u/grady_vuckovic

^{TL;DR: I have a lot of thoughts on early access games, if you don't want to read them then skip to the next comment, I don't care if this is too long for some people to read.}

The question is, do game developers understand what early access is?

It's 'meant to be' a system where developers can get early feedback on a game close to launch just before release, a form of game testing to refine the quality of a product just before it's released.

Yet I regularly see early access games remain in 'early access' for 6 to 7 years. In some cases some of these developers (cough PocketPair cough) have released 2 or 3 additional early access games after that, all without finishing the first game, which seems to have fewer and fewer updates each year..

Early Access games are sold often at or close to full price, and always at a price appropriate for the amount of content in them. They're not cheap or free, it's not like we're granted access to a closed beta program. These are products, we're asked to pay for them, invited to review them, wishlist, they're advertised during sales, promoted online with ads, often have DLC or season passes, merch, establish pvp meta, do cross overs with other IPs, reach player count numbers that are absolutely going to be the peak player count the game will ever enjoy, feature relevant content for the year of release.. all well before 'version 1.0'.

A fact that is ONLY brought up whenever someone is critical of the game!

Game has terrible art assets? "But it's early access, we're not done building the game yet!"

Game has a bug? "Please we're just a smol little company, we're still in early access, we'll fix these issues before 1.0!"

And inevitably some person who has absolute faith in the developer and their 'roadmap' defends the game and complains that critics of the game 'don't understand early access', rather than acknowledge that it's reasonable to judge a game by it's current state, regardless of it's early access label, because no label changes the fact that when a company gives you a product in exchange for money that is called a 'purchased product' and customers are ALWAYS entitled to judge a product based on the current quality of that product. Especially when the steam refund policy is that you can only get an automatic refund if you have less than 2 hours of gameplay, and there is no certainty of a version 1.0 update even ever releasing.

And I've seen plenty of early access games NEVER escape early access, or get a token 1.0 release that's at best a minor update with some bug fixes, when the developer decides they want to give up on it and move on to more profitable projects and don't want the bad PR of 'an unfinished early access game' hanging around their company's neck.

Plenty of game developers with more faith in their products release games that aren't early access and spend years updating them with additional content, features and bug fixes without the 'early access' label. Such as Stardew Valley, which released in version 1.0 in 2016 and has been constantly updated since then with additional content.

It's not fair to those developers that we judge their games by their day 1 state because they're being honest, but defend the incomplete state of a different game that has been available to buy for (random numbers, not referring to a specific game) 60USD since 2021 because it's "not released yet".

For the record.. I bought Enshrouded back when it was like version 0.6, because it looked good enough at that point to be enjoyable even if it was never updated ever again. I judged it by it's current state at the time, and recommended it based on that. I didn't hang onto it because I thought one day 1.0 might fix everything.

It's worth mentioning finally, that once upon a time, game developers did testing internally before release! They developed games for years, paid game testers to come to their office, observed them playing the game, took notes, and fixed all the bugs, added all the extra content, and did all the tweaking to game systems, all before the game was ever printed to mass produced discs or a trailer was made. It's kinda absurd we've gone from getting paid to test a game to paying to test it, and we're now at the point of defending companies who will sell products for multiple years 'before they're finished' and criticising the unhappy customers for 'not getting it'.

We should be expecting better than this and arguing for raising customer expectations back to the levels they were once at, is a hill I'm prepared to die on.

The same people 'dunking' on Nintendo and Sony will be the same people who will 'dunk' on Valve. People who think companies can just magically set prices to whatever they want and are just increasing prices 'because they can'. Folks who I assume are probably young and don't have any understanding of how supply chains work, and haven't noticed the AI bubble, or Trump's tariffs or Trump's Iran war.

I'm tired of being included in these "All of you!" type arguments.

I never once criticised Sony, or Microsoft or Nintendo, or any RAM kit manufacturers for increasing their prices. I have only blamed the AI industry and Trump's tariffs since the beginning. The same people who blame Sony or G.Skill for increasing prices, are the same folks blaming Valve here, not the other way around.

Exactly.

"I think genocide is bad and countries which commit genocide should be publicly condemned for their actions." - A statement which is apparently controversial now.

Couple of thoughts that immediately come to mind while reading that:

A) I don't think anyone should assume a ground invasion would be successful and not just a mass slaughter of US troops and Iranians.

B) The US could find and destroy anything they like but unless they start just committing genocide on Iran, they're not going to be able to destroy the knowledge, which Iran has, of how to run a nuclear program. 

C) The US is doing all of this.. because... ? ... the justification for any of this just isn't there. Iran didn't even hit first. Just because Iran might have nuclear weapons? There's no evidence or proof of that. And even if there was, so what? The US and Israel have nuclear weapons as well. And given what's currently happening, even if Iran was attempting to develop nuclear weapons, it would be hard to say now that it wasn't justified.

The rest of the world: "And we're here to tell him, that he can't."

Skill issue

Leaving this subreddit. Way too many discussions getting locked in a way that very blatantly shows the moderator's political leanings. Would not be surprised if this comment itself is deleted or something. Feel free to IM me recommendations for better subreddits for Aussies where we're free to discuss current events.

On a related note. Anyone else getting sick of the highly questionable moderating of the r/ australia subset? (Note I said r/ australia not r/ australian). So many discussions getting locked and in particular any discussion that relates to Palestine or Israel.

Nukes. Canada needs nukes.

Thicc

lol

How dare Valve make a PC that plays PC games and price it at roughly the cost of a PC. They should price it at $3 and throw in a free pizza otherwise it's doomed to fail! /s

bro bro this is basic meta ur jobber dean holster isn't even kick spinning and ur frangle mast seemingtons are waaaay outside of 67ms windows when you should be dodge jumping u some kind of idiot how do they let anyone play the game that is this bad?! LEARN UR CROWS. basic stuff dude don't you realise that mcgarnet only has a 89.3fot why are you even TRYING to turf??

Me:

.. I juusst want to jump around annnd shoooot things! 😭

Look, I think we can all agree, vibes are in the right place, no one, except some very disgusting creepy awful people we'd rather not have among us, would be against doing anything to stop people using AI apps to generate nude images of people they know. It's so many levels of messed up that it's not even worth listing them, we can all agree on that, right?

BUT.

I have to ask some questions about the details of how this will be implemented which might be uncomfortable for some to consider but are things which need to be discussed regardless.

First, how the heck are they going to enforce this?

Sure, there's low hanging fruit like banning apps that generate nude versions of photos, blocking certain websites, etc, but ... this is just a thing which AI models can do now. This is the pandora box we opened with recent advancements in AI image generation software. There are open source image generation and editing models on public websites which can be downloaded and run locally on home PCs that do this today. Preventing people from doing this in the first place might be akin to trying to prevent people from typing swear words in notepad.exe.

I don't know about you, but I don't want the Australian government to do the level of 'policing what's on our PCs' necessary for them to enforce this to the extent that they can say for sure, no one is generating images like these.

In a sense it's just the 2025 version of what creeps have already been doing for years, using Photoshop to put someone's head on a naked body. Only, at least that used to require someone who knew what they were doing, and it took longer, and was more effort, so thankfully it was less common. Now the technology is doing basically the same thing, only it's more automated and the barrier for entry is lower. It's still just as F'd, but the government couldn't stop people from doing the photoshopping either.

So at best all they can do is try to stop the distribution. But how?

Also, there's unfortunately questions we have to ask about the scope of this law and what it applies to.

For those who are sweet innocents who have never been to the dark corners of the internet, this next part might shock you but... this stuff is REALLY common for celebrities. And has been for a long time, we're talking decades.

Even before the AI, again, there was the photoshopping, 3D renders, digital illustrations, even just pen and pencil drawings.

So, I have to ask, does this apply to ... that? Is this a blanket "You can't make/distribute nude images of any real person without their explicit permission" type ban, regardless of technology, regardless of the person or context?

If so, again, this might be sad news to the more innocently minded Australians out there who don't know what these dark corners of the internet are like, but if that is what this law means, that's gonna mean a WHOOOOOLE buncha Australians, are going to be breaking the law right now today as they share around rule 30-something images of Johnny Silverhand in the buff and so on, or mods for games that remove the clothes from characters in video games which could include characters which are 3D scans of real actors, begging the question again .. does that count under this law?

OR

Is this going to be one of those "It's a law you can use to press charges against someone if you don't like something they did" type laws? Aka, it's not enforced until there's an issue, and then it's just another legal stick to beat someone with?

So if someone is a victim of some asshole using an AI app to generate nude images of them and distributing those images to friends or coworkers, and they find out about it, they can press charges?

If that's the case, I don't see how this law achieves anything we didn't already have a law for. For those with long memories, they might remember we already had a very public case of that kind involving Greens senator Sarah Hanson back in 2013. (She won btw, and there wasn't even any nudity involved in that case)

Also, again I hate to be the one asking these questions but, will this apply to strictly speaking only "nudity" or anything beyond that? What if someone makes an AI app that puts someone in a bikini instead? What about a fetishy schoolgirl outfit? Will it apply to all images deemed 'sexualised' or just nudity? Will we get a legal definition for 'sexualised'?

Again, the vibes are in the right place, but I'd like to know the details of how this will work exactly.

How about go fuck yourself and no?

What part of "We don't want to play a live service game" didn't make it through your head?

"Prime Minister, antisemitism is a cancer. It spreads when leaders stay silent. It retracts when leaders act. I call upon you to replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve, and to do so by a clear date: the Jewish New Year, September 23, 2025," he wrote.

lol mf thinks he can give our PM a deadline to change his position?

I hope Albo tells him to shove that deadline up his ass.

The thing about a recession is that the rich still have money but suddenly everything is cheaper. Because poor people are desperate to make any kind of money they can and so they'll sell at lower values. Rich people love recessions.