toxicitizen

I'm not sure how that even works but I have a feeling unless I want book spoilers I probably don't want to know... It's not like I don't have plenty of time to read the last two books but it's been so long that I kinda need to start over. And a seven eight book series is a little daunting considering I haven't read any novels in forever. Also I would need to grab the new book, I guess. Well, I just tracked down and dusted off my copies. If I leave them sitting in plain sight I'll probably guilt myself into starting them eventually.

They pretty much just confirm what you could already assume but it's always interesting to see this aspect of things being acknowledged. IGN sure are milking the shit out of this exclusive, though. I mean, this probably should've been a paragraph in a bigger write-up lol.

The tinybuild blog post has a bunch of updates at the end of it. The date in the url is most likely just updated automatically whenever there's one, probably so it gets bumped to the top. I doubt it was ever taken down completely. Also, the piracy comparison you keep bringing up isn't really apt in this case. Arguing that piracy directly translates to lost sales is silly, yes. But that's not even close to what they were actually saying. If you actually read that blog post, it says a bunch of keys were bought through tinybuild's own store and then they started getting hit with chargebacks and were able to trace the same keys to G2A. Which, by the way, is the actual reason why their games only show as purchasable through Steam on their own site now. They had to shut down their own store because turns out getting hit with hundreds if not thousands of chargebacks isn't exactly profitable. Pretty sure you usually get fined and end up losing money. The most confusing thing for me at this point is why you're so adamant on giving the benefit of the doubt to G2A, a company with a well documented shitty history, but have no issue making out the actual game makers to be greedy liars shouting at a non-existant boogeyman. Did video games steal your lover and run over your dog or something?

Oh, tinyBuild have taken down the blog post? I had no idea, that changes everythi-- oh wait, nope, it's still up. I guess your google fu isn't as strong as you thought it was, uh? So, you've sold legitimate keys through G2A. Okay. Congrats? And you think that anecdotal experience proves what exactly? Because it sure as shit isn't "so all the other keys must be legitimate as well!" Not remotely close to how that works. Do you also think that credit card theft doesn't happen because you've never personally done it? At some point, doubling down on being intentionally dense starts to make someone look just plain dense, dude. Not a great look when you also start accusing others of being uninformed...

???????? What's obtuse is to ignore the overwhelming evidence and act like G2A is exactly the same as the company that allows you to choose who gets your money between them, the devs and charity. Where exactly have I said that G2A themselves are committing fraud? I think you might be misunderstanding the problem here. It's their marketplace that facilitates the sale of stolen keys or keys bought using stolen credit cards. The problem is that they don't give a flying fuck and have no desire whatsoever to do anything about it. They're perfectly content to just look the other way and take their cut. When I said "Google route", I was referring to the draconian way they handle copyright stuff on YouTube. Probably should've been more specific there. I'm not "patting them on the back" for merely having a refund policy. You're absolutely right that it was overdue. I'm simply acknowledging that their refund policy is way better than anyone could've expected given their history. They could've probably gotten away with something worse than what we got. Just giving credit where credit is due.

Intentionally obtuse it is, then. That means I'm done with this discussion but just a few last points. 1) The UI for disabling G2A Shield isn't "crap", it's very deliberately misleading. Just because MS apparently did something similar doesn't make it any less shitty. 2) I only mentioned Humble in my previous post for a reason. GMG were caught selling dodgy keys for Witcher 3 and caught flak for it (rightfully so). They've since added a disclaimer on their store pages sourcing their keys, so that's something. You're free to double check (or not) when you buy from them. 3) Yes, the refunds are fairly recent but that's not particularly relevant here. They could've gone the Google route and implemented some shitty, corporate-friendly refund policy but instead they went ahead and implemented pretty much the most consumer-friendly refund policy imaginable and, as far as I'm aware, the best one of any digital distributor. To the point where devs making short games with zero replay value are having freakouts about it.

Came to post this. So it's definitely in a playable state, then. Looks a little rough, though. Fury's animations look a bit stiff to me and something feels a little...off about the environment. Just can't quite put my finger on what. Given we have no idea what kind of budget this has or what the team size is at Gunfire Games, I'll take this as my cue to manage expectations. It's pre-alpha so I won't make any assumptions here, they have plenty of time until release. But I'll make sure to not let my hype and expectations for a next-gen Darksiders run wild.

Really? You don't understand the difference between authorized retailers and gray market resellers? You'll never see Humble selling keys bought fraudulently, for a start, and your money isn't going to some random dude in China or whatever. And, of course, small companies like Devolver and tinyBuild are the ones you'll hear complain the loudest. They're the ones that will be hit the hardest by this bullshit! Where you choose to spend your money is your own business and I'm not trying to tell you otherwise but G2A's incredibly shady behavior is well documented at this point. You have to be either grossly uninformed or intentionally obtuse to claim that buying from them is the same as buying from Humble. I mean, just look at the process to deactivate their G2A Shield "protection" Anyone that's taken so much as a single UI design class can see that it's blatantly designed to confuse, mislead and frustrate you into leaving it active. Totally consumer friendly and not shady at all! As for Valve, that no questions asked refund policy sure is anti-consumer! I mean, they are far from perfect and have done shitty things in the past for sure but they are not the bad guys in this particular scenario.

Yeah, about that... I mean, if you can do it from inventory with NeoGAF's rudimentary giveaway system, surely a marketplace like G2A can handle it as well. No bearing on outside keys but those can always be identified and deactivated from the publisher's end. It makes sense for Steam to at least do what they can to stop it from happening through their own system. I'm not saying it's not shitty, just that I can see why they're doing it. Super fans and dumb rich people, I guess? Selling CSGO knives is apparently pretty lucrative. It's kinda mind-blowing. O_o

I'm pretty sure 4-packs were discontinued a while ago because of the refunds. The gifting restrictions suck but I can kinda see where they're coming from. This will at least prevent stuff bought directly on Steam to be sold on shady sites like G2A and whatnot. Also, no more regional restrictions on gifting is pretty damn cool... as long as you both live in regions with pricing that aren't too different. :/

Yeah, it's been in the top 5 on Steam all day. Steam's top sellers list works based on revenue. So, given an equal number of copies sold, a higher priced game should be ranked higher. Which means that to be above Prey it has to have sold at least twice as many copies in the same time period. The game's sales potential still has a fairly low ceiling but it seems to be doing decently all things considered. Hopefully it's at least doing better than SC did at launch. It's been a while but IIRC I think SC was somewhere in the 10k-15k range? As for Crossbell, I'm probably being naively optimistic but I have a feeling that they might have actually started working on it. They got started on 3rd very quickly after SC and no doubt the translator(s) work on 3rd has been over for some time now. I'm pretty sure the same people worked on Cold Steel and 3rd and we know that Hatsuu has taken over as editor/producer for the entire Trails series. So, either they're working on Crossbell or that team is currently not working on Trails at all for the first time in over 2 years. Another interesting thing is that we recently learned that Sara is no longer working on contract, she's now an in-house XSEED employee. Now, that wouldn't have happened unless they had programming work to do in-house. We know she's not working on the Cold Steel ports and it's probably safe to assume that she won't be involved with ports coming from Marvelous' Japanese side. That means XSEED have more non-port PC releases in the pipeline and Sara has almost exclusively worked on Falcom stuff before. I really want to believe that Joyoland deleting everything from Greenlight a few months ago wasn't just a coincidence... TL;DR:

It's the first english release and it's the original version of the game (the Sky trilogy originally came out while Falcom was still a PC-centric developer). XSEED have been going the extra mile and backporting a lot of improvements from the PSP and Japan-only PS3 versions, though. The Steam releases are arguably the definitive versions of the games at this point.

Launch trailer! Hyyyyype!

TODAY IS THE BEST DAY YOU GUYS!!!!!!! Of course, I can't play it until later because my idiot self scheduled a phone interview at 2PM today and only realized after the fact what I had done...

They're only publishing it outside of Japan, kind of like a reverse Demon's Souls. I don't think they funded development in any way nor do they own the IP. There's always a chance some kind of permanent deal was struck but it could easily be timed. They don't own it like they do Bloodborne. @TheMightyEthan More likely they'd just self-publish it on Steam like they do with all their non-contract games.

Yeah, I also read the first five books years ago. Been meaning to finish it for years. I've been anticipating an adaption for so fucking long. I'm not entirely sold yet (especially not on Roland's casting) but I can't help but get excited. I don't know if most books would necessarily work better as series than movies but this totally would, yeah. The production values kinda look rough anyway, a GOT-like HBO series would probably make for a much stronger and faithful adaptation. Also I can't quite tell what kind of approach they're taking here. I mean, they're clearly skipping book 1 (or it'll be used as flashbacks, which honestly is probably for the best). But if it's the Drawing of the Three, then where the fuck are Eddie and Susannah? I really hope they won't deviate from the source material too much...

Nah, it looks great but I don't have a PS4. It's Koei Tecmo, so I'm hoping it'll come to PC eventually.

Oh yeah, btw, if anyone owns Darksiders II and its season pass, you can get the remaster for free here.

First trailer for Code Vein from the God Eater team. I haven't really dug into God Eater yet but I'm definitely on board with Anime Souls. More Souls imitator are always welcome, hopefully it doesn't disappoint. I don't think platforms are announced yet but given the genre and UE4, I think PS4 and PC are safe bets. Maybe X1 but you never know, Japanese devs have a tendency to skip it altogether.

No no no, you gotta jump right into route C! Trust me on this, route C is where shit gets real.

Store page for Darksiders III is also live if you want to wishlist.

I was actually considering playing the first one last week but my hype for Trails in the Sky was so strong that I didn't feel like playing anything else. Kinda wish I had because the itch is stronger than ever now and there's just one day to go until Trails. It's been a while but it was something like that, yeah. It seems this is like the second one and taking place before/during the original.

Really digging that opening theme for 3rd. Might be my favorite of the Sky trilogy. Although, I still think Cold Steel I has the best one. Man, Falcom Sound Team jdk really know what they're doing. I get so fucking hyped listening to these soundtracks.

Reveal trailer!