Goodeye8

fauxbait means fake (jail)bait and jailbait is considered childporn, so fauxbait is about fake child porn. The content itself is not illegal if the participants are all adults but according to Australian laws the framing of the content can make it illegal as explained in the original post. Fauxbait frames the content as “child porn, but not really” and I think if someone made that framing explicit you’d also consider it wrong.

If someone posted an image of small flatchested adult woman with the title “that woman has nice tits” you probably wouldn’t think anything of it (unless you’re into it) but when that same image is shown and the title is “that fake child has nice tits” it should raise some questions for you, like why even mention child? And that’s the issue with fauxbait. There’s nothing wrong with liking small women with small tits as long as they’re adults, but why is it necessary to take the extra step to frame the adult as a fake child? If you like those kinds of women you don’t need fauxbait, you can subscribe to small titties or tiny titties or flatchested of whatever the community would be called. You can get the same content without the “that’s a fake child” implication.

If you want to argue that they’re not actually implying the fake child porn then why call it fauxbait and continue using it? There are other communities with the same content, just ban the fauxbait community and use a different community. Even if they’re not implying it they’re still using a name that literally means fake child porn.

To put it plainly I was asking if the context matters more than the content, because I think it does. I agree the faux bait community shouldn’t exist but if you’re going argue that content shouldn’t be posted in the first place I’m going to disagree. Not because it’s my kind of content, at to be clear it very much is not, but because I think that’s the slippery slope. That would be saying small flatchested women porn is CP which means men who like those kinds of women are pedos and those women are essentially jailbait. I think that’s stupid.

I think if we to improve the state of NSFW content we also need to be very specific in our wording of the criticism because how criticism is worded can change the context and as we agree, context matters. And that’s what I want from this discussion, clarity on what people are criticizing. Because the other person is right that the content there is not the problem, but he’s wrong because the reason to defed wasn’t because of the content itself but rather how it was framed. And I think you also blurred that line with the fiction story example.

You’re just taking offense to the community being called fauxbait? So if the community is called tiny titties it’s all good?

The point is that this is not the first time that Valve has been singled out for things widely done across the industry and they’ve also been falsely accused of doing things that the rest of the industry is doing.

I don’t see how that’s relevant. If someone is innocent the 99 times they’ve been accused of a crime we shouldn’t give them a pass on the 100th accusation.

If they wanted to go after Valve specifically for gambling they should not have linked it to kids. It’s invoking “think of the children” BS while diluting what they claim is the core argument.

But it is an argument to be made when a) kids are playing a game with gambling (which they are), b) there’s clear evidence that kids experiencing gambling has a negative impact on their life (which the lawsuit also clearly cites) and c) children gambling is illegal.

Gambling is also harmful for adults. They are M rated games. If a child is playing the game that is a parental issue, not a state issue. It’s not illegal for kids to play M rated games, nor do I really think it should be as that is something parents should decide. The issue is that a lot, if not most, parents have no idea what their kids are doing online.

Gambling is also harmful for adults, but that has been legalized. Children playing an M rated game is a parental issue but that’s not the argument that’s being made. But it turns into a legal issue when the game children are playing is gambling.

The argument that “mostly kids play these games” is unsubstantiated at best. Might have been true in the 90s and early 2000s, but there are people in their 50’s that have played games for the majority of their lives.

I didn’t see them making that argument. I saw them make an argument that teenagers are a core audience for CS.

Teenage boys are a core audience of first-person shooter games like Counter-Strike. It is also well known that many of the most famous esports players of CS 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 began playing well before they turned 13. Over half of the 22 players on the top five Counter-Strike esports academy teams are 18 years old or younger, and the youngest member is just 14 years old.

That seems to be pretty well argumented especially when you know the competitive scene of CS where those same academy teams have slotted straight into T1 CS. The fact that there are so many talented players in the competitive scene who either are or were minors a few years ago means that there is a big enough teenage audience to have such talent rise to the top.

Also, PC gaming tends to skew older. They might have more of an argument if they were talking about Call of Duty on a console, but an M rated game is still not targeted to that age group.

You don’t see the irony of defending Valve with their games being M rated and then saying it would be different if it was Call of Duty, which is also an M rated game? By your own logic you should be just as opposed to them talking about Call of Duty as they are talking about Counter Strike.

Again, if they want to go after Vavle for gambling, then do that. But they are jumping around with what exactly the accusation is which makes it seem like they are grasping at straws at best or trying to hide the real reason at worst.

They are and they’re making arguments where Valve would be breaking the law if Valve is gambling. That includes letting children gamble.

That we have all the age verification crap happening at the same time is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Like, How about going after anyone implicated from the files if you really want to protect children? They can come back to this after they develop a coherent argument and include any other gaming companies doing the same thing.

They can’t legally force Valve to implement age verification unless Valve decides to double down on the gambling. Valve could just as easily prevent age verification by removing gambling from their platform. I don’t think Valve should get a free pass on gambling just because there’s a risk of someone malicious trying to push age verification through this door. Valve opened that door when they decided to implement gambling.

They have a coherent argument, it’s just an argument you don’t like and they can’t include other gaming companies in this lawsuit because other gaming companies are not doing it the exact same way Valve is doing it. What you’re saying is that we should give Valve a pass on allegedly breaking the law because we can’t accuse all companies who may or may not be breaking the law. If there’s a gangrape and only 1 of the 5 rapists could be proven guilty should they get a free pass because we can’t prove all 5 did the raping? Because that’s the argument you’re making.

If this is a plan to distract from the Epstein files I would consider that a successful plan because what is happening is fucking insane. This distraction would literally be hiding child rapists by killing children.

None of this is exclusive to Valve. Yeah, people can technically buy hardware and sell it, but they can also gift games or whatever and people were already using third party websites to sell their items for cash.

Lootboxes are not specific to Valve, but the way Valve has implemented lootboxes is very distinct. And I know that third party sites have been selling the skins for cash for years at this point, but that has been happening outside Valve’s ecosystem. IMO Valve should’ve been held accountable for that years ago but so far they’ve been able to skirt the law.

And MMOs with random drops have historically always had an RMT market that is against the TOS where people sell in game currency or items for real currency.

Which is part of why I said the way Valve does things unique to Valve, because Valve does (for the most part) offer the infrastructure for all the trading except for turning Steam credit back into real money. IMO RMT shouldn’t exist either but that is not something you legally push onto developer because like you said, it is against the TOS so players are doing something the developer has already said they shouldn’t be doing.

I’m not saying that valve should be let off the hook when it comes to loot boxes, but this lawsuit kind of stinks because it is all over the place and again, valve isn’t the worst example of what they describe.

Valve isn’t the worst example but they are one of the few companies where there’s now some legal ground to go after the gambling, and when it comes to gambling Valve is a pretty big player. Ideally we should go after all of these companies but what is morally right and legally right doesn’t really match when it comes to gambling.

The fact that it’s framed as “protecting children” and claims that valve is intentionally targeting children despite the games in question being rated M and old enough that I seriously doubt there are that many minors playing is putting a ton of red flags up for me. They also add the 90s era “violent video game” rhetoric that was always nonsense.

I could see where you’re coming from but I personally didn’t see the lawsuit this way. Children are a point to bring up because we shouldn’t be normalizing gambling for children, but overall I see the suit as taking an issue with the gambling aspect of the lootboxes. We don’t know the exact number of minors playing but there’s enough for them to get into the competitive scene of CS, there are players who entered T1 of CS while still being minors.

Not sure from where you’re taking the violent video game rhetoric as I didn’t notice that in the actual lawsuit.

The conspiracy part of me thinks this is going to eventually lead to more age verification BS and they are targeting valve because it is the only company that is complying in a way that still protects user privacy.

I get the risk of pushing more age verification BS but I think that’s unavoidable when companies decide to get into gambling. Age verification for gambling has been around before the world wide web was even a thing. I see this more as playing hardball by stating that if Valve wants to partake in gambling then gambling laws should apply to Valve. They can’t legally force Valve to implement age verification unless Valve decides to double down on the gambling. Valve could just as easily prevent age verification by removing gambling from their platform. I don’t think Valve should get a free pass on gambling just because there’s a risk of someone malicious trying to push age verification through this door. Valve opened that door when they decided to implement gambling.

There’s a fundamental difference between what Valve does and what other companies are doing. In most games the things you get from a lootbox have no monetary value. You can’t sell those things to make money. You could get around it by selling the whole account but that is pretty much universally against the TOS so companies get a free pass when that happens.

But even if it did have some monetary value as long as it’s a value set by the community and never acknowledged by the company the company gets a free pass even if they unofficially acknowledge the value (see how WOTC manipulates the secondary market of MTG cards).

And this is where Valve is different from the others. Valve acknowledge the monetary value of an item, because the trades happen on their platform and Valve takes a cut from all the trades. No other lootbox or lootbox-esque game does this.

As for why it’s a lawsuit now, I’m guessing it’s related to what was said in the article. I’m guessing previously Valve could hide behind the fact that the outcome of the trades is essentially Steam credit, which technically has no monetary value because it can’t be cashed out, at least not through Valve. But supposedly now with the Steam deck, in a roundabout way, it is possible to cash out through Valve.

Valve lootboxes have always been the closest iteration to gambling and Valve has been hiding behind technicalities for a decade to keep their gambling ecosystem going. Just because Valve does a lot of good shit doesn’t mean we should be defending their bad shit when it’s obviously bad.

It doesn’t take a whole year to pivot, unless they sit on their ass for that whole year. I’m not saying it’s not possible they did that but it would be an insane level of incompetence.

That’s what is puzzling me. How was it so impossible to course correct the studio when it’s absolutely obvious how to put two and two together?

But that happened in 2024, Sony had the whole of 2025 to figure out what to do with the studio and it’s not like they don’t have highly desirable games to remake cough Bloodborne cough for a studio known for excellent remakes. I just want to know what the hell happened in 2025 for the studio to get literally no projects greenlit by Sony? Is Sony still continuing its stupid live service push or did the studio no longer want to make remakes or what the problem was? The path forward is so clear you don’t even need a business degree to make the decision that could’ve kept this studio alive so what the hell happened?

Even if it wasn’t owned by Microslop I don’t have any confidence BGS could make a good TES game. They’ve been sitting on their laurels for far too long.

This is such a horrific mismanagement of a studio it makes me question if the studio itself wanted to make a live service game and bit off more than they could chew. Because if this is on Sony, and it does have Sony written all over it, then they’re legitimately worse than EA. It’s like a low I didn’t even know existed because it would be an astonishing level of incompetence.

You’re mixing up “miracle tech that leads to nowhere” with “niche tech with little mass appeal”. A rotary engine car has won Le Mans, The Mazda 787. I’m pretty sure one of the recent Mazda plug in Hybrids (I refuse to call those EV-s) has a rotary engine as a backup for the electric engine.

Yes, I’m looking at 2 hours, not exactly high.

Some games don’t need even 2 hours of playtime to see the flaws. It took me a single COD match to understand why I hate that kind of gameplay. Getting to some arbitrary time spent would be time wasted.

The example is a free game. There’s also a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review

There are no free games. You still need to invest time and effort into the game. I got Star Wars Outlaws for free. I understood I’m probably not going to enjoy the game before the tutorial was over. I still gave it a shot under the same “benefit of doubt” idea and in hindsight I should’ve just put the game down when I got the first hint that I’m not going to enjoy it, because I probably would’ve given it a more generous evaluation. Instead I ended up with the opinion that the game is a waste of time because playing it was a waste of my time.

I agree there’s a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review and I think it’s stupid for people to leave negative reviews just to feel like they’re part of some kind of a zeitgeist. But the negative reviews don’t change anything because the reason a game is getting negative reviews is because it’s not a good game. Had Highguard been the new Overwatch it wouldn’t be in the overwhelmingly negative category even if the initial impression of the game was negative. Just look at Doom 2016, prior to launch it ticked all the boxes of being a bad game (development hell, tacked on multiplayer, poor marketing material, no review copies etc) but then it came out and people loved it. I don’t think the benefit of doubt would’ve saved Highguard. It simply would’ve made the trend from a nosedive into a steep slope and the “dead game” claim would just come a few months later.

It’s not generating any code. You don’t even get a game out of the model, you only get a video of what you played. It’s like an AI video generator except you have control over the camera and character.

Even better, it’s Starfield but your character is moving in 4D space and things pop in and out of existence depending on your position in the 4D space. And of course no loading screens.

That’s all it does so far.

Isn’t that the AI hype in a nutshell? “It’s all it does right now but if you add insert hopes and dreams it’s going to revolutionize X”.

I mean, human touch will play a role but I think the tech overall just nowhere near where it should be to make games. It would actually need to understand what it is doing because there needs to be some intentionality there. Something as simple as a counter going up when you kill an enemy, but I think even that goes beyond what current models are even remotely capable. They would be capable of imitating a counter for some timeframe but to actually keep track of it over a long gaming session? I have my doubts.

This will never be widely accepted in the gaming space because it’s not a game. The model only generates an interactive world, not a game world. It’s effectively a glorified AI prompted showroom. It’s useless as a development tool because nothing it generates is usable in the traditional development process which means the model would have to create the whole game but the model is incapable of understanding what a game is.