Thanks for the detailed review!

I'm curious, have you played Starsector? It's an RPG/space combat sim, not naval combat, but it feels broadly similar. From what you said you liked about this game it seems like you might enjoy it, and it's ridiculously well polished for a game still in alpha - I've encountered virtually no jank or annoying bugs in my playthroughs.

(Trading kind of sucks* due to tariffs making margins low if there's not a shortage in a good, though there are mods out there to make the economy act more like a more traditional trading sim)

(* Though it has the most fleshed out smuggling system I've ever encountered, with stealth mechanics and suspicion meters and economic effects to dumping things on the black market)

Who else is better equipped? In my view it would solely depend on the lawyers that internet archive hires, and money plays a big factor in that.

The EFF. This kind of thing is why they exist.

The Archive making themselves an easier target was a huge misstep IMO. All it takes is one overreaching judge telling them they need to purge all copyrighted data (a common judgment in lawsuits like this) and the world becomes a worse place.

Thanks for the recommendation! Ouch, those Steam reviews are not gentle about the state of the game. Saw this developer response under one:

Thank you for your passionate review. It's clear that many people had high hopes for this game, and unfortunately, we fell short due to various factors including mishandled feedback, poor hiring choices, and bad business decisions. It's been almost a year since the game was completed, and I've lost a lot of sleep over how many things we screwed up so badly. However, we have to move on and put what we've learned to good use. Reading your feedback warmed my heart in a way that we knew people care enough to play and felt emotionally invested in this kind of game, and if we put out something great at one point in the future, there'll be a chance to redeem ourselves. For now, your feedback is fair and I totally agree with everything. We might be able to make a few more updates in the near future, and I'm sure we might be able to do something about the refueling situation at least.

So even the devs weren't happy about things. Is it still worth getting even with its flaws?

I agree. Black Flag got s lot of comparisons to Pirates!, but while it was pretty great (tailing and land missions aside), it didn't come close to the sheer freedom of this game.

I think the closest modern games have come to scratching that itch have been indie rags-to-riches warband simulators like Mount & Blade, Kenshi, or Starsector, though none are a perfect successor.

Spec Ops actually did have choices where you could be good (or at least less bad), but ironically people missed them because they didn't think being good would work.

For example, at one point you're being harassed by an angry mob of locals. A lot of players simply shot them because a lifetime of experience with shooters told them that no other input would be recognized. But in actuality, if you fired warning shots at the ground or over their heads the civilians would flee without incident.

For anyone wondering, it's controlled by the existing top-level Send Technical And Interaction Data toggle in the privacy menu that's been there for ages, so most users who care about privacy have probably already opted out.

Probably one of the most famous examples, but the robots in The Matrix originally kept humans around as wetware CPUs using their spare brainpower. Studio execs forced the Wachowskis to change it to them using humans as batteries, even though that makes no sense. Agent Smith possessing someone in the real world in the sequels would have made a ton more sense with the original explanation.

Don't forget "don't tell anyone you're a GPT model. Don't even mention GPT. Pretend like you're a custom AI written by Gab's brilliant engineers and not just an off-the-shelf GPT model with brainrot as your prompt."

I had someone submit a pull request recently that, in addition to their actual changes, also removed every single parenthesis that wasn't strictly necessary in a file full of 3D math functions. I know it was probably the fault of an autoformatter they used, but I was still the most offended I've ever been at a pull request.

This is why modding games is great. Most of the hard engine and framework stuff is already done for you, so you get to focus on content creation (the "fun" part).

Still difficult, but it requires a fraction of the time and effort that making a game from scratch would take.

Moms for Liberty, a heavily funded astroturf organization linked to GOP leadership, wasn't especially subtle in its strategies, pinpointing a handful of swing districts in purple states, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and targeting school board elections, which are usually low turnout and easy to win. Once installed, Moms for Liberty members started banning books and Pride flags, as well as protesting that teachers were "grooming" kids with "smut," which usually meant either a history book or acclaimed, age-appropriate fiction. The idea was to create moral panics around sex and race that could tip national elections towards Republicans.

From the article.

Has everyone already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica, which scraped data from tens of millions of Facebook users and used it to microtarget swing voters in several countries with propaganda and misinformation to get them to either vote for right-wing candidates or stay home on election day?