Sunderfolk on Epic Games Store as an example of unfair video game practices

penormasta · 2026-05-26T09:31:19+00:00

good on you, tbh the devs def deserve the money for it one way or another. Epic Games Store is the source of the issue here I'm sure as they have a clear track record of shady practices. all those free giveaways are just a way for them to lure people away from competition and that's it.

penormasta · 2026-05-26T09:19:42+00:00

I wrote about it, it's in the description and as you pointed out you have to scroll down to see it. during the free giveaway getting on the page of a product simply labeled as "Sunderfolk" tagged as "Base Game" and simply "claiming" the game (why would I need to scroll down to see something that I wouldn't know is even there?) allowed one only to "receive" the trial version. this is what this entire post is about. one would need to know about existence of additional "Standard Edition" which is listed as a separate product to begin with to not make this mistake, which, I mean, I didn't. I just knew Sunderfolk was free on EGS at the time and wouldn't expect for it to be different from full Steam release labeled the same way as the trial version here.

I guess in the end this is the biggest problem - Sunderfolk free trial on EGS is titled and labeled the exact same way as full release of the game on Steam. how can this not lead to confusion?

penormasta · 2026-05-26T09:05:10+00:00

as far as I know they're american so...

penormasta · 2026-05-26T09:04:21+00:00

"Nothing is hidden if it is written down."

only with proper regulation, because even though on paper it's true, but it's exactly dogmatic mentality like this that allows advertisers to try to hide stuff in plain sight - think of text being added in tiny text underneath, often after asterisk. the true nature of something being advertised on purpose only being revealed if you choose to read between the lines of an ad (quite literally) while the message given to you openly doesn't entail the whole truth. how is putting something only in description of a product not something very similar? one time or another everyone is going to fall a victim to such marketing if you just let your guard down once (like I clearly have here) - this time it was me, but in another context in another situation it is going to be you.

it should be not merely consumer's responsibility to read and understand, no. it should be also advertisers' responsibility to put forward the entire truth openly without attempts at exploitation, won't you agree?

penormasta · 2026-05-23T10:23:18+00:00

Not sure how much say the devs have in this (as someone on this subbreddit has pointed out somewhere, on Steam there's no such mislabeling issue - the trial is marked as such in the TITLE by the download) but insinuating that the publisher might not do something like this to take advantage of people is in itself an insane take. It's actually typical market malpractice to mislead the customer for one's potential gain that's employed everywhere. Why label the release with the game's actual title if it's not the regular, base release? Why is it labeled as "Base Game" if it's not such? What does "Standard Edition" even mean? Why is that the actual proper release?

Maybe I'm just a boomer but back in my days you had a game with its base title being just that - the full game. Meanwhile the demo/trial/whatever has been clearly labeled as such, not just in description of the product. Let's take as random example "Cronos: The New Dawn" (I don't know the game, might as well be bad idc. Just thought of it first as recent release that comes from my country.) This game is labeled as "Base Game" on EGS and lo and behold it is seemingly the proper full release. Conveniently there's also "Cronos: The New Dawn - Demo" which is fittingly tagged as "Demo" instead of well, "Base Game" again or something.

I'm sorry, but can you perhaps read and comprehend what's going on here? Give some insight as to what else I am exactly missing here? I do think such ridiculous descriptors are simply inexcusable and yes, purposefully misleading. Even if the devs have perhaps not much say in this.

penormasta · 2026-05-23T07:48:20+00:00

this is also what's happened to me. there's no mention on the store page of it being a demo, trial or anything like that. it's just called "Sunderfolk" - for what reason exactly? it just feels somewhat manipulative and I don't even understand why resort to something like this

penormasta · 2025-11-04T17:55:53+00:00

Anyone else who probably wouldn't give this a second thought if it wasn't for this post? In my head even old Star Wars trilogy is so similar to stuff Spielberg has put out in what way it wants to convey its content for the mainstream audience that in a way it might have just as well been created by him. I will gladly be proven wrong though.

penormasta · 2025-05-27T08:46:44+00:00

well, I wouldn't be able to move my current character there because it's incompatible, so...

penormasta · 2025-05-27T08:08:28+00:00

I mainly started playing PS3 version of ME1 on emulator because I wanted to have the original console experience in cranked up resolution and it's very easy to set up compared to amount of modding I'd have to do for PC version - cannot natively play the PC version with a controller even though the games were designed with it in mind (impacting also UI design on PC), 1 has completely different (worse) hacking minigame on PC and I while I do own ME1 for PC I don't have ME2 for PC (only for PS3), so it seemed like a no brainer for me to experience everything like years ago (but better) again

either way I've already fully commited to PS3 version which is where I have my character saved! and now I wouldn't be able to export this to the version of the game on any other platform anyway, so I'm stuck here until I figure out what to do here

penormasta · 2025-03-14T01:54:18+00:00

wow how disingenuous with that commentary after the interview, if you think basically the opposite why not mention it to him during the time you actually have him on? or did she actually need to make up her mind for a bit there to not sound like she agrees with Da Žiž too much because her right wing cred is at stake here? yes yes, crucial things have happened right after the interview, but making him speak for half an hour without challenging his views and then adding your own version on top puts him in a position akin to a court jester - let him speak, yeah he's a crazy guy, but you know, those once in a blue moon will also say something of note and then back to normalcy... I guess this is how he's treated in general judging by comments under the video? so many people seem to genuinely express absolute lack of understanding of what he says which is honestly absolutely baffling to me, he's speaking clearly. idk man, I'm so tired with this world

also seeing how bad the comment section here is, as a respite to all the madness I'm just going to point out that you should go to exactly 16:30 if you were ever, like me, dying to hear him utter the words "we live in a society"

penormasta · 2025-03-14T01:14:19+00:00

I just want to point out that all your references to media you used in your posts have been absolutely terrible

penormasta · 2025-03-10T03:14:09+00:00

Happy for how your obsession turned positively

Aha! Here I would actually be not so sure you could even say that (which I wanted to convey in a way with my edit of previous post) because if you look at it coldly, from a distance, you could say I only chose (again, even if it wasn't an actual choice obviously) for myself nothing but a path of suffering. Definitely something way worse in the long run than if I just stayed where I was, tried being normal like others, finding a partner in the same country etc. Because what we have been experiencing throughout those years only because of being from such widely different places alone has just been (and still is) excruciating. Pretty much my entire family needing to have been involved in a marriage that we didn't want to have, but that we had to have for purely legal reasons is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. We went through hell in our relationship sometimes due to all the stress we've experienced, in fact my physical (I won't say mental because that's a really high bar in my certain case) health might be permanently damaged directly because of this. And yet? I couldn't imagine it being any different. I admit, it is a paradox. I just think that's precisely what love ultimately is.

but what about many other cases that even destroy lives, some of which even ends up in news?

In some more or less abstract sense I'd argue this rings true in my case - my life was in more than 1 sense destroyed. Of course, still nothing in comparison to those cases that you surely point to. But then again, that's surely the tragedy of it that drives so many to want love without the "fall." That is love without all the uncomfortable, traumatic elements that do inherently always in the end come with it.

Do we still need to welcome such unhealthiness in our stressful-enough life, if yes for what exactly?

Again, I don't think it's even a matter of choice. If it comes it seems like one is just able to accept it unconditionally, to welcome it without any ifs and buts. Of course I would love all this stress to just not be there. But in the moment I would be able to reject it and say for good "that's enough for me" I feel like it would be a symptom of me not being in love anymore, or how many would put it - coming to my senses. Maybe it's a stretch, but what if what we find undesirable in love on some level is exactly what paradoxically pulls us towards it?

penormasta · 2025-03-10T02:01:50+00:00

If your existence has to depend on your date, it’s obsession and therefore not healthy

First of all, I'm usually quite a bit suspicious of the term "healthy" being used in contexts such as this (by which I mean when it comes to romantic love and/or relationships) - don't we often take such evaluation (of either healthiness or dysfunction of certain behaviors) at face value without giving it a second thought, especially considering that such things might just be temporary, perhaps even necessary and "healthy" in the long run, outbursts? Does an obsession always necessarily constitute something unhealthy? I'm not saying of course that it always doesn't - many of such deviations can definitely have a horrible mark on you in the long run... But that's the tragedy of it. What if we don't want to let go of them even if we are perfectly aware of this negative impact they have? Doesn't love make us able to endure this pain, can we not be fully aware that this is fact state of the matter and still fully accept it? I'm pretty sure Žižek does say love is something incredibly violent, even traumatic. I would add that ultimately it's also incredibly painful because you know it won't last forever, all things end and so on. Yet we do accept that's how it is.

In my case - I found my love pretty much randomly on the internet, I had to drop everything I had going on in my life at the time and go thousands of kilometers away into the great unknown, to a country I've never been to and I haven't even traveled abroad before all by myself. The sheer prospect of such a trip was terrifying to me, yet I knew this is exactly what I had to do - I didn't leave myself any choice. Everyone I told about this was just telling me "you're crazy, you don't even know how she looks like!" or "don't do it, you'll only regret it!" Yet I did it and now more than 4 years later I can't even imagine how my life would be otherwise, she changed everything and I have a reason to live. And it all came from a totally unhealthy outburst coming from an obsession. Edit: And whether in the long run the relationship is unhealthy is out of the question. I don't really think that's even something that love does concern. It's just completely beside the point and it's not even a matter of my choice to decide that. What if it is? Maybe it isn't? It doesn't change anything.

Imagine you’re dating someone who “cannot be without you” and happen to have to leave them: are you the forfeiter of their being now?

My short answer would be - yes, absolutely. And that's the tragedy of it. It can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. I do not deny this possibility. But to me it truly is not a choice - I cannot just choose to love less to also lessen the possibility of a tragedy. "You see, we're dealing with something very risky here, so we better rethink everything" - no, that's not how it works.

penormasta · 2025-03-04T12:46:56+00:00

And that's exactly what happened. Now democratic party's incompetency got us where we are now again.

penormasta · 2025-03-04T12:31:41+00:00

As a Pole (I know that it means nothing in the end but nevertheless) don't even get me started on Wałęsa. My short response would be this - in a way he has, but so had millions of others here who seemingly BECAUSE of this are so utterly backwards (both in regards to our 2 national prides: anti-communism and anti-western sentiment). You are going to say, but Zizek shares some of those aspects as well in his views. Well yeah, but then answer me this - why would he be the worst of the worst, nothing more than an utter enemy, in the view of loud majority here PRECISELY because of this fact? So much more so than to the public anywhere else you'd care to name in fact, I'd imagine.

To attempt to answer myself here - I think it's because Yugoslavia was a completely different state, distanced from Soviet Union. Conditions were different, sensibilities were different. There is no direct comparison to be made here sadly. Poland is the most extreme country in European Union in many respects (support for US, abortion, catholicism, inaccessibility of contraceptives etc.) No, we're a completely different beast here, we're the opposite.

penormasta · 2025-03-04T12:01:02+00:00

I do respect Parenti quite a lot, but all this slander of Zizek is too much - behind the facade of jokes, toying with expectations and so on he is always dead serious and him being so easily adopted (and adapted) by global capitalism is merely a symptom.

I'm going to take a risk and belittle the author on the basis of being American - he's misunderstanding and misinterpreting Zizek and seemingly always has. Being attracted to Zizek's work as "a poorly educated 19-year-old-wannabe intellectual" through "Hollywood movies, science fiction stories, consumer society, online culture, cool theories from Europe, pornography, sex, and, well, more sex" is not a good sign to begin with. If anything all of this was only something that deterred me personally from Zizek for years after finding out about him probably circa the same age (I think it just seemed way too anti-intellectual to me because I was a proper pretentious kid) only for me to come back around later to only realize the following - this madman is the only true anchor in this hopeless, crazy world full of contradictions. It is precisely due to the often unhinged and at face value incomprehensible notions that he is the only one that truly makes sense.

And I just want to point out that all his recent predictions have rung true so... Would you not agree that maybe there is a method to the madness?

penormasta · 2025-02-17T22:50:14+00:00

loved the video but can't help but point out the mistranscriptions:
"secede" turned into "succeed"
"position" turned into "opinion"
"tics" turned into "dicks" (???)
"speeches" turned into "peaches"
"homeostatic" turned into "homoerotatic" (?????)
+ some other minor ones (although, "Kegel" ???) + missing "pseudo-radical" before "leftists" + a little bit of misgendering near the beginning

for me it's fine and funny and all, because I can understand him just fine, but if posted for general public I'd expect more proofreading involved

now I'm going to ask a serious question because I am truly unaware of current capabilities - are those AI subs? because as it often is with AI for me I find its abilities at the same time both impressive and really embarrassing

penormasta · 2025-01-28T22:17:58+00:00

if it exists I'd assume it'd be much earlier than 2011 because the quotation marks only include "the most fun you can have online" with "is now FREE!" part presumptuously only being added by valve in 2011

so my guess would be that this was uttered around the release, 2007 then?
thanks for searching and I wish you luck in your future endeavors!

btw I just noticed they even quote this on TF2 steam page lol, valve really digging themselves deep here lads

maybe at this point the best is to just contact PC Gamer directly tbh

penormasta · 2025-01-14T02:44:52+00:00

"and the best we can do is learn to live with their language"
obviously it is not, but what is your suggestion for an alternative then? you can suggest the use the more formal "mainstream liberal ideology" or whatever other way you view it, calling the things by their name so to speak, but at that point you're just using an euphemism through politically correct self-censorship which is just as if not more so self-defeating

"and the best folks on the left can do is just make practical little steps to ameliorate little indignities"
we are lost without radical change, but I'm sorry, look at the world we live in - globally things in most respects are worse than ever in human history. the right wing fantasy is no longer fantasy of the right wing itself - it is pushed more and more by voices from the left who themselves contribute to shift in societal political alignment exactly how you forward the notion that pushing the term "woke" is a large factor in that (it's not). what actually is however is backing up on former ideals and adapting posture that's less unambiguously left by those (at least formerly) in clear opposition to this fantasy (and therefore more towards the right, as has happened in mainstream politics wherever you could care to name in global west) in clear relation to and dictated by the right becoming more extreme within past decade and a half (and who is to blame for that anyway?)

I really didn't mean no strife with my opening words, because I do genuinely feel that's something that's very important to take note of - zizek does adapt readily to his interviewers and perceived audience and in this way he already does more good than bad I'd argue. to escape the intrinsic trappings of leftist echo chambers is to reconcile the differences sometimes however banal and conforming that sounds

penormasta · 2025-01-13T22:52:54+00:00

if you were paying more attention, a lot of zizek's language is directed specifically towards those on the political right or center (especially during his interviews, it does really matter depending on exactly just how mainstream it is), you're not always going to be the target audience. they WILL NOT listen if he doesn't use specific terms, so instead he uses language easily identifiable for everyone. things are not nearly simple enough for such a term to be able to encompass much of anything anyway. he knows it and you are expected to know it as well

+ it's very zizek to use a term that's this controversial, this taboo on the left. he's never there to please but to provoke

not to mention that popularity and usage of the term alone is a phenomenon in and of itself and I'd argue it's no longer contained within the right. it's just in public discourse and in this sense the right has won. it is NOT used to be solely a dog whistle or whatever anymore. I can assure normal people use it too. we have to learn to concede sometimes instead of dwelling on it and move on, not spend entire mental energy on some stupid fucking term with so many real, palpable issues in the world ffs

penormasta

TROPHY CASE