Heh, "a studio that has since closed."

That's an interesting way of saying, "a studio that has since been closed by Electronic Arts due to under-performing in comparison to unrealistic sales expectations after excessive meddling by Electronic Arts resulted in a game that was received less well by the series' core audience."

But it wouldn't do to poke EA with anything even remotely like criticism. Couldn't even say, "a studio that has since been closed" since stating that Visceral was not shut down by the actions of its members would be seen as criticism of EA. -_-

@gargar: Considering that definitions of "forced" include, "done against your wishes" and, "compelled by force or necessity" I would say that the word choice is apt.

You don't need to have a threat of violence in order to be forced to do something. If, for example, every grocery store in your town except for the Neighborhood Walmart shut down and no non-store alternatives for acquiring "real" food existed then you would be "forced" to go to Walmart for groceries.

In the same fashion if there is quite literally no way to acquire a game and/or make it work except through piracy and copyright violation then you are, in fact, forced to do so in order to play the game.

At this point you could argue, "But nobody's forcing you to play the game," and you would be correct. At the same time Climhazard5's comment was with regards to playing the games so that counter would be moot.

Plus I don't particularly agree with copyright laws and feel that trying to enact copyrights on digitally distributed/distributable media is inherently insane and utterly stupid. Furthermore I'm of the opinion that companies ought to have zero rights to dictate how products they've abandoned are accessed and that the statute of limitations, or expiry date if you prefer, of copyrights shouldn't be longer than the average human lifespan with endless options for renewal. Media should get a 5 or 10 year block of exclusivity and then it's public domain at worst.

From my perspective Nintendo is only in the right here if any of those ROMs were of games from active IPs and which themselves were in active retail within the last 5 years.

I like that term, "let go." They were "let go" because as "independent contractors," who aren't afforded the same legal rights and protections that actual salary/wage employees are, they can't be "fired" per se. "Let go" just serves to backstop how, and how badly, they're employed.

Y'know, when I hear "cosmic red" and "midnight black" I expect vivid reds and deep blacks, not "sports bra pink" and, "your old PS2 controller" or "midnight in the middle of an industrialized city with lots of light pollution grey."

The original PS2 controller was much closer to "midnight black" than whatever the color on this thing is. :-/

Hm... 2011 to 2015 from Skyrim to Fallout 4, 2015 to 2018 for Fallout 76, and now 2018 to 2022 for Starfield. I dunno, but considering how the number of bugs seems to be increasing with each post-Skyrim release it really feels like Starfield shouldn't be seeing a release date until 2024 or 2025.

This feels just way too early/rushed, even, or perhaps especially, for Bethesda.

@mogan: This is a pretty low hanging fruit article. I don't particularly care if GGG lets streamers bypass the queue or not. The queue was pushing about 3-3.5k through per minute when I got around to trying to play Friday night, and the server issues that the streamers were also subjected to were a worse problem.

@m4a5: Considering that most crAAAp-pushers like EA and Ubisoft have engaged in actively inconveniencing gamers in their paid-for games in order to sell them "skip the grind" products I don't think that moving on from "free" games is a worthwhile consideration.

Hell, at least technical issues, no matter how much they "should have been fixed by now," are more honest and clean than actively making your $60-$70 game more difficult to play in order to get your customers to buy limited use/duration purchases to alleviate that inconvenience.

@kumatenshi: I'm sure the two dozen people who got "screwed over" by this will totally thank you if they ever read your post.

I'm also sure that the server/connection stability issues that I saw both on launch night and yesterday affected the streamers as well and that as such them being able to bypass the queue, which took all of 2-3 minutes to go through 10k people by the time I started trying to play at 8PM CDT, didn't do more than maybe cut their time to play in half, if that.

@uninspiredcup: As someone who has invested a couple thousand hours, and probably $1,200-$1,500, into the game, I agree.

All I wanted to do was get into the game and clean up my Standard inventory because I was working most of the week and couldn't do it then. I didn't even think about starting a league character until last night, and even then I was too tired to think of something new/interesting so that I wasn't doing stuff I had in previous leagues.

Now that I'm actually in a position and ready to play everything's more or less fine. /shrugs

@Barighm: "But your honor, we can't be expected to give their property back to them because we're still using it!"