I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

Why? I think there’s a decent chance they don’t survive this - at least their commercial airplanes. I won’t fly on a Boeing any time soon, if ever. It will take years to get back to a safety culture and there are tons of shit planes manufactured in the past several years that will be in service for decades.

If I was a pilot, I wouldn’t want to fly one either. They just had another incident where a pilot says the gauges went blank and he lost control. If a pilot union starts pushing back, it’s game over.

Would you fly on one of their planes?

Pretty soon everyone will be clamoring to let the CCP keep it.

What is it with people like Bobby Kotick? He could do whatever he wants and all he wants is power. If I had that kind of career that I had generational wealth and was still somewhat young I would find something to do that’s so much better than just more work. Honestly, I think it would be pretty awesome spending a few years figuring out how to give away a couple billion. You would meet so many interesting people and learn so much about the world. Imagine being able to have a positive, life-changing impact on more people than you can count. And then imagine you buy a toxic, addictive app to make more money instead. What a loser.

100%. That has been exactly my experience. There’s no question it’s a good car, but they always manage to set higher expectations than what they are capable of delivering. You can’t help but feel disappointed even though you have a great EV. It’s really soured me on the whole brand. I would never buy another one.

It’s horrible. My laptop with hybrid graphics works ok except for a brief flicker every time it wakes from sleep. It’s not a big deal. My desktop with dedicated nvidia is a hot mess - constant flickering. Steam is borderline non-functional and there are all kinds of graphical glitches on the desktop. I’m stuck with X11 on that machine.

Genuinely curious… Do they make any good games? When I think of Ubi, I think of crappy launchers, having to sign into some bullshit account and mediocre games. I tried that Viking assassin’s creed game and it was trash, but I admit I don’t like any of the assassin’s creed games. What’s their killer app for someone who would give the game a fair chance?

Then what’s it for? Looking pretty?

Framework if you want to repair it yourself and Lenovo if you don’t. Lenovo makes a good machine and has very reasonably priced on-site support options.

Fuck ransomware gangs. Also, fuck Epic. I guess if it’s gotta happen the silver lining is that it happened to an asshole company.

To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.

FWIW, my kids were shit talking that game and saying it was going to be so bad. They started playing the demo and actually like it. They say it needs some polish but it’s fun to play. They are big Sea of Thieves fans.

People with private jets often charter them out when they’re not using them. The best place for an airplane is in the air. Only bad things happen when you let it sit around on the ground all the time. It’s not much different than commercial planes that spend most of their time in the air.

Sure, a private jet will have more emissions than an Airbus, but it’s a marginal increase. It’s not like rich people with their planes are producing a million times more pollution that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have a private jet. They’re still going to fly, at least for longer trips.

It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning. Who else is using less efficient aircraft or taking unnecessary flights? Are all those police helicopter flights necessary? What about people flying to go party on an island somewhere versus some more noble purpose? Or airlines with a half empty flight? Meanwhile, it’s the oil companies producing the vast majority of carbon emissions while we squabble over travel itineraries and choice of aircraft.

The electric company. AI’s reading articles written by other AI’s. Everyone trying to figure out how to squeeze more revenue out of it. But everyone’s paying the electric bill for all these servers and the electric company doesn’t have to give a shit about any of it.

Where is the evidence of nepotism? The person I replied to mentioned the Stanford degree and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it all comes down to nepotism. Frankly, it sounds like jealousy and taking cheap shots at someone who is doing well. I don’t understand it. Why knock someone else down? She’s successful so good for her. My own success will only come from me. What someone else did or did not achieve or how they did it is irrelevant to what I achieve.

How is getting an MBA from Stanford nepotism? She probably worked her ass off not only to earn the degree but to be accepted to the university in the first place. Without knowing anything about her, I’m going to assume she’s a total rockstar until there’s a good reason to believe otherwise.

I have been very happy with my X1 Extreme. I did have an issue with the keyboard and later the touchpad, but I paid for onsite support so it wasn’t a big deal. They came out a day later and fixed it right there at my dining table.

I would say buying a ThinkPad is worth it for their paid support options alone. When I had a keyboard problem on my old MacBook, AppleCare took like 10 days to fix it. Lenovo’s premium support is reasonably priced and they don’t mess around. A person picks up the phone when you call and they treat you like you are important. If it’s a hardware problem, they are not fucking around. They don’t care how it happened or ask a bunch of questions. It’s covered and they are fixing it. Fast.

The X1 is also super easy to work on. It’s easily disassembled with normal tools and upgradable parts like SSD and RAM are right there when you open it up. They don’t do dumb things like solder in the RAM or leave you without an open slot. This thing is designed to be repairable.

Linux support is flawless.

Good luck with that. Their phones are filled with ads and Samsung’s crappy software that can’t be removed. Apple and Google do the same thing, but their apps are at least good. As good as Samsung’s hardware is, they mess up the package with their hot garbage software.

So help him out instead of trying to steal the project out from under him. I see there are other contributors in the kbin repository. This fork comes off as really sleazy.

Ernest put in the work and established a community. Now somebody comes along and tries to move that community over to a fork. That’s some bullshit. Zero creativity with the name too. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this group tries to monetize this thing if they manage to replace kbin. Community-focused my ass. If it was community-focused, you wouldn’t be on here trying to split the community.

Yeah, it’s also the same group of people who are always complaining about how much RAM a desktop environment or app uses, that app being whichever one they are using right now.

Dude, just build a better product and let it speak for itself. Or maybe try contributing to kbin. It’s not cool to always be harping on the guy for his development pace and trying to pull people over to your fork. Like, we’re supposed to hop over there because you’ve made more commits this week? How do we know your project would be any better off if it ever blows up the way kbin did?

That kbin dude got tens of thousands of subscribers overnight and then put on blast with bug reports and feature requests. He’s done a good job running the site too. He’s got a pretty good track record as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t asked for shit in return except a little space to maintain his sanity.