August Status Update [The Apocalypse is NOW]
Getting political on the page for my dumb parody game might seem a bit out of place, but let me just get this out of my system, and I'll go back to game stuff afterwards (scroll down).
I'm usually kinda apathetic to this stuff, but they really went off the deep end.
A summary of recent Events (the yellow text is mine):
(Had to update it like 4 times)
Normally you elect people, and then these people decide on laws on your behalf right?
Far from a perfect system, but its something. And if you live in a Dictatorship.... at least It's locally sourced oppression or something.
But then there's the foreign mega-corporations being able to enforce their own Corporate Morality Laws is essentially a threat against Democracy. A bit dramatic, but really, no one fucking voted for them, but we're still forced to follow their laws ("policy").
More importantly, if you check the list of events above you'll notice this isn't just about games anymore.
If you dislike our current trajectory towards a Cyberpunk dystopia without the cool stuff , I think the only chance you got is to call & complain very loudly for an extended period of time. To your politicians, both local and in the EU/whatever, companies, media ... one guy managed to prompt the Guardian and others to put up articles! Even petitions are... something.
Personally, I'll also vote for literally anyone who is pro-privacy party next election. Kinda ignored those parties previously because they can be kinda goofy in non-privacy related areas. But I don't give a shit anymore.
On the other hand, if you like how things are going, then enjoy the ride
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BACK TO GAME RELATED STUFF!
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1. Ok, let's actually talk about the Game Development.
This post is already too long, so I'll be brief :-)
If you missed the July post (there's lots of pictures) go read it!https://www.patreon.com/posts/july-status-post-133148046
In short, in the last two months the biiiig gameplay update was launched and I also went really deep into 3D model & shader studies, and upgraded the artstyle. The game has newer looked & played better... in my opinion.
Naturally, a lots of changes, means lots of bugs lol. The current Patreon version brings in a lot of polish and fixes, and also has the first scene with the upgraded artstyle.
Since, the last updates been gameplay-focused, and then there was polish & bugfixing, I'm now focusing on the "plot". So new renders, animations etc, as well as upgrading old ones.
Also, I've finished polishing up all the "Specials".
The Special adventures (New Year, Summer, Xmas I & II), are holiday specials I made before. If you've followed the game for a long time you've probably played the old versions. They've now been upgraded to fit in with the new (2d) artstyle and gameplay. If you're a recent arrival, there should be a lot of new content for you!
2. Free games will be re-indexed on Itch.io!
(They were de-listed previously, due to payment processors)
(Paid games are still de-listed...)
- Itch is still struggling & under pressure by the money wranglers.
- Hopefully the attention this has been getting will help 'em out.
3. I got a backup page on SubscribeStar.
I'm not very active on Substar, and I don't expect any trouble with Patreon. ´
In fact, Patreon has worked pretty well so far.
But it might be worth bookmarking.
That's all for now, see ya.
Comments (9)
I'm sorry, because I know that this isn't funny at all, but your use of the Spotify photo and then Robert Downey Jr below was too funny for me to not say anything. You're doing good by bringing awareness to this issue. Good on you. If we end up having to move indie games to the deep web, I don't have a clue what we're supposed to do, because that's just ridiculous. It's not online safety, if they're ignoring how monetization in gaming supports gambling mindsets, but they choose to target indie games instead. It's ridiculous.
Here is a video about what you were saying is happening in my home country Australia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsMm3aQQMpc
Thanks for the link!
This one is not political, actually almost all the political espectrum in the internet is coming together as we should because this censorship doesn't care at one point you or I will be next that's how absolute censorship works and that's were they want to take us
There's certainly been a big push towards censorship lately, not only for games...
First off Parodos, Love the music you have for this post :-) So, if they are removing all adult content from Steam, that should also mean all first person shooter and fighting games like, Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat, etc. This explains why a game I loved, Subverse, was banned. So whats steam going to be left with? Less then 5% of there current gaming list??? Only stuff like Pacman, space invaders, etc? Guess all that will be left is Atari 2600 games. And I guess there will be a lot more dev's going to subscribestar and others going to places like f95 for there games.
a certain group previously tried to get rid of 'normal' games like Detroit: Become Human... Very unhinged behavior, doubt they'll stop with the "spicy" games
I'm always uncertain about that topic. I think adult content is actually too easily accessible by children. And credit cards (using a pre-charge with no actual charge) used to be used as age verification before, since with an actual credit card (not a prepaied one), at least the owner is verified to be of mature age (whatever that means for the country of origin, but it is probably 18 for 90+% of the population, restrictions could be applied to countries with cc issued to younger mature people). But then again, age verification doesn't need an identify verification. At a club the bouncer looks at your face, similar done in stores with the sale of booze. Only when in doubt you need to raise your ID card... or go to another store. There have been a couple of age verification services, but I haven't seen them in use for a while. Legal restrictions probably making their work difficult as well, also with the lot's of porn available with no age verification, those sites that apply it, will automatically drop in visitors. But also most stuff the government claims to be about "child protection" (or money laundering) is mostly about citizen control. So I can understand your anger. About Patreon, they have acted some time ago, I think it is already years ago, and implemented some banned themes for sexual themed contents. So in a hint sight I can only assume itch.io didn't take prior warnings serious enough and are now unprepared to act in a controlled manner. Also Steam has been acting for a long time concerning adult games (and still those are unavailable in Germany), actually they started with a ban of that stuff and only opened up on that niche in a controlled manner to begin with. But my credit card company trying to tell me which fetish in an adult game for an adult consumer is fitting... now that's clearly out of the area of their business.
The bouncer will also just look at your ID and give it back to you, not make a copy and promise to throw it away later...( and then someone breaks into his office and steals all the copies). I agree it's too easy to stumble over 18+ material. But also, there are parental controls for devices and filters you can set up on school & home networks. I wouldn't really have reacted that much to just a credit card charge. But this goes way beyond that, blocking adult content is just an excuse for increased control and surveillance. In addition to that, I've already dealt with people, especially elderly, getting scammed and having their ID's stolen, via work. It's only gonna get worse when any scam site can say "oh, according to the new laws you gotta do a face scan and show us your ID". The EU claims to launch an 'anonymous' age verification app, but currently it relies on google (lol) and last time I checked the developers had not bothered responding to hundreds of people complaining.