Even if they totally took this in stride and did all the right things, the moment will still be latched onto by right wing outrage farmers.

“How much are Bethesda paying you?" Bethesda would never have the technical competence to secretly pay journalists without getting caught.

Another day, another weird hill for Nintendo to die on.

We’ve always known Bethesda was terrible at squashing bugs. Well, I can’t speak for before Morrowind, but that’s more than a decade with that reputation. The stuff that wasn’t buggy usually made up for the issues (although a contingent of people have long questioned the practice of essentially foisting bug fixes on PC…

What’s deceptive here? She never conflated consent in the legal sense with consent of a game character. Of course they can’t literally consent to anything because their “choices” are programmed by someone. Kate is talking about the ways that game developers can highlight player and character agency by narratively…

Cool to see all the right wingers and concern trolls come out to criticize a game that's clearly not meant for them.

If you did decide to go cyber-psychotic, I think it would be justified.

So I’m assuming that much like Hollywood productions, consulting the Marines meant getting DOD to sign off on the game. What will result, then, is the message "war is messy and confusing," rather than an actual accounting of the real horrors of it. The horrors are sprinkled on just enough to give credibility but not…

I see you've visited the future and know that this game would've gone bust on Steam. Thank you for coming back to the past to impart this wisdom, person who is obviously a an indie game developer with a time machine.

So give a warning rather than simply disabling it. There's no reason for this, even a decade ago.

I really hope you’re being facetious, because “No it’s not” doesn’t really pass the “Is this discourse?” test.

Same, every time I see something Star Ocean related I check to see if it's some kind of Second Story remake or port.

The monochrome scheme is part of the magazines's aesthetic. But yeah, some of these logos would be too illegible for most logographic purposes. But there are many kinds of aesthetic differences depending on the genre of game (or how much you want to comply with generally accepted standards. 

I agree, reviewing something you've not played is clearly the easiest way to see that a bomb was in totally bad faith. I just worry about the many other situations where the wrongdoing isn't as clear cut.

It’s a possible solution, but I don’t how many review bombers actually own the games in question. I would imagine many of them do. It really comes down to intent to decide what is and isn’t a “bomb.” And philosophically speaking, why shouldn’t they be allowed to voice their opinion for whatever reason they choose?…

I think the issue is in Valve's hands, how can we trust them to even accurately recognize review bombs? What if an update really messed up a game that was good before? How can we tell if that's a "bomb" or a legitimate revaluation?

Except that there are degrees of cruel, spiteful, and egotistical. We’re told even the Mad King’s descent into madness was a descent (and, y'know, actual madness what with the voices and all). And yet, Dany goes from peeks of cruelty and spite to “turns her seat of power into a flaming crater by killing nearly every…

Except that we don’t live in a perfect meritocracy where every kind of person is treated equally. That’s why we need to highlight representation of marginalized groups. Otherwise, the system can happily continue to marginalize them.

Steam also has refunds and not all of it is online-only.

It’s really good to see the game getting a second life. Obviously it would have been better if the game had shipped more feature-complete, but gamers have a tendency of laying their criticisms at the most visible person’s feet (in this case Sean Murray) instead of looking at the systemic causes of a game getting…