Friday Facts #348 - The final GUI update

[Unknow0059]

Not a fan of the engine unit icon. It looks nothing like an engine.
The electric engine looks more like an engine, and the previous engine icon looked more like an engine.

[Optera]

I can get used to most of those new icons except:
Engines, looks like tracks for the tank now.
Heat pipe, looks like a glowing fuse to me. Adding back the cross design would certainly improve recognition.
Rocket Silo, the old icon conveyed how massive that thing is much better.
Energy shields, looks like a module with some aura. The old ones made it instantly clear they are shields.

[conn11]

Fine changes overall, here is my two cent:

Engine: probably disliked by most, the older style was more meaningful

Reactor: I like the new icon, but maybe some upscaling could be investigated.

Roboport: weird perspective, though recognisable.

Most of the internediates will take time getting used to, but they do look like some „real“ entities now, rather than placeholdery concepts of them. The effect is quite apparent with the new equipment grid.
I‘m liking the soundchanges, adding much more audio feedback to the game.

[khalismur]

I'd also consider review the rail signal and chain signal. They are quite similar in game but their icons totally different.

[Impatient]

What I really can not wrap my mind around yet, is the resolution of the G2A issue. G2A's business model is to profit from fraud. Their whole system is set up to support that. And looking at where the money comes from and goes to tells 90% of the truth about everything.

So, looking at it from that perspective, I don't understand that they reimbursed you 10 times for the damage done to you via their system. I would have expected them to try to dodge any reimbursement. I wonder if that is some sort of PR stunt by them. To make them appear to be the good guys. Reimbursing you 10 times the damage (instead of 1 time) surely smelt and smells like it. I am glad for you. Still I would like to know what is behind that.

The story was in austrian news ( https://www.derstandard.at/story/200011 ... ler-mit-40 ). The article also says, that Unknown Worlds Entertainment ( the studio that made Subnautica ) claims that G2A still owes them 300.000€. I don't know how that number is calculated. But I think, if a lot of G2A's income is from fraudulent activities via their system, they can not reimburse everyone 10 times. That again makes me think this might have been some sort of PR stunt.

[Drury]

It is a PR stunt. Their statement reads like an ad. "Today we use some of the most sophisticated proprietary anti-fraud AI technology of any online marketplace for digital products..." give me a break.

[damerell]

Icons were being designed as "caricatures" of entities they represent for a long time now. The original nuclear reactor icon back from 2017 was caricatures as well. As Vaclav wrote in FFF: "Reworking all icons is a gargantuan project, but redoing individual icons can be very quick and done silently without breaking any mods" - if you don't like overall style, unfortunatelly that's not something we are able to act upon, but we will try to improve icons about which lot of people feel like they are not good representation for items they are associated with.

Why then (for example) change the inventory icon for an electric mining drill from a tiny electric mining drill to... whatever it is now?

[valneq]

Icons were being designed as "caricatures" of entities they represent for a long time now. The original nuclear reactor icon back from 2017 was caricatures as well. As Vaclav wrote in FFF: "Reworking all icons is a gargantuan project, but redoing individual icons can be very quick and done silently without breaking any mods" - if you don't like overall style, unfortunatelly that's not something we are able to act upon, but we will try to improve icons about which lot of people feel like they are not good representation for items they are associated with.

Why then (for example) change the inventory icon for an electric mining drill from a tiny electric mining drill to... whatever it is now?

It is probably representing a redesigned electric mining drill. The electric mining drill never got its own remnant graphics, just like the assembling machine. The assembling machine will be redesigned, as will be the beacon. I suspect that the new icon already is the redesigned electric mining drill, but the graphics for the actual structure was not yet included in the game.

[Oktokolo]

What I really can not wrap my mind around yet, is the resolution of the G2A issue. G2A's business model is to profit from fraud.

I know that an honest trader is basically an unthinkable thing for most people. But what if there actually could be such a beast. What if there actually could be a trader wich just profits from buying stuff where or when it is cheap and selling it where or when it is expensive. Such a trader could still make lots of money without having to profit from fraud.
Such a strategy would obviously require prices to differ between locations or to change over time. But in planned economy, that doesn't happen. It would require something like a free market, where manufacturers adjust their selling price to the demand and economic strength of individual markets.
So how could a trader profit from buying and then reselling games without exploiting fraud...

...We live in a free market society where manufacturers indeed sell their products (including games) for different prices to different markets. Traders actually do profit from the difference of these prices by buying where and when the price is low - selling where and when the price is high.
They profit from: Region-specific prices, sales events, region-specific prices, people who sell their used stuff, region-specific prices, people who have been gifted stuff they don't want, region-specific prices.
But they really profit the most from region-specific prices (and also they are profiting from region-specific prices a lot).

Fun fact: Traders are as old as humanity and always profited a lot from regional and temporal price differences. It actually is their job to buy low and sell high.

[5thHorseman]

What I really can not wrap my mind around yet, is the resolution of the G2A issue. G2A's business model is to profit from fraud.

I know that an honest trader is basically an unthinkable thing for most people.

But we're not talking about honest traders. We're talking about G2A.

[SWSe]

region-specific prices x 1000

How well does this work though? Steam hasn't been supporting gifts across regions with a significant price difference for years now.

Sale events are a "legitimate" method to get cheap games. "Legitimate", as in selling steam gifts is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and sometimes mb the developer's EULA, but at least the money would go to the publisher/dev. Whether this would be considered legally sound in court seems to be the real gray area, AFAIK.

The kind of platform that G2A and the likes have works great for anyone who wants to profit via fraud though, and besides the proven ones in this recent audit, there are also more hints that fraudulent keys are sold there in relevant quantities that can especially hurt indie devs, taking their time, effort and money to deal with.
I wonder whether this has since improved by much, like Wube managed to secure their buying process against stolen credit card info, and devs probably not giving out as many keys anymore.

[Oktokolo]

What I really can not wrap my mind around yet, is the resolution of the G2A issue. G2A's business model is to profit from fraud.

I know that an honest trader is basically an unthinkable thing for most people.

But we're not talking about honest traders. We're talking about G2A.

That is, what i meant with it being an unthinkable thing. They might or might not be honest (i don't know any of them personally). But i don't see strong evidence for them being a fence. So i go for "innocent until proven guilty" instead of "guilty until proven innocent". Even in theory proving innocence is an impossible task as you can't finally prove the absence of guilt.
As stated, buying low and selling high is the legitimate way, trading works in a free market society. So even morally i don't see a problem with game key resellers. I certainly would not buy Factorio from a middle man, wich isn't GOG for personal reasons. But there would be nothing wrong with doing so.

And G2A still "[...] will compensate developers the full value of any chargeback fees they incurred for any keys sold via G2A Marketplace, if they are able to prove they were illegitimate."
They seem to be pretty confident to have legitimate sources for their keys. Refunding fraud-caused chargebacks, while a good method of building trust, is not a good method for generating profit.

region-specific prices x 1000

How well does this work though? Steam hasn't been supporting gifts across regions with a significant price difference for years now.

I am not a trader myself, but trading as a method for making a living has been proven to work since before any borders existed.
There might be other sources of non-frauded steam keys like humble bundles, players who made one account per key to be able to sell after use, or manufacturers who give out a free Steam key when you bought on another platform.

Sale events are a "legitimate" method to get cheap games. "Legitimate", as in selling steam gifts is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and sometimes mb the developer's EULA, but at least the money would go to the publisher/dev. Whether this would be considered legally sound in court seems to be the real gray area, AFAIK.

Whether it is actually legal to arbitrarily restrict the second-hand market, is indeed a grey area. Obviously, Steam has no incentive to go to court as that might very well break part of their business model. And the traders have no incentive either as they and their customers seem to have no problem in just ignoring the shady EULAs nobody cares about (or even reads - just try to remember the last time you actually read an EULA instead of just clicking it away).

The kind of platform that G2A and the likes have works great for anyone who wants to profit via fraud though, and besides the proven ones in this recent audit, there are also more hints that fraudulent keys are sold there in relevant quantities that can especially hurt indie devs, taking their time, effort and money to deal with.
I wonder whether this has since improved by much, like Wube managed to secure their buying process against stolen credit card info, and devs probably not giving out as many keys anymore.

Yes, of course a free market works also great for fraudsters. And yes, the broken credit card system is easy to exploit for fraudsters.
But the latter problem could pretty easily be fixed by shifting the financial risk of failed transactions from the seller to the credit card company.
Manufacturers and resellers have no way to verify whether credit card credentials are legit. But if there would be an incentive for credit card companies to prevent fraud, they would certainly find a way to do so.
As it is now, they just externalize the costs to the seller. They can do so because doing so isn't illegal (this has to change) and the legitimate customers insist of being able to buy using credit cards (this is okay).

[Oscar]

First of all ready well done icons. Thank you guys so much. You are truly the best bunch of games developers out there. Wish there were many more like you! Really looking forward to 1.0 and the DLCs that will follow. Please let me buy some DLCs in the not so distant future to further support you guys!

That being said, I agree that some icons may need new iterations, especially the engine unit, mining drills, and perhaps heatpipes. However, one little-mentioned aspect of the new update, and frankly the one that concerns me the most, is the overly crisp appearance of new icons in the game world once you zoom in. Once you zoom in, the new icons really stand out, and appear to be much sharper than all/most of the surroundings (e.g. belts, inserters, buildings, vehicles etc.). This makes the visuals on this level feel bit inconsistent in tone. Not sure if anybody agrees with me, and not sure what developers can do about it without taking too much time and effort.

[Ripshaft]

I got so excited when I saw this - it looks/sounds so freakin amazing!

[MiniHerc]

The item icons looking minimalistic is fine by me given they're kinda, well, minimal by nature. I mean, you don't want a lot of details on things that appear en masse on belts and in cramped inventory grids. In fact, one of the worst offenders on this front had been the old battery redesign, which felt too visually noisy with the colored wires and LEDs, so glad that's fixed.

also, objective facts:

Agreed.

[posila]

I am sorry we are not capable of making the game good enough for everyone. I really am.

[MasterBuilder]

I don't see anything wrong with the new pumpjack, it still looks like a pumpjack to me.
The heatpipes I had trouble identifying. I think they work better as the cross.
The reactor is different, but still works.
The personal & normal battery are too similar. Hard to tell them apart.
The electric miner is way off, but it's being redone in-game so I'm just ignoring that for now.
The refinery change I don't like so much, but I can deal with it.
I don't like the new silo. I liked the old one much more.
I don't like the rail change signal too. This is another I have trouble identifying at a glance.

For the most part I'm neutral about all the new icons. For the rest, I'll adapt in time, or maybe mod the ones I want back in. No biggie to me.

Whenever I see the new heatpipe icon, I can only think of this prop:

st prop.png (26.73 KiB) Viewed 6897 times

[skeleton5000]

the new icons look childish / cartoon y they do not look like the in game item, will a new player not find this confusing,
I refer to the mining drill,locomotive and engine in particular. it seems to me that the game is finished and it is being
tinkered with for no reason. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[MakeItGraphic]

I don't see anything wrong with the new pumpjack, it still looks like a pumpjack to me.
The heatpipes I had trouble identifying. I think they work better as the cross.
The reactor is different, but still works.
The personal & normal battery are too similar. Hard to tell them apart.
The electric miner is way off, but it's being redone in-game so I'm just ignoring that for now.
The refinery change I don't like so much, but I can deal with it.
I don't like the new silo. I liked the old one much more.
I don't like the rail change signal too. This is another I have trouble identifying at a glance.

For the most part I'm neutral about all the new icons. For the rest, I'll adapt in time, or maybe mod the ones I want back in. No biggie to me.

Whenever I see the new heatpipe icon, I can only think of this prop:
st prop.png

pumpjack is just higher res

heat pipes make more sense being a socket rather then a cross, it's rather presumptuous for it to be cross when you may not have such adjacent connections

the rest I don't know was just going off the most recent post

[DaveMcW]

Spoiler: The main entities are going to change to match the icons.