Humbled

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It was only earlier today that I thought to myself that I missed the old Humble Indie bundles. I may or may not have been prompted by yet another goddamn urging to join humble monthly. No, I don’t need games like a book club. HIBs were – in my recollection – rare enough to be a cause for celebration. A book from the book club is not a cause for celebration, more a cause for promising yourself that you’ll look into how to get out. Well, look what cat dragged in: It’s a good old fashioned Humble Indie Bundle (no. 16)! Where all games are actually available DRM-free as well as on Steam and all are truly crossplatform and all support truly wothwhile causes (EFF/Wikimedia). And hey, one of the games included is site favourite Else Heart.Break() and while you can only own one copy, it doesn’t hurt to support it some more. Time to party like it’s 2010.

All the DLC

Do memes have expiration dates?
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As yet another Crusader Kings 2 sale rolled around (this time apparently in celebration of the game’s three-year birthday – congrats!) I finally scooped up the last bit of DLC with Charlemagne. And seeing how much I had saved I treated myself to some cosmetics. Cosmetic DLC like new unit models for Saxons and the like, that is. Do I have all the DLC? No but so close it makes no difference. Iberians is where I draw the completely arbitrary line for some reason.

This isn’t really meant to be a rumination on the ethics of Paradox’s DLC policy regarding CK2. It is meant as a celebration that I now have a good reason to start a fresh CK2 campaign all the way back in the 8th century. With chroniclers tracking my every move, with fresh faces, new old clothes and an abundance of ‘historically accurate’ dynasty shields. It’s going to be great.

So, listen up all you fresh-faced, oldtimey-clothed, accurately-shielded people. This time we’re gonna get things right. We’ll plunder the Byzantine dukes but we’ll spread out in groups of three so they can’t raise any armies against us [Yeah!]. We’ll score cheap religious zealotry points by smashing up defenceless Irish churches [Yeah!] And we’ll marry our cousins and breed like bunny rabbits just as soon as we get rid of gavelkind [HELL Yeah! Wait, that won’t be for hundreds of years!? [I know, just… tide yourselves over until then, okay?]]

I might even do a bit of AAR’ing of this attempt. If nothing else it should help me remeber to quit before 1 AM so I can jot down some AA thoughts. That’s usually when I start making decisions based on spite and rage. Wasn’t that also one of Machiavelli’s tips to the young Medici prince? “Layeth downe thy schemes and get thee to bed before the clocke striketh one as thy strategemizing will sucketh thereafter”?

A Long Shvitz: One year of Steam gaming

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Today my Steam account is one year old. And twenty days. I suck at anniversaries.

On September 9th 2013 I bought Far Cry 3 on Steam for 14,99 euros. Probably at a discount. It would have had to be because I had already completed the game. Don’t ask how. I had encountered a problem, though. Ziggy’s mod for FC3 refused to work properly with my copy and explicitly stated that it wouldn’t do so with non-authorized copies. I really liked Far Cry 3 and the thought of playing it stripped of magical super powers was genuinely thrilling. So I paid up and took the medicine. It was a bitter pill to swallow: Not only did I have to down Valve’s client, I had to take Ubisoft’s Uplay client too as part of the treatment. If you’ve never come across Uplay count yourself lucky. It’s the essence of DRM bullshitware masquerading as a social network. It figuratively made me throw up in my mouth. If I was being cured of my piratical tendencies, the cure felt decidedly worse than the disease.

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