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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • The manipulative tactics listed in the article:

    • Consumers cannot see the real cost of digital items, leading to overspending: the lack of price transparency of premium in-game currencies and the need to buy extra currency in bundles pushes consumers to spend more. In-game purchases should always be displayed in real money (e.g.: Euro), or at least they should display the equivalence in real-world currency.
    • Companies’ claims that gamers prefer in-game premium currencies are wrong: Many consumers find this unnecessary step misleading and prefer buying items directly with real money.
    • Consumers are often denied their rights when using premium in-game currencies, tied to unfair terms favouring game developers.
    • Children are even more vulnerable to these manipulative tactics. Data shows that children in Europe are spending on average €39 per month on in-game purchases. While they are among the ones playing the most, they have limited financial literacy and are easily swayed by virtual currencies.


  • That was patched today.

    Changes to Scoreboard (TAB) and Extra Info (ALT) Previously there was a lot of crossover between the TAB and ALT modes during gameplay. In this update we have separated the behavior of these two modes to better serve different functions. The keys used for each of these modes can be swapped within Keybinds Settings.​ ​

    Scoreboard (TAB):​

    • Enables cursor mode​
    • Displays Scoreboard​
    • Displays Damage Summary​
    • Allows minimap ping and draw​ ​

    Extra Info (ALT):​

    • No longer enables cursor mode​
    • Quick-upgrade Abilities (ie. ALT+1) each of these can be individually remapped​
    • Can now more easily map ALT as an Alternate Cast button​
    • Displays extra information on HUD (ie. Zipline Speed Boost Cooldown) - we plan to expand upon this in future updates​

    https://forums.playdeadlock.com/threads/09-12-2024-update.27974/




  • What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games.

    In a choice between “you can play online until 2035” and “you can play online forever”, the answer is pretty obvious. All things being equal, the indefinite option is better. I think the problem is that all things are not equal, and making it a legal requirement that all games with online features come with a guarantee those features work indefinitely is incredibly vague and can lead to situations that outright hurt developers.

    If the devs need to provide a server binary for players to host a server, how do they ensure these servers only allow players who have purchased the game to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is forcing companies to allow pirate servers to exist

    How do they ensure people running these community servers aren’t charging money for people to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is allowing people to use a company’s IP to generate money without a licence.

    If the original version had an in-game shop where you can unlock things with real life money but the offline version doesn’t have a shop, thus making parts of the game forever unobtainable, did they follow the law? If not, then devs would have to give out paid features for free.

    Unless these kinds of details are accounted for, this vague idea is doomed to fail because no government is going to force a company to give up their copyright/IP for free. I know a lot of people have also said “fuck these giant corporations” but this also affects indie developers as well. Copyright protects small creators as much as it does large ones.