RightHandOfIkaros

What most people actually object to is a large corporation spending countless resources to vacuum up public data in order to create a privately controlled model.

I am curious how and why this seems to be viewed differently when it comes to something like proprietary code.

For example, there are large swaths of publicly available repos of code. Some are licensed under restrictive licenses, and some are public domain. Many are hosted on the Internet, and many more are written in educational books and other such materials you can find in your local library. If a business, large or small, references publicly available information to create its own proprietary code which itself does not contain any actual instances of infringing code (just as AI training data files do not contain any actual images and therefore no actual infringing data), why is that considered okay? It is extremely rare for completely new, original code to be written especially when a publicly available, well known method already exists. Why re-invent the wheel?

What I mean is, are the people that feel the way you have written upset when they see any project, from any business, large or small, that referenced anything that is publicly available? Are they upset that the names of all the references are not listed in the credits of every project ever? What is their problem with this? Does it matter whether a business that does that has 1000 employees or just 1, since the outcome is more or less the same?

Additionally, nothing prevents private citizens from doing the exact same thing themselves. A person can go along vacuuming up publicly available data to train a model only they have access to. Would those that you talk about object to that as well?

This does not really solve the problem. Lets take Battlefield 4 as an example, because while I would like to use Operation Harsh Doorstop as an example since its more true to your idea, it would be morbidly unfair to your idea (negatively).

BF4 allows users to "rent" a server and run as if it were their own. Aside from the server machine being in the posession and ownership of EA, BF4 private server admins can implement their own server rules, kick and ban people, etc. They also have the added benefit of automatically populating in all client server browsers, as they all connect to the same server used for account storage and matchmaking. Plus, EA handles all of the server maintenance. Pretty sweet deal.

BF4 servers currently are effected by:

• Low player population, except at peak times, weekends and holidays
• Rampant, blatant cheating (like, literally teleporting flying characters)
• Botted fake player counts in the server browser (server says 64/64 players, but there are only actually like 8 real players in the server and the rest are filled by bots that get replaced by real people when they join but those bots never spawn into the game)
• Admins power tripping and kicking whoever they feel like and players that beat them in the game

Most of the servers are like this. The official servers, nobody joins those. Literally nobody. Private servers are like, 3 in 4 players are cheating. There is 1, I kid you not, 1 good server that is ran well that kicks cheaters quickly. And the queue wait time to enter that server when more than 64 noncheater players are playing is atrocious. I am not joking when I say I once waited all day to join that server just for my game to crash once I got in. Nobody wants to have that kind of experience. Especially not after a long day at work and they just want to sit down for an hour or two to have fun in a game they like playing.

Not everything can be automated, but that does not mean that only human moderation is any better.

Hm. Not sure how I feel about a company treating an artstyle like it's their own legally protectable trademark or intellectual property.

I think the specific IP they have created can be their own to protect, but not the style of artwork. Just like the art style that was popularized by Blizzard's earlier titles that were later copied in other games (such as Paladins), the artstyle alone should not be enough to initiate legal action.

When it comes to AI, I can understand people being concerned about "unauthorized use" of training data (which honestly, how is that any different from a human artist seeing an artstyle and creating art inspired by that). At the same time, this could easily be avoided by training data made by artists that mimic the artstyle of Ghibli. If OpenAI hired artists to create artwork that is not of Ghibli property but has the same or very similar artstyle of Ghibli, nobody should have a problem with that. But I have a feeling Ghibli would complain anyway.

System Shock 2?

The ending part of the game featured a space ship overtaken by flesh.

Server side anti-cheat is vastly superior to client side anti-cheat in many ways. It completely negates most cheats in the first place. There are some problems with server side anti-cheat that prevent it from being a viable solution on its own:

1. The game needs to be programmed with Server Authentication in mind from the very beginning. Refactoring a game to move authentiation from client to server would take a lot of time. Client side anti-cheat is cheaper and easier to add later on to a game.

2. Not all cheats are detected. AimBot, XRay Vision, ESP, are the kinds of cheats that Server Authentication cannot reliably detect, because the server cannot possibly determine the difference between a really good player or a cheater in just a single game. Sometimes automated systems get it wrong.

3. Server Authentication feels bad for players with high ping and packet loss. IMO, this isnt a problem and players should play on low ping servers anyway, but programming the client to predict and do the math the server would do (and the server packets overwrite the client data when it receives the server data) makes the game feel more responsive. The issue is that this can lead to a rubberbanding effect when the result of the server is finally received by the client and they get teleported to a potentially different place or just die immediately because someone with lower ping got to them before the server packets did.

The proper solution is to use Server Authentication, Client Prediction, AND client side anti-cheat. This would eliminate nearly all cheating in the game. Of course, this removes a lot of functionality from the game client and players would see this as some form of invasive DRM.

Play with cheaters, or play without DRM/Kernel level anti-cheat, pick one. Because you unfortunately cannot have both.

Piracy was never stealing, in so far as legality is concerned in the USA, at least.

Stealing requires the owner of the stolen thing to be deprived access of that thing. If someone steals your car, you cannot access it anymore, since it was removed from you by the thief.

Piracy copies your car, meaning you still can access your car but someone else can drive a copy of your car. The first example is a major inconvenience to you, the second example has absolutely no negative effect on you.

It is why instances of piracy that make it to a court of law are tried as Copyright Infringement cases, and not theft or piracy cases. When your ISP spies on you and sends you a letter after you pirate something in an insecure manner, you get sent a Notice of Copyright Infringement, not a Notice of Theft.

I think one could successfully argue in a court of law that people tend to be hyper aware on April 1st, and so may have read the terms suspecting something amiss when they otherwise would not have.

There was a video game store that once, for April Fools Day, included in its sale terms:

By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorized minions.

Only 12% of people that purchased that day responded, essentially confirming only 12% of people actually read the terms.

"Nobody reads those EULAs, and the Defendant knows that. Therefore, the Defendant cannot hide behind the EULA as a shield because the Prosecution, having clicked Agree without being required to confirm that they read through the terms, could not have possibly known what they were agreeing to."

"If you are what you agree to, your Honor, then my clients are an unknown spaghetti of legal mumbo jumbo."

"No further remarks, your Honor."

Just don't buy Nintendo.

Its not annoying when the composer knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, the Genesis, and actually all FM Synthesizer based music, is incredibly easy to make annoying sounds with.

Realistically, you and the other dozen people here on Lemmy that see this aren't going to make a difference. Its too far gone. You are free to play or not play whatever you want, but it won't make any changes to how businesses in the gaming industry monetize their products.

It would be nice if businesses cared about their customers, but money talks way louder than feelings. And there are too many stupid people that will keep paying for Candy Crush MTX.

Personally, I am okay with RNG based rewards that cost real world money if the game is free to play, as long as it offers a way to get the RNG rewards by playing the game even if it is at a reduced rate. Even if it is Pay To Win, at least reviews will tell me going into it so I can decide for myself whether I am okay with potentially playing at a disadvantage or not. In some games that won't really matter to me, such as if I don't want to really engage with PvP, for example. But other games that are PvP focused, I probably won't play unless the rewards are cosmetic only. RNG based rewards that cost real world money in a game that costs money just to gain access to or play the game that are not entirely optional cosmetics are stupid IMO, and so I just don't buy or play those games. I almost never pay for RNG based rewards anyway, only doing it for games I really enjoy or if there is a collaboration event in the game with an IP I really enjoy, hopefully letting the IP holder know I want more of that IP.

It sucks, but a loss of only 50 or so players from here on Lemmy is nothing to game publishers that gain and lose thousands more players naturally and not because of monetization per week.