millie
Unreal is safe now, but there are no guarantees under capitalism. A FOSS license does guarantee that enshittification won’t be a factor because it literally can’t become the exclusive property of some company with a greedy executive board. Unreal doesn’t have that protection, Godot does.
Could Godot be compromised some how? Sure. Can it be enshittified? Not really.
The thing is, this could change at any time. The problem with enshittification is that it spreads. A company that’s doing great work today could be bought out by corporate profiteers and leeched of its actual value at any point in the future. We’ve had plenty of companies that started out with a vision and a set of strong principles who’ve been reduced to predatory business practices that are bad for everyone. You can’t assume that because a company seems to have integrity now, that integrity will remain.
Remember Elon Musk 15 years ago? Wasn’t quite the same, was it?
To me, sitting in a position of getting started in game development, that makes me want to sink my time and effort into an engine that I know can’t be enshittified because it can’t be bought out. I want to know that in a few years I’m not going to completely scrub every asset and mechanic that I make for the engine because somebody’s pulled some Darth Vader shit.
If you’re 5 years old and entering puberty, you’re literally already going to be prescribed the same medication, because it was designed for precocious puberty. If you’re a little older and you’re taking them because you want to transition later in life, you’re literally only delaying puberty.
Nobody is giving testosterone or estrogen to little kids, let alone surgery. They’re just putting off the changes hormones would be making otherwise, because they can’t be undone.
If it’s the permanence of the decision you’re worried about, don’t be, because there isn’t any.
Literally every seeder is part of that archive. You can look at individual trackers in the microcosm as individual archives and indices, but it’s the culture of piracy that causes the wide scale collection and preservation of media.
We’re actually at this kind of interesting cross-generational point of guerilla archival where it’s become easier to find certain obscure pieces of media history. I suspect this is in large part due to things like bounties, where suddenly a forgotten VHS of a 35 year old HBO special that aired once or twice could be a step toward a higher rank and greater access to a wider range of media.
Modern piracy has a strong incentive toward finding lost material that’s no longer readily available. Zero day content is great, but have you seen the RADAR pilot or both seasons of AfterMASH?
They belong in a museum. Indie would be proud, even if Harrison wouldn’t. Not that I know his perspective on piracy.
I think in general people would have an easier time interacting with the system and just existing in proximity to it if the stakes weren’t so artificially raised.
Honestly, I’d argue that raising the stakes via the penal system as well as through things like corporate culture and work ethic have more to do with many of our problems than anything else. We’d probably be a lot better off if we took the time to try to teach people patience by not demanding constant impossible perfection and by giving them the room to exist.
So many people get so stressed about literally nothing. I’ll pick people up driving my cab and they’ll literally apologize for needing to be picked up or apologize for paying with cash or a card or a thousand other things. I spend more time reassuring people that everything is fine and it’s completely acceptable for them to call a taxi than nearly any other endlessly repeated interaction.
It’s not a big deal. We’re all going to die. Just take a second and let yourself enjoy your life instead of subjugating yourself to assholes and apologizing for it. Part of that is minding your own damn business and not locking people up for dumb shit.