Friday Facts #303 - Under 100 bugs (but still not stable)

[SgtFourLeaf]

Hi, first of all thank you for your great work.

I'm just want to inform, that even if it sounds weird , me and my friends already beat the game and we are actually waiting the stable version to play it again with all the cool new stuff.

This is not a post to tell you:" hurry up!" It is instead a way to bring to the light that they are people that want to taste that awesome stable version and because some reasons, can't or simple don't play the game right now.

Thank you for creating this wonderful game.

[Ormy]

Steam hasn't always been so compliant when customers ask for refunds, when they first got started there wasn't any customer service at all really as another poster has said.

And these days its quite common for games to be buggy and obviously unfinished on release and missing tons of content which you have to pay even more money for (i.e. DLC)

That's why, to this day, I will always pirate any game I want and then decide later if the developer deserves my money or I want to play online. No refunds needed, no fuss, no DRM. E.g. the call of duty games, the first modern warfare was really good so after finishing the single player campaign on a pirated copy I gladly paid for the game so I could play online. Subsequent CoD games weren't as good so I pirated them, played some singleplayer, then deleted it. Another reason I pirate is to play a game I already paid for on a different platform. E.g. I paid £50 for GTA5 on xbox360 when it came out, I then paid more for a PS4 copy when that came out. When I wanted to play it on PC, no fscking way am I paying them a third time for a game I already paid for twice (I've paid full price for every GTA game since the very first one) so I pirated it. Same goes for blurays, if I've previously paid for a VHS or DVD copy then I'm pirating the bluray with a clear conscience.

With Factorio I did the usual and pirated a copy to try it, finished the NPE (this was at 17.3 ish), I was on the fence about buying. But when I discovered I could buy a completely DRM-free copy direct from the developers (I try to avoid steam if possible) I bought the game immediately. Factorio is without doubt the best-developed game I have ever played, and given its complexity, incredible value for money.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

I'm just want to inform, that even if it sounds weird , me and my friends already beat the game and we are actually waiting the stable version to play it again with all the cool new stuff.

How long did it take your team to "beat" 0.16? Was it completely Vanilla with default map options( or something more exotic)?
I've "won" several 0.17 worlds as early as april 2019 and have not come across any of the enjoyment-reducing bugs I've seen in the Bugs forums. (Then again we did not push the limits of the game, and kept to Vanilla until "won").

When you start new, take time to check the world generation options including map shape, and I suggest enabling the Technology Tree at "beginning" (instead of "off" or "once won")... They've put a lot of great work in there.


I'm just a player like you but looking at the Roadmap, Gameplaywise there's not much left to add to 0.17 apart from lots of visual elements, some fluid dynamics optimisation("maybe"), and a few blueprint and character screen UI finalisation:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Upcoming_features
https://wiki.factorio.com/Roadmap
678

What's keeping you from 0.17? Are there mods not ported to the latest 0.17 that you love? : )

[BlueTemplar]

I've tried a little bit of modded 0.17, and I very quickly missed HotCraft !

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

I've tried a little bit of modded 0.17, and I very quickly missed HotCraft !

I updated it for v0.17 myself :

HotCraft_1.0.3.zip

HotCraft v1.03 (compatible with Factorio v0.17.x)

(6.81 KiB) Downloaded 174 times

[BlueTemplar]

Thanks, I guess that upgrading it was actually pretty straightforward ?
I considered doing it myself (like I did with Iondicators, thought that also involved some image tweaking for what I had in mind), but I haven't really gotten into 0.17 modded games yet...

[grimdanfango]

I do have one issue with the FFF though, in that people arbitraging the games across regions is being referred to as "regional fraud". This is pretty ridiculous, since it only stems from the store trying to sell the same digital product at different prices, effectively performing economic price discrimination.

Regional arbitrage is exactly how free markets should work, and there's no reason to be against such a system as a game developer or a gamer. It's the natural reaction (invisible hand) to the storefront manipulating the market.

Late to the party, I know, but I just felt the need to respond.

Surely "Economic price discrimination" is precisely what you are doing if you *don't* sell your game for different prices in different countries?

To be entirely non-discriminatory based on economic means, you would ideally need to means-test each customer, and price your product as a percentage of their economic means.

Given that this is essentially impossible - you instead take an average of an entire local economy, and price according to that.

If you don't do that, then you either price your game for a dollar, so that almost everyone in the world can afford to play it, or you price it for 30 dollars, and preclude a huge swathe of the world from being able to afford it.

Suggesting that regional pricing variation is discriminatory is nonsensical. What *is* unethical is trying to game that system for your own personal gain when your own means are far above those of the country you're buying from.


Obviously the best solution would be for the entire world to be given equal economic opportunities. But when a lot of western economies rely specifically on cheap labour in foreign markets to sustain their own positions, that's clearly not about to happen.

[BlueTemplar]

It's because the meaning of "discrimination" in "price discrimination" is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what one would expect from the more common use of the word.
(Yeah, it's unfortunate...)

[Koub]

"Price adaptation to local cost of life" would indeed be more precise, but I'd be too lazy to use it

[slippycheeze]

It's because the meaning of "discrimination" in "price discrimination" is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what one would expect from the more common use of the word.
(Yeah, it's unfortunate...)

This. I am so often frustrated that both science and economics use jargon that overlaps with, and is so confusing for the "normal" understanding of, English. I can't speak to the issue in other languages, but I think that remains true in them also. By "frustrated" I mean that my industry does exactly the same thing, and it is a constant source of, just, basic failures to communicate because someone thought they should treat everyone as understanding what the distinction is in the jargon.

I mean, "global warming" is the classic one: I know the jargon, so I hear "more of everything", but that is definitely not what you hear without that knowledge - and rightly so. warming doesn't just mean "does more" anywhere else in English, just in science bits, and not even consistently there.

Anyway, to the topic of price discrimination, as it were: there is no clear-cut answer to the question "is there more overall benefit from allowing prices based on the local cost of living, or from uniform pricing across multiple cost of living zones" at this time. ...or even what "benefit" counts as, really.

[BlueTemplar]

And this is why the term "global warming" has been replaced by the term "climate change", for what, at least a decade now?

[BlueTemplar]

Another reason for wanting to know when it's close to stable that Klonan seems to have missed is that updates often break mods which can completely halt the ability to play on a modded map.

Sure you can revert the version, but updates tend to break mods often enough that it's best to wait until being closer to stable so you know it won't be as likely to occur. Depending on the change it can take a while for authors to correct their mods, assuming they're even aware of the change in a timely manner.

If some form of notice was provided before a major mod affecting change is made then authors could deploy fixes right away without needing source access to achieve the same result. This is why Bob's mods are often patched within minutes of an update and people can keep playing with them without waiting, which given the size of his mod suite is very much a good thing.

That has been my minor frustration with 0.17 thus far with regards to the updates and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Well, it's not like I've warned you all about it !
viewtopic.php?p=418466#p418466
(I've actually talked about not using mods in experimental since 0.17.0 hit, but perhaps mostly on IRC ?)
(Have you stayed on 0.17.22 though, like you said you would?)

Congrats about warning about the obvious, I guess?

I did stay on .22 for some time to permit the mod authors time to update their work. The few that didn't I had updated myself, which fortunately wasn't many of them after that point.

Not using mods during any experimental branch may as well be a statement of "Play vanilla or quit" since the game will still be evolving even after release, plus experimental is over half a year of twiddling your thumbs stuck in vanilla otherwise. I'd have quit after two months (and nearly did), but I'm still here four years later thanks to mods keeping things interesting all this time. New content and optimizations for mods are often gated to newer builds and so you have to either stay behind or keep up with the development to get the new toys. To the majority the choice is obvious, but it's no less annoying having to poke all the authors to fix things when they're likely busy themselves and it chews into their spare time as well as our own. With that said, complaints from both ends are to be expected when things break, just like with anything we own and use.

While writing that, I feel like I should re-express my condolences to any of you who work in customer service. Stay strong.

What experimental lasted "over half a year" ? (I'm not even sure we'll cross that line for 0.17...)

No, that would be "play 0.17 vanilla or 0.16 mods" - it does mean that you have to wait a bit for the new modded toys. However, with 0.17, we already have plenty of vanilla toys to play with !
Also, there are multiple stable releases for each major version - for instance, for one of my games, I stayed on 0.16.36 until it was clear that 0.16.51 was going to be the latest 0.16 stable, and for another even waited until 0.17 to update it to 0.16.51 !

Another issue is that mod bugfixing slows down Wube too, and delays the first stable release that the majority is waiting for, even for vanilla ! (With, I guess, the positive side being that it means that some obscure bugs are caught earlier...)

Also relevant :
viewtopic.php?p=445726#p445726

[Novgorod]

Funny how if you pirate a game, they call it theft and "you wouldn't steal a car", but if you're trying to sell it like a car, it's suddently not an ownable product anymore because "something something license agreement". I have a feeling that one of those things is a lie, I'm just not sure which one.

[Light]

Funny how if you pirate a game, they call it theft and "you wouldn't steal a car", but if you're trying to sell it like a car, it's suddently not an ownable product anymore because "something something license agreement". I have a feeling that one of those things is a lie, I'm just not sure which one.

The funny part is that you can't "steal" something in this context unless the owner no longer has the thing you stolen from them. You can't "steal" ones and zeros that can be duplicated unlimited times (It's just a copy), but you can steal a car which is now in your possession and not the original owner anymore. It's a very common misconception among the general populace that a copy of something for your own personal use (not for profit) is theft.

Pirating is more country specific however. In some countries it's not pirating/theft unless you sell/profit from the very thing you copied the data from, which is theft of the intellectual property you didn't buy a license to own and distribute. A major no-no in just about any country that's not China.

I once wrote a paper on this subject a decade ago, so some things may have changed slightly in some countries since. I do know that law enforcement in Canada still understands the difference and won't arrest you just for owning a copy, unless you cross that thin line and start to distribute it for your own gain. I've got two police friends (one is an inspector who also enjoys Factorio) who gets copies of things first to try them out, but we usually purchase the thing we try out if we deem it worth our money or otherwise dispose of it.

This sort of discussion will be going way outside the thread topic though, so I won't say more on the matter unless a new thread is made.

[Novgorod]

The funny part is that you can't "steal" something in this context unless the owner no longer has the thing you stolen from them.

The problem is when you let lobbyists write the laws, they will change definitions left and right as they please. Yes, technically they couldn't change the definition of theft, that's why they made up entirely new laws for this purpose. The dishonesty came in when they tried to justify how making a copy is "bad" and tried to ingrain into gullible people the idea that it's somehow the same as stealing (intellectual) "property". Well, to be precise, it's not the stealing part that had to be ingrained in the first place but it's the part where people spend some fixed amount of money in exchange for a copy and happily pretend that that's something they actually "buy" or "own". Don't forget, it always works both ways: Piracy is as much "stealing" as a properly paid for licence makes you own something.

Yet here we are (to come back on topic) - if we pirate it, they complain we're taking away a precious scarce commodity they own but if we actually treat it as a physical product that we buy and own legitimately and want to use our owner's rights (such as changing ownership), then suddenly it's just a license and not a real thing that can be owned. You can't be in charge of both sides of the sale, buddy. That's why the entire business model of the licensing industry has been a ramshacke affair to me from the very beginning. As soon as you entirely separate the "product" (or unit) price from the work put into it, you're creating an actual gray market.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, it's generally lumped under counterfeiting in France :
http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/02 ... r-les-nuls (fr)
(Which is in theory harsher than theft, but, in practice, AFAIK, nobody was ever charged with that ?)

Well, with the exception of "breaking" into a server (in that case, via Google search) for the purpose of copying files, which is stealing since 2015 :
https://www.nextinpact.com/news/95165-a ... tiques.htm (fr)

[mmmPI]

As soon as you entirely separate the "product" (or unit) price from the work put into it, you're creating an actual gray market.

True there are a lot of gray market like when you look for a job, you will not be paid based on the amount of work you do. Or you got to explain to me when does someone found the time to work a few million more than one other person ( or why some people are paid so few despite them working more than me). There is supply and offer mechanism that makes it a little more complicated than just "amount of work = price", or would you prefer paying a higher price for a hole in the ground because it was done in 10 days by many people with spoon or one person with a big machine that dig it in 3 hours ?

Yeah, it's generally lumped under counterfeiting in France :
http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/02 ... r-les-nuls (fr)
(Which is in theory harsher than theft, but, in practice, AFAIK, nobody was ever charged with that ?)

Well, with the exception of "breaking" into a server (in that case, via Google search) for the purpose of copying files, which is stealing since 2015 :
https://www.nextinpact.com/news/95165-a ... tiques.htm (fr)

I have to disagree ! this is not counterfeiting in France there is a tax on every storage support like HDD SSD, CD DVD, USB key ect, this tax is dedicated to be the financial counterpart for private copy, which is legal !

http://www.copieprivee.org/en/la-copie- ... efinition/

One case where it has been problematic at first was if a company sell you a communication software, they will sell you a license, but will try to prevent you from reverse-engineering the software so you can look at the source code. You are allowed to do it if you don't make financial use of what you find but use it to check wether the thing you bought is safe to use or not. And also if you want to make a 3rd party program that interact with the original software to patch the problem you found.

Which is not needed for factorio given the amount of work put in the demo , that should definitelly not be free then ?

[Novgorod]

True there are a lot of gray market like when you look for a job, you will not be paid based on the amount of work you do. Or you got to explain to me when does someone found the time to work a few million more than one other person ( or why some people are paid so few despite them working more than me). There is supply and offer mechanism that makes it a little more complicated than just "amount of work = price", or would you prefer paying a higher price for a hole in the ground because it was done in 10 days by many people with spoon or one person with a big machine that dig it in 3 hours ?

It's exactly supply and demand and "amount of work" also means "value of work", i.e. what somebody is willing to pay for and you are willing to give away for. The key point here is the "give away". Creating a movie or a game certainly requires some amount of work, i.e. measurable value. But you're not giving away anything of this value by "selling" a copy of the product. The product is not the copy, it's the immaterial work of art or whatever you want to call it, and you cannot chop it up into pieces and sell them off like cookies. Once released, there is immediately an infinite supply of copies - so not only is the "unit price" unrelated to the actual value of the product (= measurable work required to create it), its inherent value based on supply and demand ist exactly zero (since there is infinite supply). The salary for your job may not be fair (based on whichever standards) but at least it's based on a measurable and finite free-market value. You can only do a finite amount of work (unless you plan to live forever) and you exchange that for money at an agreed upon rate. The licensing model does not have such an exchange except for the money part.

there is a tax on every storage support like HDD SSD, CD DVD, USB key ect, this tax is dedicated to be the financial counterpart for private copy, which is legal !

Yeah, the content mafia tax on everything in the EU is an outrageous scandal and almost nobody even knows about it. I try to buy as much stuff as I can abroad.

[satoru]

For the devs and general public

1) Speculative purchasing isnt possible. Steam wont let users store games anymore in their inventory. This means that you can't buy a game on sale, hold it till after the sale, then sell it at 'full price'.

2) Note speculative purchasing is a thing if you decide to throw your game onto a bundle. Take that into consideration as any game you put on a bundle is highly likely to have EXTREMELY LONG TERM impacts on your sales. Scammers will buy a game in bulk at whatever tier it ends up on, then dump the game until the end of time on scam websites. Scammers will be selling your bundled game for YEARS afterwards on scam websites. Aka dont put your game on a bundle unless you're desperate or are well aware that its at the end of its lifecycle

3) Humble Monthly gives its users 20% off all game son Humble. This 'in theory' could give someone a way to arbitage teh 20% on a scam websites. Though it might be harder given you'd have to sell enough copies to mitigate the $12/month cost of being in the humble bundle monthly, and overcoming the fees on scam websites/paypal/etc. This wasnt really an issues when the discount was only 10%, but at 20% it could possibly be more viable to skim 5% off if there are favorable currency exchange rates for the USD pricing. For a popular game like Factorio, this might be something ot consider and may be an avenue where scammers go to instead of using steam gifts

4) Most scammers resort to tricking their users into changing their regions via VPN so they can 'gift' the game within the same region. This is pretty much the most common way in which scammers bypass the regional restriction gifting. Also listings tha say "European" version are 99% fake anyway.

[BlueTemplar]

You're referring to the speculation on video game prices as "scamming", but AFAIK (and as already mentioned in this thread) it's perfectly legal... (Whether it should be is another question...

----

Yeah, it's generally lumped under counterfeiting in France :
http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/02 ... r-les-nuls (fr)
(Which is in theory harsher than theft, but, in practice, AFAIK, nobody was ever charged with that ?)

Well, with the exception of "breaking" into a server (in that case, via Google search) for the purpose of copying files, which is stealing since 2015 :
https://www.nextinpact.com/news/95165-a ... tiques.htm (fr)

I have to disagree ! this is not counterfeiting in France there is a tax on every storage support like HDD SSD, CD DVD, USB key ect, this tax is dedicated to be the financial counterpart for private copy, which is legal !

http://www.copieprivee.org/en/la-copie- ... efinition/

One case where it has been problematic at first was if a company sell you a communication software, they will sell you a license, but will try to prevent you from reverse-engineering the software so you can look at the source code. You are allowed to do it if you don't make financial use of what you find but use it to check wether the thing you bought is safe to use or not. And also if you want to make a 3rd party program that interact with the original software to patch the problem you found.

Which is not needed for factorio given the amount of work put in the demo , that should definitelly not be free then ?

This is the private copy exception to copy rights (which are themselves a temporary exception, at least for the commercial monopoly ones)...

Note also that, unlike what you say, breaking copy protection is still illegal if you're using it in order to use your private copy exception exception, and is, like "normal piracy" (= one-person counterfeiting) punished by up to 3 years in jail and a 300k€ fine.

Thankfully, in practice, the courts seem to have decided that that (2006) law was bullshit, since they've declared the association that tried to force their hand as irresponsible because it was a case of force majeure.