Can anyone confirm that my understanding of the source article is correct?

The "Windows 12 may require a subscription" is coming from the fact that the word "Subscription" exists in a Windows config file somewhere?

That seems like a pretty big leap to me. Not that I don't think it's impossible that Microsoft would do this, but the evidence here seems thin to say the least.

I hate how much of a monopoly they have in the space...

It's not necessarily Patreon that's the root problem here. The problem is the foundations of the financial industry (banks, credit card companies, etc) have complete control over the content and products you can exchange for money.

If Wells Fargo decides that your product or content has offended some random executive, they will call up your payment provider (like Stripe) and tell them to close your account. And the payment provider will do it because they don't really have a choice.

The issue in this instance is that's its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.

Don't you see. The Switch 2 may have an LCD or an OLED screen! It also may, or may not, have backwards compatibility with the first Switch! It also may, or may not, release in 2024!

How can anyone not be potentially excited about these things that may, or may not, be true!

I wouldn't lump this in with the whole "enshitification" issue.

This is the end result of gamers not placing any value on the content they consume. People want free content, regardless of quality, over anything else.

So, as you would expect, what you are seeing is free content, regardless of quality, being created en masse.

When you use Stripe/Paypal as your payment processor you have to be willing to accept whatever demands they (and the banks backing them) decide to make on any given day.

Stands for Marxism–Leninism.

I don't see why a specific studio gets a pass for story criticisms just because they are notorious for being lacking.

People still on Reddit want someone to take their complaints seriously? Empirically speaking, they will accept this.

Nah, it's more than the communities on places like Reddit and lemmy/kbin are so small and unimportant relative to the overall consumer market that you can pretty much ignore them completely.

But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison.

Larian is similar in size, if not significantly larger, than Bethesda when they made Skyrim.

I guess it depends on how much you trust a company (both now and in the future) to do something they shouldn't with this kind of setup, whether on purpose or though incompetence.

Personally, I don't software silently installing unrelated services to my machine just in case the company decides they want to have it running on my machine in the future.

Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.

And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn't turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?

It proceeded without incident but I couldn’t help feeling nervous to trust that its lidar saw me and it interpreted me as a human.

I can't say I view an average driver with any more trust though.

"as possible" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.

This post implies that Sony has more trust is ridiculous. They refuse to secure their online services, leading to recurring hacks. There was whole rootkit fiasco which was crazy bad.

They defended the ridiculous launch prices of the PS3 by saying that they think consumers should just work more hours to afford one.

They still do shit things like hide basic features like cloud saves behind a paywall. That have no problem paying for exclusive games and exclusive content and if they had the money MS had they would do the same thing MS is doing.

To summarize the actual tweets/comments/etc that these videos (there are multiple) are panicking about.

1. Smaller studios aren't going to be able to replicate the scale and complexity of BG3. So people shouldn't be using BG3 as the bar to compare future titles/RPGs from other studios going forward. Larian is comparable in size (or even larger) to Bethesda when they released Skyrim, and no one has been able to compete directly with Skyrim either.

2. Not all games and RPGs need to be as complex and long as BG3. Expecting open-ended, 100 hour-long RPGs for every future game/RPG isn't realistic. Not all games require that scope, it's rare to get such a budget for this type of game, and even if you did, most companies won't be able to replicate the game in a meaningful way. Just like how companies other than Rockstar would struggle to replicate the scale of games like GTA and RDR.

There, I've summarized multiple 20 min videos. Just without all the hand-waving and drama.

I assume that's because their goal is to outline why third-party apps won't be needed. The whole point of this drama is that Reddit wants to get rid of the third-party apps, so they are going to do everything to try to convince people why not having them will be fine.

Where are the devs criticizing the scope of it?

It seems the summary of most of the posts are "smaller studies can't create games as big as BG3" and "not every game/RPG needs to be as big and complex as BG3".

Are those responses incorrect and how is that being critical of BG3?

If anything, they are critcizing the idea that BG3 is the game all RPGs need to strive to be.

Hard to care about this without seeing the actual text of the email.

“Electronic or appliance product” or “product” does not include any of the following:
(i) Equipment or repair parts as defined in Chapter 28 (commencing with Section 22900) of Division 8 of the Business and Professions Code.
(ii) A product or component of an “alarm system” as defined in subdivision (c) of Section 7590.1 of the Business and Professions Code, including a fire protection system, as defined in the California Fire Code.
(iii) A video game console.

Funny seeing such a specific exclusion being made here.