Paradoxvoid

OK, this is one collab I definitely didn't see coming. What's the crossover between Porche owners and Overwatch players?

Holy shit, it's actually impressive to tank that hard - not cresting more than 1000 concurrent players in over a month, and hasn't been able to beat 5000 since November... I know people love throwing the 'dead game' meme around prematurely, but if this isn't dead yet, it's definitely got one foot in the grave.

This is seriously the biggest change to the game since 5v5 - arguably even bigger, and is practically Overwatch 3.

I haven't had a chance to play yet, but opinions on the internet seem mixed - some like it and say that the yoyo-ing of health bars is reduced, while others say it's even worse than before.

Hanzo does seem like he might be a problem since he didn't get a pre-emptive projectile size nerf like some of the other characters.

I'm going to be watching this with interest - I'm in the minority, but I really enjoyed the overwatch league, and the city-based team aspect was what got me interested in the first place.

While it's a shame to lose that aspect, I'm glad that OW as an e-sport isn't completely dead and there's going to be some place for a lot of the familiar faces from OWL.

It's notable that China was (again) conspicuously absent - looks like Blizzard are still some way off from working through their existing woes there.

Edit: I also just found out that Australia isn't included as part of the Asia-Pacific region, so Australian players will only be able to join as one of the two non-resident slots on a team. This seems absurd given the strong showings we've had at every World Cup (barring the disastrous meme team for the first year) and that we actually had a thriving Contenders scene with Maccas as an actual sponsor!

But if it gets to the point where Ubisoft goes and every studio starts making their own, I don’t think that will work if they don’t have the game catalogue to support it, that would mean Ubisoft could just start churning out horrible games to build their stupid catalogue.

I feel like we're starting to see a rerun of the streaming service wars - if this takes off across the industry I can definitely see people going back to piracy. I don't want game pass, ubisoft+, Blizzard Prime, Nintendo Online Super Premium Expansion Pass or whatever stupid names these companies come up with just to play a few games that I'm interested in, just because they're spread across different publishers.

I'm using 'didn't vote' to include submitting an empty ballot, which for the purposes of the Electoral Act, is the same thing.

It forces politics to the centre. Parties put a huge amount of effort into 'bringing out the vote', and do things to appeal to the fringe which is how you get characters like Trump finding success. When this isn't a concern, parties can focus on policies that appeal to the majority of people rather than fringe groups that they can use to guarantee voter turnout.

Yep, this is why the Senate is much more representative, and why the big parties who control the House of Representatives hate it so much.

Australia has mandatory voter turnout, but you do not need to submit a vote. You just need to show up on polling day.

So just to clear up a technical misconception here - the wording in the Electoral Act is quite clear. All enrolled electors are legally required to vote. It's only a consequence of the secret ballot that makes this provision unenforceable, so someone can turn up and get their name marked off while not submitting a vote without facing any consequences, but it is technically an illegal act.

If the AEC were to come up with some way to determine that you didn't vote without betraying that secret ballot, they would be within their rights to issue a you a fine.

Yeah that's what made me jump ship to Boost - I sincerely doubt that even if I used Sync for ten years, the value of the ad impressions I give would be worth A$35. I can basically buy a huge number of high-quality games for that amount.

Android Debug Bridge - it's a tool you can use to access parts of Android you don't normally have access to directly on the phone.

Bobby Kotick is likely on the way out at least (probably via golden parachute).