She’s a backend developer

Freeciv is not free-to-play, it’s Free Software.

To be fair, Kirby Air Ride is finally getting a sequel, and that may as well be the only racing game we’ll ever need ever again.

Propaganda is powerful. You convince your followers that some classes of people don’t deserve kindness, you convince them that everything out of Hollywood is part of a leftist agenda, and once they believe both of those statements it’s very easy to spin this as further proof of the narrative they’ve already bought into.

It would not be onerous for them to continue supporting a couple of old versions of Windows, they would just have to hire a few more people to do it.

You literally did say support.

I am aware that some corporate infrastructure is hopelessly tangled up in legacy systems. But we are talking about consumer support here, which I know you know is very different.

Why would a smaller screen make framerate not matter? Textures and resolution, sure, but framerate always matters.

That’s not what I asked. You said you wanted Valve to hire people to support Windows 98. What company still supports Windows 98 like that?

Can you name any other company that supports Windows 98 in 2025?

That is not a d-pad. That is a touchpad with a plus drawn on it.

Please explain to me how a lock-in model that forces you to keep paying forever in order to keep what you already paid for is better than just being able to buy something once and have it.

Where?

Is DBFZ predatory or not?

I’m done playing your weird word games. We’ve been talking about a concrete example, one where you say this example is pReDaToRy simply because it involves DLC, and I take issue with you drawing that line. You can’t pretend you’re actually saying something else at the same time.

We can’t go back to an objectively worse model because no consumer in the world besides you would be okay with it now that a better model is possible. You cannot be serious trying to say you think we’d ever go backwards.

The current model is updating the game. Everyone gets to play the latest update even if you do not pay for the DLC.

I am also still baffled that you can somehow claim with a straight face that subscriptions are better. Subscriptions are a lock-in model that threaten you with losing everything as soon as you stop paying, so you’ll have to keep paying forever to keep your game. If anything in this conversation is predatory, it’s subscriptions!

It is not inseparable from predatory, because it is not predatory to begin with.

The idea that they should just make all DLC free is not a viable alternative.

Yes, I know how DLC works. And I disagree with your blanket opposition to all DLC ever.

I know what you said, and I know we’re on the same page because we’ve been talking about concrete examples where you say the DLC shouldn’t be allowed to be sold. I don’t know why you’re up here trying to play some silly semantics games.

No d-pad is an instant dealbreaker.

Edit: Y’know what I’ll properly expand on this. The Steam Controller failed because it tried to replace vital functionality people expect from a controller. The Steam Deck learned from this mistake and just supplemented that functionality.

TBH, the way I see it, the Steam Controller was designed for games I don’t want to play on controller, while being bad for games I do want to play on controller.

I did. I just didn’t give you the clean yes-or-no you’re prepared to posture about.

If I ask you a yes-or-no question, and you say ‘nuh-uh’, you did not answer the question. In fact, you haven’t answered a single question I’ve ever tried to ask you over the course of this conversation.

Do you play competitive fighting games at all? Do you know anything at all of this world?

Do you seriously think having to pay for every edition of SF2 and SF4 separately is somehow better than being able to continue playing against anyone even with the base game?

Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love?

You forgot your own examples include games that did not have this business model, but still plainly got made, and had major updates, and took a shitload of your money.

No, I gave you an example of a game that broke compatibility and was widely criticized for doing so. It is not a model that we should ever go back to, no one else in the world besides you likes that. The new model is better because it preserves compatibility. Do you understand the point I am making here?

I know you understand charging money for things inside a game can be abusive.

Yes, sometimes some things can be. But you’re arguing that everything is, and that is what I disagree with. And I feel that by being so aggressive towards things that are perfectly reasonable, you only end up making it harder to talk about real problems.