Glide

As of today, I am still able to log in. The next point I'm concerned about is the 30th, so we'll be waiting a while, but I'll do my best to update.

I see the other argument about this, but allow me to give you my personal example of where I am regarding charge backs, banned accounts and Helldivers using the PSN.

I love Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter World first released as a console exclusive, and I had a second hand PS4. Not wanting to give Sony my credit card due to previous data leaks, I purchased a pre-paid PSN gift card and wanted to use it to purchase Monster Hunter. I dig through their labyrinth of a store, found the game, selected on it, and was looking for a way to pay using the pre-paid card. Unable to find it, I googled and discovered I had to back up to some account menu. Being a primarily Switch+PC player, I am used to right face button for confirm and bottom for cancel, so when I came back to the console I picked up the controller and pressed the bottom face button, "X". Suddenly I had made a purchase using a credit card I didn't even know they had. One hour-long conversation later, their support agreed to refund the purchase, walked me through removing the credit card from my account, I bought the game with the prepaid card, and all was well.

Later, I wanted to play online. Well, I don't trust giving them my credit card after the last fiasco for certain, so I get my hands on a 12-month prepaid card for PSN. I add the card, hunt monsters online with my friends, no issues.

One year later, I get a notification: a ~$80 purchase from PlayStation was charged to my credit card. Uh, the fuck? So within 15 minutes, I am talking to their support, asking why in gods name they charged a credit card which I removed from the account for a purchase I didn't request. It is explained to me that when you use a pre-paid card to get a subscription to PSN, the automatic renewal is turned on. I, of course, say, "sure, but you guys walked me through removing my credit card the last time I interacted with you and I used a prepaid card to intentionally avoid autorenewal". Then, I am told that using a prepaid card turns on auto renewal with the last known payment method. I am shocked, demand a refund, am told that won't be a problem, then about 5 minutes later am instead told that I've used my "one lifetime refund request on a purchase of Monster Hunter World". There is more discussion and I explain that I will be getting my money back via charge back if they will not refund the unwanted purchase. They tell me my PSN account will be banned if I do that, so I restate, clearly, that I am receiving my money either way and they get to choose whether or not they have a customer after this conversation. I am politely and professionally told to fuck off, so I request the refund, and sure enough, my PSN account is banned.

Sony has, unfortunately, done nothing illegal by banning my account. The whole auto-renewal thing may set off some alarms in the EU, but here in North America, no one bats an eye.

Enter Helldivers. I see it requires a PSN account. I am concerned, but Steam has a gracious refund policy, so I purchase it. When I am met with the PSN account screen I consider: I could try my old account. It's likely I'll see a message about how this account can't be used to play this game, possible that it'll just work because the game doesn't really use the PSN, and at worst, it'll be permenantly bound with my Steam account, I will be banned and I'll just refund the game. Not wanting to give Sony anything that resembles new information due to a combination of my previous experiences and their penchant for losing customer data in security breeches, I try my ~5 year banned account. It works, first try, without issue. I've played ever since.

Now, with this renewed discussion on PSN account linking, the whole narrative from the Dev side is "this is so we can manage bans across both platforms". I am, obviously, concerned. Evidence suggests I am about to be retroactively banned from a game I purchased, have only used lawfully and ethically, and I will be long outside my refund window. I am waiting patiently to see how it all shakes out before I attempt a refund request via Steam.

The only places I've had to cut out was shoppers, and I go there so rarely that it really didn't matter.

Their grocery stores have been garbage for so long that "boycotting" is such a moot point to me. They're the only nearby grocer that forces you to buy the amount of a listed item to actually get the discount (ie, if an item is 2/$6.00, buying one charges you full price, not $3.00). Between that and many items being ~5-10% higher than the other grocers, I'm not sure why anyone shops there to begin with.

So, at first install, I actually linked my account to a PSN account that I knew was banned due to a charge back on an unwanted purchase. At the time, I figured if I discovered that I can't play because my account is banned from PSN, I'd just refund on Steam. I feel I'll be very justifiably pissed if my account is now banned from playing retroactively, long after the refund window.

Weird take, imo. Mobile games are probably the best they've ever been. They were traditionally a place for rampant p2w garbage gacha machines, and while those are still there, the platform has actual decent games nowadays. Real PC games are being ported to mobile and the platform is being taken seriously. Even in the world of micro transactions and gacha games, there are far more that are actually decent as games then there ever has been.

I've been playing Monster Hunter Now and I've been really impressed with it. The entirety of the Riot games are good games with reasonable microtransactions. Vampire Survivors, my go-to "I am offline" game, is the exact same game on mobile as PC, save the fact that it's free and you have a choice to watch ads for marginal farming speedups (which can be disabled if you buy literally any of their ~$1.50 DLC expansions, which are hilariously large considering their price). Fucking Warframe is coming to/already on (?) mobile.

I genuinely can't say mobile games have ever been in a better place than today, despite the existence of the shovelware P2W games that continue to roll out.

"Steal from us and we'll raise prices!"

The class war continues. Fuck them.

See if there's a farmer's market in your area. Many places have one on weekends, at least.

Nah dude. If they hit a billion dollars, you take all their wealth, reset them back to level one, put a star next to their name and tell them to do it again. They'll appreciate the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with a second run.

I purchased It Takes Two for some $12 or something during a Steam sale. I was disappointingly surprised when I discovered it was an EA published game and on their launcher, even through Steam. I wasn't happy about it, but I shrugged; I have an origin account from back in the SW:ToR days, so I'll just log in.

I punch in my info, correctly remembering both my email and old password, and am met with a 2FA screen. No problem, I have access to the email, so I load it up, wait a couple minutes, and nothing comes in. I press "resend authentication" just in case, stand up, get a drink, use the washroom, sit down, nothing. I hit resend again, start googling the status of the 2FA servers and see some complaints about the time it takes to get a 2FA from them in old forum posts. 30 minutes later, nothing.

I load up a torrent client, find a repack of the game, begin torrenting it, finish it, install it and start playing. Half of the time my girlfriend and I had to enjoy the game right now is gone, but we played and enjoyed it none the less. I refund the game on Steam. We finish, head out to supper since we agreed earlier to meet some friends, and I'm sitting at the table when my phone buzzes. I've received an email providing me my 2FA key for the EA launcher, 4 hours after originally requested. In this time I was easily able to pirate, install, play and finish a session of the game I was logging in to play, and as a kicker, refund the original purchase through Steam.

Piracy is a symptom, not a cause, and these garbage clients are just another facet of the infection.

Either "eating meat is fine because animal life is less valuable than people's dietary needs/preferences," or "vegetarianism is the only moral option, as all life is equally valuable," but it seems to me like any answer in the middle is hypocrisy, no?

I dug into this more deeply in another response, but no. Life can be equally valuable and we can accept that evolution and history has led us to a place where we end life without feeling a sense of superiority over that life.

Imagine a poker game. You have been dealt a winning hand. You are incredibly confident of this and are correct to feel so. Are you a better person for winning that hand? Is this a signal that you're not only expected to take the money of the others at the table, but permitted to do so because you are a better person?

We are the species that was dealt a better hand. This puts us in a position of power. This does not make us "better", nor does it negate the value of those other lives, despite the position we find ourselves in. Yet we do, ultimately, get to collect as a result of that hand.