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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • How are the two related?

    A user obtains the game through legitimate means by “buying” the game. However, they do not own the game, and are in fact, just renting something. This is despite decades and decades of game buying, especially pre-Internet, equating to owning the game and being able to play the game forever, even 100 years from now.

    By pirating the game, a user has clawed back the implied social construct that existed for decades past: Acquiring a game through piracy means that you own the game. You have it in a static form that cannot be taken away from you. There’s still the case of server shutdowns, like this legal case is arguing. But, unlike the “buyer”, the game cannot suddenly disappear from a game’s store or be forcefully uninstalled from your PC. You own it. You have the files. They cannot take that away from you.

    The phrase essentially means: You have removed my means of owning software, therefore piracy is the only choice I have to own this game. It’s not stealing because it’s the only way to hold on to it forever. You know, because that’s what fucking “buying” was supposed to mean.

















  • The portal gun doesn’t really fit in a Half-Life game. The mechanics of the gun almost demand an enclosed space, with flat surfaces and puzzles that require the player to understand that they’re solving a puzzle. The portal gun would break the outside world too easily, as players figure out how to just zoom past everything, and not follow the linear path that FPSs like Half-Life guide towards. Testing surfaces for game breaks and boundary checks would be a QA nightmare. It doesn’t kill enemies in any useful way, which is the primary function of a FPS weapon.

    It is a puzzle gun, in a puzzle game. And that’s okay.