Tom Stephens

We are permitted to state what is or is not important to us, and that will stand on its own so long as it's not imposed on anyone who doesn't share it. In my view, if it's worth doing at all it's worth putting a little effort into it. That goes for a dev studio, a modder or a gamer. I buy games because I wanna dig around a little in the interior, edit things a little. It's what I look for and then pay for.

Yep, the jars out-gas from us as silane and CO2 (no PET-ting allowed). But that kinda gas (just like methane) comes out of more than just pores. Oh, and using or writing mods to change, add or re-introduce features to the game is by design. Call it 'meta' if you like, but that process is WAD as far as I'm concerned. And there ain't nuthin' unhealthy about introducing ourselves to a little XML by digging around in ../data/config. I elevate everything I can, which really is *everything* in this game. In Fallout 4, you can use planters to put your crops and even water pumps on the roof behind protection, which you do because settlement attackers use RPGs and grenades a lot. Base design in this game should already be looking to the arrival of ranged attackers with explosives.

Well now, some of us gamers follow these things because it can mean the existence or not of their favorite games. The wary and intelligent gamer will invest the time to not just follow, but try to understand these things a little if for no other reason than to avoid projects based on the promises of people that align themselves with adverts and gambling. We don't get to be islands (unless one likes being prey), and this fiasco should underline that in heavy strokes.

One nice (if somewhat subtle) take-away is that small but on-going improvements in cores, along with any improvements in OS core scheduling, will continually improve performance of CPU-bound games, even if slowly going forward. Every tic of improvement is more frames at 4K or more time between frames for scripting or both, which is 100% good news.

That's right. But if you pre-heat the water, let the frogs scream, then lower the temp and promise to never raise it, the frogs will jump back in. A form of "escalate to de-escalate".

Uh, so my bet (and I'll give even money) is the new billing is going to go out in the first second of 2024, more or less exactly as it's already been laid out. My bet is the very point of this backpedal is to buy time by appearing to relieve pressure. Kinda like "escalate to de-escalate".

Maybe not "unreliable", maybe actually untrustworthy. The install fees in some form are understandable, from a certain point of view. And maybe there were smarter ways to raise revenue. But surreptitiously back-editing away past promises in their TOS indicates they knew they were doing something of dubious character, because the back-editing itself is of such character. And I still have to learn more about their association with advertising and gambling (avarice and vice?). The other thing I've seen attend such behavior in my 60 years is collapse. When companies (especially smaller ones, but not just) are close to failing, they do some odd things. Sometimes prosecutable things. One thing that's on my mind is how this will affect modding the game. I notice some use Unity assets. I also notice mods can double the life of a game. What wins out here?

That third option you outline would be consistent with Unity suddenly folding in the next two quarters and leaving the engine in legal and support limbo. Although there could be an extreme case of that that even prevents people installing as abandonware while Unity's assets get sorted out (fees owed being among those). I've actually seen it happen to businesses, complete with late-night shredding and moving-out sessions. Come to think of it, if you wanted to clear out the offices for a mid-day shredding session, you might call in a death threat of some kind...

Agreed, to some extent. I think the word "boycott" is a distraction. The problem is, where does a game fit in your priorities if you suspect it has no future? Unity appears to be in a death spiral, demanding more money for a product they can less support, and doing it in a way that screams "we've been planning this for a while but didn't want our customers knowing about it". Anything tied to that better be super-buoyant, if know what I mean. Hence the 'weird', hence the glance to TFP. Who knows, maybe they did see this coming and do have an option to exercise.

Are you now, considering recent events, beginning to understand why the question may have been both timely and pertinent?

Well, this is weird. I'm having problems playing the game, now, partly because I don't know if it has a future. And I'm having this weird moral issue even looking at the game knowing what kind of creatures the owners of the engine are. It would be nice to hear from TFP about this, how they plan to manage it. It could help.