For anybody saying “it’s not a problem, just moderate it yourself”

I’m of the opposite opinion. It’s a much bigger problem than just Steam community moderation and it needs to be addressed more broadly. (Monkey’s paw curls)

This. It’s not a problem, it’s a niche.

It sounds to me like you have two viable options:

1. Accept that your role at the company is now “prompt ‘engineer’” and do your best to optimise your workflow for quick turnaround, since the business is prioritising speed. If you want to do programming, start a personal project.

   Optionally, you can think about how to frame the issues with code quality in terms of financial risk to leadership–but be prepared for them to continue not giving a shit (and maybe start viewing you as “not a team player”).

2. Find a new job.

So many people seem to want to go back, though. Maybe we just need to coordinate

This breaks my heart. The Marathon trilogy had such a cool setting and atmosphere. What the hell is this.

Into the ground, you say?

After everything they’ve done to their other key franchises… Surely no one is going to fall for this, right?

This may help explain why some devs I talk to think LLM code assistants are amazing, while others find them only situationally useful at best.

Blizzard openly admitting that they scammed players into buying Overwatch 1 twice:

download all of Demon Slayer thousands of times over

shueisha is forced to transfer billions of yen to my bank account

checkmate corpos

What if we were the real parasites all along

Sure, but exploring the way games abstract reality can be interesting and worthwhile.

Classic publicly traded company using “reorganisation” (read: layoffs) to trick shareholders into thinking they are turning things around by simultaneously reducing costs and shifting blame for past failures of leadership.

The next step is a super safe release, like a remaster of one of their top selling games, followed by an announcement of a new entry in one of their most popular series. Line goes up. Ubisoft is back! Hire more developers, open a new studio (or buy an established studio), resume enshittifying. Rinse and repeat.

I have played these games before.webp

Wasn’t this the game that had an RCE exploit in the chat system? Like you could just type JavaScript in general chat and the game client would run it for anyone who saw it. That’s about as enshittified as it gets (see also: smart appliances)

The difference between awards chosen purely by people who play video games and awards chosen primarily by people who make their pay cheques in the industry

Saints Row 2-3-4 are great for this. 2 is the GOAT, but 3 and 4 are arguably better at providing the “screwing around” experience.

Sleeping Dogs is underrated and regularly goes on sale for like $5. There is not as much sandbox-ey stuff to do compared to GTA/Just Cause/Saints Row, but I loved jacking a nice car and cruising the freeway at night, or going on a murder spree and playing survival against waves of cops.

Elder Scrolls isn’t necessarily as wacky of an experience out of the box, but between mods and the sheer amount of freedom you have in the game, there is plenty of dumb random stuff you can get up to.

If you have Elden Ring on PS4/5 and know your way around the game, invasions have a ton of potential for shenanigans. Probably not what you’re after, and I imagine multiplayer activity is down since Nightreign came out, but it’s worth mentioning as such a unique experience.

Honourable indie mention: Mars First Logistics is a game where you build vehicles and use them to transport objects from point A to point B. The challenges are largely physics-based, with the objects often having unusual shapes or odd properties, and your vehicle needs to be able to self-load them in addition to bearing them across varying distances and terrains. It’s not really what you’re asking for, but I feel like it scratched the same sort of itch for me in terms of open-ended low-stakes gameplay.

men don’t universally conform to a stereotype

therefore they must all confirm to a different stereotype

also women bad

This is the first I’ve heard of Zorin. I’ll definitely be giving this a hard look. Thanks for the recommendation!