ProdigalFrog

At least for steel plate, it should work without any supporting material.

Kevlar around it would help catch spalling from a bullet flattening out and spraying little bits of shrapnel out across the surface, but since these ones aren't actually stopping the bullets, there is no spalling to catch.

If it is for hand guns, then it's almost completely a waste, since the only pistol caliber guns I've seen in this war are only issued to Civil guard there, way behind the frontlines.

Ah, didn't think of that, probably so.

Interesting to think that the U.S. has spent so much money to develop and test a new bullet and rifle combo specifically to beat Russian body armor, all for naught.

That steel plate in the vest should absolutely be stopping those rifle rounds, that is their main purpose (shrapnel can be stopped with much lighter and more flexible Kevlar).

The fact that these are failing to stop those rounds shows that the steel is likely not heat treated correctly to the proper hardness. Considering how much weight those add to a loadout, if the rest of the vest is Kevlar, those soldiers would likely have a higher survival rate by ditching the ineffective plates entirely in exchange for better mobility.

A while back I put together a pretty big list of free Linux games, along with their license info. A good amount of them are FPS games, hopefully one of them interests you 🙂

I guess for tactical shooters, Urban Terror might qualify?

I found him to be a compelling speaker, and thoroughly enjoyed his style of introspection, but I can get why some would prefer a text version.

This was the major plot point of an old web comic I used to read, Mare Internum (warning, attempted suicide on page one). I'm sure the creator is quite happy with this news.

Rock'n'roll racing got a pretty solid GBA port, it's a fantastic little isometric battle racer from the 90's

It's extremely difficult for me to enjoy most 8-bit games, as there's very little there to intrigue my tastes. However, there are a few standouts that I still play to this day on an emulator handheld, like H.E.R.O. or Mr. Do!

The good ones generally have a really solid little gameplay loop that's quick to get into, with tight controls that let you get into a flow-state easily, and a difficulty curve that isn't infuriating (something far too common from that era). The story heavy games from that era usually had mediocre or terrible writing paired with repetitive grinding gameplay, so the classics like Final Fantasy are sadly off limits for me.

H.E.R.O. is one of my favorites since it has somewhat uncommon gameplay where you control a man with a helicopter pack in a mine, avoiding various hazards to rescue a trapped miner at the end of each level. It rewards memorization, which is a knock against it, but even though I've played it heavily, I keep coming back to it as I never can quite remember the layouts of the later levels, and once control of the backpack is mastered, it just feels good to zip around all of these creatures and caverns of instant death without nicking yourself. I'm not sure how someone who has never played it before would feel about it, since it can take a while to get the hang of the controls, but I think it holds up pretty well from that era.

It also received a pretty massive number of ports to various consoles and home computers. The original Atari 2600 version is good, but personally I found the MSX port to be the most polished, and it adds some nice additional graphics as well.

Are there really that many companies screwing over consumers? I’d appreciate if Stop Killing Games actually kept a running list of which companies and which games are anti-consumer.

Before Ross started this campaign, he'd been steadily creating a video series dedicated to cataloging games that are killed for the past 8 years, called Dead Game News. Here's a link to a playlist of the series, and you can see the titles of the games that have been killed in the title of the episodes. The Crew is certainly not alone, it was chosen to be a centerpiece of the campaign because it had so many people who owned it, having a fairly high profile shutdown, and being a super clear-cut example of a publisher actively disabling a game that clearly didn't need to be.

I’m also not sold on the idea that a ban is the only way to protect consumers.

Instead of banning it completely,

I want to point out that outright banning live service games has never been suggested or wanted in this campaign. The proposed solution is to make it a legal requirement to have an end-of-life plan for live service games that are not subscription based. This would effectively mean the publisher/developer would need to account for the need to make the game playable after they decide to end support from the beginning of development, and make choices that would make that possible (choosing software and licenses that won't conflict with an End-of-Life). Alternatively, they could either make it not require a central server at all, or make it subscription based.

While the game is supported, they would still be able to run it however they please, their profit model would not be banned, the only thing that changes is what happens when the game is no longer profitable enough to support.

I’m in favour of the Buddhist idea of impermanence. Everything is temporary and trying to make a game exist forever is as silly as trying to live forever.

There's nothing wrong with that, but many people have the philosophy of preserving our history, so as to learn from it, and for future generations to experience. I personally am very grateful that I can read the thoughts of someone who lived a thousand years before me in a book, thanks to fanatical archivists who preserved it. It's the closest any of us can come to experiencing a time machine, the very concept can fill one with awe. Nothing will last forever, but I and many others derive meaning and value from keeping history alive for future generations to learn from, to enjoy, to ponder. Us preserving things in our corner does not disturb someone else from living with impermanence, it is only there for those who wish to partake.

Boycotts are fickle things, sometimes gathering a following big enough to make a corporation cave, but many other times, not getting any steam at all.

And even if a boycott is successful against one company, it doesn't mean they won't try the same thing again, or try their usual 'do something extreme, then walk it back to where you originally wanted it' two-step, which is generally very effective at getting what they want. They know how to manipulate the public to their desires, they have whole divisions dedicated to that (though sometimes even they get caught unawares). If we went this route, the issue is that this tactic is done frequently enough that people would likely get boycott fatigue. "Ugh, another campaign? Another publisher screwing us? I just can't anymore."

At least against corporations, actual consumer protection law is a much more reliable long-term solution to an enemy that will try every tactic to avoid real, effective change in favor of the consumer.