Dragon Age: Origins came out 15 years ago. That’s a very long time to stay with the same company in the tech sector. It’s not at all unusual that there are so few people left who worked with the engine for the first game.

I’m running Win 10 Ameliorated on mine. Manual driver installs were the only big hiccup. Works well otherwise, but it’s not my daily driver.

I can’t really use Linux since my work is deeply embedded in Microsoft everything; I need OneDrive to work dependably.

It was offered as a free upgrade for anyone with Wishes 7/8. And you could get free upgrades to those from earlier editions of Windows, too.

Some people haven’t paid for Windows in 2 decades-ish with a legit retail purchase.

Isn’t it getting harder to find custom ROMs, now? Used to be basically everything was on XDA forums, but I’ve heard lots of custom ROMs are moving to they’re own websites/Discord servers/whatever.

Meanwhile, Steam is raking it in by continuing to offer a better product than piracy. The Steam Deck is making that even more true; it’s so much more convenient to have games in the Steam library than try to keep a repack updated with new patches/content.

Right, but pirating Disney-owned IP is more moral than paying for it. Disney is the number 1 company in the world for lobbying for copyright over-reach. Every dollar that goes to Disney pays for lobbyists who will continue to push for life-of-author + 90+ years, because life-of-author plus 70 years just isn’t enough time to control our shared cultural heritage.

Similarly for Nintendo and software piracy.

Paying for Disney/Nintendo media is immoral.

… he claims there is no point producing proof because they wouldn’t be believed.

He also dismisses any evidence created by others as untrustworthy.

What a load of shit. It’s up to the person making the claim to provide evidence. People have claimed the opposite, and backed it up with “low-quality” evidence. Refusing it would be pretty easy, if it were true; get someone independent to verify in a pre-funded, blind trial.

The only reason not to do this is because they know their product reduces framerate frequently enough to be a problem.

Agreed; it’s funny reading articles like this about massive marketing budgets when I haven’t seen a single ad.

True, but I expect that wasn’t meant literally; it was expressed that way for rhetorical effect.

Most of the capitalist system we’re in has incentivized short-term cashflow over long-term revenue for most stakeholders (annual bonuses, for example), and AAA gaming is almost entirely following those trends, too.

Exactly. Group policies give lots of control to mass enable/disable features.

It’s one of the reasons to pirate Enterprise Windows instead of Home/Pro, so you can write your own group policies for your own device.

You can also download remux quality rips. Be warned: they take a lot of disc space! Hard drives cost 1.4¢/GB right now, so say 2¢/GB for a raid NAS, all in. That means each remux costs about $1 USD to store with backup… But you need to put down the cash for like 1000 movies at a time to get the best marginal price.