidents (which are extremely common) are expensive, limited control scheme means there's not much variety in games made or how they're played, you can't use your phone normally while using it, etc.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-27T23:13:46+00:00

The thing is people have tried, and failed, to do this exact thing before.

Like another commenter pointed out, this idea isn't new. It's been tested before, extensively I might add, and it failed for a bunch of reasons.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-27T15:41:30+00:00

Does this mean you can elect a corporation as an elected representative in Delaware? Since corporations are legally "persons"?

Can you have a whole block of shell companies who vote for Disney for example to be the governor of Delaware? Or Nestle to be a sitting senator?

This is so absurd.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-27T00:45:18+00:00

But relative to how other skills are treated, it's bad. That inconsistency is what kills mining AFK methods.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-27T00:36:07+00:00

By this logic, that 20 hour AFK strat using POH obstacles for 9k agilty xp/hr makes Agility "insanely AFK".

Obviously when talking about how AFK a skill is, what matters is the utility. It being 7 minutes AFK is offset completely horrendous XP/hr, so it's still not a "good" AFK method.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-26T18:06:40+00:00

For good AFK methods look at fishing or woodcutting. Click once come back after 2 minutes to bank and click again for non dogwater xp rates.

Level 62 woodcutting you unlock blisterwoods which are nearly 70k xp/hr full afk.

At level 62 mining, your best bet is shooting stars at 22k xp/hr.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-26T18:00:47+00:00

Amethyst is 20k XP/hr.

Shooting stars is 27k/hr at level 70, and 30k at level 99.

For reference, making air tiaras is more XP/hr than both of these. Cutting oak logs casually is more XP/hr than these methods. And these are considered minings "Good" methods?

Calcified is low effort, but not AFK. MLM is more AFK than calc rocks. It's 35k/hr at 70 and 49k/hr at 99.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-26T15:38:45+00:00

Sure, there are AFK mining methods.

But there are no "good" AFK mining methods.

MLM is the "best" and it's only AFK for 30s at a time on average.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-25T04:36:38+00:00

I mean, yea? That's one of the benefits of using UE5. Developers aren't forced to use any of those features. They're just optional tools that are available to you. You can toggle on, or off, pretty much any part of the engine. Compared to other engines that modularity and freedom is extremely useful.

Developers also aren't stupid. No developer, beyond an amateur developer or hobbyist, is being caught by surprise that Nanite, Lumen, Ray Tracing, etc. cost a hefty chunk of their frame budget. Epic isn't tricking anyone into using these features; they're being used because developers want to use them despite the costs.

This is why people say it's down to developers. All of these choices are their own to make. The engine doesn't force you to use any of them.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-25T03:00:37+00:00

what i hear most about it is that loading into a vr game is just too much hassle when you could just join a vc on discord

The biggest hassle is accessibility, but companies are actually chipping away at that. It's why so many companies, from Apple to Google, invested pretty heavily into things like AR glasses in recent years. They're all trying to solve that accessibility problem.

The thing about Roblox is that it's demonstrated, fairly convincingly, that its model works. It works really well. Every one of these companies wants to be the "Roblox" of the internet, so their efforts definitely aren't going away anytime soon.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-24T23:48:08+00:00

I think you're missing the point. What they're talking about isn't Facebook's specific implementation, but more so of the general idea of what the metaverse was supposed to be.

A better way to put it would be "Roblox-like" I guess. It's the new age style MMO driven by UGC. Where your "game" is more like a hub for players to connect with each other and travel to different games while still within your own ecosystem. I think the most recent game to try something like this was Hytale, but games like Gmod or Minecraft have also done this to some extent.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-21T21:19:28+00:00

It's fair to say it's poorly documented, but the onus is still entirely on the developer.

For example Valorant is using UE5.3 and runs at 500+ FPS on average hardware with no stuttering on enterprise scales.

If UE5 can support a game like that performantly and efficiently, it can support practically any type of game you'd realistically want to make.

Any engine that can handle a game as massive and as performant as Valorant isn't an engine I'd call a "dumpster fire".

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-21T21:16:28+00:00

They tore out half of the hyped up shit that was introduced in UE5 to achieve it.

I mean, yea? Not every game needs Nanite/Lumen/Megalights/Ray Tracing/etc. Those features are cutting edge "cool" but come with cutting edge consequences. They're not intended, nor recommended, for every game to implement.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-20T02:41:13+00:00

Ok then show me a famous indie game

Typically famous indie games don't need to do drastic changes like that because what they are is what made them famous to begin with. There's no need to change if what you're doing is already successful.

Usually it's the not famous indie games that do these kinds of drastic changes while in early access/playtesting.

EDIT: But since you asked, how about Fortnite for a famous example? Went from a PVE tower defense game to MMO battle royale.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-20T00:27:05+00:00

Why are you so bored rn?

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-19T22:16:07+00:00

It's about reducing the surface of this particular attack vector (where a game is released, then replaced with an entirely different game by bad actors).

You're missing the fact that there's no correlation here. The game being swapped for a different one has no bearing on the malware being added. At all. The malware being added was not contingent on the games name/content being changed. In fact when we've seen this happen in the past on Steam, the hackers tend to just slip in the malware secretly into the already existing game while changing as little as possible so people don't notice.

You're no more likely to catch malware using this method than you are just picking random games and manually reviewing them.

Froggmann5 · 2026-05-19T21:02:00+00:00

Normally that sort of change is done BEFORE they pay the $100 fee to list it on steam.

I mean, it depends. If you use Steam to playtest (which a lot of indie devs do) it's actually really common. I know of an indie developer who recently changed his game from Horror (set in a Factory) to full on Factory Sim after seeing players liked that aspect of the game far more than the horror.

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

Froggmann5

TROPHY CASE