My sincerest apologies in advance to the moderators of /c/games if the below is not suitable for the community. This is extremely loosely related to gaming but concerns a significant player in the industry.

On the morning of Monday, 2024 11 25, I received a text message from my bank notifying me of a potentially fraudulent transaction of $0.00. This resembled some kind of a service test charge.

I was amused to see this was sufficient to trigger such a response from my bank. My account had been paused and my card transactions were halted as a result, though I'm grateful for their diligence.

Looking at the message, it appears to have been from Blizzard Entertainment:

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The first time I dealt with them as a customer was around 2016 or 2017. Overwatch was on sale and my friends urged me to pick it up. It wasn't my sort of thing and I quickly put it back down.

I was stupid enough to buy Destiny 2 later on in 2017. The long-timers (or most likely, former players) amongst you may recall that D2 was only available through BattleNet on PC. I think they moved away to Steam a couple years later after parting ways with Activision, and I linked my Steam account to complete the transfer around this time.

Fast-forward to October 2019 and the "Blitzchung controversy". I don't wish to expand on the topic here. I didn't agree with Blizzard's actions around that event, nor did I have any particular reason to retain my online account with them, so I decided to delete it in some extremely minor form of protest.

It seems that a significant number of account holders thought of doing the same thing, as Blizzard started to demand some form of government photo ID to proceed.

I can only presume they employed this tactic as some sort of deterrent, though I was fairly sure it couldn't legally be enforced; what business did they have to ask this of me? They've never needed my drivers license or passport photo before?

After a lengthy back and forth with their support agents, I decided to send them a GDPR data erasure request instead. They immediately honoured my request and notified me that my account and all associated PII would be removed from their systems.

Just over five years later, and I'm randomly greeted with this fraud alert. Mondays are particularly busy for me, as I'm sure they are for many of you. I cursed as I glanced at phone that morning. I don't need more stuff to deal with.

I immediately called my bank and rectified the situation, though I wanted to understand how this happened to begin with. Whilst I was still on the phone to them, I confirmed that:

• My last payment to Blizzard Entertainment was in 2017 (2 years prior to my GDPR data erasure request)
• The attempted transaction on Monday originated from Irvine, US (location of their HQ - it wasn't someone using my card details)

I decided to write to Blizzard's customer support. They appear to have a section dedicated to unauthorised payments. My endeavours were unsuccessful.

After explaining all of the above, I pressed them on several key points:

• What is the purpose of this charge and why did this happen?
• What data are you retaining on me?
• Has another user attempted to use my payment information (at this point, I've no reason to suspect my payment info has been compromised)
• What will you do to prevent this happening again?

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I wasn't satisfied with the first response, so I tried again later on.

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>Check if you have an active World of Warcraft subscription

Couldn't you folks have done that?

>Check your recent purchases in your Transaction History

(I had already explained that I had done this as part of my initial query to them)

>Make sure that you are logged in to the correct Blizzard account

"An extensive research" to be sure

All of these questions were completely sidestepped. I began to suspect that these were bot generated or generic, canned responses.

If you are indeed real people, and you somehow stumble upon this post, please know that I'm sorry to call you out, and I know you're dealing with my case using the resources you have available.

So why am I mentioning any of this here?

I would love to know if any of you took the same action as I did back in 2019:

• Did you attempt to close your account following the HK tournament controversy?
• Did you face the same level of resistance as I did?
• Did you follow up with a data erasure request?
• Do you have any reason to suspect that Blizzard are still retaining data on you in 2024?

An associate of mine has pointed out that they may have a legal obligation to retain some records despite my request for data erasure. The question is, why was this service test charge placed?

Thank you for reading through my ramblings.

Have a cosy one.

It's beyond insane to me that a $70 "AAAA" game (kidding, it's AAA) dips down to the absurd price of $5. I've never seen anything like it. Wish the entire Sims 4 "collection" if you can call it that was $5 total, would be incredible, or Starfield.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23002452 >

I went ahead and bought a bunch of indie games, picked up Darkchaser, Oxygen Not Included, and UFO50, and also grabbed Cities: Skylines. Got used to the launch prices of some AAA games, buying these discounted low-priced games really doesn't hurt much.

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I'm close to finishing Silent Hill 2 today. The game nearly gave me a heart attack though. Not because of the game itself, but because i guess at some point my storage filled up and it wasn't writing save files correctly, so whenever James would load in he'd just spawn in a black Abyss.

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Luckily some guy online had a save file right where i left off in the Labyrinth. So thankfully i didn't miss much, idk what ending i'll get though so that will be something to look forward too.

Going through the Otherworld town kept making me want to play Alan Wake II again (I might have a slight addiction). The rain and the city streets reminded me of Alan's Chapter, and then the Phone booth reminded me of how that was used in the story too:

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Overall i'm really enjoying my time with this game. I'm hoping to 100% it so i can put it on my display case on my Steam profile right next to Fallout New Vegas and Alan Wake I.

I'm looking for titles that will run well on my only computer. Which is a 5-year-old 13" convertible laptop attached to a docking station with a 24" 1920x1080 screen. It's got Intel internal graphics.

For reference, Skyrim runs well on it at 1920x1080 and high settings.

What would you recommend? Mostly interested in open world RPGs.

Specs: Intel Core i5-10210 (4 cores, 8 threads, 4.2GHz) 8GB LPDDR3 (2133 MHz) RAM Intel UHD Graphics w/ HDCP support. DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 shared memory

source: https://x.com/Palworld_EN/status/1861560568756462079#m

Today's game is Silent Hill 2. I made my way through the Hospital (I had to call it a bit short though due to being in handheld mode on my Steam Deck and the battery going fast). I wanted to try something a bit different today with the screenshot, so i observed Mary's letter and zoomed in, seeing if i could get a item shot with the angle. I think it came out decent, the lack of control really though makes it feel kind of cheap. still, i think it's pretty and really showcase's how gorgeous this game is.

I also got the shotgun, which made dealing with enemies a whole lot easier. Now instead of loading 4 pistol rounds into an enemies leg, i pop them in the knee with the shotgun and thwack them with Jame's trusty metal pipe. It has definitely made my life a lot easier, though i try to save rounds for the bosses, so lying figures and mannequins i try to melee when i can.

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I also got this screenshot of the main wing of the hospital, which i thought showcased the game's pretty atmosphere. Besides just giving me Batman Arkham Asylum vibes, the lighting is so well done that i feel like there's always going to be something hiding right in a corner, like that dark hallway in the screenshot. I few times i jumped because i thought i heard a Nurse, only for it to turn out to be a random background noise.

I'm wanting to do the New Game+ for this too. Seeing as how i have to get both the speedrunning achievement for Uncharted 4 and the speedrunning achievement for this game, i think I'll probably do a brief intermission of popping on over to Uncharted 4, beating that in under 6 hours, and then trying to beat Silent Hill 2 in under 10 hours (assuming i don't get it automatically in my first run, i am already at 7 so idk)

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/28662251

https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html

A surprisingly well-made font-based game with a dash of nostalgia and humour. It's not long (it took about 30 minutes to complete), but I had a lot of fun with it :)

You can play it as a browser game (https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html#player) or download the font (https://github.com/mmulet/font-game-engine/releases/download/1.0/fontemon_small.otf) and play it on the go on any word processor!

cross-posted from: https://goblin.band/notes/a121dz47s3oi4dgd

> [Documentary] The blood on our Controllers - The Complicity of the Game Industry in the Palestinian Genocide > > Watch here > > Quoted from the video description: > > "The blood on our Controllers" is an amateur documentary made to denounce the role of the video game industry in the normalization of the Palestinian genocide, through its close relation with the military industrial complex and the representation of Arab communities in games. It is a collaborative work between developers, artists, animators, and academicians to show how our games are doing wrong or right, what the game industry could be and what needs to be done for it to happen. > > It's time for those who have been the loudest for so long to try and learn to listen. > > Speakers (in order of appearance): Hippolyte Caubet, Rami Ismail, Younès Rabii, Florent Maurin, Meghna Jayanth, Holly Nielsen, Rasheed Abueideh, Elodie Roblain, Florence Nichols Smith > > @gamedev@programming.dev > > \#GameDev #Gaming #Games

I beat the first section of Silent Hill 2 today. I got to the next one too, but put it on hold for tomorrow, mainly because it was late. This whole section had me on edge just due to the ambience. And the sounds that play kept making me think Pyramid Head was right around the corner and i was going to have to run from him. I'm also in love with the rust everywhere, it makes it even scarier and gives it an industrial feel. I think that industrial feel is part of what makes it unsettling, because my brain is going "this is a domestic environment, but why does it look like a factory?".

It's such as shame this game doesn't have a Photo Mode because there's so many good shots obstructed by James taking up like 30% of the screen. Especially landscape shots, they would be amazing if i could get a proper lens control on it.

Here's a bonus screenshot i took of James up on the stage. I love the attention to detail with this because they could just as well had Maria not say anything:

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Further on the attention to detail, in the Motel Maria can hold up her outfit from the original game and ask James if he thinks it suits her. it's a nod i thought was cool.