There’s no denying that they played a part, but I just don’t see the evidence for saying that it’s their game or that Epic doesn’t deserve the credit.

It looks like the reviews to the archive.org upload are full of harmful links likely containing malware. Not sure about the main file.

I’m not sure what your claim is based on. Epic members including Tim Sweeney and Cliff Bleszinski are among those credited for programming and designing them.

Also, if you’re the copyright holder, no amount of contract work would take away from that, so you’d still have every right to not allow your IP to be used.

Not at all. For one, there can be no sense of national pride in a game made outside your country.

There’s no backlash when they are sexualized and exist for the male gaze. Them being complex, independent and strong is seen as a threat.

The sister was undoubtedly the better protagonist, but given the backlash to women and non-white people in leading roles even now in 2024, imagine what it would have been like back then. Ubisoft was playing it safe, and even now with Shadows they are trying to play both sides both in the rhetoric and probably in the choice of having two protagonists.

Comparing it to Wukong is unfair. Any game primed for success in China will have astronomical numbers just by virtue of the population size.

Love is love.

It’s a great game but I wouldn’t call it uplifting at all. Some of the why is already in your comment. Some people may also get frustrated by being in a loop and having to start over time after time. Some of the puzzles aren’t easy, which again may add to the frustration.

They got money upfront from Epic, then if the revenue from the sales exceeds that, they earn 88% from each sale compared to the 65% on Steam.

Not invading countries also helps.

CS2 being ranked higher than Siege and Fortnite is really misguided. It’s been almost the same game since before the internet. Siege was a welcome improvement on the same formula. Fortnite continues to innovate with new games and new modes, all appealing to a wide range of people and skill groups. Even its main mode sees drastic changes with each season. It keeps things fresh, which is vital for a live service game like those three.

That logic makes absolutely no sense. Look into Google before you take issue with Mozilla.

Blaming the West for Putin’s actions is beyond misguided.

Putin was a KGB officer who personally watched the fall of the GDR, which crystallized his distrust in the power of the people. He had close ties to the Russian mafia and oligarchs even before his presidency. Yeltsin picked him for his loyalty and willingness to disregard the law to save his boss, just as he had Sobchak.

His rise to power was marked by the false flag apartment bombings, just like the Reichstag fire. That was followed by wars and total crackdown on the local media that were independent or critical of Putin, like the NTV channel. His disregard even for his own population was also demonstrated by the response to the Kursk submarine disaster and the treatment of hostages in Beslan and Moscow. It’s also around this time that his opponents were persecuted: Politkovskaya was killed, Litvinenko was poisoned in the UK, and Khodorkovsky was locked up.

The invasions of Georgia and Ukraine were perfectly in line with the above and were needed to ensure that the Russian people don’t get too inspired by the color revolutions in the neighboring countries that spoke the same language and used to belong to the same country. Mobilizing the people against a foreign threat is also a common tactic used by dictators to distract the people from their degrading quality of life related to the lack of civil and political rights, overwhelming corruption, and so on.

Now refunded it seems. The person probably contributed to say it’s a scam, like some of the other backers in the comments.

We’ve noticed that some backer’s contributions to our Kickstarter may not have the best intentions behind them, and we want to ensure that all support is genuine and positive. With this in mind, we have decided to return the 12k SGD so that the funds can be put to better use by their owner

That would be perfectly in line with their past behavior.

Already 60% of the goal reached, with 28 days to go. 😩

We don’t know one way or another. Even if it misleads some people, that needs to be called out. The clearly defined criteria are displayed to many of those who join, yet they’re being put aside to essentially make up evidence and then turn to the really questionable definition of what is Russian that would also cover the likes of Telegram (reportedly used by 75% of Ukrainians), Google and so on, as rightly noted by someone in the group comments. They could have gone with that definition from the start, not baited and switched.

They aren’t calling for people to mount heads on spikes or review bomb, as far as I can tell.

In the context of the article, it’s not about the consequence - obviously, nobody’s getting burned at the stake - but about the how: the finger-pointing based on vibes or accusations of something done by another person.

On the one hand, I don’t want to tell Ukrainian folks how to spend their money with respect to Russia.

In that case, just look at how the Ukrainian users of the group are reacting. The number of users to have voiced their disagreement already exceeds that of the admins.

I’m not seeing any mentions of new sanctions at the link. It talks about a crypto network having been disrupted.