Small point of clarification: the ids were a unique key, not necessarily an ID, and not necessarily used to identify anyone (any record).

Absolutely. It shows Sony didn’t know the first rule of creating database tables. NEVER make a text the key for a table. Always use a UID / GUID or a randomly generated numerical id.

Stockholm syndrome is real, my friend.

If you or anyone else reading this want to share your story, on or off the record, I’m at jason@kotaku.com. I believe very strongly that we need to keep reporting and talking about these things.

Look at all these “it’s about ethics in journalism” face-ass people in this comment section. The salt is so delicious. “Oh no, I have to download another small 40 MB launcher and move my mouse 2 inches higher on my desktop to play this game. Unacceptable!” FOH

Eexactly! Stop acting like EPIC is the bad guy here. Steam had s strangle hold on the PC market and is dipping its hands deep into devs/publishers’ pockets and taking a whopping 30% cut. Now EPIC is here and is taking a far more favorable 12% and devs/publishers are more than happy to put their games on the EPIC store…

Exclusives are a way of creating competition between storefronts. Epic has drawn a line in the sand labeled 12% and now expects Steam to step up if they want games to be drawn back to their storefront. 30% is an INSANE royalty rate and they only got away with it because there wasn’t an alternative. Now there is.

thats not how competition works

Not disagreeing, just trying to explain why that might be difficult to do in some cases for those who maybe aren’t aware of how working with these venues works sometimes.

If you’re gonna pirate games go ahead and own it. No one is gonna feel bad for you having to pay a premium for a game, quite simply because in a year you’ll be able to get it for $20. In two years it’ll be $10. If you pirate it, that’s on you and has nothing to do with the publisher’s business decisions. But enjoy!…

Literally not an exclusive. You’re talking about it as if its exclusive on the level of console exclusives. But if you own a pc, you are able to play it. You may choose not to because you don’t want another launcher or whatever. But if you have a pc, you are in no way excluded from having this game. It’s really not…

The way I read the OP’s comment made it seem like to me that they were calling Kotaku dot com, a video game website, an enemy of the people for writing a story about a distracting cartoon bear in a video game and not Chinese sturgeons.

I’ll be curious to see how it turns out, honestly. As you point out, the entire point of the project is not (or at least should not be) to provide a 1:1 experience to the original game coupled with a significant graphical upgrade—it is to provide the experience players think they had some twenty-one years ago.

If they…

Who did they purchase exclusive naming rights from? Blizzard? Toronto? Why are naming rights even for sale? I think what’s truly fucked here is that no one seems to think it’s fucking whack that an existing team is being forced to remove their goddamn city from their name and then laughing at them because they wanted…

I’m right here with you on this. I’m really confused here. A new team forms and now an existing team has to change their name? Calling out another team for a grudge match is unprofessional? What??? What kind of bizarro world is this? I should have realized when people started calling those books the Berenstain Bears…

This kind of boggles the mind. Why were they not allowed to just be another Toronto team? I’m a New Yorker, and, just in the major leagues, we have two baseball teams, two football teams, two basketball teams, two soccer teams, and three hockey teams! To say nothing of the women’s teams in those sports, and the myriad…

Counterpoint, they charged money for Blizzcon tickets and this is what they gave the fans. Sorry, but this isn’t “gamers rise” this is “fans raging” and for good reason if they had blown money on a blizzcon ticket.

Maybe I am the minority but I prefer women who don’t like makeup. The excuse that makeup helps build confidence is a lie in every way imaginable.

Or like that time EA savagely murdered any hope Titanfall 2 had by plopping it between Call of Duty and it’s own friggin’ game- Battlefield 1. I swear they literally *wanted* that game to fail so they could talk about how the business model doesn’t work.

I’ve literally never been to a restaurant that offered unflavored soda water on the menu TO pay for.