Think of it more as a "controlled burn wildfire," you want to clear land to let new foliage grow. Same with companies; you clear out some space and see what ideas flourish with the new crop
Or, more likely, leadership is sloppy and lazy. They make mistakes and color outside the lines, and they pay for it. The hope is that they don't hurt themselves too bad.
Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Add an expiration date on the "box" (I dunno what you call it in modern times):
"Online-only: This game will be playable until 2028-06-30"
This forces the publisher to put their money where their mouth is. If the game is successful, like WoW, by all means extend the time it's playable for. If it 'flops', you're on the hook to support it for 3 years, since you shouldn't be putting out made-to-fail slop.
Also, storefronts should have a button that says "Rent" or "Subscribe" instead of buy, if the EULA has clauses like "we have the right to remove access for 'any reason, or no reason'.
The word 'buy' implies some level of ownership (not to the rights to IP or anything, but at least to the product being purchased).
I think having expiration dates is very reasonable and I wish their FAQ would cover this. Current FAQ entries seem to suggest companies must make the games playable forever, and suggest this is somehow possible without ongoing support or divulging intellectual property. I am not sure this is always possible to satisfy in the most general sense.
It isn't with the status quo, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. The EU as a market has enough sway to solve every vendor insisting on restrictive licensing. And we'd only be talking about already sold copies anyway.
Yes, I suggest they divulge the intellectual property. Games are an art form similar to paintings or music, and we as a society should be able to experience previous art.
Keep the IP while you run the servers and sell the game, when you are no longer interested in running the servers, drop a tarball of code. It doesn’t need to be simple, it just needs to be possible and complete. The community can take care of it. If the IP is valuable, then you have your incentive to keep the game playable until it isn’t valuable to you.
There can be a lot of interwoven licensing with games. fmod, speedtree, SDK terms, music... you can't just open source it in most cases and call it good.
Publishers could just put "Guaranteed playable until 2026-07-02", and then extend those games that are profitable.
You really need either a minimum term of support in law, or a requirement to publish a docker of the server into escrow, to be released if the company fails or decides to discontinue.
> Publishers could just put "Guaranteed playable until 2026-07-02", and then extend those games that are profitable.
A one-day warranty would almost certainly run afoul of the EU's merchantability laws.
Edit: Misread the date (sorry, American here -- we write dates weird). However, the point still stands: selling a product to consumers involves some warranty of merchantability, and breaching that entitles consumers to refunds (and can even get the publisher in trouble with regulators).
I wouldn't be concerned with publishers going the "guaranteed playable until" route because there's already consumer protections that discourage this type of thing.
An expiration date could be hard to estimate, but a minimum level of support based on sales might be worth thinking about.
As I understand it, that's not the main focus of this initiative though. It's mostly about opening up dead games for stuff like private servers, so we are not forced to lose access to all the art within when the developer pulls the plug.
It seems like a relatively small ask to at least _allow_ hardcore fans to keep something alive. I can imagine publishers that have a great connection with their community (like Coffeestain) actually benefitting from handling stuff like this in a decent way.
Yeah, this level of uncertainty is annoying. It gets extra annoying when we are talking about games like BF2 and the like, that have zero real reason to not have the ability to be played on lan or similar.
The most important thing is not to "blow" your endocrine system. If you overload it your body will subconsciously avoid exercise. The full body max-weight workout will feel good the first time, then soon, mysteriously, you won't want to go back to the gym.
My suggestion is to stop your workout a little before you want to, almost as if you're disappointed it's over now, which will make you want to go to the gym the next day more consistently.
Ish? I can similarly claim that the most important part of any exercise is showing up. Surprisingly apt for any work. Just showing up is obnoxious in how effective it is.
Similarly, for many nootropic reports, "just doing something" is far more effective than people give credit. Especially if it is a choice to do something. Successfully executing one choice seems to confer some success at executing on the next one. (Note, successful execution does not imply successful outcome...)
I'm convinced this is why people that start their routine with "just make your bed every day" get a surprising amount of success.
All of which is to say that I agree you shouldn't blow yourself out. My push back is that you are probably far less blown out than you think after a workout.
Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts? You're then going to couple that with an increased heart rate?
I unironically offer the opinion that half a teaspoon of creatine is a much better alternative.
> Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts?
ADHD patients seem to be able to exercise just fine (and -importantly- don't seem to be suffering widespread muscle death) when on Adderall and similar. I bet folks like that are pretty glad that the body is a complex, robust system that does reasonably well in a fairly wide range of internal and external environments.
I honestly do not believe hardly any of the studies about adderall. I am an adhd patient and playing tennis on amphetamines once spiked my heart rate above 200. Not good. Also vasoconstrictors + valsalva technique for lifting heavy weights = anuerysm risk.
So, respectifully to the studies, im calling bullshit.
Going to make a wild guess that coffee’s contribution is its classic stimulant effect, which is well known.
Not sure why the nootropics people are always trying to come up with alternate theories for why something works when substances like caffeine are well studied and known to provide a mood boost.
I found it quite effective in helping me to grind leetcode when I was job hunting while working full-time but YMMV. Perhaps I would've gotten the same gig, but I tried doing a month without it and found my ability to power through was significantly lower than with amphetamines. Maybe it was because the amphetamine gave me an artificially high amount of dopamine which offset the inherently boring nature of the task.
Doing great! I'm doing well in the job - as expected, the actual tasks required of me are ~nothing like leetcode. My sleep is definitely better after discontinuing amphetamine use. Got a massive raise so that alleviates a lot of stress around money as well. No complaints from me, I'd do the exact same thing if I had to do it over again.
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