TurtleFish

This is great!

I think HDR is a must have because they're positioning CP2077 to be both immersive and impressive in graphics both technically and aesthetically. By 2020, HDR gaming monitors and cards should be there, at least on the high end (the first 4K 120Hz HDR Gsync monitors were just put up for sale a couple of months ago, so there should be some product in 2 years).

And what you're asking is exactly my point - Witcher is pretty crazy demanding, which means they aren't afraid to go for broke. But, I wasn't referring to what card with which you can run the game at max settings, I was referring to the 1080Ti being defined as the minimum spec card. I've got no problems with game being so crazy at max you can't run it at 4k/60 without a set of Nvidia GTX 1199Ti's running in Quad SLI with a 2KW power supply. But if the 1080Ti or comparable is the minimum spec, then I think they've gone too far, since that mean pretty much nobody will be able to play the game at all. Which is why I think there's definitely going to be several rounds of optimization before we see what the final spec is.

Applaud the art (that's great stuff!) and second @johnrabbit's request if you have the time.

The EB games at the mall my wife and I shop at has a huge wall of Funko Pops, stretching up about 3/4s of the way of a front display window. We both involuntarily shudder when we see it - it's just so WRONG.

I think it's a little early to talk specs - you figure that once they're feature complete, there's going to be at least several optimizing passes where they pick their target frame rate and target hardware, and see what they can hit. On the other hand, if they are aiming for a 2020 release (which would be appropriate, given the source material), the next gen of graphic boards should be out from both Nvidia and AMD, and they should at least have an idea of what Microsoft / Sony next gen is, so they may push the envelope a bit. Having a 1080Ti as a minimum spec card would be a bit much (that's still a $700 graphics card!), but I can see anybody running Nvidia 9XX or low end 10xx or the AMD equivalents being told "Sorry, you're SOL."

Hell, given what they're trying to accomplish, and that they self publish, it wouldn't surprise me if they decide to go full Crysis on this -- "Yeah, this thing can look REALLY pretty - too bad the hardware to run it maxed out won't be widely available until 2025 or later."

I will say though, if the PC version does NOT release with HDR as an option, somebody at CD Projekt Red has made a big mistake.

Sure, we can agree to disagree. But one last observation - Steam isn't separate from society. By discussing what responsibilities Steam has to society, it IS society deciding to take responsibility for itself.

Same here, being a Chinese kid growing up in the late 1970s, early 1980s. The thing is, if you decide not to censor anything, you then deal with the other half of the issue -- allowing anything to be said without consequence only encourages people to continue saying those things, until they reach a point where you're dealing with a much bigger problem, and God knows how many people get hurt along the way. Even if they don't hurt you, they might hurt others... or, worse yet, they won't hurt you until they reach a point where they're so powerful they CAN hurt you -- at which point, it's too late to do anything about it. (History is very illuminating on that point.)

Besides, censorship isn't some black/white thing - like we censor everything or we censor nothing. We can find a compromise. We can look at our society and decide "Okay, yeah, we want to be as permissive as possible, but there are some lines that we won't cross, at least in a public forum, to try and preserve courtesy, decorum and safety."

That's the point. Valve, by their statement, has given up all responsibility for the matter about preserving courtesy, decorum and safety. They're going "it's up to you, and who gives a damn about the collateral damage about what we publicize on our soapbox." It's not an inclusive environment which is the goal of public discourse, it's exclusive, because only the loudest, meanest voices will come out on top. (And I don't give much credence to the concept of removing 'illegal' or trolling content - you can hurt a lot of people without doing anything illegal, and who defines what trolling is?) When there are no rules, it's the law of the jungle, and that means, in the end, only the loudest, angriest, meanest people get heard -- and, historically, that has NEVER ended well.

And also remember - Steam isn't telling people you can't make your game. Steam told people in the past "Make your game, but we'll decide if we'll sell it. If we decide not to, go sell it somewhere else and God bless." Instead, Steam is telling people "Whatever. You can sell the game on our service. We don't care as long as it doesn't land us in court." So this really isn't a censorship issue, since the game can still exist, and it can be distributed other ways. What this is about is the question "What responsibility does the owner of the dominant game delivery service have to society?" and the answer, according to Valve, is "None." Which is what corporations are about, they're allowed to do that -- but we can't then close our eyes and pretend that nobody's going to get caught in the crossfire.

I don't like the decision - but, it's not surprising, because it's the direction they've been moving in for ages. As other people have pointed out, as long as the money keeps coming in from being a game delivery service, the benefit from being a game discovery service is moot. But it's short sighted on a lot of levels - given how decentralized Valve leadership is, I wonder if somebody panicked and went "Screw it, we don't care anymore" and put this change in just to take the heat off.

The big problem is, in the Internet of 2018, the moment you say "No more filters", nothing but crap rises to the top. And if you think what's coming out now is crappy, just wait until people take the Steam declaration as a challenge, and see what they can get posted to the store. It can get a HELL of a lot worse, and for a lot more groups. Nobody is safe - and I think the real challenge for the people who say "Censorship has no place" will be when they're the group that's specifically targeted.

Just correcting this, because I didn't say that, @glockjaw said it. And you're right, if it IS a contract dispute then none of the copyright issues apply. But the original source (Korean Times) says it's a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in a Korean jurisdiction. You can't argue contract details in a copyright infringement case.

That's the part I'm trying to get at - none of this makes sense strategically. Regardless of how you feel about the games involved, or how this whole thing went down, the fact remains that PUBG relies on Epic's tech. PUBG has fired an opening salvo at Epic, but in such a way that can't result in any sort of decisive endgame. So why anger the company that you rely on? Or, if you are going to do this, change engines, get that into production, and THEN sue Epic, so you're covered against counter-action.

This feels like somebody made it personal - and one of the things in business is that if you make it personal, you're going to make bad business decisions.

@flashflood_29: Thanks for taking the time to let me clarify. I've also edited my original post. And to repeat - I am not defending Roseanne or that Kramer person. Just the way the moderation worked out. (And not blaming moderators either! It's a thankless job.)

If that's the crux of the lawsuit, then Bluehole needs to fire their lawyers. Even if you take this statement at full face value, it certainly makes Epic unethical -- but illegal? Unless Bluehole can produce a whole bunch of advertising that specifically says "PUBG sponsored Fortnite!" or something that explicit, you don't have something actionable - and, even in those cases, the result is usually to pull the offending advertising and pay a penalty, not get hit with an injunction so you can't do business in the jurisdiction involved.

If you're going for an injunction (which is what everybody seems to agree they're aiming for) the product itself has to be infringing, and the court has to find that the transgression is so egregious that the only remedy is to take the product out of the market. That doesn't happen very often - even in well-founded patent cases, usually both sides settle before it goes to the nuclear option, because it's usually in nobody's best interest to pursue the case to the bitter end.

This is why I don't get it - like, everybody is still making money hand over fist. Why rock the boat like this? Even if you have a case, unless it's absolutely clear cut (and this case is most definitely not clear cut), you're still talking millions of dollars and years of litigation.