This is not true for games that provide a dedicated server software you can run. Games like Counter-Strike, which is 26 years old and still averages about 8,000 players, do exactly that. Although Valve provides an in-game server browser that queries a central server, you can directly connect by IP address to play online multiplayer without any help from Valve. Minecraft and many other popular games use this model. One of the things the SKG community would like is for publishers to provide some pathway to this capability to keep games playable. "Online multi-player" is not synonymous with "publisher-managed multiplayer"; it never has been and should never be taken that there's only one way to do it. For some games (such as those where match-making among a very large number of players is important) it makes sense, but is not necessary for all.

This is where it gets complicated - the SKG movement cites the game The Crew as an animus, where an online game that could have been playable offline was disabled by the publisher, despite them having developed code to make that possible (but not enabling it). Since it was shut down, the community has written software to make it playable again. One of my racing games, Dirt Rally 2.0, even in the single-player campaign mode, requires a constant internet connection, and will kick you out of your race event if it loses that connection for any reason. There's no good reason for that. Once Codemasters shuts down the server, the single-player campaign will be unplayable.

As for games developed for significantly older systems, emulation makes that a lot easier than keeping antique hardware operational. My favorite racing game of all time, Whiplash, was released in 1995 and works great in Dosbox on the Steam Deck. I still play it regularly. It took some effort, but not much - DOSBox is a well-supported and documented program - and now that it works I don't have to mess with it, and the configuration I made is portable: I can just copy the directory to another machine and play it there. My Steam Deck has games on it originally developed for the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, DOS, and Windows in addition to the native Linux programs.

Socialized only to make sure they fail, not to provide for the general welfare.

The modern democratic party is quite right of center, and that's a problem. The Democratic party is an enormous fan of corporate welfare and subsidies for industries that are aligned with their talking points. There are still a few firebrands in the party, mostly centrists like AOC and Elizabeth Warren and possibly Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar, but they took suck at the teat of irresistible corruption.

And this is not a both sides argument. For there to be a both sides argument, there have to be two sides in opposition, and the truth is that there aren't.

Except when it's not. It's not always clear at the time of purchase that the publisher has the ability to shut down the game at some unspecified future date. So "just saying no" requires some knowledge of the future that may not be available. In addition, on platforms like Steam, publishers can push updates that you *must* install to continue playing which remove features or add an online requirement that didn't exist when you purchased it, leading to it being disabled remotely when the publisher eventually shuts down the servers. The TOS/EULA generally require that you agree to all future updates to the TOS/EULA without notice or ability to opt out, so the consumer really doesn't have any actual rights to the games they "purchase" in this system.

Even if the outcome of Stop Killing Games isn't legislation that requires publishers to create tools or release code, an acceptable outcome (IMHO) would be regulation that requires transparency, labeling, and prohibits what's effectively sabotage so the consumer can make an informed decision and have some guarantee they get what they actually paid for. If a digital storefront carried a disclaimer that said "This game requires an online connection to the publisher's server to run. The publisher has not guaranteed the server's operability for any length of time" then a user would at least have the opportunity to consider that risk when purchasing. Additionally, if a regulation prevented publishers from deploying an end-of-life update (a "time-bomb") that didn't exist when purchased, that would also protect consumers without harming publishers. So there are some easy approaches here which don't burden publishers.

Personally, I'd like to see a law that stipulates that any digital good to which your access can be removed by the publisher must be described as either a "rental" or "subscription", with the length of the term clearly spelled out, with penalties for revoking access before the end of the term. That way, you can know exactly what you're getting, for how long, and can count on it being there; and publishers can't trick you into thinking you're "purchasing" something you aren't. As much as I love Steam, I'm aware this would include the entire Steam library. The most obvious downside to me is that this would likely lead to the normalization of the idea that you don't own your video games in general.

I'm HODLing my 100 Trillion ZWL. It'll bounce back any day now, you'll see!

I can't wait until the Roku crawler is just chock full of Trump propaganda

Once when my daughter was 4, I told her that she'd had enough screen time and needed to turn off the tablet, and her rebuttal was, "but my brains aren't rotted yet!"

I can't wait to see Trump plastered all over the Roku crawler.

Trump never promised to end the Ukraine war overnight. He promised to end it "on day 1," so before there could be an overnight.

A Trump pardon for his crypto bro is imminent anyway.

You want his wife to have an affair with JD Vance?

90% of youtube videos will fall under one of these prohibited categories, so youtube may as well just block the entire country.

I burned my entire Max 20x quota with one prompt this morning. Of course, number of prompts isn't the metric. It's what you ask it to do. Fable5 + ultracode "do a code review of this codebase against mainstream coding standards, focus on security, deduplication, and opportunities to improve architecture" is vague enough to run up a $100K bill.

I like XMAG as an ETF because it's SPY minus the Magnificent 7. I don't know if these AI companies are going to end up in the SPY but if they do, I hope the managers at XMAG will add them to the exclusion.