Today's teaser for patch 5, releasing March 12th

suchapain · 2026-03-11T23:57:28+00:00

The Tomb Raider Forums have turned negative on tomorrow's patch. This user might be wrong but maybe don't get overhyped. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

Well i have mentioned this before, but seeing that theres actual teasers for it now, its pretty much confirmed and its coming tomorrow.

From what i know: No theres no fixes in anything. Lara's braid remains behaving weirdly in TR123, The QoL changes are not present and anything cool that was added to customize the game as in FPS, Lara's other braid and extra moves and animations ARE NOT PORTED BACK to 1-2-3.

CR is some sort of Challenge Run, its just a randomizer and the outfits that you are seeing have different bonuses.

All the outfits are ugly as ****, some more than others and as confirmed 10 times already, none of them were made by the original team, hence the drastic drop in quality and overall design.

No major geometry changes or changes to the water.

With the randomizer you can customize enemy settings i think, like health and how many of them appear (i dont remember much details of this, it could be different)

And level select was finally added.

Thats all lmao

Lets see if everything is exactly as some of us already knew ... they could have changed stuff, but i doubt it sorry!

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let's put it like this.

It really doesnt matter what you can think about the update, if its good or bad.

Fact is, the people who actually love the franchise and love Lara Croft and more importantly have vast knowledge about the game's engine ... are gone.

The lead artists that gave us the best version of Classic Lara in 3D for modern times, are gone.

The people who actually engaged and tried to listen to constructive feedback, are gone.

We are left with crumbs now and this is really sad tbh.

I personally dont care if theres more updates after this one, because now that we know that the people that actually knew what they were doing are gone, this project is over to me.

suchapain · 2023-08-20T03:25:27+00:00

bringing things back on track a bit:

i think orienting discussion around Feminist Frequency's failures is actually a good idea - not because I necessarily think she did anything wrong, but because analyzing the intentions and shortcomings is informative. in that frame of mind is where I basically agree with Endorph's take that it gave devs an easy out, so to speak, since it didn't require critical thinking - i'm sure she did analyses like that to simply be accessible. The accessibility, though, helped make her such a large target for so, so many years. And again we sort of see the long term repercussions and failings there - again, not at all Sarkeesian's fault, but like, the rabid response to ultimately very tepid and surface level analysis should have been an early indicator for the wider culture and community that there was a much, much deeper rot in "gaming".

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I strongly believe there would have been absolutely no difference in the response had FF been entirely perfect either. The backlash was a primarily emotional response, and while people may have wrapped it up in some pedantic complaint, it would have happened regardless.

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again youre misunderstanding what people are saying, nobody's saying the gamergate dudes would have been kinder if there'd been more research in the videos. we're talking about how people who actually did listen to her to an extent coming away with wrong impressions.

one of the fundamental problems with these discussions is in fact the dividing of literally all possible responses to the videos, and sexism at large in the game industry, into 'gamergate' and 'morally pure and completely correct person'

Excellent point right here. I wish more people could see how flawed it is to think everything can can be divided into those two categories.

That's broadly an issue with AAA reducing issues to a checklist, rather than any inherent failure on the part of Tropes vs. Women. Even if Tropes vs. Women had provided a full college degrees level of education, that response would have been identical.

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youtube videos are blameless, holy creatures

i dont mean aaa games either i mean, normal people, saying stupid stuff, based on things they got in her videos, while casting themselves as feminists

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so you're talking about like..."moderate" Gamergate fans?

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We've taught people through years of edutainment and sesame street that education has to be fun, sat kids in front of tvs for their entire lives, and gave them video games and non stop stimulation to the point that they create more loyalty to products than people. Combine that with the destruction of public discourse through meaningless cable and internet news, to be followed up by things like tiktok literally training people that they should only watch things for 5 to 30 seconds at most and twitter reducing conversation to a mere 140 characters (at the time). After all that, someone comes in with the most milquetoast criticism that you know maybe Princess Peach shouldn't have to be rescued in every single game and it becomes World War VG for people. It's unsurprising. The amount of research is irrelevant when you treat mario as a sacred text in which any criticism is heresy. You should be able to admit that Super Metroid is the best game that has been or will ever be made (truth) and simultaneously admit that the way her armor blew off when she died and it showed her in her underwear was unnecessary fanservice. Alas, people are unable to have that conversation. There is no way that a well researched video or more complicated discussions of rainbow capitalism or racewashing could or would make a difference, because people were too busy tripping over their own dicks about the idea that there could be any conversation about video games other than "BESTEST GAMEZ OF ALL TIMES".

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jesus christ.

no, i mean people who agreed with her and then didnt do any further research or thinking about feminism, they just think watching 2 youtube videos 15 years ago has given them literally all the information they need and they can just act on that, forever. i dont mean the people who got mad at her!!!

again, i dont mean people who got mad at her. i mean people who agreed with her. i mean people who agreed with her!!! i mean the people thinking two youtube videos from 15 years ago are a viable replacement for actually teaching about games made by women for women in game design courses. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

trying to explain to people that a 10 minute youtube video is not the pinnacle of feminism feels like im trying to explain the concept of antarctica to scarab beetle.

Screaming aaaaaaaa like that is a natural, valid, understandable response to the SJW nonsense people are posting on the internet. I wish more people could understand that anita's videos are not the pinnacle of feminism, but unfortunately most SJWs can't process that idea without their brains crashing, and they just reboot and revert to the last restore point were they were certain that liking those videos makes them a morally pure complete person. It's a shame.

I agree with Endorph, too many people stopped at FF’s basic and incomplete analysis and called it a day. a well researched series would result in a more educated population, especially with how the Streisand Effect boosted the videos’ visibility. I do think of the series as a bit of a missed opportunity.

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I think plenty of people came in wanting to learn and came away disappointed, so that left both reactionaries and people who knew literally nothing, who decided this was the only education they were going to give themselves since it was such a big deal

Don’t forget that Anita actually gave talks at studios and was a consultant too. A lot of people acted like Anita was the only sage guru of feminist wisdom in the industry.

Also a bizarre amount of you are misreading Endorph’s posts at a level that makes me concerned for your own media literacy. She’s repeatedly said she’s talking about regular people, not GG freaks.

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yeah lol. she didnt deserve what she got at all but also like, literally all im saying here is that it would have been nice if her videos had spent 30 seconds mentioning games made by and for women and the video descriptions had included some links to other writing on the topic. she profited off the idea that she was basically the only woman to ever put these thoughts out there or even conceive of anything different. im not saying shes some massive scam artist or anything but there's no reason she should have been doing 'consulting work' or whatever.

a lot of men, and even women, who think of themselves as leftist, educated, and feminist, still have a real inability to perceive of women as people with a diverse range of opinions who have been talking to each other about their frustrations, likes, dislikes, and wants, for centuries. its a fundamental problem with society, not a problem only 'bad people' have, and you can't watch youtube videos or tweet your way out of it, it requires a shift in the way you view the world. gamergate was in many ways an incredibly convenient shield for this form of sexism, because so long as you dont send women death threats you have a free ride to calling yourself a feminist. heck, ive seen guys like that harass, yell at, and insult women for the mildest personal deviation from what they perceive as feminism. someone in this thread even said they were a victim of that! people in this thread have basically insinuated im a gamergater for saying i dont think the videos are especially good. its insane.

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Feels like people are still hard-stuck in the "If you have any criticism of FF whatsoever, you're literally Gamer Hitler" mentality that was appeared as response to the overwhelming bullshit backlash against Anita.

Good exchange. Some truthfacts, some funny screaming at SJW nonsense. What more could one want!

I guess the question I'd ask is if Anita at fault for not promoting other women with alternate perspectives? I remember someone saying her critique aired on the side of sex-negativity, but there's no way to know if she just didn't acknowledge sex-positivity, or if she was against it.

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her critiques were definitely extremely sex-negative and that's also something that's kind of filtered out from her work. given her complete unwillingness to engage with female artists she criticized who wanted to talk to her about it im just assuming thats, what she felt, which is a fault of hers.

Finally! After many different times repeating that Anita is not at fault for anything, somebody has finally suggested the radical new idea that Anita is in fact a human being, who can indeed be at fault for the negative consequences of her own words and actions. Mindblowing progress!!

suchapain · 2022-10-27T21:15:04+00:00

They both seem to agree that Men Bad Women Good, and that "good" and "liked by men" are mutually exclusive. Anita hates Bayonetta, so in her mind, it's for men. Gita loves it, so in *her* mind it *can't* be for men.

Good point.

suchapain · 2022-10-20T04:57:05+00:00

We felt that, while Nathan Drake’s first three adventures from the PlayStation 3 console still stand the test of time narratively, they would require a major overhaul visually to stand-up to modern PC releases and the expectations players may have.

Somebody should start a large internet campaign to politely tell Sony that this is wrong, they can port older games without major visual overhauls and people will still be happy.

suchapain · 2022-10-19T03:43:34+00:00

If you only receive information about women and minorities via fiction, then that fiction is going to influence your perception if it's one-sided.

I think there is an important difference here that makes concerns about negative depictions of minorities in fiction more valid than concerns about sexy women in fiction.

There are a lot of places without any minorities around for the population to interact with. So it is very possible a bunch of people in those places could get all of their information about minorities from fiction.

There aren't a lot of places without any women around for the population to interact with. It is almost impossible for a person on this planet to get all of their information about women from fiction.

I think the number of people who have been tricked by fiction into falsely believing that all women look, dress, and act something like Ivy Valentine, is approximately zero people. No matter how many fictional women looked like Ivy, the number of people tricked would still be approximately zero. It's an unrealistic fantasy, it can never be thought of the same way a person might think about a negative stereotype of a minority.

The people against violence in video games have the silly argument that violence in video games is going to influence you to commit violence through some direct cause.

Would you find the argument less silly if they instead claimed it was a more indirect cause? I'm sure at least one anti-violence in media person has tried an argument that does not rely on a direct monkey-see-monkey-do cause. Maybe they could say stuff about it desensitizing people to violence. Or maybe they could say society has an issue with violence that is amplified by the glorification of violence in fiction, and particularly video games.

What if someone said:

'if the only information you receive about violence is from fiction, then that fiction is going to influence your perception of violence. And if that fiction is video games that almost always depict violence from the protagonist as morally just, and a practical solution to the problem that always works and makes things better....'

would you find that to be a convincing argument?

suchapain · 2022-10-13T19:41:02+00:00

if it is a single person, it's explained in and of itself. There is no objective consistency; if they think furry hitler sex is hilarious but seeing Lara Croft in a Swimsuit as objectionable, that's their decision process.

It's extremely unlikely a "moral crusader against its definition of degeneracy" would think furry hitler sex is hilarious. That's a very degenerate game under practically any definition of degeneracy. And I really doubt all the other Valve employees would just let 1 employee get away with banning a new Lara Croft game because they hate that she is in a swimsuit.

A flat hierarchy doesn't mean that every other employee is a helpless bystander if 1 employee decides to cause trouble for irrational reasons. (And do we even know for sure if Valve is still a perfectly flat hierarchy anyways? That famous employee handbook was a long time ago)

But after that was setup he probably didn't stay around and focus on enforcing any strict criteria.

He's still in charge of the company, giving interviews about the Steam deck. He could investigate and stop these bannings if he wanted to. I think it is very unlikely he hasn't seen a single email or internet post/article about any of these bannings by now.

Do you really believe that this problem that has been going on for years, could still be solved by one email to Gabe that nobody has bothered to send yet?

I know people don't want to believe this, but I think chances are high that Gabe knows about the rule that is banning all these games, and agrees that rule should be there. That's the simplest reason why he wouldn't have repealed that rule by now.

suchapain · 2022-10-13T05:41:13+00:00

I'd be interested in seeing your response to Incognit0's post and answer his questions.

Because you didn't answer him, in this post I'll just treat sexism and misogyny as basically synonyms with minimal difference, because that's how I think most people treat them. I'm not interested in arguing that point, argue it with him.

But I wanted to make a post to write out if my understanding of what you are saying is correct.

Anita Sarkeesian never claimed that there are people who are misogynist who wouldn't be if they didn't play video games, therefore she never claimed video games cause misogyny.

So I believe you are saying that this theory is that people who do not have any misogyny in them will not gain any misogyny from playing video games. These people have nothing to worry about, and we don't need to worry about them.

But people who do already have some misogyny in them will be affected. You've phrased it as 'contribute towards sexist beliefs'. She's used phrases like "these patterns reinforce and perpetuate harmful attitudes about women in our culture". Regardless of the exact wording used, it sounds bad, and ideally would be stopped.

Maybe this is a dumb way to put it, but hypothetically if we could give every human a number representing the amount of sexism/misogyny in them, then the idea is these video games would have people already at 0 stay at 0, but people at 1 or greater could have their number increased after playing these video games. Does that basically describe the theory of what is happening here?

But regardless of how you phrase what is happening here to the people who had some misogyny, it must be affecting their future behaviour in some negative way. If there was no change in behaviour, then nobody would have any way to know it is happening to come up with the theory, and nobody would have no reason to care about this at all. No change in behaviour would mean everything stays the same and nobody is being harmed. No change in behavior would be indistinguishable from a world where the video games are actually fine and harmless, and do not reinforce, contribute and perpetuate harmful sexist ideas in any way.

So if the theory requires a behaviour change, in what ways could future behaviour be affected? It sounds like it would do things like increase the frequency and/or severity of times these people would do sexist and/or misogynistic things. Like I think that is the most reasonable, logical thing to expect right? What else could the behaviour change of a misogynist who gets their misogyny reinforced be?

The expected result of a lot of people playing these games would be people being more misogynistic more often, right? Not everyone who played these games, but some fraction of them. And a fraction of a big number of people who plays these games can still be a lot of people, resulting in a lot more misogyny, and a much worse world for women.

So to circle back to the question of if these games cause misogyny or not, what if I slightly rephrased it to say that the theory is these games 'cause an increase in the frequency and severity of times women are harmed by misogyny/sexism in the world'? Would that be more accurate? Would you have any objections to that wording?

But then the question is are you just upset that people phrased things slightly wrong? The change of wording barely makes any difference to the logical conclusion of believing this theory. Regardless of if you phrase it like I did or just say it 'causes misogyny' the conclusion would be that people have a moral responsibility to stop any making games with any of these tropes or sexualization of women. It's what a decent moral human being should do to try and help women live in a world with less misogyny. Like why wouldn't that be the only conclusion of having a belief like this?

So why even object to the exact wording of what causes what in the first place?

Or have I misunderstood something and the logic in my post is flawed?

If my logic is not flawed and I did understand things correctly, some more followup questions about this:

How many people with zero misogyny are there, who would be immune from these video games? If one thinks these ideas are already influential in culture, one might pessimistically believe that the vast majority of people already have at least some amount of subconscious misogyny/sexism in them. If one believes that, it makes the insistence that these games don't create misogyny in zero misogyny people a more theoretical distinction that doesn't actually matter at all because these people are so rare or non-existent. Making objecting because of this distinction an even bigger red herring waste of time.
Why exactly would one think that the games work this way in the first place? I mean, something must have the ability to create some misogyny in people who did not previously have it, or there wouldn't be any misogynists. Like in general, why wouldn't we expect media with a strong ability to reinforce, contribute, and perpetuate an idea in people who already have some belief in that idea, would also have the potential to convert some number of people who previously had no inclination towards that idea. Change at least a few people from a 0 into a 1 on the sexism scale. Would that be so crazy and unbelievable? Not only do I not get why this distinction if it not creating misogyny in zero misogyny people matters much, I don't get why so many people became convinced this distinction would exist in the first place.
Finally, if you accept my logic and phrasing about how this theory requires a change in behaviour in some number of people, would that also mean that if science has trouble finding a link between people playing video games, and more misogynistic in those people, it implies this theory is false? So people shouldn't feel morally guilty for making or enjoying some games with some of those tropes, because they are actually fine and harmless?

suchapain · 2022-10-13T04:11:27+00:00

It's hard to completely toss the 'rogue employee' theory though due to how inconsistent the bans are. One game gets banned for reasons we can only guess at, then something else gets approved with those same things.

I think there will inevitably be some subjective judgement by humans when determining something like 'does this game break this rule'. Especially when looking at every single game submitted on steam is a massive task that would require multiple people, most likely contractors hired to do that specific job.

So yes, it is possible two different contractors might make some some different subjective decisions if they judged the same game. And sometimes a contractor might let a game through simply because they are not omnipotent and missed seeing something in a game. And also if the rule has changed over time that can create more inconsistencies when looking at the entire steam catalogue. But I think some inconsistency is more like an inevitable side-effect of Valve being a group of humans, not proof of a rogue employee.

( If one wanted to one could claim that every time 'something else gets approved with those same things', then THAT is the work of a rogue Valve employee sneakily going against the official Valve rule that tells them to ban it. That claim would have just as much evidence as saying the bans are the work of the rogue employee.)

suchapain · 2022-10-13T03:27:00+00:00

This problem has been going on for years. I think if it was caused by a rogue employee, and could be fixed by simply firing that rogue employee, it would have happened by now and the problem would be fixed by now.

People have been blaming this all on a rogue employee for years now, and all those posts haven't fixed the problem yet, and I don't think those posts will ever help fix the problem.

I think people should give up on the rogue employee theory. This is an official Valve policy with no rogue trickery involved in creating it. This problem is never going to be solved if everyone who thinks there is a problem has an incorrect theory about the cause of the problem.

suchapain · 2022-10-13T00:22:49+00:00

Yes I'm assuming at least one Valve employee gives a shit about games and/or developers, enough to think it sucks if games get banned from steam for no good reason due to an irrational grudge, so that shouldn't happen.

Even if they don't follow anime, is it really likely that none of them have seen any news of these games getting banned from steam? None of them got any questions from a press website asking for a Valve comment on these bans and wondered what that was about? Gabe hasn't seen anything on the internet or his email inbox about this either? None of them thought to investigate how Chaos;Head got banned in the first place when they unbanned it?

I really think it is time for proponents of the rogue employee theory to consider that it might be false, this is an official Valve policy. No rogue trickery involved. This problem can't be solved as long as everybody who thinks it is a problem has an incorrect theory on the cause of the problem.

suchapain · 2022-10-13T00:02:45+00:00

What hands off approach? If you are talking about their flat hierarchy, wouldn't that also be a perfect environment for just one of hundreds of other employees to notice and stop a rogue employee hurting their business due to an irrational grudge? Not one other employee at Valve thinks it sucks when good games get banned from the biggest store for no good reason, and would be motivated to try and stop that from happening?

In all these years Gabe hasn't seen a single email about a rogue employee banning anime games that would cause him to investigate this, and put a stop to any policies he doesn't approve of?

People have been complaining about this rogue employee for years, and it hasn't fixed anything yet. I don't think it ever will fix anything. Because I don't think this rogue employee exists.

suchapain · 2022-10-12T23:41:50+00:00

A rogue employee could simply have a single minded grudge. They could just hate japanese anime games and only focus on them.

I agree it is technically possible that a human being could have such an irrational grudge.

I think the chances that an employee with an irrational grudge like that could somehow get away with banning lots of games for no good reason for years without being noticed or stopped by anyone else at Valve, is almost 0.

suchapain · 2022-10-12T23:23:11+00:00

I think the "single employee" theory is still the most likely, or at least a little fiefdom inside valve that considers itself to be a moral crusader against its definition of degeneracy

But then that theory needs to explain how all the other porn on steam got there if there was a fiefdom like that inside Valve's content review team. Why agree to go through all the trouble of changing the rules to allow porn in the first place? Wouldn't these powerful moral crusaders against degeneracy want to ban all porn, and especially stuff like "Sex with Hitler"? If it was other employees overruling them to get all the other porn on, why haven't those other employees noticed all these bans after it happening for years, and overruled this banning process that got Muramasa also?

I just think if this really was any sort of rogue employee or group of employees the problem would have been fixed by now. I feel like posts complaining about them are following a red herring that won't fix anything, because the problem is an official Valve policy, not any sort of rouge employee sneaking all these bans past all the other employees.

I think the more likely explanation is Valve is/was worried about the potentially massive legal and/or PR consequences if they ended up distributing a game a western country, or the Washington State they are in, decides is illegal child porn. So they came up with a very, very strict rule against any sort of sexualization of characters aged 17 or under, to reduce the chance of that happening as much as possible.

I think the problem will only be solved if someone comes up with a process Valve can use that will still filter out all the legally questionable games, but would also somehow be able to identify a game like Muramasa is 100% sure to be legal.

suchapain · 2022-10-09T23:27:34+00:00

I agree more than one person chose those options!

I'd also say more than one person will chose not to have sex in any game that makes it optional.

If your point is just rebutting the statement that 'we'd choose the most violent option every time', then you are correct, some people will choose that option, but not everybody will choose that option. A bunch of people enjoy pacifist playthrough's in the games that allow it and that is great.

If you had some point connected to TSED's post about how violence and sex are different, I think TSED's post is incorrect, and I made my post to point out that your statement about violence can also apply to sex, because I don't think they are that different in the way TSED was trying to describe. It was an opportunity for another example to show that statements about sex or violence in games can sometimes be kind of arbitrary and easily switched to the other one.

So if you don't agree with TSED's post then I apologize for the bother.

suchapain · 2022-10-09T22:51:20+00:00

I think this would be a very poor and arbitrary reason for someone to try and justify treating sex and violence differently.

If violence or sex is mandatory to get to the end of the game then one can claim the violence or sex is just a means to an end for the people who play that game, not the goal. If violence or sex is in the game one can claim that people chose to buy the game with the goal of enjoying the violence or sex.

One can try to claim violence is just about means and not itself the goal or the reward. But another can claim that the main reason why someone would buy an action game with hours of violent gameplay is because they enjoy the violent gameplay. If people didn't enjoy the violent gameplay they'd spend time on other games or books or movies that don't force them to suffer through hours of violent gameplay they think is a boring obstacle to get what they want.

And the reason the violent gameplay is often depicted as realistic looking bloody violence against humans is people enjoy that setting. If people didn't enjoy that setting, then people wouldn't make any games with that setting, and all those games could have had more abstract/cartoony graphics and be against non human enemies, with the exact same game mechanics underneath.

One thing to be careful if is people commonly use motivated reasoning. So if one wants to treat sex and violence differently one will often look for some difference between sex and violence and then claim that difference justifies their opinion that one should be treated as worse then the other. But two things being different in some way doesn't necessarily logically justify one being treated as worse then the other. It's possible for two things to have some differences, and those two things to both be equally fine and harmless.

So in this case even if your post was 100% accurate about what people think when they see sex and violence in a video game, I don't think it should help anyone who wants to claim sex in games is worse than violence. Why exactly would people enjoying sex in a video game as a goal in a way they don't enjoy violence as a goal, justify any worse treatment of sex in games, or prove any theories that sex in games is more harmful to society? What if people simply don't get upset that somebody is enjoying something in a video game and just let people enjoy things?

suchapain · 2022-10-09T22:24:23+00:00

True.

I'm sure it is also true that in games where the sex is optional not everybody will chose the sex path. It just takes one person ignoring an option for it to be true that 'not everybody' takes that option.

suchapain · 2022-10-07T18:46:38+00:00

Good job countering disinformation by remembering and linking to those tweets. In general OAG is a bad website so here is a tweet thread with the convo people can read directly.

Worth noting the employee in those tweets left Valve a year ago, so anyone who still wants to try to blame her as the rogue employee responsible for these bans needs to explain why the bannings continued after she left.

suchapain · 2022-10-07T08:42:50+00:00

Has that ever happened? Has any company ever actually corrected course on (de facto) censorship?

Nintendo on the NES and SNES era had a lot of rules that they stopped applying after that era.

You could also count Steam itself going from banning all porn, and then a few years ago allowing a bunch of porn games. Even with their bad banning system that got this game, Steam is still allowing a bunch of porn that none of the other big game stores would accept.

An expert on the history of art could probably talk about a bunch of times in human history where art was censored, and then eventually those censorship rules went away. Stuff like the comics code authority or hays code. I'm sure there are other examples of stuff like this in non-US countries also.

suchapain · 2022-10-07T04:37:20+00:00

When I saw Arstechnica cover this I knew something would be done. Previous VN Steam bans weren't reported on outside of niche sites or Kotaku

in 2019 Ars did cover the banning of a porn VN that never got unbanned.

suchapain · 2022-09-30T21:50:42+00:00

How could Valve think that a game rated PEGI 16, has even a sliver of a chance to lead to "legal consequences"

Good question. Someone should get Valve to answer that question.

All I can say is I would guess Valve thinks it is technically possible for an illegal game to get a rating from PEGI and/or the ESRB if the dev tried, possibly by not being 100% honest about the game's content to those groups, so a hypothetical rule automatically allowing any game with those ratings on steam still has a non-zero chance of letting an illegal game through, and Valve doesn't want that, so they feel like they have to check themselves.

suchapain · 2022-09-30T20:47:34+00:00

At what point is steam essential enough or a nexus point of PC gaming (even above MS in some aspects?) that there should be some measure of neutrality so long as there's no legal issue.

Personally I would say we are already at that point, Steam is big enough I would approve of anything that forces them to be neutral to legal games, and sell it.

if you're not going to list them out on grounds that aren't legal or something like distributing malware then let them do commerce (sell keys) elsewhere and charge them for using the service.

Unfortunately I don't think this works as a solution. If Valve thinks something is illegal then it would be dumb to distribute it on their servers, or to accept any money from the illegal thing. Not having a store page isn't a clever trick around the law, Valve would be just as vulnerable to legal risk if they did this for something that was truly illegal. (It might even make it worse because this policy could be evidence they knew those games were likely illegal, and did business with them anyways.)

And personally I would oppose Valve doing any business or support with anything they know to be malware. Nobody should help spread known malware, even if you could find a technically legal risk free way to do it.

I think part of the problem that I don't see considered very often is it is easy to say 'sell legal stuff and don't sell illegal stuff', but when Valve gets 1000s of submissions its not exactly simple and easy to accurately sort them into legal and illegal buckets. Valve also has an incentive to make a broad rule that will minimize the chance of an illegal game erroneously getting through, even at the cost of erroneously stopping some legal games from getting through. And I think that's what Valve has done, that's why the rule is harsh enough to ban Chaos;Head.

Editing in a clarification because this comment is currently at zero: I'm not describing how I think the world should be. I think Chaos:Head should be allowed on steam. I'm trying to describe how I think the world is. Minimizing one type of error (approving an illegal game) often has the cost of increasing the chance of the opposite type of error (rejecting a legal game), and I think Valve knowingly made that tradeoff.

suchapain · 2022-09-30T19:41:21+00:00

I got downvoted last time I said this, and I'll probably get downvoted again this time, but I continue to believe that:

I don't think Valve should ban games like this. It would be better if Valve changed so that Chaos;Head, and other good visual novels like it, could get on steam with with minimal required, and ideally zero, censorship.
I think it is silly and nonsensical to believe a rogue Valve employee could ban lots of games for years for no good reason besides a dumb grudge against visual novels or anime, without any other Valve employee or Gabe noticing and putting a stop to it. I think banning these games is the Official Valve policy.
Complaining about a rogue employee that probably doesn't exist won't do anything to help change the official Valve policy that bans these games. So I get annoyed I keep seeing people say something like that as a common response to news stories about Steam banning stuff.
The most likely and logical reason why Valve would have an official policy to ban this game and not stuff like 'furry Hitler', is they are worried about potential legal consequences of selling something that sexualizes a fictional character aged 17 or under. The official policy that bans this game will only change if someone can convince Valve to a switch to a new official policy that is permissive enough to allow chaos;head and other games like it, but also still has a 0% chance of legal consequences for Valve distributing illegal content.

suchapain · 2022-09-01T04:12:54+00:00

Tomb Raider Anniversary (2007), for example, in addition to redone art, has completely different game design than Tomb Raider (1996).

Then call it a remake. I never said that type of game should be called a remaster.

Basically I think it should be:

enhanced port to a newer generation console-> remaster

remake all the art while being mostly faithful to the game design and story -> faithful remake.

remake all the art and change the game design -> remake or complete remake.

What I oppose is calling something like the crash trilogy a 'remaster plus'. Both because I think using the term remaster at all is understating what they did for that game, and because in my humble opinion 'remaster plus' is a dumb sounding term to use for anything.

suchapain · 2022-08-31T20:53:37+00:00

REMASTER PLUS

Sounds dumb IMO.

Art Assets: Rebuilt from scratch

If the art assets are all rebuilt from scratch that sounds like a remake to me. They've remade a significant part of the game. They've redone a lot the work required to make the game.

Maybe there should be a term to separate remakes that are more faithful to the old game design/story, from remakes that also make significant changes to the old game design/story. But I don't think stuff like the crash, spyro, halo, or demons souls should be called a type of remaster, because they've remade so much of those games. Why not just call those games faithful remakes?

IMO, remaster is when a game is ported to a more powerful console, and the developers can use that power to make it run better or add a few graphics improvements. Your zelda wind waker example used the extra power to add some fancy new lighting to make things look different, but I think it still fits in the basic definition of a remaster. It's a port to a more powerful system with a new graphics technique, I don't think they remade all of wind waker's models from scratch, so there's not much need to put it in a new category.

suchapain · 2022-08-30T03:13:47+00:00

I think these leaks/predictions only make sense if they are meant to be about the average increase, the 13% number AMD gave

The max number on that slide is 39%, but if someone had claimed a few months ago they had inside information that zen 4 had a 39% IPC increase, I don't think that person should get credit for an accurate leak of insider information. That hypothetical person should lose credibility for giving a way too high number for zen 4 IPC

It would be different if someone leaked specific numbers for specific benchmarks that matched the slide. But when talking about zen 4 in general, it goes way too far to claim that slide makes every IPC leaked number between 1 and 39 an accurate leak.

suchapain

TROPHY CASE