T w e n t y S i d e d

This week on the Diecast we talked about No Man’s Sky NEXT, the massive patch / overhaul that rolled out a week ago. I was peeved that people were claiming that the patch “fixes the game”, when none of the core problems had been addressed. As I said on the show, “It’s the same damn game!”

But I put a few more hours into it and I don’t think that’s quite fair. It’s not the same game. It’s a very different game… with most of the same problems.

If you’re new to the site, you may want to go back and revisit what I said about No Man’s Sky a year ago when I did a four-part analysis on the state of the game as it existed in the summer of 2017. In particular, The Disappointment Engine post illustrates how so many of the mechanics work to frustrate the player.

Before we can look at where the game is now, let’s jump back and look at where it was at launch two years ago.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “No Man’s Sky NEXT”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is a crazy story right out of a (admittedly dull) cyberpunk novel. Someone discovered that a bunch of PC games were using third-party “spyware” called Red Shell. There’s no way to know what information Red Shell was sharing, but it it had evidently been running inside of a lot of games for some time without being noticed.

People made a fuss on Reddit, the story gained some traction, and many developers began patching Red Shell out of their games. Some of them did so without comment, while others downplayed the move. The patch notes either failed to mention Red Shell at all, or they simply said “Removed Red Shell” without elaborating on what Red Shell was or what it was doing.

A few companies made official statements. A ridiculous number of them claimed that while Red Shell was included in the install, it had never been active and don’t worry about it we’re getting rid of it anyway you can trust us we’re dedicated to security etc etc etc.

This story has been simmering for a month or so. It was quickly picked up by Polygon, Wired, and PC Gamer, but it didn’t seem to make many waves at the time. I didn’t hear about it until 2 days ago.

As of this writing, the story is still developing. New games are being discovered to include Red Shell, and previously discovered games are patching it out and doing PR damage control. A few games got ahead of the curve and patched it out before being noticed.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: Red Shell”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.