I think the joining theme is that the EU wants more and more power and control.
Ofc. People who push this are in composition 10% moral crusaders and 90% those afraid for their own power and status quo in the coming years. With these pushes toward age verification and message scanning; It's not just they want to scan everything and watch everybody, they want to test the waters and people to to think they are always being watched and self censor and not do anything against powers that be. They know better than anybody how shaky things have gotten in Europe and how unpopular they really are. It's pure attempt at population control.
The only problem is that with current people in power they really can't help themselves, but to make things worse for the average people. So the fire will rise anyway.
Yeah because class isn't about net worth but about how you primarily make your money. If you have to go to work or are expected to go to work to keep a roof over your head then you are working class. If your income is primarily owning things and from other people going to work to keep a roof over their heads then you are part of the bourgeoisie.
Also in this inflation, we'll soon all be millionaires.
The fact is that if you are a non anglo and want to read literature not written on you own tongue be it originally written in english or any other language, then usually the easiest road is learning english. I personally have not seen American, British or any other anglo setting as that interesting, ever. Language is still culture and when doing translations you still can't help but adding some anglo thinking and cliches into the story. Not that I think it's that high of a cost to pay for transferring literature from one culture to another
You are still rolling the dice whenever you really need some specific specialized proprietary software. Especially if you need to get it running ASAP and without major issues. It might work out of the box with wine, or it might not. You just don't know and that
Gaming is better, but it's still gaming, just toys.
All the big adult sites will probably just die or at least shrivel in popularity. Most Europeans simply will not use whatever "tell Brussels or London where or what what you are watching" option is. In the place of the big sites there will be a billion shady and likely virus-lottery proxy sites whose only selling point is that they do not do age checking or require registration. Those then get occasionally smacked down by Brussels, just to be replaced with 10 more clones the by the next week. On the side piracy and vpns will thrive. Kids will not be protected nor will people's privacy, quality will be worse.
I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix that will get through through the cracks since massive established sites had to actually fear shutdown and losing all revenue unless they had robust gatekeeping mechanisms. If Brussels wants your 2 month life-expectancy site dead anyway, because of it's only selling point of having to show id, then why really bother with the quality control of the material. Especially if site holder has no personal qualms about that stuff.
Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn't any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?
Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.
Something like LÖVE would be much better for beginners. It's much more important for first projects to get results that keep you motivated than to jump on the deep end with features.
donated to some fund that then went to paying a lobbyist/think tank to work for them
It would be more effective to get a quarter of 1.4 million people organized with united demands and on the streets of Brussels with the actual risk of projecting threat violence on EU bureaucrats, then StopKillingGames or any petition or demand would have a much better chance of passing. At that point you wouldn't even need collect any names before hand :) All the voting, all the petitions all the representation only exists to act as an filter and push the little people people and their little people idea's far away from actual power as possible.
I'll be positively surprised if this passes, but I really really really doubt it. Too much money at stake here just for the sake of having some pro consumer common sense.
It's just the basic logic of maturing market. They couldn't really increase the game prices that much more without affecting demands, nor could they improve efficiency of making games (the capital costs and team sizes have only gotten up) so they did the thing they could. Try to turn games from a product that the sell into a service they provide and can therefore lock people into their walled gardens and keep continuously charging fees and subscriptions. Too bad games are more of an art form than a news paper or a some tool maintenance contract is.
Are being a puppet and getting tricked mutually exclusive to you? Intelligence assets rarely have the full picture of what their handlers plans for them or their target are. Most of them think or are made to think that they are indispensable to the their masters.
Really hard to think that al-Julani consciously accepted to shake hands with western high level politicians and made the new free Syrian leader one day and the next Israeli media is making him the next Osama bin laden, while he has to flee Damascus because Israeli bombs.
Or maybe ya'll are have been so full of hubris and are now finally getting wiser with age and start to recognize that you were always shit or average at best.
Ofc. People who push this are in composition 10% moral crusaders and 90% those afraid for their own power and status quo in the coming years. With these pushes toward age verification and message scanning; It's not just they want to scan everything and watch everybody, they want to test the waters and people to to think they are always being watched and self censor and not do anything against powers that be. They know better than anybody how shaky things have gotten in Europe and how unpopular they really are. It's pure attempt at population control.
The only problem is that with current people in power they really can't help themselves, but to make things worse for the average people. So the fire will rise anyway.