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STEAM | May 2016 - VAC to life, VAC to reality

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H

Hektor

Member
HP_Wuvcraft said:
I've always been fascinated as to why GAF cares if this or that game bombs or not.
Click to expand...

Some people just really want to see Pitchford eating crow after all his comments. Understandably so. Sucks for the rest of the studio ofc, but that's an the janitor on the deathstar kind of thing.

Thanks for your game btw~~
 
C

Creamium

shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
Haven't played a turn based game in a long time, but a friend kept recommending me Shadow Returns... I like it a lot, both in combat and story. I just had the first mission where I could recruit extra mercs and it spices the fights up quite a bit. Fun game, not too complex and easy to get the hang of.

btw: did anyone end up trying Slain! ? It came out a while ago, was excited for it, but it seems to have gotten mixed (user) reviews.
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Hektor said:
Some people just really want to see Pitchford eating crow after all his comments. Understandably so. Sucks for the rest of the studio ofc, but that's an the janitor on the deathstar kind of thing.
Click to expand...
Alien in the dark, you mean. An innocent bystander caught up in all the wrong ways.
ku-xlarge.gif

Creamium said:
Haven't played a turn based game in a long time, but a friend kept recommending me Shadow Returns... I like it a lot, both in combat and story. I just had the first mission where I could recruit extra mercs and it spices the fights up quite a bit. Fun game, not too complex and easy to get the hang of.
Click to expand...

Shadowrun Returns, the first one? You need to play Shadowrun: Dragonfall--it's a classic. Shadowrun: Hong Kong is pretty good, too. They have great writing and, technically, their titles have only gotten better since the first. Returns is "ok" while the latter two are "fantastic" and "good."
 
S

Soulflarz

Banned
Hektor said:
Some people just really want to see Pitchford eating crow after all his comments. Understandably so. Sucks for the rest of the studio ofc, but that's an the janitor on the deathstar kind of thing.
Click to expand...

Basically!

As for me personally, I don't care about the game, which amazes me as to how they could pump so much money into a product that the average consumer still cares so little about.
 
B

BoosterDuck

Banned
Hektor said:
Some people just really want to see Pitchford eating crow after all his comments. Understandably so. Sucks for the rest of the studio ofc, but that's an the janitor on the deathstar kind of thing.

Thanks for your game btw~~
Click to expand...

Bro, Randy McSegaThief is going to sell 10 million copies of Borderlands 3.

this was just a little project for the studio that fell flat on its face lol
 
C

Creamium

shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
LurkerPrime said:
Shadowrun Returns, the first one? You need to play Shadowrun: Dragonfall--it's a classic. Shadowrun: Hong Kong is pretty good, too. The latter two have great writing and, technically, their titles have only gotten better since the first.
Click to expand...

Yep, first one. I know Dragonfall is supposed to be even better, and I'm interested in it now since I like how Returns plays.

edit: wow the reception for Slain! appears to be brutal. I'm getting that off the wishlist.
 
M

MUnited83

For you.
HP_Wuvcraft said:
I've always been fascinated as to why GAF cares if this or that game bombs or not.



Apparently I'm making thousands a day.
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Its a bland game that always looked average at best, and trying to get into a market that Blizzard is going to dominante. People are just seeing that the game is bombing just like they thought it would, because its a bland mess for a full 59.99$, and the person at the helm is Randy Pitchford, one of the most well known gaming scammers of all time.
 
T

TheLetdown

Member
HP_Wuvcraft said:
Because it's fun to shit on professional devs for some reason. People will always side with the indie dev.

Even when one of the quotes from the article has the Alien Wasteland dev asking for money to change the name. It honestly sounds like the AW dev wanted to force a C&D for the publicity.

But once those same indie devs start talking about how piracy affects them, then they become as evil as EA.
Click to expand...

I didn't see the RPS article, which is why I was reticent to start calling for the pitchforks.

Despite this cash grab moment that he graciously decided not to report to other news sites, or that they failed to report on, there's still the appearance of the only violation being the word "wasteland" that I find pretty damn problematic.

By no means am I excusing the possibility of indie dev bullshit.
 
D

Dr.Social

Banned
LurkerPrime said:
Today in weird news:

inXile Studios (creators of Wasteland 2) C&D'd a one-man indie team's "The Alien Wasteland" due to the name.

RPS explains:

RPS gives further explanation for why this might have happened in their article, but it basically boils down to the broken copyright system. So meet the newly-christened Alien Action!


As an aside, how long until the Wasteland Angel devs realise that inXile has been profiting from their IP and take action?
Click to expand...

To clarify, inXile has to protect their trademark or they risk losing it. While you might not confuse Wasteland with an FPS called "The Alien Wasteland" not doing anything might make it harder for them to protect against a new isometric post-apocalyptic RPG called Wasteland: Reckoning or something. Also they aren't claiming they have rights to the word Wasteland in any media, just as it relates to videogames.

More info:
Failure to Police

Trademark rights may also be lost when a trademark owner fails effectively to police its mark against eroded distinctiveness, which may occur as a result of the presence of confusingly similar third-party marks in the market. For example, if many third parties subsequently begin using the same or a similar mark in commerce in connection with goods and/or services similar to the trademark owner’s after the owner has already begun to use its trademark, and the owner does little or nothing to police its mark, the mark is likely to lose some or all of its value as a source identifier in the marketplace. As a result, the trademark will become weaker, and in some cases it may lose its distinctiveness entirely.

To help avoid such adverse consequences, the trademark owner should police its mark by enforcing its trademark rights through various legal means, such as (a) sending demand letters, (b) initiating opposition or cancellation proceedings with administrative entities, (c) proceeding with litigation in the courts and/or (d) entering into licensing and/or other agreements with third parties, as may be appropriate under the circumstances. While some courts have determined that a trademark owner need not necessarily prosecute every infringing third-party use of its mark, such third-party uses can still affect the distinctiveness of the mark in the mind of the public. The optimal policing and enforcement efforts for particular marks may vary with the particular circumstances involved, such as the nature and importance of the mark, the nature of the trademark owner and the size of its legal budget, and the number and nature of the potential third-party trademark infringements.
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http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx
 
P

Phinor

Member
HP_Wuvcraft said:
I've always been fascinated as to why GAF cares if this or that game bombs or not.
Click to expand...

To re-use that word, Battleborn is a really fascinating case. Half the internet passionately hates the game and want to see it fail although most of them never even played it. The hate for Gearbox/Pitchford accounts for some of that but it seems to be a game a lot of people really want to see fail for whatever reason. Then there's a smaller population who really enjoy the game (and by game I pretty much mean the multiplayer). There's a lot of indifference too, Giant Bomb has completely written off the game, it didn't hook any one of them at all. I wonder if anyone of them has tried to learn the multiplayer part. Brad tried the MP beta for one match during a live show, didn't concentrate on the game at all and called it confusing afterwards. Hrm.

I can't even figure out why some people like the game and others don't. People who like Borderlands don't necessarily like Battleborn but there's also people like me who really dislike Borderlands but enjoy Battleborn. I also really enjoy Overwatch but don't like Paragon/Smite/any other recent game like that (be it moba or whatever Overwatch is, hero shooter?). Still, Battleborn has a tough release date and I doubt it's going to survive very long.
 
S

Soulflarz

Banned
Borderlands got boring by the presequel. It didn't even really hold me to the end of 2 and I played a ton of one. That said, continuing the style into battleborn was a bad idea.

JaseC said:
There are more keys here than owned copies of Battleborn PC. ;) (55k, to be precise.)
Click to expand...

too cruel
 
S

sadblob

Member
Creamium said:
Haven't played a turn based game in a long time, but a friend kept recommending me Shadow Returns... I like it a lot, both in combat and story. I just had the first mission where I could recruit extra mercs and it spices the fights up quite a bit. Fun game, not too complex and easy to get the hang of.
Click to expand...

Try Dragonfall and/or Hong Kong after, they are much better.
 
M

MUnited83

For you.
Trademark laws are fucking broken, and inxile has no more right to it than anyone else that used that damn word in the title of their game before, which there have been quite a lot.


Can't wait until the guy has to remove Alien from the name too! Go Trademarks!
 
H

HP_Wuvcraft

Banned
Phinor said:
To re-use that word, Battleborn is a really fascinating case. Half the internet passionately hates the game and want to see it fail although most of them never even played it. The hate for Gearbox/Pitchford accounts for some of that but it seems to be a game a lot of people really want to see fail for whatever reason. Then there's a smaller population who really enjoy the game (and by game I pretty much mean the multiplayer). There's a lot of indifference too, Giant Bomb has completely written off the game, it didn't hook any one of them at all. I wonder if anyone of them has tried to learn the multiplayer part. Brad tried the MP beta for one match during a live show, didn't concentrate on the game at all and called it confusing afterwards. Hrm.

I can't even figure out why some people like the game and others don't. People who like Borderlands don't necessarily like Battleborn but there's also people like me who really dislike Borderlands but enjoy Battleborn. I also really enjoy Overwatch but don't like Paragon/Smite/any other recent game like that (be it moba or whatever Overwatch is, hero shooter?). Still, Battleborn has a tough release date and I doubt it's going to survive very long.
Click to expand...

The only real thing I dislike about Battleborn is the god-awful character designs and how hard it is to unlock anything versus the actual amount of content in the game.

TheLetdown said:
Despite this cash grab moment that he graciously decided not to report to other news sites, or that they failed to report on, there's still the appearance of the only violation being the word "wasteland" that I find pretty damn problematic.
Click to expand...

What IX was doing was bullshit, yes, but it sounds like they were trying not to get lawyers involved. This guy basically blackmailed himself into a C&D. He wanted this to happen.

Trademark and Copyright laws as they exist right now are really dumb. It's too easy for someone to trip over your toes.

BernardoOne said:
Its a bland game that always looked average at best, and trying to get into a market that Blizzard is going to dominante. People are just seeing that the game is bombing just like they thought it would, because its a bland mess for a full 59.99$, and the person at the helm is Randy Pitchford, one of the most well known gaming scammers of all time.
Click to expand...

I honestly still don't see the appeal.

Soulflarz said:
As for me personally, I don't care about the game, which amazes me as to how they could pump so much money into a product that the average consumer still cares so little about.
Click to expand...

You contradict yourself because clearly you do if you're making this statement.
 
E

Eila

Member
Driw3r said:
Kinda weird considering that the game will be 100 % free soon. Wondering what happens to card drops though.
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If it's Free on Demand no cards for people who get it via steam store and no +1. That's what happens to Relic Hunters Zero, for example.
I beleive you can still get free steam keys for that via nuuvem.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
Dr.Social said:
To clarify, inXile has to protect their trademark or they risk losing it. While you might not confuse Wasteland with an FPS called "The Alien Wasteland" not doing anything might make it harder for them to protect against a new isometric post-apocalyptic RPG called Wasteland: Reckoning or something. Also they aren't claiming they have rights to the word Wasteland in any media, just as it relates to videogames.

More info:

http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx
Click to expand...

So I can't call a game Dinosaur Wasteland? What if I call it Wasteland of Dinosaurs? Reminds me of the Edge bullshit that went on for so long.
 
S

Soulflarz

Banned
HP_Wuvcraft said:
You contradict yourself because clearly you do if you're making this statement.
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You're right, I care about a game I saw the reveal trailer for and literally know nothing else about besides "kind of like borderlands" and Randy Pitchford is on it.
Please don't put words into my mouth X_X

why do you care so much about other people laughing at it failing?
Just saying, it's kind of silly.
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
JaseC said:
It's arguably the best stealth game in years despite having its fair share of warts (ugh, the elves).
Click to expand...

I detect no lies in this post, even if it's from an Australian
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Dr.Social said:
To clarify, inXile has to protect their trademark or they risk losing it. While you might not confuse Wasteland with an FPS called "The Alien Wasteland" not doing anything might make it harder for them to protect against a new isometric post-apocalyptic RPG called Wasteland: Reckoning or something. Also they aren't claiming they have rights to the word Wasteland in any media, just as it relates to videogames.

More info:

http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx
Click to expand...
RPS does get into this a bit, but I find it difficult to believe due to Wasteland Angel. Wasteland Kings and Alien Wasteland "infringe" but Wasteland Angel does not? It's weird, at the very least. And to be clear: I don't know about legal stuff--it just strikes me as bizarrely selective.

Now, what is the difference between them? I see two key differences: firstly, Wasteland Angel was released in 2011, long before the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter; and secondly, it has a mid-tier publisher in Miridian4. So there is a vested interest in protecting the sanctity of the Wasteland IP, but only when inXile is actively working on Wasteland games. And, of course, the latter two "Wasteland titles" are softer, easier targets for legal threats, having no publisher backing to protect them.

It's just a bad look for inXile. Especially when their games are funded by the goodwill of their fans.
 
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