That's a very valid point, albeit incredibly disappointing. Mechanisms to block tracking should be built into the operating system, but I also realise that it would probably be impossible to accurately implement.

"Ask app not to track" is accurate to what you're choosing, I just hate that we've gotten to this point.

I loathe the wording that's been normalised around tracking. The options for the upcoming dialog are "Allow" or "Ask app not to track".

Why the fuck do I need to ask, as if the app is free to deny my humble request not to be spied upon? The whole tracking industry is awash with weasel words and vagueness in an effort to have us make ill-informed decisions.

Fucking parasites.

I've been a fan of Dragon Age since Origins and this game looks like another step towards the kind of simplified gameplay that every game has made. It's disappointing that the series has gone from an RPG to a generic 3rd person action adventure game, but given the gradual evolution of the other games it's not really surprising.

kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

Such a nice way to sum it up. You would think that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 would show publishers that there is a (large) market for actual RPGs, but that's maybe too much to hope for.

I haven't had a gaming-capable PC for about a decade and I'm very happy with my PS5 (and the PS4 before it). Sony bringing exclusives to PC don't feel like the end times as it's just a way for them to make more money.

I'm genuinely glad that PC players will get to experience some of the great games that have been on the PS5 in the last few years.

I know that the world has changed and these kinds of big conferences aren't really viable (or necessary) anymore, but my younger self who always wished to go to E3 at some point is sad.

Even single-player games aren't single-player anymore with all the online-requiring bullshit publishers have shoved into their games. The game most likely comes with a fuckton of telemetry and user-behaviour tracking which is a lot more valuable to Sony if it can be attached to a specific user.

Cute article, but does anyone else find it distracting that in between some of the paragraphs there are links to other articles? I know that modern media needs to be engaging to people with TikTok-brain, but I found it somewhat obnoxious.

I counted 5 of these article links which was bad enough, but I can't imagine what it looks like without an ad-blocker.

When you mentioned it I remembered that of course there is a setting for this.. but when I went to check it just says "Updates disabled by your organisation" In this case it's a work laptop that has a bunch of "security" things installed on it which prevent me from doing things like ...installing applications I need to do my job. Not sure how Firefox is able to update when it's been explicitly disabled, but I will at least change this setting on my personal computer.

I may have misworded it a bit. The tabs themselves get restored, but the state of the tabs (being logged in to a site, for example) isn't always retained. In all fairness this is perhaps due to my privacy settings, but I'd prefer it if Firefox didn't force me to restart.

I'm on macOS.

I remember feeling liberated when streaming became big. Dealing with potential fake files, low quality, or having something stuck on 95% with no seeders was something I wasn't going to miss when I ditched piracy for Netflix.... then the streaming wars began and here I come crawling back.

I also pay for Kagi and I'm super happy with that decision. I do wish they'd stop putting so much AI cruft into their search engine, but at least I can disable it.

I recently played through Weird West and absolutely loved it. Makes a lot of sense to learn that it was made by former Arkane Austin people.

With all the money they'll save from shutting down all the smaller studios they can just go out and buy more.

Ironically if the developers band together and start another studio they would probably have Microsoft knocking on their door with an acquisition offer in a few years.

But how else can they guarantee infinite growth to their shareholders? Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders???

I wonder if regulators will bring this up the next time Microsoft wants to buy another publisher. They fought tooth-and-nail to buy Activision Blizzard and like a child that got a new toy they're throwing out the old ones.