Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint’s Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they’ve made some bad moves lately.

I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint’s Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they’d just made Saint’s Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.

At the point where they decided to “reboot” to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn’t get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who’d only heard of and experienced Saint’s Row 4 would get excited about.

They could’ve probably taken Saint’s Row up to 6 entries if they’d just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn’t know, I got distracted and didn’t play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could’ve probably stayed in business if they’d just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible “free to play” multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.

Given how modern AAA games are and Bethesda’s recent track history, it’s not negative to be skeptical, it’s smart.

Especially since despite Microsoft watching over them and helping them to have the most “bug free launch in history” it’s still probably going to be a hot mess for weeks to a month after launch. I want to be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Plus, the recent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 with no microtransactions or season passes, etc. has gotten peoples’ standards up, and given that Microsoft paid a lot of money to buy Bethesda, we’re aware that they’re going to have to make that money back somehow, and will probably give into the temptation to do some really player unfriendly things to do it.

Bethesda’s been going all in on surprisingly expensive microtransactions for really tiny amounts of content, like in Fallout 4 and 76, and it wouldn’t be shocking for them to continue in that direction. People aren’t being mindlessly negative, they’re looking at current and past trends and making an educated guess about the future.

It’s true. It’s why I feel that Mastodon will never replace Twitter. It’s too much of a left wing circlejerk / bubble, and they’re actively hostile to even moderate viewpoints. much less actually conservative ones.

I’m probably in the minority in this, but I believe that even people I don’t agree with should have a platform and be tolerated as long as they’re reasonable and willing to compromise and show respect, as long as they’re not racist nazi nutjobs.

The world isn’t exclusively made up of one set of ideas, and you shouldn’t shut out 75% of all viewpoints just because they don’t agree with yours, imo.

I don’t see how this works in the long run, if they have to put paid corporate drones in charge of moderation. Wasn’t the entire point of Reddit that they don’t have to pay moderators?

This kind of strategy is lose / lose. If spez want an IPO, well this kind of crap is tanking that IPO.

Given how much of a douche he’s being (and only because he has organizational power, and not because he has people skills) in the event of a disaster, he’d probably be one of the ones to bite it first, or to be sent on an mission for expendables, to be honest.

When you can’t just wave around money or org chart power to solve your problems, then people will start showing how they really feel about you. The way he’s running Reddit into the ground shows that he’s not a good leader, and the way he’s pissing everyone off right now by following in the footsteps of a huge failure (Musk) who’s also a jerk is just proving that he’s an idiot AND a douche that wouldn’t do well if society went awry.

Underrated reply. Twitter is definitely a place where a bunch of people follow a small group of famous people and content creators almost like lemmings. (The irony that lemmy isn’t like despite users being called lemmings isn’t lost on me)

Mastodon is a bit better, but also strangely seems to be focused on big names and groups as well, just different ones and to a lesser extent. It’s one of the reasons I spend less time on there and more on Kbin / Lemmy.

On the positive side, it’s from Mastodon that I learned about Kbin and Lemmy to begin with.

What would happen if someone changed their real name to Beefsteakcowboy? I’m actually genuinely curious. I think some of the malicious compliance types actually would, to be honest.