iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Just gonna take my own reply as a quote here: bsky.app/profile/brav...

Agree with this mindset, but will say that there's a bit of difference with gas specifically because people rely on that to survive. You don't need PSN or video games to survive so you can just cut those purchases out. All you can do is minimize the amount of gas you buy w/o alternative fuel sources

The people who are locked in and are emotionally invested enough to do a protest like this probably are playing "that much PS5" or PS4.

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No, at least not in the medium-term. Information security for the kind of data that was stolen back then is taken a LOT more seriously now than it was back then. It's one thing to have a prolonged outage and limited breach; it's another to be fully hacked in the way they were back then.

Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This, and also, honestly... if you don't like something, just stop using or funding it as much as possible. You don't need to wait to do so. Literally just do it. These week-long blackouts do nothing if you're just going to re-up your subscriptions and stay a monthly active user afterwards.

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Reposted by Brendan

Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 10/04/2024

remembering the greatest interview of all time

An interview with the guy who yells MORTAL KOMBAT in the theme for Mortal Kombat

interviewer: I see. will you do it over the phone?
guy: would i do it over the phone? absolutely.
interviewer: let's hear it.
guy: Mortal Kombat!

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Reposted by Brendan

Jon Cartwright @jon.gvg.io · 25/07/2026

FF14 and COD are going to take up the entire Switch 2 storage by themselves

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Tama Hero @tamahero.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I just read someone say "maybe some art is just meant to be an 8.5/10" and I felt a little spark in my brain. As a critic I am always evaluating what was amazing about something and what could be improved. But my expectation is never that a great work be a 10/10.

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Nintendo Patents Watch @ninpatentswatch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

XC2 also supports cloud saves if you have NSO.

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Reposted by Brendan

According to Cross Marketing’s survey of 1200 console gamer in June, physical media is alive in Japan: • 41% prefer physical, 40% prefer digital, and 19% buy them equally • The ratio is slowly drifting toward digital • 2025 was an outlier, possibly bc of the NS2 and PS5 Japan-only model launches 1/

Console Game Purchase Media (Single Answer)
Purchase all as digital download versions
Purchase both, with digital download being more common
Purchase both, equal in roughly proportions
Purchase both, with physical package being more common
Purchase all as physical package versions
n=
2026 Overall (1,200)
20
20
19
16
25
2025 Overall (1,159)
20
23
21
17
19
2024 Overall (1,168)
17
19
22
17
26
2023 Overall (1,070)
11
17
24
18
30
2022 Overall (979)
12
18
26
19
26
(%)

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I'd like to add this: If they're using Gen AI to generate game assets, they didn't disclose it on Steam. They kept examples of AI use vague in interviews (saying they used it as a tool and naming Photoshop's generative fill feature but not giving other examples), so skepticism is fair.

By the way, because I feel like I have to be hyper-specific and emphasize this as much as possible, I'm not saying there's *nothing* wrong or that can go wrong with this feature. It's just that I think this isn't as bad as the immediate reactions would make me think it is.

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I don't have those answers. All I know is that... I'm tired of every other day coming with a doomsday story for gaming lol.

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Perhaps it's because of how poorly video streaming platforms have handled ads with their premium platforms? Perhaps it's because of how EA is shoving them directly into their premium titles? Perhaps it's just everything going on with the industry at the moment? Or perhaps it's something else?

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This is all to say, although this ad-supported game streaming option is being marketed completely wrong, it also probably doesn't deserve that much outrage. It feels like nothing that problematic in its current state, like people are taking the worst case scenario and running with it.

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Because of this, I think marketing game streaming as a solution for those who currently can't afford a new console in this specific press release was a bad idea. Instead, this feels like more of a way to get people to subscribe to Game Pass and stream games from there, which is fair enough.

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This wasn't going to be free without ads because it costs money to host server racks full of Xbox consoles or PCs to run games and you could just never buy another Xbox game. Even so, the one hour limit is pretty low. So, really, this is more of a trial than something you would use forever.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

If you're an Xbox player, you might have Game Pass already. Game Pass subscribers can do this without ads already. Meanwhile, if you have an Xbox that runs the game natively, you can just stream from that. So this is a very situational feature AND the headline looks bad out of context.

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Okay, this is pretty awesome.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

And the biggest problem with Valve getting rid of physical gift cards is now solved!

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Flo @floha258.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Can‘t believe @mookartbot.bsky.social has its own Wikipedia page

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I believe the "tied to an account" thing was misinformation that was spread at the time the Switch 2 came out. As the others have mentioned, they're just regular game cards but with no data on them, like what Microsoft has been doing with a lot of their games on PS5 and Series X recently.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Unfortunately people have decided it's okay to misuse Community Notes to dunk on the original poster or promote their own personal perspectives rather than actually correct factual errors or add real context. This is also the case on Threads and Instagram with their Community Notes features.

Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Spent an hour typing a 400 word thing for a job-related questionnaire just for their site to time me out and wipe what I had written out of the text field. :) Note to self: Type in a notes app and then upload to the site.

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𖹭 Sylvie 𖹭 @sugarsylvie.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Shellos and Flareon making smores! A request I had gotten #art #fanart #pokemon #eeveelution #flareon #shellos #westshellos

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RUS @illustr.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

No. 155 - 157 fiyaaaaah

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I had another two comments in the thread here, but I felt like I didn't express myself the most eloquently, so I deleted them. My point was pretty much that, despite my own moral concerns, I can see hyper-specific scenarios where these terms do in fact have ethical applications.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Welcome to license agreements. That said, the most Nintendo's actually ever done with that term is account/console ban people from online services. I don't even know whether Sony has actually pruned accounts with purchases either and the term has also existed for 2 decades in the UK.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Yea good point. That said, you can probably find some sort of parallel computing that would benefit from GPU acceleration, and if not, you still have pretty competent CPU compute that you can make use of.

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Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

And as you said in other comments, not really easy to win a plagiarism suit unless it's straight-up direct theft.

Brendan @braviarybrendan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I will still say that I saw the original design similarities as parody, but I am also fully aware that Japan's copyright laws don't really have fair use in the same way as they do in the US, and that they really should have just made more unique monster designs to begin with. Lol

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Also very possible that ID themselves felt like they needed to do damage control/make a statement here too, considering a bunch of their devs got axed and people have legitimate reasons to be concerned that the studio isn't going to be what it was before the layoffs.

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AT Protocol is how posts on Bluesky are handled by their servers. Anyone can make an app or website that accesses Bluesky or another service that uses AT Protocol. The app or website you use to access it is called a client.

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I'd imagine some of these datacenters will just be repurposed for things besides AI when the current AI boom subsides. There is a ton of need for databases and web servers for services like YouTube and Bluesky still, and they already spent the money, so why not?

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The PS Plus prices are good, but I don't love that they only reduced the standard price of these games down to $40, not to mention the DLC is $30 if you don't have PS Plus. This is the same as the new PC prices, though, so fair enough, I guess?

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You can use Plutonium on the Steam release, at least. But yea, they really need to patch these games.

It's one of those things that makes business and technical sense, but if it's handled poorly, it is an unethical practice. For me, at least, the concern is this will be handled poorly and people will lose their purchases and/or historically significant accounts. Plus, it's bad for preservation.

I think if they clarify that this policy doesn't affect accounts with game/DLC purchases or lots of data, it is understandable (pruning a database can help with storage and performance of some queries). But as it stands, if this policy is applied to all accounts equally, then it is very problematic.

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Correction: The Switch 2 bans were console-level, not account-level.

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That was a different scenario. This is "we will delete your account for doing nothing with it". That was "we will terminate your account if you use pirated games", but the way the piracy checks work meant some who bought used games were inadvertently banned. Nintendo also unbanned those affected.

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PLAYSTATION TERMS OF SERVICE

The crazy thing is that this term isn't even in the US Terms of Agreement; it's in the UK TOS. United Kingdom: www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/... US: www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/... That's probably why nobody knew about this retention period until three months after the TOS was updated.

playstation.com