If he's trying to manipulate the economy in the direction of lowering cost of living, he's doing a terrible job at it. Useless wars and tariffs have been highly inflationary.
Why "unlisted burgeoning tech companies"?? H1 Bs are going to big, publicly listed US companies. Which by the way, 60%+ of Americans own a stake in due to their 401ks, pensions, IRAs etc. So I think bringing in top talent from around the world could be really good for the average American.
The thing that was / is a drag about Kickstarter was in the early days when some complete randos raised quite a bit more than the mine server project raised to make a “spiritual successor “ to a game I designed. Anyone who knew better knew they couldn’t, whatever they believed. Would have been nice to see that money go to a real game or a real developer.
It worked out sometimes! Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night shipped, and was fun! Then, they somehow managed to spend years of dev time after shipping to make good on the various higher-tier rewards that they had promised like a Boss Rush mode and an 8-bit prequel story. (This was well after the game was fully wrapped up and nobody was still playing it, so it felt a little weird, but they followed through on their promise!)
FB has a huge advantage launching any consumer app over any start up. Even ones that have higher valuations. If you think the market position isn't important, imagine what would happen if Apple changes their TOS such that Muse stops working as well on their devices. Or take it off the store because it's "dangerous".
I read Bernal Diaz's book about the conquest of Mexico and in it he says that formations of Aztec warriors would break when a conquistador would charge into formations on an armored horse. They thought the horse and rider was one sort of monster. It was also a combination of a bunch of things they had never seen before: steel weapons, armor, the power and mobility of a trained war horse.
I don't think they could have taken control of the Aztec empire without allies and a lot of political intrigue. I think a good modern analogy was how the US quickly took over Afghanistan after 911. You could say we did it with a small group of special forces and a lot of air power. But really it is more like there were already (warlord) factions ready to strike at the Taliban who knew they could win with air support and everything that would come after. For the Aztecs, the role of the cavalry was like those B52 strikes.
There is more value in remastering old games than you might think. And there always has been. One of my first gigs in the game industry was producing an Infocom Clasics CD-ROM at Activision. That’s games from the seventies and eighties re-released in the nineties.
Was it an issue that Infocom had been shut down? For example for making a version of the Z-Machine for Windows 95 or whatever was current. Did Activision have an archive of all the Infocom development stuff, or were you able to go off of whatever documentation fans had come up with when they were making unofficial Z-Machine interpreters?
Activision bought Infocom. We did have an archive of the Infocom servers which was kind of amazing. I remember notes for an adventure game set on the Titanic. There was a design document for Leather Goddesses of Phobos II.
And I was very happy to purchase BOTH volumes, as a long-time Infocom fan! I still have the discs in storage in a box of old cds in my closet. Of course, now I just have the z-machine files on my computer and run them through Gargoyle...
This is one of the points he is making. It might not be legal, but it is certainly allowed with precedents being set in courts and policies being turned into law by politicians. He seems quite explicit in stating that what he is doing now with multiple 90s era games will be what happens with this years games next year, and IP protections are getting eroded at such a rate that even the big budget games get cloned with impunity. One of the quotes is about Rockstar's defense being a brand fortress and money.
If they can argue its copyright infringement, then you can be sued for it. Sometimes you can get away with just a rebuild of the engine without the assets (do not try to copy the assets!) but even then its up to the company's lawyers if they want to push it. Certainly if you try to sell your remake things get spiky. Can look at all the legal disclaimers on things like OpenSAGE as an example. But plenty of companies are cool, as long as they see no competition to their own copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreation...
OpenAI and anthropic make the case that if the model decided to reverse engineer the game itself after getting prompt injected, I mean inspired, “GPU did it” is a perfectly valid defense and we should invite the owner of the GPU to write future regulation
Seems fair. If you have a thousand dollars and try to clone a million dollar game, you're sued so hard your grandchildren need lawyers. If you have a billion dollars and try to clone a million dollar game, they call you a genius and invite you to the white house (for what that's even worth any more).
Up to this point, it has never been actively stopped. Except for Take Two with the PS2 GTA games, but that was a cease & desist, so it's not determined as "illegal" either.
I think that it's legal as long as you're not decrypting stuff, but my understanding may be limited.
Which IP law? The EU has them somewhat different from the US, you know.
...The unauthorised reproduction, translation, adaptation or transformation of the form of
the code in which a copy of a computer program has been made available constitutes an
infringement of the exclusive rights of the author. Nevertheless, circumstances may exist
when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain
the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program
with other programs. It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances
only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person
having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice
and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective
of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system,
including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together. Such an exception
to the author's exclusive rights may not be used in a way which prejudices the legitimate
interests of the rightholder or which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the program.
...Protection of computer programs under copyright laws should be without prejudice to the
application, in appropriate cases, of other forms of protection. However, any contractual
provisions contrary to the provisions of this Directive laid down in respect of decompilation
or to the exceptions provided for by this Directive with regard to the making of a back-up
copy or to observation, study or testing of the functioning of a program should be null and void.
...The person having a right to use a copy of a computer program shall be entitled, without
the authorisation of the rightholder, to observe, study or test the functioning of the
program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the
program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running,
transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do.
...In the absence of specific contractual provisions, the acts referred to in points (a) and (b)
of Article 4(1) [reproduction and alteration of the computer program — JvD] shall not require
authorisation by the rightholder where they are necessary for the use of the computer program by
the lawful acquirer in accordance with its intended purpose, including for error correction.
...The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and
translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable
to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created
computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met...
It's a very narrow exception, but it exists, and the the laws of the EU members follow this directive.
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