Rundown (7/20/2025) Natalie’s Software Suite! (And Alternatives)

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie’s Software Suite! (And Alternatives)
• Publishers LOVE Selling Games to People Who Don’t Play Them (Sell to Hoarders and PROFIT!)
• I Played The Mindwave Demo (Per Skillet’s Request)
• Acquire Snatches United Arab Emirates Funding (Acquire X Red Dunes Games Venture Announced)
• Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part IV (Steam Goes After Sexual Content Because of Malicious Payment Processors)
• Microsoft Kills Their TV and Movies Storefront (Another Reason to NEVER Give Them Your Money)

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Header image background was created by raemz of Medical Whiskey acclaim. This was my desktop background for a couple years, but I think the original hosting site has been shut down.

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie’s Software Suite! (And Alternatives)

Hello everynat~! Wait, no, there is only one Natalie! Me! …Excluding that character who I later renamed to Natasha after I stole her name for myself. But that’s 2013 deep lore, and we don’t have time for that today— or any day really.

Anywho, after the continued list of reasons to hate Microsoft have grown to a fever pitch over the past few months, I decided it would be a good idea to take note of the software I regularly use. Partially because I think it would be fun to share my software suite with the broader internet, and so I could gauge the feasibility of making the transition away from Windows and to Linux. Because ditching Microsoft means going to Linux and never looking back. Not for a thousand years.

• Windows-Specific Features: This is not really any specific software, but it is important to acknowledge what built-in non-standard OS-based stuff that I use, and the list is pretty simple. I find the Snap Layouts to be a major game-changer in Windows 11, and use it pretty much every day to cascade and apportion my windows to optimize screen space. I could do it manually, as I had for several years, but it is an immense quality of life feature. The same is true for snipping tool, a feature I use at least once a week, and you can’t get much simpler than Win+S+Shift. These features are not strict requirements, but they are such good features that it would take time to adjust to an OS without them. …But that’s pretty much it for OS-based built-in stuff. Unless you want me to name basic things like a file explorer.
  
• Web Browser: For my browser, I use a ragtag combination depending on what exactly I’m doing on my computer. I use Firefox for personal stuff. Microsoft Edge for dayjob stuff, as I am already using OneDrive for email, file management, and so forth, so why not just use their damn genocide-funded browser as well? I also use Chrome for my side job, as I need a third browser for another Microsoft account, and I cannot generate reports in anything but Chrome. Fortunately, Firefox and Chrome both work on everything, so I won’t ever be without a familiar browser, and there are a bunch of derivatives I could check out. Like the Crypto Bro’s favorite, Brave, or the forum goblin’s Waterfox. I also don’t need to worry about compatibility as… most browsers run on whatever.
  
• Email Client: I am ‘trying’ to move away from Gmail to Mozilla Thunderbird, as I view it as a simple, intuitive, and quality email interface, and my address is with the Dutch privacy-focused provider StartMail. It’s not the best interface and UX experience, but it works fine enough for me, and I like using it more than using Gmail. Really, I just need to set up multiple email accounts in Thunderbird, and set up a new custom domain account for my professional and banking stuff. Something like natalie at my legal name.net. Because I’m all about the N’s. And this would be future-proof, as Thunderbird works on Linux. …Haven’t gotten it to work on my dumb iPhone though. (I’m NOT looking forward to getting my next phone, but that’s another matter.)
  
• Music Player: I use MusicBee as my music player, and it works just fine. I do not need to think about it, and it plays whatever I put into my specified directory just fine. It is tricky to set up the way I like because of the wackadoo way options are arranged, but it works, and I have no desire to change. This bee has given me consistency for the past decade. Unfortunately, MusicBee is Windows only, so I would need to use another music player if I were to switch to Linux. Probably something like the cross-platform DeaDBeeF, if only because I think that would be funny to say I use DDBF. If you cannot immediately think of what TF related thing that brings to mind, you must delve deeper into darkness.
  
• Discord: Discord is, unfortunately, my main way of communicating with friends, and while I hate what the corpos in charge are doing with it, I will stick with it until it enshittifies and I can convince people to leave. It also runs on everything, so I’m defo stuck with it.
  
• Writing Software: After ditching Google Docs five months ago, Obsidian is my writing playground, and it runs on everything, like any good piece of modern software. While I have few complaints— I don’t like the sidebar folder format, as I have thousands of files and a lot of subdirectories— I think it’s the best in the market. I was iffy about the lack of backups at first, but I eventually decided to pay for their cheap cloud storage plan, just so I can access my most valuable possessions across multiple computers. Additionally, I use LanguageTool Standalone for spellchecking and grammar checking in Obsidian, which appears to support Linux, so that’s good!
  
• Office Software: Microsoft Word and Excel do not support Linux, and per my anti-Microsoft scree, I don’t want to use these tools, despite them being industry standard cornerstones. The go-to alternates are going to be the open source OpenOffice or LibreOffice, both of which are basically the same thing, just without the annoying bells and whistles. They have good compatibility features, they look similar, and while I think they are worse, they are sufficient substitutes that run on everything. Now, would I feel link a bitch of an accountant for using this free software instead? Yeah, I would, but I’m already a bitch of an accountant!
  
• PDF Editor: Adobe Acrobat 2017 is my go-to PDF editor, which is an essential part of my work, and a lot of office-type work in general. It functions sufficiently well, but I also kinda hate it. It crashes way too often, its OCR and export functionality leave much to be desired, and it is only ever good enough. The PDF editor market is pretty much exclusively made up of premium offerings, most of which are subscription-based, so I’d need to cough up some cheddar to get an alternative. Just looking around for a multi-platform, and open source, software, I think my best bet would be Master PDF Editor.
  
• Accounting Software: For casual computer use, Linux works just fine… but unfortunately, it lacks widespread support from various firms, like Intuit, who corner the market on accounting software. I regularly use QuickBooks Desktop and ProSeries for work, and while QuickBooks for Mac has been a thing for decades, ProSeries, and every professional tax software I know of, runs on Windows, and only Windows. If I want to use this software, I will need to either run a virtual machine or switch to an entirely web-based approach. Which would be a pain in the ass, as ProConnect is stupidly expensive by comparison. And I do too many little returns to pay $30 per filing. That would cost my company, like, $7,000 a year! Currently, we pay less than half of that!
  
• CPU Monitoring Software: After running into some CPU temperature issues earlier this year, I started running Core Temp on startup every day, keeping it nestled into my status bar. It gives me piece of mind that my computer is not overheating when the fans start whirling. The software is Windows only, but I am certain that Linux has an alternative, as this seems like something a Linux-head would demand on any PC.
  
• Games: Games are where things get complicated. Even now, most computer games are developed for Windows exclusively. However, with the advent of SteamOS and Proton compatibility layers, PC gaming has gotten complicated. A lot of Windows games work fine on Linux right out of the gate. Others do not work at all, as someone hasn’t figured out what three lines of code need to be changed. Others are black boxes that I don’t think anybody has actually tried playing on SteamOS. If one switches to Linux, there are going to be games that just do not run properly. Meaning you pretty much need to keep a virtual Windows machine on standby so you can play those games in peace. Maybe things will get better, but Valve is adamant about not hiring people to do work that could be automated, and they can’t just have a program test every game that sold over 100,000 units on Steam.
  
• VPN: I use Hotspot Shield as my VPN, as it’s free with my browser-based password manager, Dashlane. It works fine, I don’t think about it, and it also runs on Linux. …But if I were to make the transition, I would switch away from an American company and would instead start using Mullvad. It’s Swedish , andit was recommended to me by the same person who recommended Obsidian, so it MUST be good!
  
• Antivirus: I use Bitdefender as my antivirus, and I freaking hate it, dude. It is a massive RAM hog, throws false-positives in my face all the time, freaks out when I use a hex editor, as I do on occasion, and lies to me about how much money a subscription costs. …But they also appear to be commonly considered the best antivirus for Linux. Orz… Fine, fine, I’ll accept the inefficiency in hopes that it is less fussy on Linux.
  
• Everything: I talked about Everything last week. It is a file indexing software for Windows, basically what Windows Search is supposed to be, and I love it. It is the best piece of software I have ever downloaded on a lark, and I would strongly recommend it to any Windows user with a lot of files. Everything is lightweight, fast, and just works. It is Windows only, but I’d hope that there is a similar Linux equivalent. …Or maybe MintOS or SteamOS have actually functional start menus. If so, then I wouldn’t need everything! I would need nothing!
  
• Bulk Rename Utility: This software is a GODSEND. Bulk Rename Utility is what the name describes. A vintage-looking utility for renaming files, and as someone who hoards data, I care a LOT about file names! It is not the prettiest or most efficient, but I would still give the software a 10/10 because it just works! …And it is Windows only. Shit. Oh well, I’m sure that someone made something similar for Linux! Real Linux heads think that GUI should not be used for this, but my goal is to be lazy on the computer and minimize the amount of work I need to do. And typing is more work than clicking.
  
• Paint.Net: I use Paint.Net for sprite art, shitposts, and creating the headers for every post on Natalie.TF nowadays. It is an efficient piece of software, I have very few complaints, and it has so many plugins that I could do everything I visually want just using it. It is a nice middle ground between MSPaint and Photoshop or any more robust art program, and it’s perfect for me. …Unfortunately, it does not work on Linux, because it is built on Microsoft tech. Ugh. Guess I would need to try customizing GIMP to my liking. I have not touched it since my captioning days, but I guess if it supports a single pixel pencil, I might be able to make it work.
  
• Draw.io: Draw.io, or Diagrams.net, is how I make image collages and, more importantly, flowcharts. It is an essential bit of software, I dislike certain things about it, but it performs bloody miracles, so it gets a pass from me. Also, it runs on Linux, so yay for that!
  
• Waifu2x Snowshell: Yeah, I use Waifu2x for some things, particularly upscaling older comics to more modern resolutions, and I think that’s a fair and ethical use of so-called AI. (I miss when we called the good stuff machine learning.) While there are many Waifu2x standalone bits of software, I started using Waifu2x Snowshell almost four years ago, and it still does the job! …But it is Windows-only, so I would need to switch to the more robust Waifu2x Extension GUI or something similar. I tried using that on my computer before, but Bitdefender says it’s a virus, because Bitdefender is a Bitdumbass.
  
• Playnite: I use Playnite to ‘organize’ my game library, as it is basically an ideal game launcher in my mind, chock-full of customization features. …But it only runs on Windows. Oh well! So much for that dream! Guess people just don’t do much retro gaming on Linux… Or maybe they just wanna type out ROM names in full every time they want to run a game.
  
• XnConvert: Much like Bulk Rename Utility, XnConvert is a very useful program for converting images. I like using it to rescale images to smaller resolutions, new aspect ratios, and convert images to different types. Namely WebPs to PNGs. It is a handy tool to have in my digital toolbox, and I have used it thrice this past month for header images. I could do all of these things manually, but why bother when XnConvert makes things easy! I know how to do it the manual way, and I do it all the time, but I gotta work smarter! …And it runs on Linux! Woo-hoo!
  
• Audacity: For those living under a rock, Audacity is super common recording and audio editing software. I sometimes use for audio trimming, conversions, or when I want to extract audio out of certain video files for funsies. …And of course it runs on Linux.
  
• MangaReader: MangaReader by luejerry is an incredibly useful bit of software for reading manga, turning it into a continuous scrollable web page that you can rescale and adjust to your liking. I have read oodles of manga this way over the years, and I think it is the best way to read manga on the computer. At least for me. …It is on Windows and Mac, but not Linux. C’MON, MAN!
  
• P-Touch Editor: Oh, I almost forgot about this! P-Touch Editor is label printing software I use for work, and the software supports Linux. Neat! Also, buy Brother printers. They are, like, the ONLY good printers!
  
• HakuNeko: I love and hate HakuNeko, as it is a miracle software that lets me download manga directly from unofficial manga sites. However, it is also SLOW, clunky, and takes a LONG time to load one view from another. I understand that bandwidth does not grow on trees, but it is just annoying to use at times. Also, I really do not care for the file structure HakuNeko uses. I want an entire series, all chapters, to be downloaded in a single folder, with a %CHAPTER00%-%PAGE00% format. So chapter 14 page 23 would be called 14-23.png. Instead, the software downloads each chapter as its own folder, meaning if I want to convert them to my preferred format, I need to Bulk Rename Utility every file I downloaded, for every series. This SUCKS, as I can imagine a better solution. …Also, yes, it runs on Linux. Yay~!
  
• HDoujin Downloader: HDoujin Downloader is a manga downloading tool that works with so, so many different sites. It even works with DeviantArt! (Kinda.) This thing is one of the greatest bits of software for TSF comic enjoyers, and a damn near essential tool for anybody who wants to download, or even read, things on e-hentai. I cannot imagine trying to save all the pages of most of the comics in my library without this, and it even lets me save the names of comics in my preferred format. I love it and… it’s Windows only, because it used .NET Framework. FUCK! Yeah, no, the Linux dream is so over. Y’all need to get your hentai game on lock.
  
• Zoom: Like many work-from-homers, I need to use some combination of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. However, I started back when Zoom was the go-to choice, and I’ve stuck with it. It’s not perfect, and their latest redesign kinda stinks, but people are generally receptive to doing Zoom meetings, and it works well enough. Unlike Microsoft Teams, which has a 50/50 chance of giving my clients trouble. …Also, of course it runs on Linux! I would lose my marbles if it didn’t!

…And that about covers every piece of software I use regularly, all wrapped up in a svelte… 2,500 words? This cannot continue…

In conclusion, I cannot switch to Linux. I’m sorry, but I use too many programs that only work on Windows and lack a good alternative. I know, ‘cos I just did the research! I could blame myself for this… but it’s not my fault that I live in a de facto monopoly, or duopoly.

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…Also, here are annual prices of the subscription services I pay for, because why not? I am not showing the amount my boss pays for software, because… I would cut the expenses down by a third if I could, but I can’t! He’s paying for like four AI suites so he can be lazier with his responses to emails.

• Obsidian Sync – $48
• Game Informer – $32 (I won’t be resubscribing because they don’t let you download a PDF. If I cannot download it, it’s not a PDF, dumbass.)
• StartMail – $30 (Will probably go up to $60 if I get a second email)
• YouTube Premium – $140
• NigmaBox.com Domain – $19
• Natalie.TF Domain – $62
• WordPress Business Plan – $250
• Patreon – Roughly $1,400

Gosh, that Patreon charge has such enormous ‘someone who is good at the economy, please help me budget this. My family is dying!‘ energy. What can I say? I like supporting people who make stuff I enjoy.

I may be missing something, as annual charges can sneak up on you like that. But assuming my categorization is right, and it should be, that’s about everything.

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Publishers LOVE Selling Games to People Who Don’t Play Them
(Sell to Hoarders and PROFIT!)

Here’s a topic that would have been semi-topical if I talked about it last week, but I cut myself off like the yap junkie that I am. The Steam sales ended a week and a half ago, meaning people spent a bunch of money on games that they aren’t going to play, possibly ever. I know I do my part! I do my part and then some! However, these sales always make me wonder about the economics of Steam, how much it benefits developers, and why there is not as much backlash against their 30% rule (for most games).

Well, my sweaty gaming forum directed me to a PC Gamer article that was largely restating a How to Market A Game article from a month ago. Because that’s how journalism works, assuming that even is journalism. Nobody knows nowadays! Anyhow, the original article brings up a number of curious insights about the Steam userbase and the economics of dealing with them, namely that they are digital hoarders, self-described collectors, who buy games just to add them to their library. Or, in more colorful terms, “a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly” which I take offense to. I don’t do any stinkin’ drugs! I can spend my money irresponsibly while sober, thank you very much.

However, the writer, zukalous, has a point. There are a bunch of hoarders, especially in the modern era, who collect things just to have them, as there is security in stuff, and it feels nice to get more of them. Whether it be Lego sets, yarn, or books. They even drop the vital lore that there’s a Japanese term for people who collect books they never read, tsundoku. Which makes me think we need to have a gaming specific version of the term. I would propose tsunge (積んゲー), as here’s already a trend of affixing ge (ゲー) from ge-mu (ゲーム; game) to words like kuso (クソ; shit) to form kusoge (クソゲー; shitty game) or god (神; kami) to form kamige ((神ゲー; god game). Though, I think people would just assume it’s related to tsundere (ツンデレ). Ugh.

It’s easy to reach this conclusion off of common conjecture and vibes, but zukalous cites a source claiming that roughly half of all games bought on Steam go unplayed. A factoid that basically proves that Steam users are spendthrifts. People so eager to buy and collect games that, even during Steam Next Fest, they are more likely to wishlist a game than play the demo, and only maybe a quarter do both.

With people so eager to buy, or express interest in buying, a game, this creates a beneficial climate for independent developers, as they do not need to sell to people who want to play the game now. They just need to capture the interest of people who intend on buying something. Which, of course, means they need to get their marketing game on point, as people are quick to judge and dismiss things they don’t understand. I know I hazily look at screenshots, check the blurb, the tiny banner, and if it gets past that, I look at the genres, the review stats, and then decide if this is worth keeping tabs on. Otherwise, I ignore it and forget about it. It’s a 3 to 5 second decision, and then I move on! This has led me to ignore, like, 40,000 titles, but it’s also why my wishlist is over 420 games long!

The article’s good, got me thinking, and adds to my growing belief that Steam is the main thing preventing Gamindustri from collapsing. Because no other storefront really facilitates the same seamless browsing and impulse purchasing as Steam. I originally wrote a write up on the PlayStation Store and the Nintendo’s online store, which are awful and fine respectively. Seriously, the PS Store is so terribly designed for browsing and hostile in its scaling that I’d say it feels like a scam website, lacking even basic features I would expect of a website circa 1999. Like listing the discounted price, not the price and the discount. How did we go from the pretty good PS3 era store to this?

Though, I was completely missing the point in trying to use the browser-based storefront, as… people don’t intuitively use them. If people are going to buy a digital console game, they are going to buy it on the console. Because it feels right, and it’s more efficient. People want to buy, download, and play games all on the same device. There are still impulse purchases during sales, but it’s also just harder to FIND games on console storefronts compared to Steam. Steam realized this was a problem in 2014 when they introduced the Steam Discovery Queue. Then they added curators, then they started recommended games based on tags. The store is designed to show you things you may be interested in, based on algorithms. Just, you know, less malicious than the kind we tell campfire stories about.

Meanwhile, console storefronts do NONE of that. You just have new games, trending games, or a sloppy bucket of all games. That worked on something like the Xbox 360, but there games were compartmentalized, you had to go between retail games, XBLA, and community games, rather than see all games together. And the quantity of games coming out were far less and far less disproportionate. Fewer AAA games are releasing, more indies are releasing, and infinitely more low effort shovelware is being thrown onto storefronts. The middle is gone, there’s too much noise, and buying games on consoles these days… sounds pretty terrible unless you know what you want going in.

Gosh, no wonder console players are investing 50% of their time in the top ten games. The storefront is too hard to navigate to find other stuff!

Akumako: “Wait, are you coming out in support of algorithms curating what people see and engage with?”

Akumako, we are talking about a store, not a place for information or a streaming service where all content is free or locked behind ads. A digital store should show you products it thinks you would want to buy. If it can react to your preferences, all the better. An algorithm should be honest, transparent, clear, and let you customize it. Steam’s storefront algorithm is not complicated. It just says ‘hey, you like HORSE GAMES? Wanna play other games with the same tag?’ And if you wanna ignore them, you can do that! You can’t ignore SHIT on a console storefront!

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I Played The Mindwave Demo
(Per Skillet’s Request)

Welp, guess I’m just playing demos or short games as my readers request ’em. I didn’t expect that to happen, but I guess I’ll do a lot of things for that sweet, sweet engagement. Press-Switch maid and regular reader Skillet Caso asked me to check out the demo for a game by the name of Mindwave. A title centering around a large group of people competing in a corporate-run battle of mental fortitude that takes the form of a “cerebral microgame frenzy.” Taking on the role of musician and misanthrope Pandora, the player must socialize with their fellow contestants, learn their quirks, before battling them in what I would describe as WarioWare, but with an soft M rating and developed for a PC interface instead of motion controls or a touch screen.

By PC interface, I mean that the game has the player switch between mouse controls, arrow keys, and the keyboard in general, often having them use two of them in conjunction with the other. A concept that I initially wrote off as overly-complex, but after playing the game for a while, I got it. The game is supposed to be a disorientating, psychedelic, and hectic battle of sensory inputs. It is supposed to feel like you are juggling a random assortment of ideas and concepts with a lack of congruity and continuity. Because you are. And with the game featuring the same creativity that would be demanded of any WairoWare-like, I would say it has everything it needs to be considered a fun and creative microgame fest. …But that’s kind of burying the lead for Mindwave.

The vibes of Mindwave are immaculate. The artists, composers, and designers all had a gorgeous vision for this game, and what they were able to create here warrants a place on my favorite game aesthetics of all time list. Right up there with The World Ends With You and Jet Set Radio. The harsh angles affixed to character designs, the moody dark blues and purples of the world, and the grimy, distorted, often rough pixelation applied to everything. It’s definitely not the most consistent, the style guide changing frequently between microgames, but it retains a clear vision throughout that, frankly, I don’t think I could get enough of.

The lower resolution pixelated approach shows a reverence for large retro game sprite work and its ability to add color definition through proximity. But just looking at the game for long enough, it’s clear that it took just as much inspiration from Flash animations of the early 2000s. …And more than a little inspiration from Invader Zim (2001). Not in the sense it looks derivative or like a rip-off, but more in the sense that the creators loved that show, doodled a bunch of fan art in school, and now that they’re adults, decided to make a game like a thing they loved as a kid. And isn’t that how, like, half of all indie developers operate these days?

Mindwave has a visual identity so striking that I think it’s worth playing the game just to look at it. Which is not to say it is a slouch in any other aspect. The brief demo highlights the strength of its moody protagonist and the oddball cast she can interact with, wisely giving her a more affable partner to vamp off of. The unhinged and sporadic microgames, vibrant interstitials, and character-specific music all capture a sense of madness that’s… appropriate given the context. And as a TF and mental manipulation enjoyer, I would be lying if I said this game didn’t give me some juicy ideas. …But I have a few too many of those nowadays. (God, I need to pick up the pen again.)

…So, yes, Mindwave gets a full recommendation from me. So play its demo, don’t just add it to your account or wishlist it. Play it with your hands!

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Acquire Snatches United Arab Emirates Funding
(Acquire X Red Dunes Games Venture Announced)

Goldarn it Acquire. I do a nice piece gushing about your legitimately cool tenure in the games industry. I praise you for your modern trend of experimenting on small-scale titles in collaboration with indie studios. In return, you tarnished one of your latest titles with AI generated backgrounds, and now you’re entering shady-seeming business ventures? Ugh.

The story here is that Acquire Corporation has entered into a publishing agreement with Red Dunes Games. With Acquire being a long-standing industry mainstay whom oldhead dorks would know for Tenchu and Way of the Samurai, but they do a lot of stuff nowadays, including the latest Mario & Luigi game. And Red Dunes Games being a burgeoning publisher based in the United Arab Emirates, who I previously learned about when talking about that Samurai Pizza Cats game. …I still cannot believe that game exists. If the Samurai Pizza Cats can get a game, literally anything is possible.

The press release about this partnership is mostly corporate fluff, but it vaguely announces three titles. Project Tremor, which explores city-shaking kaiju battles. Project Umbra is about dark fantasy hunts, whatever that means. While Project Shadowcar is a shadowy espionage thriller. …Why does this remind me of CyberConnect’s Trilogy of Vengeance?

So, why do this happening? Well, I think I need to first ask who the hell are Red Dune Games? Their website and initial press release makes them seem like any plucky indie game publisher, talking about the value of fun games. The two founders, Mohamed Al Jneibi and Sultan Al Darmaki, both have their own blurbs, establishing them to be experienced in a load of different business ventures, mostly entertainment, but also spanning agriculture.

Yet having experience does not really answer the real question I have whenever I see a company like this, especially from this part of the world. Where is the money coming from? Who is giving these men funding to run a games publisher? And, aside from developing ‘global IPs’ what are their goals? To make good games and make a decent profit? Nu-uh, that’s not how it works, honey. There are too many avenues for exploitation to ever think an investor would be okay with that. Especially when they’re located in a nation with such a bad track record in a lot of ways. I don’t think it’s as bad as Saudi Arabia though. (I’m sure my current Muslim friend will tell me after she reads this.)

Okay, but why is Acquire taking their money? Well, I can intuit the reason for that pretty well. Acquire Corporation was acquired by Kadokawa in 2024, and in order to make their publicly traded corporate owners happy, they need to bring in money. One of the best ways to bring in money is to enter publishing/funding deals with third parties, who will fund the game in exchange for a portion of the revenue and often IP rights. Acquire could just self-publish their titles, taking on debt or eating into cash reserves, and they do with smaller titles. However, that route offers more risk than relying on an outside publisher. They want consistent revenue and minimal debt. A publishing agreement gives them just that.

It often makes better economic sense to get paid to develop a game and lose out on 70% or whatever of the lifetime revenue. Kadokawa probably told them to do things that way, and in searching for a partner, they found Red Dunes Games. If they had moral objections, they could have pursued another business partner, but funding for games has been on a downturn for several years at this point. If you want to make it in this industry in 2025, you need to take work wherever you can get it.

To give an example from my professional life, if you’re a programmer and the only place that’s hiring is Lockheed Martin, what are you going to do? Lose your house and let your kids go hungry because of your pesky moral obligations? Or are you going to suck this bitter turd and siphon value from the military industrial complex?

…Actually, with how America’s defense budget is going, a lot of American tech workers are going to wind up developing weapons of genocide.

Point is, I am suspect that Red Dunes might have some ulterior motives à la Savvy Games Group. Am I being a bit too flippant, if not racist in housing these concerns? …Eh, probably.

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Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part IV
(Steam Goes After Sexual Content Because of Malicious Payment Processors)

So, this was an unpleasant story. This past week, Valve has updated Steam’s terms of what should not be published on Steam to include the following line: “Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.” Which effectively means Valve will comply with the content standards set forth by major credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard.

In the past, I have spoken about how the puritanical standards of these companies— more specifically those who lobby and exert pressure upon them— are deeply biased and use their power to hurt creators of sexual content. Their standards are almost always opaque, nonsensical, and exist to hurt people whom a tiny group of people would rather not… exist. As an online digital storefront, Steam has always been beholden to the whims of these organizations, but in Trump’s America, these companies believe they can bully or threaten vendors for having the audacity to deal in ‘obscene’ works.

After what I can only assume to be some terse meeting, call, and/or emails, Valve has delisted several NSFW games, most of which featured rather telling names. Like Interactive Sex – Futanari Incest – Episode 3. Or NejicomiSimulator Vol.1 (Gapping, Amputee sex slave, Petrify, Time Stop). Games that, most likely, won’t have too many direct defenders. But there is nothing to say that Valve will not continue to proactively cleanse their NSFW game library for anything they might not agree with. Which could include games like the (mostly) excellent Mice Tea, the HOT AS FUCK banger that is Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto, and the ultimate TSF comic creation too, Koikatsu Party. …Sometimes I forget Koikatsu is an actual game, and not just a way for people to make TSF comics and TSF comics alone.

Considering Steam’s track record with 18+ game content— especially if it came from Asia— especially if it’s anime, I am very concerned where this will lead in the coming months. I still think about the Chaos;Head Noah situation. And I will never forget the Anime Titty Holocaust. I can easily imagine Steam enacting a great purge of games with adult content, easing entire genres, and robbing them of a place in the premiere global PC gaming marketplace. This action would hurt any company, any creator, who produces and deals in games that do not meet this new standard, forcing them to operate in the margins, robbing them of the ability to easily monetize their work.

Now, there is much that one could, and should, criticize about Valve’s moderation and their lack of good faith analysis. However, I do not think they are doing this out of their own fruition or internal values. They are doing this because they are being pushed around by the likes of PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard— I don’t know which one and, frankly, it does not really matter. They are heads of a hydra. Valve may be an essential component of the modern gaming landscape, but they are a shrimp next to these pillars of modern commerce. In order to do business at any meaningful scale, one needs to get their approval, or enact some wackadoo backdoor funny money policy.

I think that Steam needs curation to make the platform usable, that it lets in far, far too much spam. And I think that a lot of the erotic games on the platform are just crap. Not even the good smut! I am far from opposed to the idea of imposing higher standards and clearing up even 25% of all games on the platform. But that’s not what this is. This is a bunch of callous, spiteful people trying to police platforms to reflect their ideals. To allow perverse violence, but not perverse sex.

So, what is the solution? Well, collective organizing and action amongst artists would help. Creating a union, guild, or representative organization would help give the disparate kinky communists something to rally upon— if they can stop fighting amongst themselves. I’d certainly join and happily pay my dues if such an organization was created, as I am an NSFW 18+ content creator who produced erotic novels and short stories. I write literary analysis of porn for fun.

People need to take back the power, control the means of production, and all that good old communist crap.

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…I was also going to (teasingly) suggest cryptocurrency as an alternative payment platform, because of how little regulation there is. The Ethereum folks don’t give a shit if people use their platforms to trade child sexual assault videos, or to buy a child they can sexually assault. A main appeal of crypto is that it is a great way to buy things from people who don’t want to keep a paper trail, and a royal pain in the ass to handle from an accounting perspective. In addition to being pretty terrible for anything less than a $10 transaction, given the ebb and flow of gas fees, and subject to valuation fluctuations unless one is dealing with a stablecoin pegged to fiat. Like Tether (which is probably a scam) or USD Coin (which probably isn’t a scam).

However, I think this more wild west era of crypto is going to either end, or be on a downturn. Let me explain. Over the past year, maybe three, Big Tech companies (I guess I’m capitalizing that now) have entertained the idea of launching their own unregulated crypto scrip so they can skirt past banks and regulations while placing an unnecessary accounting burden on the average person.

I foresee a future where AmazonUSD, MetaUSD, AppleUSD, Elon Musk’s XUSD, and GoogleUSD become the de facto currency for dealing with these organizations. Where Amazon pays its vendors in its own currency. Where YouTubers stop being paid in cash, and are paid in stablecoin. You’d think that would be good news for those shunned by banks, but I don’t think it will be quite that easy. Big Tech might want to adopt a libertarian free-for-all zero regulation attitude to their platforms. Or they might want to crack down on people, and force all wallets to be tied to an account, to a government ID. To create a world where all commerce is monitored by the government on an immutable public blockchain, meaning anybody can see whatever you bought… Unless the owners choose to give them a private account, not attached to a government ID.

…God, how did I go from talking about how porn should be protected as free speech, into talking about a crypto dystopia? Should I just delete the last few paragraphs? …No, the people need to know the truth. That the biggest companies in the world want to be arbiters of commerce, banking, and function as governments in the sense that they can control or arrest, i.e., ban, people on a whim.

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Microsoft Kills Their TV and Movies Storefront
(Another Reason to NEVER Give Them Your Money)

Microsoft, go one week without destroying your legacy for profit and to free up cash for AI investment. …What do you mean that’s impossible?

My frustration and disappointment with Microsoft over the past few weeks has already been documented. They have given up on the Xbox project, shown themselves to be a truly callous entity that has naught but disregard for their workers, and if I could comfortably cut them out of my life, I would. However, just when I thought they would start keeping their head down, they not only shove Copilot into my work email— as if it would be any help. Emails are tools to convey information. Why would I convey the information to a chatbot so it could convey it to someone else? Why do I need a middleman?

…But the actual story here is that Microsoft has closed down a pillar of their store, their TV and movies storefront. Yes, a feature Microsoft triumphed during the late 2000s and pivoted to— HARD— in the 2010s by making it the core feature of the Xbox One, the All-In-One Entertainment Machine of the 21st Century™! They shut down their storefront with no warning, no foresight, no big blowout sale, and while you can still download items purchased for now, that feature is going to be deprecated and become unfunctional as time goes on.

People who bought these products paid for what, in my mind, represents glorified rentals. ‘Digital is forever’ was the saying back then, but now, roughly twenty years later, it’s on the way out, and I feel sorry for everybody who invested into one of these big digital media libraries. Because if this is happening to Microsoft, it will likely happen to other competitors, so long as they think they can get away with it.

Now, why would they do this? I’d theorize it’s to cut back on staff, on maintenance, on licensing agreements, deal brokering, contract writing, and finnicky little bullcrap for something that I doubt is making that much money for anyone. I mean, it’s probably profitable, but a 7% profit margin is not good enough these days.

I could end things here, but I would much rather take an opportunity to poo-poo on the sorts of people who look at this and say something to the effect of ‘this is why physical media is always superior.’ It is true that physical media cannot be directly taken away from you by companies, can be resold, and does not require an internet connection in its ideal form.

However, all physical media will eventually decay as decades go on. Film rot is real, tape rot is real, disc rot is real, hard drives fail, and even flash memory, like SD cards, will likely not last 50 years from now unless kept in an ideal cool and dry location. Physical media is not meant to last forever, just like how books and paper are not meant to last forever. If you have never picked up paper that was decomposing or fell apart in your hands, you don’t get to espouse the virtues of physical media. I shall not allow it!

However, as a self-appointed preservationist, I also despise the closed ecosystems and DRM that come with trying to buy digital goods nowadays. I loathe how difficult it is to find most novels in an EPUB or PDF format with no pesky surveillance technology. However, this is not an either or between Blu-Rays and Kindle books, as if you distribute something as a lossless digital file, then chances are it will be just as usable 50 years from now, assuming we still have PNGs and FLACs, and we almost certainly will. Digital files can be backed up and distributed indefinitely, and while their storage medium may need to change, that’s a not a huge concern.

This is why I believe that DRM-free releases are what preservationists should be clamoring for. Buying games off GOG, buying music off Bandcamp, buying ebooks off eBooks.com or SmashWords, buying unmentionables off DLSite. Because then you can keep the files with you, spread them across multiple devices, and if you lose them, you can probably just download them again. Sure, you cannot resell them, but that’s kind of a feature. Reselling finite physical goods makes sense, reselling fungible digital goods does not. And if something ever leaves digital shops, and stops being sold then… I’m sure you could somehow find a copy.

Plus, in this era of licenses on a cartridge and discs that only include a menu, I think that physical media pundits are fighting a losing battle, when they should really be fighting for better consumer rights that lets them keep their games, keep their movies, keep their media library, without any gray market malarky. Because the only outcome to stuff like this IS piracy.

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Progress Report 2025-07-20

Sprites are from some BISHOP visual novel I have never played, but thought looked cute. The background is from Min-chi, whose backgrounds you should use for whatever. Eyes and face are from a Patreon commission from ONATaRT, but I am considering them my property!

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So, as a before bed yap, I want to talk about an annoying Bsky thang I saw from an artist whose work I’ve previously covered, but I don’t want to start any sort of beef with them by citing them by name. But basically they were talking about how Universal Basic Income was a ‘neoliberal scam’ and all essential services should be free, which… I see what they’re getting at, but the more I thought about it, the less sense this idea made to me.

Now, it is a correct observation that UBI would be a truly radical change or fix all problems on its own. It slots in nicely with the framework of capitalism, of a commerce-driven society, and merely gives people an additional social safety net. …But I would say that is part of the appeal. That is what makes it feasible. It would take decades to reinvent the economy around the distribution and widespread availability of essential goods and probably centuries to get people to stop thinking like capitalists and consumers. UBI, free education, free healthcare, government pensions, all these things exist to make a commerce-driven society function. Raw, pure, unfiltered capitalism does not work. At least not in the long-term, as we are seeing. But socialism, which is, reductively, just capitalism but with more free shit for the people and less ‘freedom‘ for corporations and businesses, can absolutely work, and has been the backbone for many of the happiest nations in the world.

I get the appeal of going full communism and making all essential services free. The problem comes in defining what essential services are, figuring out what should be free, and what people should need to pay for.

The idea that everybody should be housed is a good policy, a necessary one for a… real society. But not everybody has the same housing needs, and how would you distribute housing to people who want it? Would a single person with no children be able to get a detached home or would they just get an apartment? Would it be a studio or one bedroom? How would this society determine where somebody gets to live? Would it be a first-come first-serve basis? What about mansions and massive houses? Would one person get to live where while a family of five is left slumming it a two-bedroom apartment?

Now, you can look at public housing for examples, but public housing tends to involve optimized housing units like townhomes, apartment complexes, and so forth. How do you apply that to something like suburbia and the wide variety of home sizes? How do you determine who gets to live where? Based on their job? Do they need to move when they get a new job? Is moving an essential services? You see how hard this is to map out? Now, if you are going to build new housing, then you are playing by different rules. If you are able to tear down, build up, and plan a community from scratch, then you can do a lot. But that is expensive, and seems wasteful.

What about food? This actually has more comparisons due to the prevalence of food banks, food stamps, civilian rations, and the like. These are ways for people, even the poor, to acquire and gain access to food. However, food stamps have largely been replaced by debit cards for use at grocery stores, which is just money. Rationing during wartimes sometimes just gave people certain goods, like grains and sugar, but other times it saw the use of point systems. Food banks, meanwhile, vary depending on the food bank itself, but most rely on a trust system, where you only use them if you cannot afford food. But if you just took grocery stores, and made everything free, that just would not work.

I am not trying to be cynical in saying this, but I have seen what happens when you let a kid loose at a candy story and tell them they can get whatever they want. They will wind up filling a Santa bag with candy and eating a full kilogram of the stuff before they’re ready to leave the store. And adults are just children with the power to fuck! (IYKYK.) If you give them a food budget, food stamps, a meal card, or whatever, then most people would try to spend it well.

…Now, I can get behind making some food free, as there’s a long history of that, but deciding which goods should be free would be hard, especially in a culinary diverse society. Some people DO NOT eat grains or sugars, period. Some cook everything from raw ingredients, others just buy stuff they can throw into the microwave. And the more options you give them, the closer you get to adopting a point system, the closer you get to just reinventing money!

Clothing is a weird one, as I don’t think it’s often considered an essential service, and people have such a wide variety of preferred styles that I don’t know how it would work. Plus, with secondhand clothing shops being common, I don’t think people are unable to get clothes. They’re more likely unable to get good quality durable clothes that fit them properly. (There’s a reason I’m a verified Land’s End Bitch. I gotta wear talls! Especially with these long-ass arms.)

However, I think that most other essentials makes sense. Making public transit free, accessible, and more developed is just good sense. It makes it easier for people to get around, helps stimulate the local economy as people are going out and seeing places, and helps develop a stronger sense of community than driving alone in one’s car, viewing people as obstacles. If you could take a bus, train, or street car where you want to go, the need for a car diminishes greatly, which cuts back on auto expensive, pollution, and traffic congestion. You know, along with all the other guff that I learned from Mister Not Just Bikes.

Making water, power, electricity, and internet free is a sensible idea, at least for housing. You could say that that would incentivize people to be more wasteful. Blast their AC, leave lights on, and keep every screen on their house on. But I don’t think that would actually make a material difference. Same with people taking 15 minute showers versus 10 minute showers, or… well, the internet is not metered unless you live in Literal Hell.

…In conclusion, I think UBI is based and cool, but it would only work if the Federal government sets price caps for various essential foods and commodities. Like, say eggs cannot cost more than $2.40 per dozen. Say apples cannot cost more than $1.50 per pound. Say rent per square foot in this district cannot exceed $2.00. But stuff like transit, personal utilities, and healthcare? Yeah, no, just make that shit free and everybody would be happier.

…Except White people. A lot of them would choose to live in poverty with one leg if it means that Black people live in super poverty with no legs. I, intuitively, don’t think that’s true, but Black people seem to, and I’m smart enough to believe them.

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2025-07-13: Wrote 600 word bit on Mindwave. Only wrote about 4,300 words for the GIMD showcase, as I kept getting distracted by stuff, and chatted with Skillet into the wee hours of the night.

2025-07-14: Wrote 750 word Acquire bit and 3,900 words for GIMD, but was feeling a bit done at about 1:00, so I stopped. I’m already on episode 33 of 52 anyway.

2025-07-15: 4,500 words for the GIMD showcase, drafting everything but the segment covering the side story, which will be a 500-ish word quicky I can do tomorrow. For now, I am too tired and too distracted. I wish I wasn’t part of such an active Discord channel… And wasn’t addicted to digital stimming.

2025-07-16: Wrote 1,200 words for the Steam puritanical bit. Wrote about 400 words for GIMD, but I did not feel like editing it yet. It’s too fresh in my mind. Instead, I edited this Rundown and prepped some images.

2025-07-17: Pulled up my jockstraps and decided to edit the GIMD showcase, which is 14k words long, just obscenely lengthy. …But then I had to push out the Press-Switch update. Orz. Also, LanguageTool is racist and eats CPU like bonkers when dealing with a document littered with Korean names. I just wanna talk about Ji-hoon’s magical adventure! LOOOOOONNNNGGGG! …Wait, I actually managed to edit the whole thing? Woo-hoo! Now I just need to grab… 85 images? FUCK!

2025-07-18: People with chronic sleep disorders they are unable to handle by age 67 should not be in charge of their own company. Especially when they distribute work to their sole employee. So not a productive day. Wrote the 800 word Microsoft bit while lazing around. Grabbed screencaps for GIMD and set the image dimensions. This process took nearly three hours

2025-07-19: Got the writing project done’d, so I decided to go back to Hundred Line after two weeks, tackling the Dragon Ball route, which lacks adventure. Did chores. Watched Higurashi with Cassie and another friend. Got pretty sleepy because I have been looking at too much text for too long!

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