Its unfortunately a pretty common thing, especially for gatcha games. Look at the whole Limbus Company debacle from a few years back, for example, where people protested outside the studio because the summer skins weren’t sexy enough (for a game that hadn’t previously sexualized characters heavily) and got an unrelated artist fired because she was a feminist and thus was surely the one who made the decision.

With gatcha games, its a bit of a perfect storm with the extreme investment expected in these games, the monetization of characters, an industry that leans into this, and the fact that these games tend to be made in and marketed towards east-Asian regions where generally, sexuality is more accepted but sexism also more common and played largely by young, immature men.

Edit: Notably also, a lot of the men getting super invested in games like this are also vulnerable, which means a lot are likely to also end up in groups like the incel “movement” as well as being more likely to be swept up in any existing toxic culture around the games themselves.

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As everyone has clearly stated, you need to watch out for your personal health and safety (mental and physical).

That said, I just want to highlight the fact that you probably shouldn’t broadcast your feelings on it too bluntly (even if you are in the right) and should consider if a more middle-ground approach would be better for you compared to making a large announcement and cutting people off. To be clear, this should be primally about you and your well-being, though.

In particular, as other have stated, if you’re cutting them off anyway, its probably worth considering just ghosting them. That way you can avoid fights and drama, as well as likely having less records of you being trans if you’re worried about that.

If you still care about your family a lot, as it sounds like you do, it may also be worth considering trying to work out a plan for low-contact rather than completely cutting them off. For example, if you communicate mostly through social media, you might disconnect or switch to alts they don’t know. If its primarily through sms but not phone, prehaps block or hide their sms messages but allow them to call you. Maybe you just need to stop visiting them or allowing visits. Your family doesn’t need to know this plan or the reason for it, and probably shouldn’t. For example, you could just brush it off as wanting to disconnect from social media/technology or being busy. If you want to go this route, figure you what works for you - don’t do it out of obligation, but because you genuinely want to keep the connection and are confident you can do so with without putting yourself in danger. Also, be willing to re-evaluate this later, if your relationship or need change.

In the same vein, you can also start looking at moving to safer regions. I understand this is a big commitment, so I don’t expect it to be a reasonable answer, esspecially in the short term, but if may be worth starting to look at whats involved. It might be complete overkill (I pray to God it is) but if you don’t have significant roots, moving further away may help distance yourself from them, while also providing more security.

Ultimately, I don’t think you’re in the wrong, if you feel the need to resort to anything more extreme for your own well-being, don’t hesitate. At the same time, it can be hard on you to lose family, reguardless of how terrible, abusive, or stupid they may be, which is why I’m bringing up some more middle-ground options. Consider your needs, and decide what the best way to achive that is - you don’t need to consider their reaction or feeling when trying to figure out how to keep yourself safe and healthy.

It could be done, but it could even more easily be done to just say Ukrane is part of NATO, and NATO will intervene if necessary to prevent further territory loss. The result would be the same. Putin doesn’t care about the theatrics. He just wants the Ukrainian identity destroyed and the land to be considered Russian. It doesn’t matter to him how NATO is involved beyond how much of a threat they are.

Well, they implemented some graphical improvements and options, as well as workshop mod support so now would be a good time for a replay.

Either physical or digital. And I have access to a PC (with a bunch of emulators) or mobile phones.

A soft top/sub top.

Its not really about the taste - its about the speed and convenience. If you want good food, you make your own. If you just finished a shift in a back-breaking job, and hate cooking, then its a chance to relax and free up some time.

People don’t want to date those who don’t value or respect them, their lives, their family, or their country? Im shocked! Shocked, I say!

Its just been my personal experience browsing, sorting by new. Generally, anything that could potentially be viewed as an ad (nonetheless a paywall) gets downvoted. For example, I used to see more art shared, and often users who included watermarks (even non-disruptive ones), or links to a patreon would be immediately downvoted. I’ve also seen YouTube creators criticized here for simply selling merch. Even just a couple days ago, I commented on the same trend, and another user quickly replied to tell me its a good thing nothing here can be monitized because money ruins everything. There are exceptions, esspecially with open source software, but these seem more the exception than the norm, in my experience.

They also often rely on commissions or supporter pages to cover costs or make a living, which Lemmy is often hostile to.

If used in the specific niche use cases its trained for, as long as its used as a tool and not a final product. For example, using AI to generate background elements of a complete image. The AI elements aren’t the focus, and should be things that shouldn’t matter, but it might be better to use an AI element rather than doing a bare minimum element by hand. This might be something like a blurred out environment background behind a peice of hand drawn character art - otherwise it might just be a gradient or solid colour because it isn’t important, but having something low-quality is better than having effectively nothing.

In a similar case, for multidisciplinary projects where the artists can’t realistically work proficiently in every field required, AI assets may be good enough to meet the minimum requirements to at least complete the project. For example, I do a lot of game modding - I’m proficient with programming, game/level design, and 3D modeling, but not good enough to make dozens of textures and sounds that are up to snuff. I might be able to dedicate time to make a couple of most key resources myself or hire someone, but seeing as this is a non-commercial, non-monitized project I can’t buy resources regularly. AI can be a good enough solution to get the project out the door.

In the same way, LLM tools can be good if used as a way to “extend” existing works. Its a generally bad idea to rely entirely on them, but if you use it to polish a sentence you wrote, come up with phrasing ideas, or write your long if-chain for you, then it’s a way of improving or speeding up your work.

Basically, AI tools as they are, should be seen as another tool by those in or adjacent to the related profession - another tool in the toolbox rather than a way to replace the human.

Its not that old (although that does fit the theme) but Hotline Miami 1, and to a lesser extent, 2. Both are limited a lot by the engine, and by the small scale of their development. If they could be re-made in a new engine, with some modern customizability and QoL features, as well as added polish on things like the door physics, I think it could go a long way to ensuring they stand the test of time.

Yeah, that sounds very similar in strategy. TTT is a deception game built on top of the fps video game, Counter Strike - its a pretty typical deception game, one team of innocents with a revealed detective role, and a few hidden traitors amongst them. The main difference compared to a lot of deception games is just that everyone will have weapons and can kill others at any time, often in a fraction of a second. Because fights are so short and bloody, everyone is typically extra jumpy and information that would normally be obvious is easily lost, which makes it perfect for exactly that sort of manipulative play.

Any good play in a deception game - esspecially an open-ended one - feels so bad.

In particular, the example that comes to mind is when you create an alliance with a friend in TTT with you as a traitor and them an innocent: manipulating them into killing a bunch of their friendly innocents with you, before you shoot them in the back of the head to win the game.

Unfortunately, that popup only lists third party DRM.

They do not have to. FTL is one example I know of off the top of my head.

P

Also looks very Deep Rock.

Honestly, I think now is probably the best time in history for discoverablity by far. Things like YouTube have done a lot, but I think Steam has played a massive part. Compare it to most of the other options:

Physical retailers tend to just be a wall of products, with the exception of games with a large marketing budget (esspecially those working out deals directly with the retailer) that often get special placement in their own shelf. Marketing budget is king, and everything else is hard to browse.

Reviewers offer a bit of an advantage as they provide an easy way to assess if games are good or bad, but they are usually limitted in the number of reviews they can publish, and those reviews tend to go towards the games that get sent from powerful publishers or those with most hype, meaning it usually still comes down to marketing budget.

A step up from that is most online retailers. Here, you have easier access to information about the games on display, and often have ways to sort by genre, price, or reviews. That said, a lot of emphasis is always placed on either the top grossing, games directly connected to the storefront owner, or games that directly buy space on the front page. This offers far more discoverability than anything that came before, but still tends to massively over-push higher-budget and/or higher-return games.

Steam on the other hand, has put far more emphasis on featuring good games on their front page. You can’t buy the space, Valve doesn’t bias the store towards their own products as much, and revenue plays a generally smaller part in the algorithm. Instead, they have a much better personalized recommendation algorithm and more tools for customizing your storefront (such as blocking tags). On top of this, they have recognized that this isn’t enough, and introduced a myriad of (often half-baked) additional discovery tools, such the the Discovery Queue, Curators, and the various festivals like NextFest. Sure, its not perfect, but I can consistent find new games I’m interested in, whereas on other platforms its barely worth trying. I think this is a big part of Steam’s success that often gets overlooked.