it's annoying that video games disable achievements when you install mods. i DID kill alduin who cares if thomas the tank engine was there

all these retro style games that are like "NO tutorials NO handholding" apparently forgot about the little books that used to come with your game that detailed all the mechanics, controls, special moves, lore, maps, collectables, means of unlocking additional content, character bios, etc

i remember there were a few games that would even include what was essentially a walkthrough/strategy guide for the first level or two, i dont get what these retro devs are on lmao

hadnt actually considered that. much to think about

So it’s not normal to search replacementdocs.com for the games you play?

I actually find this type of thing really fascinating. When art is designed and expected to be experienced in a particular context, what sort of new experiences do you get when you rip it out of that original context, and how does that change the way you look at it? I wrote a little bit about this as applied to old anime OVAs on cohost a while back as another example:

Playing retro games without being primed by box art or manuals. Watching anime OVAs or movies that expected you to be familiar with a 52-episode series that never got localized. Looking at a greek statue with the paint faded away. I think there can be some danger in assuming that the thing you experience something right now is how it was always meant to be experienced, but a focus on an "authentic" experience can also close you off to more of these "accidental" experiences.

I just think it's neat!

stardew valley should have an additional category after "marriageable" which is "affairable" where u can have a tryst with any married npc. i dont think jodi or robin will leave their husbands for me but i also don't think that should prevent me from having the ability to try

NEKO ATSUME 2

not joking

WE'RE SO BACK

For those unaware, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U disabled uploading levels in March of 2021, and is shutting down its servers entirely in April of this year. I don't know if there's a good estimate on how many levels have been created in SMM's lifetime, but in 2016 Nintendo reported about 7.5 million levels created by players, so the number is High.

In the meantime there is a community dedicated to taking every level that has yet to be cleared for the first time, and clearing it. Some of these levels take 6-10 hours of attempts to beat, and some of them use obscure glitches that no one else has discovered. Nevertheless, as of a few months ago there were less than 20,000 uncleared levels and currently there are less than 1,000.

Nothing remains but the most difficult platform experiences you can imagine. The community is confident they can "beat Super Mario Maker" but the deadline is fast approaching. It will be a tight race, and this is shaping up to be a potentially historic moment.

As of yesterday, all levels uploaded in 2016 have been cleared.

There are now 10 levels left.

We're looking at a full clear by Friday.

It is Thursday, Ides of March Eve, and there are 3 levels left before every single level in Super Mario Maker has been beaten by someone.

Imagine being the person that made a level so hard that literally every level ever made in this engine has been beaten except yours and 2 others.

Additional update, March 15th. There is now 1 level remaining.

This image is the entire level. The end goal is at the red door at the right, which is connected to the red door at the top left. Meaning if you follow that little zig-zag upward to that door, you beat the level.

The level takes 17 seconds to beat. Or it would, if anyone but the level creator had ever beaten it.

At the exact time of writing this post there have been 92,333 attempts at beating this level across 1,115 players. That means on average each person has made 83 attempts at this 17-second level. According to youtuber/Mario player Grand POOBear, yesterday it had somewhere around 50,000 attempts, which means that over the course of about 24 hours Mario has died 40,000 times to this one level.

If anyone wants to track the progress:

The last level is at 150k attempts, but it’s still not beaten!

160k attempts now and still not beaten!

Update!

They've declared themselves done because:

"What about TTH? After over seven years, the creator of Trimming the Herbs revealed on March 22, 2024 that the level was, in fact, a convoluted sort of troll. Despite a general belief both then and now that tool-assisted speedruns (TASes) were not possible on the Wii U, the creator had access to a hardware-based TAS prototype which was used to develop and clear-check TTH. It was apparently intended to be a sort of "teaser" for the feasibility of these tools, but after the level's release, it remained relatively obscure even in the community it was designed to troll and was eventually forgotten (until Team 0% uncovered it). Since the level was not uploaded legitimately, it was excluded from Team 0%'s list of uncleared levels. As a result of this shocking revelation, Team 0% considers Super Mario Maker 1 to have been 100% cleared on March 15, 2024, the day that Yamada (aka "kazeihinn") cleared The Last Dance.

This isn't quite the end of the story for these levels, though. Trimming the Herbs, as well as another level involving 81 consecutive midair shell-jumps which was uploaded using a controller macro, aren't impossible for a human, and a handful of dedicated and extremely talented players are still grinding out these levels and aiming for the true first clear by a human — an exceptionally prestigious feat and something of a "101%" completion goal for the team. When (not if) these players succeed, their achievement will certainly be marked on this site in commemoration of the defeat of these secret "final bosses" of levels."

For those unaware, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U disabled uploading levels in March of 2021, and is shutting down its servers entirely in April of this year. I don't know if there's a good estimate on how many levels have been created in SMM's lifetime, but in 2016 Nintendo reported about 7.5 million levels created by players, so the number is High.

In the meantime there is a community dedicated to taking every level that has yet to be cleared for the first time, and clearing it. Some of these levels take 6-10 hours of attempts to beat, and some of them use obscure glitches that no one else has discovered. Nevertheless, as of a few months ago there were less than 20,000 uncleared levels and currently there are less than 1,000.

Nothing remains but the most difficult platform experiences you can imagine. The community is confident they can "beat Super Mario Maker" but the deadline is fast approaching. It will be a tight race, and this is shaping up to be a potentially historic moment.

As of yesterday, all levels uploaded in 2016 have been cleared.

There are now 10 levels left.

We're looking at a full clear by Friday.

It is Thursday, Ides of March Eve, and there are 3 levels left before every single level in Super Mario Maker has been beaten by someone.

Imagine being the person that made a level so hard that literally every level ever made in this engine has been beaten except yours and 2 others.

Additional update, March 15th. There is now 1 level remaining.

This image is the entire level. The end goal is at the red door at the right, which is connected to the red door at the top left. Meaning if you follow that little zig-zag upward to that door, you beat the level.

The level takes 17 seconds to beat. Or it would, if anyone but the level creator had ever beaten it.

At the exact time of writing this post there have been 92,333 attempts at beating this level across 1,115 players. That means on average each person has made 83 attempts at this 17-second level. According to youtuber/Mario player Grand POOBear, yesterday it had somewhere around 50,000 attempts, which means that over the course of about 24 hours Mario has died 40,000 times to this one level.

If anyone wants to track the progress:

The last level is at 150k attempts, but it’s still not beaten!

160k attempts now and still not beaten!

For those unaware, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U disabled uploading levels in March of 2021, and is shutting down its servers entirely in April of this year. I don't know if there's a good estimate on how many levels have been created in SMM's lifetime, but in 2016 Nintendo reported about 7.5 million levels created by players, so the number is High.

In the meantime there is a community dedicated to taking every level that has yet to be cleared for the first time, and clearing it. Some of these levels take 6-10 hours of attempts to beat, and some of them use obscure glitches that no one else has discovered. Nevertheless, as of a few months ago there were less than 20,000 uncleared levels and currently there are less than 1,000.

Nothing remains but the most difficult platform experiences you can imagine. The community is confident they can "beat Super Mario Maker" but the deadline is fast approaching. It will be a tight race, and this is shaping up to be a potentially historic moment.

As of yesterday, all levels uploaded in 2016 have been cleared.

There are now 10 levels left.

We're looking at a full clear by Friday.

It is Thursday, Ides of March Eve, and there are 3 levels left before every single level in Super Mario Maker has been beaten by someone.

Imagine being the person that made a level so hard that literally every level ever made in this engine has been beaten except yours and 2 others.

Additional update, March 15th. There is now 1 level remaining.

This image is the entire level. The end goal is at the red door at the right, which is connected to the red door at the top left. Meaning if you follow that little zig-zag upward to that door, you beat the level.

The level takes 17 seconds to beat. Or it would, if anyone but the level creator had ever beaten it.

At the exact time of writing this post there have been 92,333 attempts at beating this level across 1,115 players. That means on average each person has made 83 attempts at this 17-second level. According to youtuber/Mario player Grand POOBear, yesterday it had somewhere around 50,000 attempts, which means that over the course of about 24 hours Mario has died 40,000 times to this one level.

It costs more than the fucking console

Steps you can take:

Send xbox feedback telling them you're disappointed and upset with this change.

If you have an xbox game pass, cancel it and cite this as the reason why.

If you are someone with a disability, that uses a 3rd party controller for accessibility reasons, file a civil rights complaint.

The more people that file, the more seriously the DOJ takes it, and the more pressure Microsoft will come under to reverse this dogshit choice.

Concerned Ape knows what's up

HEY THIS IS FUCKING GREAT BUT YOU LEFT OUT THE BEST GODDAM PART

DAVID LYNCH IS THE OTHER EXCEPTION AND I AM FUCKING LIVING FOR IT.

one of my favorite tidbits about speedrunning that comes up every time the games done quick marathons come around is how Wind Waker speedruns are about five hours long because of the giant wall in Hyrule that actually forces the runner to play the game because they’ve been throwing shit at this wall for over a decade and still can’t figure out a way past it. the wall in hyrule is entirely unglitchable and the only way past it is to play the game properly. the speedrun would be like one hour if they could get past this wall but nope, it’s five hours. fuck the wall.

and the comedy of this situation is exponentially amplified the more you know about skips and glitches in speedruns in general

as examples of how broken WW is elsewhere, you can clip through walls and go out of bounds to skip entire dungeon sequences pretty much anywhere with a ledge, use the Wind Waker to enter a state where you ignore physics and swim at 5000 miles an hour, and even fly infinitely into the sky after dying like some kind of helium zombie. do you know how many games could be broken wide open by an infinite height trick? TTYD would shave off 3 or 4 hours.

but this fucking barrier around Hyrule Castle, against all odds, is just completely insurmountable with any of this. Ganondorf is literally the most successful and powerful villain in gaming history and this Super Extendo Fuck You Shield™ is a shining testament to it

This is the kind of information I want on my dash

Okay but do you have any idea just how big the Super Extendo Fuck You Shield™ actually is? Try approximately four times the height of the castle itself.

And not only that, but even if you get over the invisible wall, there’s another barrier that causes damage and knockback. So even if you managed to get over the invisible wall part of the Nintendo Containment System™, there’s still an additional, cylinder-shaped barrier that will do damage to you and knock you back out, even if you try to get in from the top or bottom. That castle has more security measures than Fort fucking Knox and it’s all to give a middle finger to speedrunners wanting to finish the game in an hour. It’s fucking wild.

https://youtu.be/7XBPrFYN1MU

As of July 2019, the barrier has been defeated in all versions of the game, and the current World Record is 1hr 04m50s. The current method is to give yourself seventy invisible grappling hooks, which corrupts so much of the game’s memory that there’s not enough left over to load the barrier (or a lot of other things, like enemies or cutscenes. It’s amazing). You can just walk right trough where it’s supposed to be.

stardew valley: a witch cursed my house, so now i have a Dark Chicken who lays Evil Eggs. this does not negatively impact me at all

discourse in other fandoms: lgbtphobia or racism, ships, etc

discourse in stardew valley fandom: if you can fish without mods fuck you

I can and will fish without mods, somebody come fuck me

the absolute POWER behind this response has me fucking losing it

fish fear me, everyone in this thread desires me carnally

things still aren't going well for unity btw. i know the talk of it died down a bit but i didn't forget

i hope unity implodes under the weight of its own hubris

Shareholder capitalism at its finest.

Thus we see the trust thermocyclone in action.

I think you mean thermocline, but yeah

Just because I write for a living doesn't mean I'm literate.

“I am too sensitive to sunlight to go out on most days. The conditions in here are perfect. Care to buy anything?”

As someone who's spent half her life in the Gaming and Entertainment industries, let me tell you how FUCKED everything is.

For context, I'm a 34 year old trans woman who spent the last SEVENTEEN YEARS of my life in these industries. So half my life has been in this.

I'm currently 9 months out of work after being laid off from a huge well known company due to them "selling off half the company's outside studios so the core company could invest in NFTs and Blockchain."

Unemployment has fully run out for me at this point and I'm struggling.

This is not new. I'm not the only one. And what's more is that it's been happening to gaming and entertainment studios for years and it continues to get worse.

Day after day, week after week, month after month I've seen studios both big and small laying off workers and then announcing "AI! NFTS! BLOCKCHAIN!" shit constantly.

These companies have posted record profits and then have used those profits to... cut their staff and pay their execs more.

All the while they pretend to still be "FOR THE FANS" and as more of the workers unionize and try to band together shun those workers saying "HOW COULD YOU!? THE FANS WANT THEIR CONTENT!" as if the content is worth people's lives and livelihood.

The biggest thing we, as workers, are fighting for is FAIR PAY and to not have our works or voices used for AI!

And these studios keep saying NO, and then making it impossible for us to work or live.

The studio heads have purposely stonewalled talks and contact deals because they KNOW we are all underpaid and want to WAIT US OUT until we are SO POOR we HAVE to make a deal.

So if you continue to see my post (and posts from others like me) saying "Hey, I'm still out for work, if you have some spare money I'd really appreciate it" - please consider helping us out.

We want to get back to work and they won't let us without us selling away our souls.

Why don’t you want consumers to boycott, again? Kinda seems like we should.

Hi! Great question!

Here’s the answer:

Because the stuff you’re seeing release NOW? Movies, games, TV shows, etc?

Yeah, that was done by people. Real people. Who worked very hard to put that in front of you.

Boycotting, at the moment, only shows the execs that “okay, the people don’t want THIS CONTENT THAT WAS CREATED BY HUMANS! So we should double down on this AI, NFT, Blockchain shit!”

Any (major) content that is attempted to be made in full (or in major part) by AI or what have you, is far off.

As of now, the AI stuff you’ll see will mostly be used to do promotional stuff (see VO for movie trailers, which is already happening and easy for them to do).

Companies will use any excuse they can to “learn the wrong lesson” if it’ll save them money that they can immediately put into a CEO or board member’s pocket.

I understand. I really do, but knowing that these same human creators aren’t actually getting any of that money doesn’t sit well. At least, not for me.

This hurts my heart.

`

Do you think we ever did?

We never see any of that money anyway.

Do you think if a game or movie or TV show does well that we get paid more because it succeeded?

Because we never did.

If it hurts your heart to know we aren’t being treated well right now, it should hurt more to know we never get the benefits of anything we do that succeeds and only get the ramifications of if something fails.

The companies have always pocketed the profits and paid their laborers as little as possible.

So, again, if it hurts you to hear that… imagine how much it hurts US.

Which means you should listen to us when we say “This Is What You Should Do, As Fans, While We Are On Strike!”

If a time comes where we say “please boycott these projects/companies” then do so, but until then… please support our work to show that you care about what we do.

And if you see anyone, like me, asking for financial help to get us by until the strike is over? Donate what you can or share those posts asking for help.

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

YESSSSSSSS