Quote from the article: “The inclusion of intrusive DRM softwares [sic] like Denuvo is a choice that yields an unfair punishment on the consumer,” Running With Scissors says. “Respect the consumer, make a game they want to play, and you will never feel the need to fight piracy. The gaming industry deserves a better future, fight for that.”
Running With Scissors is a "legendary" developer?
Postal was a violent mess that didn't age well.
Postal 2 was a buggy mess that also didn't age well.
After that, it was just legitimately bad games on top of the humor not aging well. (They literally don't even acknowledge Postal 3)
Seriously, who the fuck would label them legendary? They've been a broken mess for over a decade.
I'd label them legends in the sense that they're probably one of the game studios I know by name the best even though that's all they have to show for it. Postal 2 for as bugged and edgy as it is, is an extraordinarily famous game.
know by name
Sure
know the best
Ehh.... Even putting aside things like Nintendo.... Let's just say I know the names of actual developers on several small studios, including bad games, and I have no idea of a single person who made Postal
The Titanic is a legendary ship, but it wasn't a very good ship
You're not the target audience, the target audience is edgy teenage boys. Postal 2 was the perfect game for 13 year old me.
You're right labeling them as "legendary" is just weird tho.
I'm honestly disappointed to see people disrespecting two absolute classics in such a way.
I can understand not liking the first postal, but postal 2? I'm afraid there is no hope for you
Glad to know you never grew out of your edgy gamer bro stage. Being able to pee on things is peak gaming, amirite? /s
I'm literally saying this as one of the few people who watched the Postal movie more than once simply because it had David Foley in it and I'm okay with bad movies.
Pretty much, yeah. I don't feel the need to posture as somehow intellectually superior to a game that is designed to be fucking stupid. I appreciate and recognise all art for exactly what it is.
It's more that there's actually games that rise to the level of great art that are designed to be fucking stupid, like Katamari Damacy, which leans hard into absurdism, and is often quite funny, but more importantly the gameplay is original, brilliant, and fun. The art direction in KD is also off the charts quality, especially the music, all of which was written for the game.
Look, I loved Postal 2 back in the day (I always sort of rolled my eyes at Postal, but 2 seemed less serious and more tongue-in-cheek). I might even replay it someday, but it's not great art. Especially now it's ugly, it's clunky, more importantly it continues to be a buggy mess. Not even a Gary Coleman cameo could save it. They were fun games for what they were and for the time they existed in, and it's okay to remember them for that, but it's a little absurd to just act like the world hasn't moved on and that they were great art to begin with. Art direction was bad, level design was bad, there was a lot of bad stuff about the game, beyond even getting into the edgelord shit.
Bad art is okay. I love B-movies, but we don't have to pretend they're anything other than what they are: B-movies.
I'm sorry but that is exactly why postal 2 is good. Unpretentious, offensive, provocative, unpolished raw art designed to generate chaos - whilst simultaneously having that certain charm which is impossible to put into words (hence the cult following) - which is exactly what it did. All of that without punching down (OK there was a bit of dodgy stuff, but for the time period it isn't too bad). Truly one of the greats and you can't change my mind, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
Yeah, it's fine to agree to disagree, but just one caveat
OK there was a bit of dodgy stuff
Man this game came out two years after 9/11 and went whole hog on the "all muslims are terrorists" stereotype. It punched down quite a bit.
Just my opinion, but that was an intentionally outrageous caricature of the narrative being served by the US government, and in fact the way many americans viewed Muslims at the time. Or it could be outright racism/sectarianism but idk I haven't looked into it at all. Thats the beauty of postal 2 I guess
but that was an intentionally outrageous caricature of the narrative being served by the US government
I actually agree with you here, but I had a serious experience years later that changed my mind on the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for folks like us who have any kind of media literacy to understand that it's maybe not meant to be making fun of Muslims, but rather America, but...
GTA 5 has this torture scene, right? It hit me like a brick wall one day when I met people who read that scene way, way, way differently than I did. I had read it as an indictment of torture. The problem is, there's way too many people who think that scene is cool as fuck and want to do that kind of shit in real life. It's like the people who look up to Scarface from the movie Scarface. Like these characters aren't good people or people to look up to, but because America is full of violent uneducated fucking yokels you had a bunch of absolute fucking idiots taking the exact opposite message from it. ( I mean, just look at Trump voters...)
You can't control how others interpret your art, and if you're not clear enough, you might end up in a similar position as the people behind Postal 2 and GTA 5, where you have a lot of folks totally misinterpreting what you're trying to say, and then deciding it means vile, horrible things are not just okay, but cool.
It's actually something I worry about a lot in life, because I've had so many times where I thought I was teaching a person one thing, but it turned out I was accidentally teaching them something horrible. In a country with basically no media literacy and an average 7th grade reading level, we can't actually take it for granted that absolute fucking morons might misunderstand us.
The problem in particular with Postal 2's caricature of the views of Muslims in America is that functionally, most Americans who played the game never understood that intent or cared. So when it came down to it, they further entrenched those ideas in the American consciousness, instead of them being read by most people as a critique. Was that their intent? No. Does it matter that the opposite happened? Yes.
That's a valid take, and actually explains why a large number of people will never understand the nuances or even primary message of art. For example, conservatives discovering the true meaning of "killing in the name of" by rage against the machine.
I suppose RWS knew the consequences of this, which reveals the nihilistic backbone of the game's theme.
I'm not sure they knew the consequences, I think at the time, like me, they actually had more faith that the majority of Americans would read it as what it was. As a young person, I definitely thought there were more thoughtful people.
It's easier to critique now, 20 years on, because we're not experiencing the same things the video game industry was at the time. From the insufferable Jack Thompson to Hillary Clinton wanting to ban GTA over the leaked Hot Coffee code that wasn't in the main game, but locked away in files inaccessible to most, the industry was under attack and being blamed for all Americas ills. Several games, but mostly GTA and Postal, were holding up a mirror to American society and saying things similar to what I said in my last comment: "America has a bunch of ignorant violent gun-toting people living in it, and they were there before video games were, it's a violent consumer and celebrity obsessed society, so America maybe you need to sort your problems first before blaming us." At the time, a fair stance to take, but 20 years on, a decision that lead to a lot of negativity and more mixed feelings on the legacy of the game due to it.
It was easy to think back then that acceptance of gaming in the mainstream wasn't a given, but games now out-profit movies, and some of the biggest "blockbusters" are games. We were honestly probably worried over nothing.
games can be art, not all games are, and not all deserve respect
While I'm not fond of the company, and perhaps legendary is a bit excessive, they're still a big name that made remarkable videogames. With Postal 2 they nailed it, can't say about the other 3 because I've never played them.
Denuvo is the apex of a long history of bad choices.
Maybe actually sell us the games in a way we really own it, without any sort of online activation/account/telemetry/data-gathering like when we could buy a disc and just use it, and it should all be ok.
I feel like a dinosaur every-time I think this nowadays, but what is so problematic with the "own as in physically own" that is so hard to implement? If they want to provide a service, sell a service.
In the past I used pirate versions of games I bought just to be able to play them offline, or because I did not agree with the terms of service. It is so much for our info, it goes beyond just knowing you are the real owner of the software copy: it comes to the point where it looks like it's to guarantee we are not its' owner.
Now some DRMs even destroy gaming performance and its just faster to use 'ked versions. I hope it changes somehow.
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.
"Postal" is such a steaming pile of edgelord shit that even Civvie11 doing videos on the franchise doesn't make it any more bearable for me.
Critical support for this developer's message here, that said.
I appreciate Postal 2 because the premise is kinda funny. It's deliberately designed so you can beat it without doing any violence at all. You're given tasks like get milk, pick up your paycheck, etc. And it involves standing in lines or people berating you. You're stuck doing tedious annoying repetitive tasks, or you can get a flamethrower. I think standing in line to get Gary Coleman's autograph takes 90 minutes if you do it normally.
Otherwise it's very silly early 2000s edgy white guy dudebro humor
You're stuck doing tedious annoying repetitive tasks, or you can get a flamethrower.
That premise, while cute, hasn't aged well for me. The ever-rising number of chanlords shooting up their schools (and elder chanlords murder-suiciding their own families) because no one would blow them behind the bleachers (or because the wife left him or the kids won't call anymore) sours the premise of "wouldn't it be funny to murder everyone that mildly annoyed you" white guy dudebro humor for me long ago.
"Yo its a video game"
Yeah, and that changes nothing about why I don't like it. You're giving a lazy thought terminating cliche here.
EDIT: Christ, you activated a long dormant alt account just to stan for your edgy video game? That's just sad.
This is my only lemmy account and I made it before reddit killed 3rd party apps as I quit going on there. Going through my post history to try and judge me is something weird to do though
Going through my post history to try and judge me is something weird to do though
Rising from dormancy while otherwise doing nothing with that account, just to announce how mad you are that your edgy game wasn't to my liking is weirder to me.
"Yo its just an opinion"
I comment when I have something relevant to say and typically delete mean shit after typing it out cause morons like you aren't worth my time.
Surely someone must be a moron if they don't like your edgy video game! What an emergency! And I'm so not worth your time that you're still replying, you foaming frothing edgy gamer stereotype.
Have a nice life man. Hope you find something you can enjoy your time at instead of whatever it is you're doing.
Your passive aggression and petty concern trolling attempt, because I didn't like your edgy video game, is noted and will receive all the consideration it deserves.
Even the devs hate denuvo. It slows down the build times and makes it hard to debug.
Isn't that a contradiction? Nobody is threatening them to implement Denuvo. It's a choice.
Again, the developer chooses to work with these publishers beforehand, right? Or are you saying that developers do not have a choice whether or not to implement Denuvo, even though they hate it?
They might not prefer it, but it's not like they had a gun on their head.
Again, the developer chooses to work with these publishers beforehand, right?
have you ever been employed anywhere in your life? have you ever had to pay bills, rent?
Yes, of course. But what has that anything to do with employees? Developers are not employees, they are the developing company.
what? that's just false, developers are people, they are employed to develop the game, usually their employer is the game studio.
i think what he means is that the "developer" has the power because he "develops" the games and without him the games can't be "developed"
it's a silly way of mistaking a role for the individual that fulfills it. the role is necessary... not that particular individual
What is it with clowns like this digging their heels in and blaming literally anything but the precious MBAs that are plaguing and ruining literally everything about modern society.
the developer chooses to work with these publishers beforehand
What kind of paradise are you living in?
so whenever your boss tells you to do something you think is not the correct course of action you just quit right? you just leave your job without having another one lined up and probably risk losing your home, all because your boss told you to this thing you find annoying, you don't have a choice to work or not work, the choice is to work or starve, which is not a choice.
even if they do hate it and consider it to be the work of the devil, they still don't really have a choice, game development is a really competitive industry, if devs aren't leaving their jobs when the studio makes them overwork 80 hour work weeks right before release for a month in order to hit the deadline then they're definitely not leaving just because they hate having to implement denuvo.
but it's not like they had a gun on their head.
they do have a metaphorical gun in the form of bills that need to be paid...
Not if you work for a massive publisher.
edit: or if you publish under one. It's likely in your contract. Devs really don't want to use it, but they are required to do so.
Release a DEMO, like the old days. So we can DECIDE FOR OURSELVES!!
Its a simple fucking technique. We only pirate to try, if its shit - then fuck you. If its good - then you have a purchase.
I mean I just pirate it and play the pirated version lmfao.
No sense in paying money at that point
That's the problem though. They want you to commit to a purchase and hope that you forget about your 2h grace window
Actually yes.
In my childhood it wasn't very easy to find a licensed copy (TBF, even pirate copy sometimes), but demos would be distributed with magazines etc.
And after playing a demo which you like a licensed honestly bought copy becomes emotionally much better than piracy.
It was a working mechanism. For games which are not crap anyway.
I think the best way is to just have basic piracy detection, if someone trips it, then have a message that you can get past appearing guilt tripping them for it lmao
Back to OG times in gaming where you would have stupid hats saying pirate or other weird things happening in game like not being able to complete it if it was cracked, good times.
Crackers: We don't do it for the piracy, we just like the challenge.
Denuvo: Try this one then.
Crackers: Too hard bro, at least give us a chance!
I acknowledge that this isn't going to be a popular opinion in a piracy sub, but the main reason people hate Denuvo is that it works.
It's basically killed the entire game hacking scene, because by the time they break it, nobody is interested in the game any more. There's like one person left that can do it, and they're more than a little bit odd.
It may be "anti-consumer", but you know what was worse? All the other shit they tried on PC. Always online bullshit. Single player games that you couldn't save any more if your connection wobbled. Actual rootkits.
I haven't pirated any actual software since the 1990s (too cowardly) but my hatred for Denuvo and the like burns with unsurpassed intensity. I will never knowingly buy a game that includes it. "Anti-tampering" indeed. I'm not sure if that shit should be legally allowed at all, but certainly not in ordinary mass-market PC games.
It does require you be online, and it is essentially a "rootkit." Its malware features are more polite and better hidden than some of the worst of what has been tried before, but that just adds to the danger that it might be seen as acceptable by people who don't know any better.
Death to the concept of intellectual property and all but I've never actually felt Denuvo making problems for me when I played a game using it, you're right it seems to be working as advertised.
I'm still hoping someone to crack it in a more reliable and fast manner, fuck large gamedev companies and their profit margins.
I've definitely played games that used it, and I wouldn't even have known without the handful of negative steam reviews shouting about it.
I acknowledge that this isn’t going to be a popular opinion in a piracy sub, but the main reason people hate Denuvo is that it works.
You act like this is some hidden secret lmao. You should change your name to Captain OBVIOUS.
It is bad for the consumer... but the alternative is instant cracks, as seen with a lot of games on r/Crackwatch that don't have the DRM.
Denuvo is the first software in a long time that has been able to successfully stop the supposedly inevitable march to cracking. It's a miracle that more AAA devs don't use it, since it works so well. (EMPRESS aside)
You can hate me all you want for saying this, but the war against piracy, for the most part, has been won.
