What grudges do you hold against tech/software companies and why?

[Giganthrax]

Holding grudges against companies is a bit too extreme for me, but I do dislike a bunch of them and wouldn't buy their products except on massive discounts via gray markets. 

 

They are:

Epic Games, for their shitty epic store, forced exclusivity, and security breaches that ensure I'll never ever give them my credit card number.

EA, because EA.

Funcom, because they're garbage and because they already fooled me once with Age of Conan.

Apple, for how overpriced their products are and how they serve as a status symbol for insufferably snobbish people in my country. 

[Giganthrax]

On 1/10/2020 at 10:42 PM, RonnieOP said:

Im confused why this issue only gets held against Epic.

 

Steam has had exclusive games for decades now as has Blizzard. Yet its only Epic that gets shit on for it.

The exclusives on Steam/Blizzard are Valve's/Blizzard's own games. Also, Blizzard totally put the old Diablos and WarCrafts on GoG. 

 

Epic on the other hand throws money at devs in order to buy timed exclusivity, often after the game has been advertised on Steam for years. Nobody has any problem with Fortnite being Epic Store exclusive because Fortnite is an Epic game, they have a problem with games like Shenmue 3 suddenly becoming epic store exclusive and refusing refunds to people who bought a Steam key. 

[dizmo]

5 hours ago, JM21 said:

Actually I just remember how sour I was when I found out that 8th gen Intel CPU's were not compatible on Z170/270 motherboards. I wasn't surprised, but I wasn't happy.

I always just upgrade the whole system so I don't really care if they don't make it compatible with older boards *shrugs*

[DailyProcrastinator]

26 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I always just upgrade the whole system so I don't really care if they don't make it compatible with older boards *shrugs*

I used to do the same until AM4. But had I been able to I would have bought the i7-8700k for my Asus Z170 Sabertooth Mark 1, that was my favorite motherboard out of all the ones I have owned. 

[Totallycasual]

I'm still holding a grudge against Rockstar Games because they cancelled the single player DLC that was in the works for GTAV, they cancelled it so that they could re-purpose the assets and focus on making more money with GTA Online.  What pisses me off even more is that the casino was meant to open in the single player DLC but they abandoned the single player game and opened the GTA Online casino.  If it wasn't for Red Dead 2 i'd be ranking Rockstar down with the likes of EA, i feel like GTA Online and the way it was monetized has corrupted the company like cancer. 

[Ragingsilver]

Google: Shutting down Google reader and buying out companies I liked only to take their patents and throw them out (Motorola is one example).

Youtube: Making content creators lives hell and for constantly making their UI worst each year

BFG graphics cards: They had amazing gpus and a lifetime warrenty. Gone!

Epic store: Exclusivity stuff

Sony: A lot of their products having proprietary equipment

 

and many more I can't remember right now

 

It's not to say I will never their products again, it's just some things they did me wrong. I still boycott Google whenever I can though

 

 

 

[kaiju_wars]

Another three companies I'd like to add.

Bethesda, Ubisoft, and EA.

I won't necessarily not buy their products again, but you bet your ass I'm either buying it used, or at a sever discount like steam summer sales and such (as an example).

 

Bethesda for how Wolfenstein Youngblood released.

The New Order and The New Colossus were amazing, then Youngblood came out and they tried to make it's combat more like Destiny or The Division 2, and it just didn't work well.  I didn't have an issue with the daughters, thought it was cool we were seeing the 80s of this world where the Nazis won.  But the story started, then went no where, kinda just stopped after that and it became a grind fest.  Sure the first two games the levels were linear, but they melded into a good enough story along with the gut busting action of killing nazis.

 

Ubisoft is pretty simple for me.  The major disappointment that Far Cry 5 was, and Ghost Recon Wildlands (and eventually Breakpoint).

 

EA with Battlefront, Battlefront II, Battlefield 1 (yeah, I was kinda disappointed with it in the end), Hardline, and 5.  Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem.  

Like I still haven't bought Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order yet, because EA.  I hear it's good, but I'd still rather wait for a sale.  

[Anomnomnomaly]

On 1/12/2020 at 8:59 PM, Vishera said:

Well,I have a grudge against AMD,

In April 2016 around the launch of Polaris and the Crimson Relive AMD released the most broken drivers in history:

Constant driver crashes and green screen of death,a problem that AMD have NEVER FIXED and 4 YEARS have passed since.

Then:

https://www.pcinvasion.com/r9-380-black-screen-issues-amds-persistent-unsolved-bug/

 

Now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pboDbxogSw4

 

Same old driver issues and problems with new ones as an added bonus.

 

See, I never knew that... back in 2016 I was still using my R9 280X and it wasn't until early 2017 that I got a RX580 and never had any problems with it outside of thermals that were cured with new thermal compound.

[Anomnomnomaly]

2 hours ago, kaiju_wars said:

Another three companies I'd like to add.

Bethesda, Ubisoft, and EA.

I won't necessarily not buy their products again, but you bet your ass I'm either buying it used, or at a sever discount like steam summer sales and such (as an example).

 

Bethesda for how Wolfenstein Youngblood released.

The New Order and The New Colossus were amazing, then Youngblood came out and they tried to make it's combat more like Destiny or The Division 2, and it just didn't work well.  I didn't have an issue with the daughters, thought it was cool we were seeing the 80s of this world where the Nazis won.  But the story started, then went no where, kinda just stopped after that and it became a grind fest.  Sure the first two games the levels were linear, but they melded into a good enough story along with the gut busting action of killing nazis.

 

Ubisoft is pretty simple for me.  The major disappointment that Far Cry 5 was, and Ghost Recon Wildlands (and eventually Breakpoint).

 

EA with Battlefront, Battlefront II, Battlefield 1 (yeah, I was kinda disappointed with it in the end), Hardline, and 5.  Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem.  

Like I still haven't bought Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order yet, because EA.  I hear it's good, but I'd still rather wait for a sale.  

I downloaded and tried Youngblood... it was unistalled within a few minutes. Not what I thought it was and I'm glad I was able to... test it... first. 

 

I've already detailed my gripes with Ubosoft... but I do have the Far Cry series... although Like you I purchased everything on sale after they bought the franchise.  FC3 was good... but FC4 was just a bland copy and was really FC3.5... FC Primal was just more stuff that should really have been DLC for FC4 and whilst FC5 was good... FC ND is just DLC content not a new game... I've bought every one of those on sale except ND which I have no intention of paying for at all.    It's a kinda mediocre game anyway.

 

I'm trying to play Fallen Order to see if it's worth it... can't even launch the game. Get to the game menu and it crashes my entire system forcing a hard reset.

[kaiju_wars]

6 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

I downloaded and tried Youngblood... it was unistalled within a few minutes. Not what I thought it was and I'm glad I was able to... test it... first. 

 

I've already detailed my gripes with Ubosoft... but I do have the Far Cry series... although Like you I purchased everything on sale after they bought the franchise.  FC3 was good... but FC4 was just a bland copy and was really FC3.5... FC Primal was just more stuff that should really have been DLC for FC4 and whilst FC5 was good... FC ND is just DLC content not a new game... I've bought every one of those on sale except ND which I have no intention of paying for at all.    It's a kinda mediocre game anyway.

 

I'm trying to play Fallen Order to see if it's worth it... can't even launch the game. Get to the game menu and it crashes my entire system forcing a hard reset.

Far Cry 3 is one of my favorite games of all time.  Far Cry 4 I also enjoyed a lot.  I didn't find it bland but it was also my first far cry.  Far Cry 5 I just found underwhelming and disappointing.  It took out a lot from the Far Cry formula IMO, and it just didn't feel like Far Cry to me.  The main protagonist for example always has a lot of character, usually someone you don't care for but you watch them change and grow.  But here he just.. was silent, mute.  I didn't care for this character, I didn't hate him, I didn't feel anything about him.  I felt like I took a step back to a previous gaming generation as a result.

[Anomnomnomaly]

On 1/12/2020 at 5:42 AM, Marbo said:

Vodafone UK. 

 

Great service on my mobile, but customer service is full of either liars or people who don't know what they're doing. Could be a mixture of both. 

 

Every time I called I got different answers. Lots of different ways to be fobbed off. Including offers made that weren't followed through. Next agent would then tell me they were not authorised to make those offers. 

 

Soon as my contract is up I'm gone. 

 

A couple of years ago, I was sick of the shitty service I was getting from my ISP (Virgin) the 100mb service I was on was averaging less than 20mb... they refused to tell me why it was so bad. But tests I ran seemed to suggest that they were actively throttling my connection when connected to a VPN. Because they were so slow, and because they fell below the minimum guaranteed speeds advertised I was able to get some refunds and out of my contract early.

 

I shopped around and went with Vodafone.... biggest mistake ever.... Within a few weeks I'd cancelled and made so many complaints regarding their lies and bullshit. They were supposed to transfer my number over from Virgin... a number that originated from BT before going to Virgin and 'CAN' be transferred back without any issues... Numbers 'issued' by virgin can be a problem some times, that wasn't the case here.  They repeatedly lied to me about transferring my number over, not once did they even ask for it... confirmed by both Virgin and Openreach... I informed them of my cancellation within the 28 day window I legally have. I cancelled payments and had what money I'd already paid refunded.  I ended up writing a strongly worded complaint to their CEO because of their lies and bullshit.

 

They still managed to cause me problems afterwards though... they terminated my broadband within 12hrs of agreeing to the cancellation... took a further 2 weeks to cancel the landline. Meanwhile I've got to keep my virgin number/line going because if I cancel it they won't transfer the number. That number is linked to work stuff and would involve a lot of lost business, reprinting of materials and so forth... in short.. it would cost me a lot of money.  Until they released the landline, I couldn't sign up with a new ISP... leaving me without internet for weeks. I had to buy a wireless dongle for my PC and use my phone as a mobile hotspot after buying a lot of extra data.

 

When vodafony finally released the line, I was able to sign up with a company called Zen... who come highly recommended in the IT community... Been with them for almost 2yrs and aside from a few glitches with speeds dropping (faults on the lines between me and cabinet), I'm getting reasonable speeds.  Can't wait for my area to be upgraded with fibre to the home though.

 

tl:dr Vodafone can suck my balls... they're the worst company to deal with.

[Vishera]

4 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

See, I never knew that... back in 2016 I was still using my R9 280X and it wasn't until early 2017 that I got a RX580 and never had any problems with it outside of thermals that were cured with new thermal compound.

As far as i know the 280X didn't have any of those issues,but Polaris GPUs had those problems.

Some people experience those issues and some don't,tech Jesus from Gamers Nexus tried to bring those issues to AMD's attention,I hope AMD will listen to him and fix those issues.

[Anomnomnomaly]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

As far as i know the 280X didn't have any of those issues,but Polaris GPUs had those problems.

Some people experience those issues and some don't,tech Jesus from Gamers Nexus tried to bring those issues to AMD's attention,I hope AMD will listen to him and fix those issues.

I had the ASUS 280X... the one with 1500mhz memory being run at 1600mhz with out adequate cooling to all of the dimms resulting in graphical glitches. I had mine replaced twice until I realised I'd have to fix it myself.  Two options... remove the cooler and fit some little copper sinks to the dims, or flash the firmware to clock the dimms back to 1500mhz.  I did the latter... and it was fine after that.  I was running that card in my mediaserver without issue until last summer when I got my 5700XT... and swapped my RX580 into the mediaserver... the old 280X is currently sat in my drawer along with loads of other spare PC parts.

[dalekphalm]

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

The market will only tolerate two options.

This is... well.. a fascinating, but extremely odd opinion. And blatantly false in many industries. You cannot simply boil it down to "There can be ONLY ONE! TWO!"

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

Coke and Pepsi

Aside from the fact that there are indeed multinational alternatives to Coke and Pepsi, this is perhaps your most valid argument.

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

McDonalds and (regional favorite)

This one literally makes no sense, and is easily the worst argument you made.

 

McDonalds

Wendy's

KFC

Popeyes

Burger King

A&W

Arby's

etc

 

Literally almost every city in Canada, let alone in the US, has almost - or all - of these options.

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

Mac and PC

For consumer based PC's, yes (And really that should say Mac and Windows) - though, as small as they are, Linux is a third option. If we look at the Enterprise, suddenly Linux becomes a massive option, with products like RedHat being extremely popular.

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

iPhone and Android

For now, yes, this is a problem.

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

 and so forth.

And so forth what?

 

Banks?

Canada has FIVE major banks that operate in every province, and have branches basically in every town. On top of that, there are dozens of additional banks that have a presence.

 

Car makers?

In America alone, there are THREE major auto manufacturers: Ford, GM, and Telsa (Four if you still count Chrysler, but it's basically European now). If you count all the makers available to buy in America, that number jumps to like, 1 to 2 dozen major auto makers? Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, VW, etc (not even counting "smaller" (still massive) niche performance brands like Merc, BMW, etc).

 

Cell phone carriers:

In Canada there are THREE major carriers: Bell, Rogers, and Telus - they operate nation wide. The US has even more, with at least 4 major nationwide carriers. Plus all the smaller regional networks.

 

I'm not going to bother with further examples. Nothing you've said has proven that the market can only tolerate two options. And I've listed multiple examples that prove otherwise.

 

In some very specific industries, that might hold true - but it's certainly not some universal truth.

On 1/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, Kisai said:

-mostly pointless snip-

 

[dalekphalm]

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

I keep doing so, and you just ignore them and move the goal posts.

 

-snip-

It seems like the vast majority of these seem to only apply to the US. Your banking system sucks - no doubt about that. Canada's system is much less fragmented. As I said in my post above, there are FIVE choices for bank, in which you can be pretty much guaranteed to find a branch in every major town and definitely city in the entire country.

 

Only small towns with such small populations that they literally only have one branch will you not find variety and selection.

 

Same with Mobile Carriers. We have three, and they're nation wide, every single province. Granted, there are locations where some coverage is better on carrier over another, but every single major city (and most towns) will be covered by all three.

[Kisai]

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Same with Mobile Carriers. We have three, and they're nation wide, every single province. Granted, there are locations where some coverage is better on carrier over another, but every single major city (and most towns) will be covered by all three.

Because people seem to have a reading deficiency, that's a false statement

 

This is the Canadian Cell coverage map. Take a VERY close look, because I'm going to show you how "nationwide" Cell phone coverage claims are BS.

 

Bell (aka BCE, HQ Montreal Quebec.) Little or no coverage west of Manitoba. All the coverage in BC is either Fort mac, or Downtown Vancouver. No Saskatchewan.

 

Telus is almost entirely in BC and Alberta, their HQ is Vancouver BC. Not in Saskatchewan, Practically absent in the Toronto Metro, Non-existent in Newfoundland and Labrador. Not present at all in the Yukon, NWT or Nunavut. 

 

Contrary to Bell and Telus folklore, they do not "share" towers. They are effectively MVNO's in each other's service areas and maintain a half dozen towers so they have local phone numbers to hand out. No MSC, no phone numbers.

 

 

Rogers, HQ is Toronto, weak coverage in BC (no fort mac), Not in Yukon/NWT/Nunavut, does have some Saskatchewan coverage, Pretty much no coverage in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

 

So those are the three carriers that claim coast to coast coverage, yet not true. None of them really claim to cover the north. So you might go, "but I thought there are four?", Freedom Mobile is a joke, just like Sasktel and Videotron. Sure you might have coverage if you go into roaming areas, but they literately do not have towers in most of the country.

 

Sasktel, featuring just Saskatchewan. 

 

Freedom Mobile, featuring coverage in only large cities in BC, Alberta and greater Toronto. Shaw Communications is based in Calgary Alberta.

 

Now the one thing, that non-Canadians might not realize, is that the map of Telus, Bell, Shaw and Sasktel, but not Rogers also matches their landline service region. Rogers wireless is the only carrier that can legitimately claim to be a national carrier, and that's being generous, since the coverage gaps are everywhere. And just like the US, often these are due to who owns the 850Mhz bandwidth which only two carriers can have as there is only an A block and a B block. And the B block was the local landline carrier. It has never been possible until 4G for all carriers in Canada or the US to operate in all markets simultaneously since there was not enough different spectrum for more than two carriers to exist in each market. The 2G 1900Mhz spectrum added 6 additional bands, and that's how we ended up with T-Mobile in the US, and Fido (which was then not part of Rogers) in Canada. They were 1900Mhz spectrum only. With AWS, all the carriers in Canada standardized on GSM-UMTS, and with 4G-LTE, everyone on the continent is now on the same page and can use the same coverage fakery like MVNO's do.

 

There are maps like this for the US as well.

 

T-Mobile, their HQ is in Seattle, Washington.

 

AT&T, Their HQ is Dallas, Texas

 

Verizon, their HQ is New York City, New York

 

Sprint, their HQ is Overland Park, Kansas

 

And of course any MVNO's on these carriers still only count as the Carrier. When I worked for AT&T Wireless, the 2G TDMA system actually transmits a roaming database to the phone that says which towers it will display "AT&T" on even if those towers are owned by someone else. With the 3G and later systems, these roaming systems operate in a similar way. Particularly along the US-Canada border. Many of those cell towers within 5 miles of the border are "in network" due to roaming agreements between the Canadian and American carriers so that they lower their own customer support costs. But that's not perfect. I can actually pick up US towers from the southern tip of Vancouver Island, from land.

 

So please stop pretending that you really have any choices when it comes to mobile phones. You have whoever owns the 850Mhz spectrum (which is the best spectrum to own) without being a VMNO on it, or you happen to live where that one tower that carrier happens to have in order to offer local phone numbers in that city. You are lucky if you even have two choices at all. This is by design, because the carriers can not operate on each other's spectrum. No Spectrum, no coverage.

 

I'm only continuing this argument because some of you are insisting you have choice when you really do not. Cell coverage is the big one, because it's regulated. Unregulated things just exist as long as there is money to be made and growth to be had. Your favorite food products exist entirely at the whim of who owns it, and big companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi control how much shelf space their products get in grocery stores, and send their OWN employees to put their products on those shelves.

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Because people seem to have a reading deficiency, that's a false statement

It is not. You're showing coverage maps - but guess what? Most of the "empty" spots are largely empty land. The fact that a national carrier doesn't cover 100% of the second largest country by land mass in the world is entirely unsurprising. Most of that landmass doesn't have anything in it, and the white space is very sparsely populated.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

This is the Canadian Cell coverage map. Take a VERY close look, because I'm going to show you how "nationwide" Cell phone coverage claims are BS.

See above - irrelevant.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Bell (aka BCE, HQ Montreal Quebec.) Little or no coverage west of Manitoba. All the coverage in BC is either Fort mac, or Downtown Vancouver. No Saskatchewan.

So they have pretty much nationwide coverage with some gaps in sparsely populated provinces (additionally, Saskatchewan has a regional carrier that Bell has trouble competing with).

 

Also, this map is incredibly misleading - Bell has coverage in Sask through roaming agreements. Here's an actual coverage map, not just the towers they own:

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Telus is almost entirely in BC and Alberta, their HQ is Vancouver BC. Not in Saskatchewan, Practically absent in the Toronto Metro, Non-existent in Newfoundland and Labrador. Not present at all in the Yukon, NWT or Nunavut. 

Again, these are towers they own - through collective agreements, Telus operates in most of those blank areas. They have excellent coverage in basically all of southern ontario, including Metro Toronto, because Telus phones can roam on Bell networks (this doesn't cost the end user, either, since it's a pre-arranged agreement between the carriers).

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Contrary to Bell and Telus folklore, they do not "share" towers.

This is kind of true and kind of false. During the HSPA days, Bell and Telus built a joint network together and shared full access to each others towers. I do not believe they built a joint LTE network though.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

They are effectively MVNO's in each other's service areas and maintain a half dozen towers so they have local phone numbers to hand out. No MSC, no phone numbers.

The relevance of this is... what? Your premise is that there can be only two. There are three. Your premise is wrong. Why do you keep arguing a point proven wrong?

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

 

Rogers, HQ is Toronto, weak coverage in BC (no fort mac), Not in Yukon/NWT/Nunavut, does have some Saskatchewan coverage, Pretty much no coverage in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Hardly anyone has coverage in the north - it's so sparsely populated it's hard to make a profit margin up there - there are some carriers that are subsidized though.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

So those are the three carriers that claim coast to coast coverage, yet not true. None of them really claim to cover the north. So you might go, "but I thought there are four?", Freedom Mobile is a joke, just like Sasktel and Videotron. Sure you might have coverage if you go into roaming areas, but they literately do not have towers in most of the country.

I love how you call two regional carriers a joke, because they are regional carriers. Sasktell is fucking awesome if you live in Saskatchewan. And their prices wreck the prices I pay in Ontario.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Sasktel, featuring just Saskatchewan. 

Look at that, a regional carrier, only covering their region. Your point?

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Freedom Mobile, featuring coverage in only large cities in BC, Alberta and greater Toronto. Shaw Communications is based in Calgary Alberta.

Freedom came out of nowhere and has already expanded coverage as far as you see. This is a fucking awesome coverage considering the cost of expanding a network and building towers. That coverage is only increasing. Sure Freedom doesn't cover every area - and that's okay. Nobody claimed they did.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Now the one thing, that non-Canadians might not realize, is that the map of Telus, Bell, Shaw and Sasktel, but not Rogers also matches their landline service region. Rogers wireless is the only carrier that can legitimately claim to be a national carrier, and that's being generous, since the coverage gaps are everywhere. And just like the US, often these are due to who owns the 850Mhz bandwidth which only two carriers can have as there is only an A block and a B block. And the B block was the local landline carrier. It has never been possible until 4G for all carriers in Canada or the US to operate in all markets simultaneously since there was not enough different spectrum for more than two carriers to exist in each market. The 2G 1900Mhz spectrum added 6 additional bands, and that's how we ended up with T-Mobile in the US, and Fido (which was then not part of Rogers) in Canada. They were 1900Mhz spectrum only. With AWS, all the carriers in Canada standardized on GSM-UMTS, and with 4G-LTE, everyone on the continent is now on the same page and can use the same coverage fakery like MVNO's do.

What is the point of all this?

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

There are maps like this for the US as well.

 

T-Mobile, their HQ is in Seattle, Washington.

 

AT&T, Their HQ is Dallas, Texas

 

Verizon, their HQ is New York City, New York

 

Sprint, their HQ is Overland Park, Kansas

Again, what's your point here? For how large the US is, those coverage maps are awesome. Most of the empty regions tend to be very sparsely populated areas.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

And of course any MVNO's on these carriers still only count as the Carrier.

Uhm... says who? You? You decided that? I guess because you're the authority on carriers?

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

When I worked for AT&T Wireless, the 2G TDMA system actually transmits a roaming database to the phone that says which towers it will display "AT&T" on even if those towers are owned by someone else. With the 3G and later systems, these roaming systems operate in a similar way. Particularly along the US-Canada border. Many of those cell towers within 5 miles of the border are "in network" due to roaming agreements between the Canadian and American carriers so that they lower their own customer support costs. But that's not perfect. I can actually pick up US towers from the southern tip of Vancouver Island, from land.

Roaming agreements are awesome because it allows massively expanded services without as large upfront investments. You make that sound like a bad thing.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

So please stop pretending that you really have any choices when it comes to mobile phones. You have whoever owns the 850Mhz spectrum (which is the best spectrum to own) without being a VMNO on it, or you happen to live where that one tower that carrier happens to have in order to offer local phone numbers in that city. You are lucky if you even have two choices at all. This is by design, because the carriers can not operate on each other's spectrum. No Spectrum, no coverage.

Who gives a shit whether my choices are VNMO's or actual tower operators in my area? You're under the false impression that VNMO's are somehow not a good thing, I guess?

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

I'm only continuing this argument because some of you are insisting you have choice when you really do not. Cell coverage is the big one, because it's regulated. Unregulated things just exist as long as there is money to be made and growth to be had. Your favorite food products exist entirely at the whim of who owns it, and big companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi control how much shelf space their products get in grocery stores, and send their OWN employees to put their products on those shelves.

Also, you keep cherry picking your responses. You said "the market can only tolerate two choices" - you make no disclaimer about which markets, you were clearly referring to all markets in all industries. You even used (really stupidly) McDonalds as an argument, which was probably the worst argument you could have made, given the number of national fast food chains (even just limiting to those who specifically serve hamburgers).

 

Why do you keep trying to make the same easily disproven argument?

 

So sure, some specific markets might have only two major choices - but those seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

 

I have shown you multiple examples of multiple industries in which you can more or less get 3-5 (or more) choices in whatever it is that you're trying to buy. You ignored those and cherry picked results that you thought would look favourable. Stop that.

[Anomnomnomaly]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Also, you keep cherry picking your responses. You said "the market can only tolerate two choices" - you make no disclaimer about which markets, you were clearly referring to all markets in all industries. You even used (really stupidly) McDonalds as an argument, which was probably the worst argument you could have made, given the number of national fast food chains (even just limiting to those who specifically serve hamburgers).

 

If I can interject a little sanity into this issue. 

 

I actually kind of agree with both of you... the market does tend to boil down to 2 major players that will dominate... but there will usually be other smaller competitors in the market too.

 

It's very easy to look at those 2 dominant companies and imply that they're the only real choices you have. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to find an alternative.

 

Now I'm in the UK... so we have a few mobile carriers... Vodafone, EE, 3 and O2... Of those the first 2 are the biggest with EE being the combined companies of Orange and T-Mobile until a few years ago... We used to have 5, now we have 4... and of those 2 are very large, O2 comes next and 3 are the smallest.

 

Then you've got dozens of smaller operators... GiffGaff, Sky, Tesco, Virgin and and so forth... these actually lease from those others.

 

Now from my limited knowledge of US cities... I do know (from what friends have told me) that some have either a monopoly on certain services or are limited to just a couple of providers. One for example only has Comcast in their area and that company has gone to great lengths to shut out any other competitor... and they're paying through the nose for services that are half the price where ever there is more competition.

 

So both of you have valid points... but neither of you are 100% right 

 

 

[RonnieOP]

1 hour ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

If I can interject a little sanity into this issue. 

 

I actually kind of agree with both of you... the market does tend to boil down to 2 major players that will dominate... but there will usually be other smaller competitors in the market too.

 

It's very easy to look at those 2 dominant companies and imply that they're the only real choices you have. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to find an alternative.

 

Now I'm in the UK... so we have a few mobile carriers... Vodafone, EE, 3 and O2... Of those the first 2 are the biggest with EE being the combined companies of Orange and T-Mobile until a few years ago... We used to have 5, now we have 4... and of those 2 are very large, O2 comes next and 3 are the smallest.

 

Then you've got dozens of smaller operators... GiffGaff, Sky, Tesco, Virgin and and so forth... these actually lease from those others.

 

Now from my limited knowledge of US cities... I do know (from what friends have told me) that some have either a monopoly on certain services or are limited to just a couple of providers. One for example only has Comcast in their area and that company has gone to great lengths to shut out any other competitor... and they're paying through the nose for services that are half the price where ever there is more competition.

 

So both of you have valid points... but neither of you are 100% right 

 

 

But the argument isnt "theres only two popular options in the market". They are saying "the market only supports two options".

 

Which has been proven false over and over again in a number of areas. When it comes to food, banks, drinks, cell phones, tv makers, shoe makers, clothing makers, retail stores, etc.

 

The market does allow more then two options. Thats a fact. You cant point to a random area that one option isnt available and then say its not an option. Thats just asinine. Theres no burger king in the county next to me. That doesnt mean burger king isnt a huge force in the market.

 

And even in the context of video game launchers (which started all this) they are factually wrong.

 

Off the top of my head. Steam, battle net, GOG, and epic.

 

Like it or not Epic has already become a market force. In 2019 they had 680 million dollars in sales through the launcher alone. Not counting coupons and free games, etc.

 

So while you can read people bitch and moan about the epic launcher. The vast majority of people are not boycotting it. And it will only continue to grow. Devs are going to get offers for a good chunk of $ for being exclusive even if its timed. And get a higher % of sales by a good margin (88% instead of 70% on steam). 

Its a no brainer to take a much much better option even if the vocal minority want to complain. Id even be willing bet the majority if people on social media claiming they wont use it in fact are.

 

 

 

 

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

If I can interject a little sanity into this issue. 

 

I actually kind of agree with both of you... the market does tend to boil down to 2 major players that will dominate... but there will usually be other smaller competitors in the market too.

 

It's very easy to look at those 2 dominant companies and imply that they're the only real choices you have. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to find an alternative.

 

 

 

The problem here is that someone is nitpicking the language instead of having a substantiated debate. The market only supports two options for the vast majority of North America, and you have to live in a large city before you even start seeing third options for physical services. The big players will do everything to squeeze out the competition, or buy them, or buy their bankrupt assets, or buy their logistics companies so they can't get their products or services anywhere.

 

Go ahead and go into the Field Test mode of your mobile phone and go check what towers you are actually getting when you switch carriers. I know when I did that here, Selecting Bell selected the Telus cell site id, the same as when using Telus normally. Selecting Freedom(Shaw) or EXT (presumably Rogers) did not.

[Evolution.]

Nvidia and their outrageous pricing how do you go from 699  1080 ti to damn near double the price for a mere 30% increase of performance of the 2080 ti. 

And intel  for having a monopoly for releasing the same expensive quad core consumer chip for a decade until amd stepped in. 

[Anomnomnomaly]

21 hours ago, VenomZ_ said:

Nvidia and their outrageous pricing how do you go from 699  1080 ti to damn near double the price for a mere 30% increase of performance of the 2080 ti. 

And intel  for having a monopoly for releasing the same expensive quad core consumer chip for a decade until amd stepped in. 

Because they're taking a leaf out of the intel book.. When you are the clear market leader, you can jack up your prices and there will always be idiots willing to pay it.

 

But as we are seeing with Ryzen... intel has slashed their prices... in some case 50% and still can't remain competitive. Here's hoping the new 'big navi' rumours are true and that AMD offer better performing products at a much lower price.

[Jerakl]

On 1/8/2020 at 4:55 PM, Caroline said:

NZXT: they exist only because of the braindead fanboys who keep recommending their junk cases and other overpriced gimmicks

You know it's funny. Back when I was around the PC build scene their stuff was considered decent quality. Guess a lot changes in 5 years.

 

Just to keep it short, I'll pick one for the gaming industry and one for hardware.

For me it's gotta be Corsair. I can't think of any company in the hardware industry that fills my mind with disdain when their name is mentioned as much as corsair.

To be clear, not ALL of their stuff is awful. There's actually a couple decent products in there. I just REALLY hate their peripherals. Every time I see someone recommend one I try as hard as I can to steer them somewhere else. Not because I hate Corsair that much, but I genuinely believe their keyboards and mice are not good products. They're gaudy, feel cheap (tried them at stores on multiple occasions etc), and overall I don't see how people choke down that price tag for something that feels like a 30$ dell OEM and looks like it was designed by people addicted to chrome highlights (looking at you, post WW2 car companies). Their mice are equally bad, they look ugly, uncomfortable, and just... cheap? Can't say I've ever tried one, but I'm VERY picky about mice. Maybe it's just me.
Like I said, not all awful. I have a friend who got a 1TB M.2 for a reasonable price. Some of their cases are nice looking (if not overpriced and dated).

 

 

TL;DR available for what's about to come.

 

 

If you have any interest in an absolute travesty of the early 2010s gaming industry, I recommend you read my rambling below.

Please, it took me a while and I verified the data.

 

 

For the gaming industry? Hi-Rez studios, and by extension their game Smite. Okay, this one is gunna require multiple paragraphs.

I hate this company with a passion. Any time ANYONE I'm talking to mentions ANYTHING in relation to this studio I go off. My hatred (not grudge, hatred) is so strong for this company that I rant for 5 minutes as soon as their name comes up ANYWHERE. Now, why? Because they killed my favorite game. The game that got me into FPS games. This being Tribes: Ascend (further just "Tribes"), and the series as a whole (for the foreseeably future). Tribes was possibly one of the best FPS games to come about this century, and in killing tribes they also basically killed an entire genre of FPS (FPS-Z).

 

Okay, that seems like an over reaction right? No. Hi-Rez's style of developing is as follows, they kinda sorta make a game, never quite going all in (usually producing a mediocre product) and the game inevitably falls flat because they move most of their dev team to a new project after it's clear the game they just made (always a "live" online f2p game btw) wasn't as much of a hit as they hoped. Pretty much throwing something against a wall until something stuck, there was a game before Tribes called "Global Agenda" that has also been erased from history (more on that later).

 

So what happened with Tribes? Well it was going all and well, they had a super successful game, tons of fun, reasonable monetization, etc. Well in traditional Hi-Rez fashion they moved most of their team to a new project because while it was very successful, they decided they needed to make something new. Either because Tribes wasn't seeing the smash hit success they wanted, or it's just their studio does things (make game, drop it, make new one, repeat). Anyways they started development of what is now known as Smite. Their dev team at the time was relatively small, so this took almost ALL of their dev team. New content for tribes basically became non-existent and the population dwindled to what it is now. What is it now? Nothing. You're lucky to find 2 servers will >6 players each at peak times (at least one is going to be a cheater too),

 

Smite became a hit, a MASSIVE hit in fact. Any support for Tribes died as soon as this became apparent to the studio. The game devs went radio silent for THREE YEARS. That's right, no "hey we're dropping support for this game", just ghosted. Then 3 years the release an update, shuffling up how classes and everything worked, removing perks, etc. They basically revamped the entire loadout system (in effect ruining the game from what it was). 

 

So how does this all end. Well they officially declared the game dead with the last update (yeah, the one that broke everything the remaining players were used to after half a decade of playing) that there would be "no more updates". That was 3 years ago. Tribes is now unlisted from the Steam storefront, the game's official forum were shut down in 2013, and all evidence of the ever game existing has essentially been erased from the internet (other than through 3rd party means such as blogs etc). Hi-Rez doesn't have it listed on their website as a game they even MADE. In fact neither is Global Agenda. 

 

So how did this kill FPS-Z? Long story short there were various games that tried to fill the hole Tribes left (notably - MidAir). They all fell flat on their faces for one reason on another, whether it be a high price tag, or not enough PR to get them a steady playerbase etc. I personally own Midair, paying full price (32$ Canadian). So I'm not someone screaming from the sidelines. Anyways, back to them killing the genre. To make this a bit clearer, Tribes is THE FPS-Z genre. The series pretty much defined the FPS-Z genre. The issue here is Hi-Rez OWNS the rights to the Tribes series. They have given no indication of wanting to sell the rights to the IP (I can't verify this because this type of stuff is rarely made public, but I'm sure in the years since the game has died they've been approached about the right to the series). So in the rights to the game/series staying with them, no one can make a proper continuation of the series - effectively killing the entire genre.
 

How Hi-Rez treated this game, and by extension the fans/customers (obviously I'm in that camp ) is disgusting. I will forever preach from my internet soapbox about how awful Hi-Rez is, anytime someone even so much as THINKS of them. I will never let this go, nothing that happens in this life (or any other) will allow me to forgive any individual that was responsible for the decision to kill that game. It was unique in every aspect, a wonderful game by all accounts (incredibly high reviews, made various publications "top PC shooters" list, etc.). And now it's dead, not only that but the company that owns the IP has attempted to wipe any trace of it's existence from the internet.

Yeah, I just wrote a 7 paragraph rambling/essay about how much I hate a game dev/producer. I have a few various ides to turn into video documentary/essays and this is one of them. Thinking about it fills my mind with nothing other than rage.

 

 

TL;DR: Studio did my favorite game dirty (and just in general, tried to wipe all traces of it's existence) in favor of promoting Smite. It's been 7 years since they killed the game and I refuse to let this go. If that sounds at all interesting please read my essay, it took me half an hour