I'm gonna be honest, from what I've played, it honestly seems like the people complaining about the party members hitting on them too much have just been clicking options without fully reading them. It kinda sounds like the writer here inadvertently started romances with every single party member.

Yes, if you get their opinion of you up high enough, they will open up the possibility of romance- but you can tell them that you're not interested in them in that way, and the topic will never be brought up again. And yeah, the game is considerably more sexual than a lot of other RPGs. I don't think there's any denying that. But the author does make a good point in that it disrupts the usual structure of sex in video games. To me at least, in a way, sex in BG3 feels like it's part of the world; rather than something that just exists for some late-game cutscenes.

Rockstar's brought them just to shut them down, I'm calling it now. Probably cheaper and more reliable than pursuing legal action for the same result.

My advice is work out where you draw the line, and don't cross it.

I'm gonna be honest- if you're buying games through Steam, you're already giving money to a deeply unethical firm: Valve. Valve takes a 30% cut of all transactions on Steam. Valve is also the studio that introduced lootboxes and similarly predatory microtransactions to the western market, and continues to profit from them to this day.

Where I draw the line is when a studio drops below the already low bar set by the industry. When a studio sexually harasses an employee to the point of suicide. When most of the game's development cycle is pure crunch. When a studio puts predatory microtransactions into a singleplayer game.

I also draw the line when a game (or any other work of media, for that matter) is directly giving money to bigoted scumbags. If a studio employs bigoted scumbags, that person is getting paid whether or not I buy the game. But if a studio is making a game based on the IP of a bigoted scumbag, they're getting a cut of each sale. When a copy of that game is brought, they're getting a bit of money they wouldn't have got if the game wasn't brought.

If that's the case, I figured it was "Marxist-Leninist", which is what most of them prefer to describe themselves as.

Some people are just spiteful shitheads. Also, there's been a bit of a wave of DDOS attacks against US-registered sites lately- Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction website, got DDOSed a few weeks back. Seems like they're going after any site that doesn't have good DDOS protection and is based in the US.

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. I think there's an anime adaptation.

Stellaris. It's been "that game" for me practically as long as I've been into gaming. I've got nearly 1000 hours on Steam alone.

I've not been buying Ubisoft games since the sexual harassment scandal back in 2020, and this only reaffirms my choice not to buy anything from them. It's not just scummy, it's pointlessly scummy.

Admittedly, physical copies of games don't resolve this issue either: legally speaking when you own a physical disk, all you own is the disk itself- not the contents. The only way to actually fix this issue is better consumer protection laws.

Called it. I'd be prepared to bet that in a few more weeks, Meta's just gonna quietly drop the idea of ActivityPub integration all together. To me at least, it always seemed like the whole "planned Fediverse integration" for Threads was just them trying to jump on what they saw as the latest buzzword bandwagon.

Had Threads been released a few months earlier, you can bet they'd have been talking about "Metaverse integration" instead.

I feel the two big reasons are:

1. The average user of a site like Reddit probably hasn't noticed any significant changes; or if they have, they just don't see them as a problem. So they don't have any significant incentive to emigrate to another site. On the other hand, people who are tech-savvy notice the changes; and decide they need to move.

2. To a lot of people, the Fediverse is just not as convenient as centralized sites. People who are more tech-savvy and/or use Linux, are willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience in exchange for using a site they see as better.

It's also worth keeping in mind that right now, the Fediverse is still in its early days. Every site in its early days generally has a broadly similar userbase- people who are familiar with technology and willing to put up with some inconvenience because they see the potential.

I agree. All the Fediverse is to the Silicon Valley firms is the current buzzword. Like you said; if- and to me, it's a question of if and not when- Fediverse integration gets built into Threads, it's gonna be limited. My bet is that somehow they're gonna make it so that Threads instances can only federate with other Threads instances.

And that's if it exists at all. I feel there's a considerable chance that Meta just throws away the Fediverse integration idea. Either it's too much effort for too little profit, or some new buzzword comes along for them to chase.

I'm pleased to hear that they're moving. Fandom's had a monopoly on the community-created wiki space for far too long, and it's had a dire effect on the usability of so many wikis. It's like they're trying to make their site everything but a easily usable resource for community wikis.

On a related note, I highly recommend the "Indie Wiki Buddy" extension for Chrome and Firefox. When non-Fandom/Fextralife wikis are available, it'll direct you to those instead; and when they're not, it'll allow you to view the Fandom wiki through a much more usable mirror.