Yes/No. Both Sony and Microsoft have quality control processes to ensure that whatever is published is going to play on first entry of the disc.

That said, publishers use A LOT of workarounds. Day 1 patches to “finish” the game. Download code inserts. And as of recent, mandatory online server check-ins. As far as I’m aware, Nintendo is the only one who allows publishing half the product with required download.

I’m afraid to find out how many people are still downloading OpenOffice, thinking it’s the same software they heard about back in 2010.

Correct me if I’m wrong but- manually configuring your DNS in the OS would still enable traffic monitoring, wouldn’t it? I always thought DNS traffic is not encrypted by default.

I thought I was losing my mind after seeing all the PS5 Pro praise. Glad to see that the numbers matched what my expectations were.

I do wonder if Sony bought out some influencers or something, because it was oddly counterintuitive amounts of praise.

I haven’t followed Kotaku for years. Did they give up on covering video games? Car manufacturing isn’t even adjacent.

You’re not thinking evil enough, honestly. Two examples off the top of my head, each being fairly innocent mistakes: If you enter your phone number for 2FA, it’s not going to be public-facing. It’s their responsibility to keep that information private from internal and external threats. Ok, so what if it leaks… right? Oh, it turns out the hacker SIM swapped your phone number for the 2FA, and did a password reset on your account via support chat. Still no big deal, its just social media… Except you’ve been giving updates to all your patreon backers on your project that’s shipping soon. It suddenly vanishes off the internet, replaced with a crypto scheme, and all your supporters just flooded your bank with chargebacks. Your attempts at getting your account back are met with silence and your supporters are now furious. Was any of that your fault? No. You get $100.

Let’s try another example: Bounty programs are used by companies to collect bugs and other possibly exploits so they can be fixed. “Too expensive, nobody will know if there’s a bug anyway.” So the app on Google Play store gets installed by 30 million users with a critical flaw… if a very specific image is opened in it, the phone bricks. All the news sites cover the bug, pushing the image to the front page. You open the app and… Your expensive phone just died. Were you at fault for that? No. You get to join the arbitration group and get an individual settlement of $12.

Think more evil. Don’t stick with the “I have nothing to lose” because you almost always have something to lose. The fact these terms were even thought of and written means you do have a financial investment in the platform.

I looked at the terms of service and noticed that they bind you into arbitration, limit your terms to $100, mandate you to travel to Delaware for dispute, and force you into mass arbitration if your dispute is similar to others.

Pass

ooh, do you have any details? I don’t think I heard about this one.

Nonono, you misunderstand. They want $30 for allowing you to play The Sims 2.

none of those are DLC

I keep seeing “have all DLC” but they seem to be conflating Expansion/Stuff Packs with actual Downloadable Content.

Does The Sims 1 contain all the Maxis website stuff? Is the downloadable Elle Woods no longer lost media?

Does the Sims 2 include all the downloadables from The Exchange? The downloads from Sims Store? The downloadable pre-order bonuses? The downloadable Christmas pack?

I can skip over any business that only has a Facebook page. Plenty of choices out there…

What I can’t skip is when a political candidate is only on Facebook. I can’t count the number of times I was trying to research candidates for local election and found they only had their policies on a locked Facebook page. Infuriating doesn’t describe it.