[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 5 points 2 days ago

Downloading content is almost definitely legal in Canada, and non-commercial digital distribution has never gone to court, so its legality hasn't been established.

I can't find the source, but I recall reading speculation that sharing backup copies between owners of the media is likely legal in Canada but, again, it hasn't been tried by courts, so its legality hasn't been firmly established.

Anyway, with non-commercial digital distribution not having any legal teeth in Canada, it's effectively legal and its literal legality is unknown.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 11 points 2 days ago

Depends on your jurisdiction.

As far as I know, that's never been tried in court in Canada, and there's reason to suspect that may not be the case here. (Although I'm not a lawyer, so I may be mistaken.)

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 6 points 2 days ago

You can if you own the Mario game...

... but I just downloaded a 1TB Batocera Switch image to run from MicroSD.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 16 points 2 days ago

This statistic is misleading. They have no way of knowing what people paid for those games. The "value" isn't just the Steam price.

As many people have mentioned here, most games in big Steam libraries come from bundles. It's pretty typical to get games for, like, $1-2 each in those. I regularly get 8 games for $10, of which I only really want 1. I play the one I cared about and get my $10 worth. There's no "lost value" so long as I got my money's worth from the title I played.

I take an even bigger view: if I buy 10 bundles for $10 each, and get 1 absolute banger (for my preferences) and a few others that are fun for a bit, then I'm happy. I often add 20 new games to my library in a month, and only immediately play 1. That doesn't mean I have "$400 value of games I've never played."

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 6 points 4 days ago

Indeed. As a silly example, I had a Pacman clone game that ran based on CPU cycle speed. I needed to turn the in-game speed setting way down and toggle turbo off to make it slow enough to be playable.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Sad but not surprising that governments failing to fund maintenance costs are leading to service failures. Even less surprising that a conservative government is using the problem they created to privatise profits.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 42 points 6 days ago

I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who was supporting anti-trans bigots, who were accusing teachers of being pedophiles, and (I suppose) attempting a coup. (Hard to take the last one seriously.)

Like... Of course this ended poorly. I'm surprised they paid any of the hydro bill from their camp, tbh.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 16 points 6 days ago

Sentencing hasn't happened yet; 48 years is the maximum, according to the article.

Whatever the sentence is will be ridiculous since it's just copyright infringement, but hopefully the sentencing goes to a small fraction of the maximum.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 38 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I dunno. I think there are enough things named after men.

Maybe a nice neutral woman's name... Like, Anna?

And it's more about preservation and archival, so I think it should be called an Archive, not a library.

Yeah, Anna's Archive. Great name. Let's go with that one.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 9 points 6 days ago

I don't follow. The Internet Archive only allows 1 copy of each physical book to be loaned at a time. If someone has the book you want already, then you need to wait until their loan expires. It's not like shadow libraries that allow unrestricted DRM-free downloading.

And publishers' profits are rising and don't seem to be at all correlated to library access, so of course nobody is suggesting they should close.

What am I not understanding?

9
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

Fanatical is running a Steam Deck games bundle right now. Are any of these games worth the time?

I feel like I've heard good things about Arise, but I'm out of the loop. I don't recognize many of the others by name.

Prices are reasonable, so it's less a question about if it's worth the money, more if its worth the time. (3 for CA$6.79, 5 for CA$9.59, or 8 for CA$13.69)

Terror of Hemasaurus
Jack Move
Garden Story
Castle on the Coast
The Tarnishing of Juxtia
Arise: A Simple Story
Zombie Army Trilogy
Beyond the Long Night
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree
The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
Röki
Home Sweet Home EP2
Hero's Hour
Moonlighter
Pathologic 2

31
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.

This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.

So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?

41
submitted 8 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.

Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.

I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.

The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.

What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 94 points 9 months ago

This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.

See Blender, too.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 103 points 10 months ago

Copyright has completely jumped the shark. There's absolutely no balance between the public benefit of the public domain.

30 years ought to be enough time for anyone to extract any reasonable value from an IP. If you haven't made your profit in 30 years, then let the public benefit from it.

Or at least let preservationists (data hoarders, let's be honest) keep our cultural history alive and accessible for future generations.

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blindsight

joined 1 year ago