ofc the brits were the common foe, that doesn't mean russia didn't support the us to become a good counterweight to them, which made perfect strategic sense, and both countries had good relations for well over a century. russia provided open and strong diplomatic and political support all the way and during the civil war sent 2 fleets, which didn't engage in combat but did deter french and british interference.

btw, if they hadn't done all that you would possibly still be a colony, you ungrateful and ignorant moron. i'll leave your other delusional ramblings about dictatorships, evil villains and imaginary conquests to yourself in your city upon a hill. beware of the ghosts.

from the american revolution all the way to the civil war, where they supported the union? who do you think the us bought alaska from? even during the cold war they somehow managed to negotiate strategic arms control and joint space and scientific projects. they're not natural enemies, although many in the us think so.

they actually profiteered quite a bit from the ussr collapsing, specially with yeltsin. they took over very lucrative privatizations on massive scale, pretty much free access to natural resources and energy security, they got a massive market for consumer products, cashed in old debt from the ussr and expanded their political influence to great extent, not to mention the lucrative grift of rampant corruption underlying each of those aspects. putin managed to throw a wrench into most of that, which is probably why he is so hated. this is exactly what they wanted to restore with this new operation of destabilizing/fragmenting russia via ukraine.

so you want war. have you thought of enlisting? macron, starmer, mertz and von der leyen indeed seem to agree. but they're on the way out, and not in a gracious way. besides, it wouldn't surprise me that war is indeed on the horizon, but between europeans states rather than against russia.

... and why would that be, right? you might want to revise european history, particularly german (and uk) in the early last century.

trump could be correctly seeing this (it's hard to know what really goes on inside his head), it would be consistent with his campaign against forever wars, and that would be the wider point of his attempts to reconnect with russia. the us and russia have been long time allies in the past and it would be in the interest of both to have a good relationship, there would be money to be made and it would promote stability on the old continent. if that is his true intention, however, he faces several problems: first he has a lot of resistance at home, from the atlanticists, neocons, the intelligentzia and the mic, which are also his natural political enemies, second by a majority of the public opinion and the media indocrinated for decades with soviet-communist-putin-bad, compounded by the fact that his political capital is waning for several reasons, third by the clusterfuck in ukraine he "inherited" and where particularly the european neocons will sabotage any attempt to reach a peaceful resolution, and last but not least, this will be a very complex process where he would need to tread very carefully and he has the diplomatic skill of a tyrannosaurus rex on acid.

it's really a long shot but it would be positive for the world. there are other subtle indications that he might be actually meaning it. e.g., he has been quietly deescalating the tensions in bosnia/herzegovina which the atlanticists had been spinning up again. he might be indeed playing the long game but it is not at all clear that he can pull that off.

user opinion isn't the same as a required "this game is a rip-off" disclosure sticker on the game. that doesn't exist and game platforms generally don't care if a game is a reskin or not, they'll let the consumers figure that out. but they do care to flag e.g. "adult content" because there are concrete legal implications, which is mostly the same motivation behind "includes ai" for potential copyright violation claims, although that's still a debated thing.

i don't think he's talking about opinion, but about platforms being required to prior explicit disclosure from developers. public opinion and user reaction must be dealt with no matter what. in particular he's talking about steam which has very good refund policy and is notorious for review bombs. true, epic store isn't up to the same standards, but they have faced backlash online just the same.

is that a new thing? people have been happily paying $39.99 for a single cosmetic element for a good while, a bunch of pixels. i think that's nuts, but people do what people do.

this is the crux for me. you can have "ai-generated slop" and you can have ai as a tool used in development, even in art. just like with any other tools what determines the quality of the outcome isn't the fact that the tool has been used, but rather how. if you make a fine game that people enjoy then good for you, and it is irrelevant to me if you used generators for 1%, 10% or 100% of your process, just as if you used maia or blender or paintbrush. it's how you do it that will matter. mediocre "ai slop" will be roasted and give you a bad rep, prompt refund claims and if it includes copyright violations it will likely be sued.

imo that has little to do with a required "includes ai" sticker, nor does that help much in this regard. that's what i think is just political games because it is a new and controversial field.

flappy birds? X'D

let them try! you say below "A truly bad game won't sell no matter it's cost.". while i have some reservations with that assertion i think it largely applies here. and i would add "no matter how much ai was involved".

i don't know. i used "politics" in the philosophical and more abstract sense, not really picking any sides. "ai" is a new thing that will have an impact, it's not going away and the discussion about that impact and how to deal with is in nature political no matter what side you pick. different people will spin different narratives suiting their preferences and concerns, that's business as usual. what i do say is that '"uses ai" tag should be required!' doesn't really deal with the impact and is empty politics, a bandaid at best. in particular steam uses it to shield themselves from potential liability in copyright claims, by their own admission.

sounds about right. then again, fundamentally i would agree with him. we don't tag games for being copycats or reskins, musical content for using autotune, media for being fx filtered, etc ... and the offer is literally flooded with those and everyone finds that's normal. we correctly assume that those are just tools of this age, even if they were unimaginable just a few years ago, now they are bread&butter. well, ai is the new kid in the toolbox, that's just how it is and that cat isn't going back into the bag.

tagging games for using ai or any other tool is right now a political statement that aspires to become a societal norm, and i don't think that's warranted either. that narrative is a political tool and at best resistance of affected parties in an inevitable transition, it's reactionary and won't survive the passage of time.

ofc this ceo wants to spin this counternarrative to his own benefit as you would expect, that's what ceos routinely do, but as it happens in this case his basic point is still correct. immo.

s/forced/forceful/

interesting.

are you implying that the 2014 coup wasn't real?
that nato push and meddling wasn't real?
that the civil war resulting form the discriminated oblasts declaring independence wasn't real?
that the ensuing war crimes weren't real?
that the western military buildup wasn't real?

well, that's all documented, even if you refuse to look at the evidence, and it more than enough explains a forced reaction, although justification is another matter.

i would gladly have a look at the evidence supporting your claim, if there is some. i see none.

i usually don't disclose my sources in certain forums (like this one). i do wish they had greater audience, but they are honorable people doing honest and thorough intellectual work, research and divulgation and precisely for that are at high risk of being trolled, doxxed, canceled, deplatformed or even summarily (and illegally) sanctioned by groupthink brigades or the oh so freedom loving eu commission, et alia.

you otoh just quote here this kind of delusional nonsense verbatim. it only takes one simple search to know exactly what twitter cesspool of the day you're nurturing your rotting brain with. do you now understand why i almost never reply to you, except when i'm in the mood of a bit of cheap trolling? i need to be a fair bit tipsy to bother trolling some helpless sod like you. take care.

are you a certified viber? how many certifications would we be talking about?

yes? for several reasons, including sanctions. it's still a net exporter, and has just switched trade partners. besides subsidizing, promoting domestic machinery and alternative crops, etc. sensible thing countries can do instead of ... conquering land ffs. from what fairy tale land did you come from?

you might be a case in point? :-)

typo, should read: war crimes by western ukranians against eastern ukranians.

that's a lie, and a very stupid one. prove it. it ignores completely what ukraine is, the developments from 2014 on, the government toppling, the nato poisoning, the civil war and the war crimes against western ukrainians (cultural russians). that's why russia invaded.

russia has more "land" than any country in the world, they don't need and want more. but they won't have nato on their border and fascists discriminating ukrainian russians. they encircled kiev to stop the banderites, either by forcing them to reason or by toppling them. that didn't go well, but the banderites again listened to boris and the cia and decided to take on russia. risky and costly move, with dire consequences.

trump has nothing to give, russia has been liberating those oblasts on its own, with blood, and will do so until they finish or people come finally to their senses.

trump is desperate now because nato is losing faster and faster and that shit will fall on his orange imperial head. he's in a hurry, throws deadlines and tantrums around. putin has said, quite calmly, that while the "plan" is an acceptable starting point for negotiations, they are happy with how things are developing on the ground. in trumpspeak: they hold all the cards. they don't care what ceasefire nonsense ukraine and the coalition of the whining keep blabbering about. either a proper security deal is reached, nato gtfo and western ukraine is neutralized for good, or they'll do it themselves by force. everything else is just theatrics, corrupt politicians trying to save their asses.

the smo is actually nato's fault, more precisely mainly the us and uk. europe jumped on the bandwagon pretty late, but will be the one left holding the bag because the whole thing was a monumental flop and russia prevailed. yeah, we will isolate them! we will crush their economy! that went well ...

another brilliant idea. we will outmerc them!!! good luck. anyway, european elites still in denial don't need to worry much, they can salvage their capital to elsewhere. europe however will soon become the new third world, if ordinary europeans aren't called to arms to give their lives for their lords, that is.

what would they want that shithole for?

it is. european elites had already fucked up its industrial base in favor of rents and stocks a while ago, then definitely sentenced it to death with project ukraine and who should be to blame now? ofc china. it's testicles all the way.