I'm convinced a lot of these projects are just a way for those at the top to embezzle the investor funds and they don't actually care if the game sells well.
The "classic" VC model was always "throw money at 20 companies, and if even one of them takes off, you'll get your money back and then some." Before the dot-com bubble, there was at least
some effort by all parties involved to actually make that work -- VC investors actually vetted the companies they were considering, and companies that got funding actually (and genuinely) busted ass to get a viable product out the door. It worked.
Then the mentality changed, leading to the dot-com bubble, and it never changed afterward. It became "come up with something 'clever-looking', get a lot of people using it, then show VCs that growth and convince them it's 'incoming dollars' and not just 'simultaneous freeloaders', then coast until a big fat corporation buys us out."
People stopped actually working on "products" and started working on "five-year exit strategies." No need to build anything more than a "MVP" (more fun industry jargon that tells you you're working with a shyster -- "minimum viable product") prototype and keep it coasting when you never plan to take it to production-quality and just want to score a buyout in a few years.
End result? Endless half-finished toys. Software, gadgets, games, consumer electronics, whatever. There's neat shit out there that barely makes it out to market yet ultimately finds success (Android comes to mind), but then there's fucking Juicero (Google also funded that bullshit -- $300 million for an internet-enabled DRM-encumbered juice press, and no, I'm not even kidding). That god damn thing spawned from a conman pitching "fresh cold-pressed juice by subscription" and a room full of VC pockets full of money desperate to burn its way out on
anything.
It fucking sucks. And yeah, I've no doubt in my mind half these fucking game companies to just ride every gravy train possible until derailment, then shut down a studio, shuffle the deck, create a new studio, go back to the same fucking tap, and keep it going for years. It's not strictly "embezzlement," more like "sinecures."
Randy is a notorious retard that apparently requires a corporate-mandated tardwrangler to filter everything he says so he won't cause more grief for them.
That person should be fired, because they're doing a dogshit job of it. Pitchford is an endless embarrassment to his company and employees.
ETA:
shit, that's why my banking app doesn't run on my phone? it's one of the few apps i would want on my phone, but at least i can still access it through the website in a browser. pointless.
Yup! Any Android app (presumably iOS does the same thing by default as well, since those fucking things are locked down even harder) can ask the OS to attest that it's "official." That function checks three things: if the bootloader is locked, if the running firmware is signed by a Google Play Services-recognized key, and if the device is rooted. If any check fails, attestation fails, and the app assumes it's not running in a "safe" environment, whatever that actually means.
On paper, any of those checks failing
could indicate a "compromised" device of some kind, but in practice even a device that passes attestation can also be compromised (by an unpatched vulnerability in Android or the vendor's custom-baked flavor of it, a fuckup in an individual app, a fuckup in the radio firmware, etc.).
On a PC, "Secure Boot" and TPM combine the "locked bootloader" part and "OS signature" part. PCs by default grant "root" access to the owner, unlike phones, so there's no notion of "checking for root," but instead, they focus on ensuring Secure Boot is enabled and signatures are valid. If those pass, they're "assured" of running on either a known flavor of Windows they can compromise themselves (e.g. with "Easy Anti-Cheat" or other rootkits) or something "tainted" like Linux of any flavor that refuses to allow that kind of hardware seizure by default (this is why no game with kernel-level anti-cheat bullshit attached runs on Linux -- they don't have Linux ports of their rootkits because they're incompetent and because Linux isn't Swiss cheese like Windows NT is).
You know the stupid part of all this? None of it's necessary. Not any of it. A banking app is made secure by SSL/TLS, strong security design principles on the server side, and zero-trust architecture (including literally
never trusting anything the client sends you until you verify it, each and every fucking time). McDonald's has no fucking business even
asking politely if I'm running an "approved" flavor of Android to run their app. I should be able to run it on a fucking Bluestack emulator if I feel like it. Their shitty app should be secure enough on its own to withstand operation on a hostile platform (which should be the default assumption of all network apps at all times anyway) without any "attestations" by third parties. Verify your fucking keys yourselves, lazy assholes.
Bleh. I'm grumpy now. I'm glad this stupid game's crashing and burning. lol. Make a good game next time, faggots. Maybe it'll sell better.
lassified takes off.
