Did you read the article?

This doesn’t just cover microtransactions. In fact, the new law is harsher on fake gambling than it is on real gambling - loot boxes get classified as M, but a poker minigame is an automatic R18.

Patent infringement is a curious angle. Do we know what specific patent(s) they’re claiming here?

Oh, did you think the headline meant they were shutting S3 down? Servers will remain up for the foreseeable future, and they’ll even still run seasonal Splatfest and Big Run events. They’re just done with content updates.

Two years of content seems plenty reasonable. Especially when they said from the start that it would be two years. Games don’t need infinite updates forever and ever and ever. Especially when it’s not a live service being sustained by microtransactions.

You didn’t answer my question, by the way.

I would be entirely fine with Flappy Bird passing into the public domain, but this isn’t even that. They actually own it now.

Splatoon 1 had one year of content updates. Splatoon 2 had two. And they told us from the start that Splatoon 3 was also going to have two years.

How long do you expect them to keep going for?

Did you even read the article?

This is not the same Flappy Bird. The original game already has been preserved, the APK is floating around if you know where to look.

This new game is an outright scam using stolen IP to trick users into thinking this is the original.

Normally these kind of announcements come with some kind of explanation. The lack of one reflects very poorly on Mozilla and leads me to assume the worst.

So real gambling is M, fake gambling is R18+. Makes sense.

It’s an iterative series, each game building on the predecessor’s mechanics, so there’s not any one major twist. But there are a lot of little things that add up. The new movement techniques are great, Salmon Run has been significantly expanded, and just in general the QoL is night and day.

Also, the fact that Ink Armor, Sting Ray, and Main Power Up are not in the game might be the true biggest step forward. S3’s meta is in a pretty good spot now.

Large parts? It’s been a while since I played Octo Canyon, but I’m pretty sure the only thing that reappeared from Valley was the Octostomp boss, but it’s a different fight anyway so not really.

It’ll never happen, but I’d honestly prefer for S4 to move on from Splatfests and do something else entirely. They’ve run out of ideas, a lot of the themes feel like filler just to keep it going out of obligation. At this point I just see Splatfests as a weekend where they take away Ranked and make everyone play the worst game mode.

How many years do you expect them to keep pumping out content for the same game? They’ve gotta wrap it up somewhere. Two years is plenty.

Back in my day, games were released and we played them for what they were.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Haven’t had a whole lot of time to practice, but I’m working on charge partitioning. Managed to get double ball a few times in a match.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - After getting demoted to Expert I went on an even worse losing streak for a bit, but I seem to be clawing my way back now. It’s just sample size, or so I keep telling myself.

Splatoon 3 - Grand Festival was rad. Not the Turf War part, Turf still sucks, but it was the second best concert I saw all week.

S2 was 2017, S3 was 2022. Five year gap is pretty reasonable for sequels.

S4 likely won’t happen until after the next Animal Crossing, since it’s the same team working on both IPs.

They really made sure to reference the number 3 in every possible place except the kit system.

F-Zero GX - As far as pure racing goes, GX is perfection.

Kirby Air Ride - The actual racing mode is… mid, honestly. But City Trial? One of the most interesting and unique game modes ever conceived. Sad this game never got any kind of successor.

I like X so X can’t be bad

I didn’t say that. What I said was “these are not the same thing, and drawing a false equivalence between them muddies the message.”

Depends on how much of a threat they are. Some random loser on /pol/ who will never leave their basement in order to harm anyone is probably not worth punching. But someone like Richard Spencer, who has a lot of reach and influence as a big name, I’ll gleefully watch that one clip over and over with popcorn at the ready.

I suppose the more difficult question to ask is where to draw the line in between.

It’s not. These are not the same thing. No one has bankrupted themselves playing Balatro.