Why would companies withdraw licensing agreements? They get money from Nvidia and also from the consumer that has to buy the game separately.
They certainly aren't launching it on a different game-streaming service or intending to compete with it. Withdrawing doesn't make customers buy more of their games either - probably less.
So why would they be withdrawing from licensing agreements that are effectively free money for them?
>> Why would companies withdraw licensing agreements? They get money from Nvidia
Lawyer reasons: Because they have lost the rights themselves. They may have licensed things like artwork/music for sale during a fixed period and so ongoing subscriptions, continual resales, would require renewing those licenses. Just look at the recent re-release of Mike Tyson's Punch Out, which had to remove Mike Tyson.
Evil reasons: They want to publish a new version of a game, say SimCity 11. The target audience is largely people already playing SimCity 10. So they discontinue SimCity 10, turn it off, to "encourage" the customer base to forget SimCity 10 and "purchase" SimCity 11.
Petty rich guy personal reasons: Say you are George Lucas and you have published something embarrassingly awful, like a Star Wars Christmas Special. The die-hard fans love it, or at least want to see it. But you are embarrassed. So you discontinue any concept of streaming/rental/sales to hide your shame, regardless of profit motivations. Also, Han shot first!
They weren't getting money from nvidia, and really why should they? nvidia provides very expensive hardware on which I can access my own steam library, etc.
The world of IP isn't just about selling someone something, it's about reselling the same person that thing many times over. So now I have my VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, digital streaming, 4K digital streaming, 4K digital streaming HD collectors edition, etc. variants.
And of course if there are multiple cloud gaming providers, they see it as an opportunity to extort each of them.
When GFN first came out it had all of the Civilization games -- and it worked great -- but then as other cloud gaming options appeared 2K pulled the whole catalog, presumably with hand out. When Civ VII came out they suddenly allowed it all again, not only to rekindle interest in the series and presumably because some people were only going to buy the game if they could play it on the platform.
Game streaming services like that are harder to reliably hardware fingerprint and introduces unusual install patterns (same game potentially repeatedly installed large amount of times by same user).
For DRM and ban avoidance detection this means either false positives (which is bad rep) or if it's tuned to ignore those signals on specific service provider hardware makes it easier to do account sharing (and thus not buying the game).
I always assumed that the streaming services had negotiated to receive DRM-free versions specifically to avoid this issue, similar to the DRM/telemetry-free versions of Windows used on air-gapped government networks.
There are different streaming services with different behavior.
Google stadia had special builds, very well could have been DRM-free.
Other streaming services like G-force now are closer to renting a virtual machine with some automation scripts on top. Where after connecting you use a slightly modified version of steam to install games (which publishers allowed to be streamed) almost like you would install them locally. Those definitely aren't DRM-free (except a portion of indie titles which are DRM free everywhere). While G-force now tries to limit access to underlying OS, surface is too large to trust the platform with DRM free builds especially if it allows installing multiple games and steam workshop mods. It's a bit more complicated as g-force now also has "ready to play" games which provide more stadia like experience with better integration.
So overall it means 2 cases:
* special builds/game specific integration scripts from streaming platform -> requires extra work and agreement between streaming platform and developer/publisher, introduces uncertainty of how streaming platform limits account sharing (compared to the DRM publisher uses)
* no extra work, just single checkbox in steam developer panel -> potential conflicts with finger printing, DRM and anticheat systems
Neither of 2 are no brainer free money. Either it's extra work and bureaucracy to negotiate, prepare and configure special build. Or it's conflicting with DRM systems.
It's trivial only for smaller indie devs who are uploading DRM free builds to steam anyway.
if we've learned anything from movie and show streaming then yes, publishers will absolutely all start their own game streaming service if it ever takes off. nice that Microsoft is building a gaming monopoly, can't have multiple platforms if there's only one mega-publisher.
Studios that gets purchased by these mega-publishers have always experienced enshittification, so the fact that they might make their slop streaming-only doesn't really bother me.
We'll be fine as long as we have an open platform to play good games from studios that haven't sold out, and without interference of anti-competitive gatekeepers, but we need to defend our right to use these open platforms - definitely the PC, and if we could find a way to align, I think we could regain ground on android/ios as well.
> we need to defend our right to use these open platforms - definitely the PC
coming from someone who thought they'd refresh their PC in 2026 (planned this in 2024), i agree. getting priced out feels like the first step in the wrong direction.
Some independent developers have stated they don't like that the experience is degraded on GeForce now (because of latency, control bugs, etc). They prefer that users are running the game in a way that they've tested themselves.
I used half my nations energy for a day and discovered the cure to cancer! I tested it thoroughly, and it works - you put the petri dish in the oven (300C for 30mins) and the cancer is destroyed!
How did you manage to uncover the operation? Is there any things that tipped you off? Is it like, accounts only posting on a precise subset of subs, or how much a network of accounts reply to each other? Or too much linking/references to products, or perfect spelling/identical consistent typos?
I'm curious because it feels like it could be built into a tool to analyse - even if it does become a bit of an arms race.
It's harder now that post history is hidden but I did something similar in the past.
Start with a single comment you think is a shill. Maybe 80% of their post history is vague inane generalities (like "aww so cute" in r/cats, or a reply to a top rated post that only paraphrases the existing context without adding anything new). You can use an LLM to identify every comment or post from that account that mentions a product or service. Take note of everyone who replies to that comment as well as the parent comment. Then use an LLM to identify every post from that original account asking for recommendations (hey r/bidet, what's your favorite bidet), and look at who responds. If you build this graph, draw directional edges based on who replied to who. The accounts with edges both ways across different posts are bots. Rinse and repeat by examing the post history of THOSE accounts. You will end up with a graph with a few loosely connected nodes (maybe false positives) but a tight web of spam accounts that frequently engage with each other.
That's your bot farm. This would be relatively trivial for reddit to implement, if they cared about reducing spam. I got a POC working in a few hours, back before they limited API access
It's hidden for users who opt in (not all spambots do, believe it or not) but there are some 3rd party databases that index comments- no idea how complete they are
It's also a pretty silly thing to say difficulty = tokens. We all know line counts don't tell you much, and it shows in their own example.
Even if you did have Math-like tokenisation, refactoring a thousand lines of "X=..." to "Y=..." isnt a difficult problem even though it would be at least a thousand tokens. And if you could come up with E=mc^2 in a thousand tokens, does not make the two tasks remotely comparable difficulty.
Is this sarcasm? Not that Trump's word means anything, but Trump has been against it since his first term. Having cancelled it temporarily in that first term, has said that he'll end H1B if he gets reelected, and that US shouldn't have the H1B program.
It's only since 2025 when Elon was in his good books and told Republicans to not vote for a bill that Trump woke up that day and decided he'd be pro-H1B.
I'm actually trying to reduce the 'funkyness', initially the idea was to start from a child's sketch and bring it to life (so kids can safely use it as part of an exhibit at an art festival) :)
There's a world of possibilities though, I hadn't even thought of combining color channels.
I think they were suggesting that it might be possible to inject the initial sketch into every image/frame such that the model will see it but not the end user. Like a form of steganography which might potentially improve the ability of the model to match the original style of the sketch.
What are the quotes? I don't understand, some of them are just a single word like "Art", "Autoimmune", "Cartoons"; or innocuous phrases with no context.
The beginning is a list of ## chapters because there's many. A woman was in the psych ward for more than a decade. Luckily a doctor tested for autoimmune, which cured her.
For example you can search the page for ## False Claims Act. It will show the FBI jailing psychiatrists who illegally over billed Medicaid for fake or unnecessary services.
The first two talks are in the "Ethics, Society & Politics" category, and the third in the "Art & Beauty" category. Why would they need to be about computing?
It's a big organisation, and politics is wrapped up in what they do, along with the post-WWII Antifaschism culture in Germany.
Even if it weren't the case, I don't get why attack them for helping stand up for democracy, something in dire need of advocacy these days
They certainly aren't launching it on a different game-streaming service or intending to compete with it. Withdrawing doesn't make customers buy more of their games either - probably less.
So why would they be withdrawing from licensing agreements that are effectively free money for them?
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