Mastodawn

Wojciech Mosiejczuk Feb 25, 2025

For the record, the "website access" will also be retired in a few months.

Full FAQ: https://digital.darkhorse.com/faq/

Frequently Asked Questions | Dark Horse Digital Comics

Read your favorite titles for only $1.99! No iPad/iPhone? No problem! Read Dark Horse Digital Comics on your Internet-connected laptop and desktop!

G-Squirrel Feb 25, 2025

@mosiejczuk Ouch. Thanks for sharing. I haven't received an email like that, but I've got lots of comics on Dark Horse Digital. I guess I'd better download them all through the app asap 🙄

Phil Betts Feb 28, 2025

@gsquirrel @mosiejczuk there's a browser extension that could do it I used a few years ago. Probably still about?

isaac mewton Feb 25, 2025

@mosiejczuk @pluralistic all who pay for media deserve this (but no worse, unlike e.g. instagram users)

@maimun @mosiejczuk @pluralistic That's kind of a fucked way of looking at it. I'm all for abolishing capitalism, but until we do, should we not pay creatives for their work? Piracy is cool and good for lots of reasons but that doesn't mean paying for the hard work of talented people is therefore bad and worthy of consequences...

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic

well it's fucked alright. i'd be the first to admit it.

i have no problems with buying a painting off a crazed artist in a strange town, and i have been known to drop banknotes in the hats of buskers who expect coins. but we're not talking about any of that. we're talking about our jailers, the "content creators".

over here in the great glorious heart of hell, we're talking about "paying" (with imperial fiat tokens) "creatives" (what is more properly called content sommeliers) for their "hard work" (sucking dick in university till they learn how to smile in a money making way)

and what actually is happening (as opposed to what we're talking about) is yall are paying professional intermediaries for access to a zero-marginal-cost digital entertainment product with all the utility of a rubber baby pacifier - then going "waaaah" when said pacifier is torn out of yall sucker mouths

it's understandable - yall think creation is yet another notion subjectable to noun verbing, i.e. something you do as a job. i'd recommend the following heuristic: anybody doing art as a job is very unlikely to actually deserve your hard earned money

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic

i mean....

Hellboy
Witcher
Cyberpunk
Avatar which one of these is anything more than "iNtElLeCcChuAl ProPerTEeE"? if you have had any transcendent experiences in the context of these settings, it was you who created them - definitely not the content monkeys (who aren't getting paid anyway and will soon be replaced by AI, since it's the intermediaries taking your money)

@maimun @mosiejczuk @pluralistic Hellboy is pretty good, if you're talking about the older film by del Toro or the comics. Haven't watched the newer film and don't really care to. Witcher and Cyberpunk were both produced by a team of game developers who worked incredibly hard - arguably too hard, game devs need a fuckin union ASAP. Avatar was impressive if only as a showcase for VFX, and yes those artists need a union too.

@maimun @mosiejczuk @pluralistic I think putting down some art and raising others up just makes you that insufferable kind of critic who considers anything they don't like to not be "real" art. I try to keep an open mind with most things, personally. One of the most impactful films I've seen in recent memory was Everything Everywhere All At Once, in 2022. I'm lucky that I prefer films and music to games though, because at least I can ACTUALLY purchase them.

@maimun @mosiejczuk @pluralistic Games need an equivalent to CDs and Blu-ray, formats that the game will exist on forever, stored offline in perpetuity, with nobody controlling if and when you're allowed to access it. The move to solely digital distribution for video games has done serious damage to the entire industry.

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic if it's not the publisher pulling the game, it'll be the platform vendors breaking backwards compatibility ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ games are a legit artistic medium but the incentives to preserve them aren't there on a systemic level, it's why that's also largely left to diyers (often against the wishes of the publisher, consider the emulator rom situation). meanwhile most people will just buy the latest and greatest bullshit that they are told to buy, and a great deal of human creative activity will continue to simply be burned for the sake of holding space for ads in people's heads

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I was mostly thinking of the PC platform where backwards compat is pretty good and baked-in (for the most part, you definitely have to find somewhat period accurate hardware but there's a whole lot of wiggle room you wouldn't get with consoles) but yeah consoles are a pretty horrid model too. I imagine something that backwards compatibility regulations could do something about it, but really we just need to abolish capitalism :3

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk at this point "we just need to abolish capitalism" is what back in the sticks we used to call a "thought-terminating cliche". okay, let's go, i'm all for it. suppose we do. how do you propose artists be rewarded for their work after money?

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic sure thing, "art" can be anything but especially what the money tells you is "art", certainly not what insufferable anonymous critics like myself tell you. more like what self-important public personalities who get paid for their opinion and usually turn out to be disgusting people tell you. but all that abuse is on the other side of the screen (though not really) and we'd rather keep our little entertainments

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk Firstly, an artist making an artistic project with the primary motivator of being paid does not necessarily invalidate that work or mean it has nothing to say, especially if looked at in context. All art has some kind of value, even if its narratives and characters suck. Secondly, it really sounds like you're saying anyone who disagrees with you just mindlessly consumes whatever "the money" or paid critics tell them to, and that's extremely insulting.

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I didn't see EEAAO because I was told to by a critic - I stumbled across the trailer, and after watching it decided it looked like the kind of movie I would enjoy, so I set a reminder for myself to see it when it came out. I managed to get tickets either opening weekend or second weekend and loved it despite the theater I watched it in sucking ass haha.

@pendell so, you saw an ad, which someone put there for you to see, because someone (the "critic" in this scenario) told them to put it there, because it would make the producers money. you purchased the offered product and enjoyed it. great! i'm all for enjoyment, especially when there is art involved! doesn't excuse the hidden costs of that enjoyment though. of course, you are as free to disavow those hidden costs as much as you are free to hold any opinion (that is, the more popular the opinion, the more free you are to hold it)

@maimun I'm sure you're a lot of fun to be around, man. For the record I didn't "see an ad" I visited A24's channel because they usually produce good films and I wanted to see if they had anything new in the works.

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk i'd go further than that; a lot of people who agree with me, and myself at times, just mindlessly consume whatever "the money" tells them to, because consuming entertainment products is a soft mandate of the soft power that oppresses just the same (but is orders of magnitude more difficult to fight back against)

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk furthermore, you are simply restating well-known socially accepted talking points of barely sufficient coherence. which i personally consider to be insulting and harmful behavior. more to your own dignity as cultured being than to me, but either way i don't find it particularly inexcusable, especially considering how widespread it is. just more bourgeois collaborationism, big deal. takes all sorts to maintain an extractive deathcult ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk okay man.

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk admirable response 🙄 next time try saying that to someone who has actual power over you, i'm just an annoying internet critter

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I don't know how to respond because you're just letting some kind of word salad spill onto your screen. "you are simple restating well-known socially accepted talking points of barely sufficient coherence" is a really long-winded way to say you think I'm a normie and much dumber than you. "which I consider insulting AND harmful more to your own dignity as a cultured being than to me" my god how far up your ass is that head of yours, I don't think surgery can help

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk so if you wanted a response there it is, I think you're an extremely insufferable person who fancies yourself smarter than everyone around you because you choose to hate everything that comes out of pop culture, not because you find a genuine distaste for any of it, but because you've already decided you hate all of it and you're going to spend all of your time making it everyone else's problem. Now, go keep being miserable somewhere else please.

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk i completely agree with your evaluation of me, except for the part where you say i choose to hate these things because they come out of pop culture. sadly, i'm obligated to hate them, because they come out of that same "capitalism" you talk of abolishing - and which wants us all obedient or dead

sorry for striking a nerve with the hellboy and congrats for actually using some of your own words this time. that's what i'm trying to provoke! meanwhile, i'll be miserable where i like, thank you very much, and you are more than welcome to block me if talking to me makes you uncomfy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk can you not believe that the art would be created anyways, with or without capitalism? It has to exist within a capitalist framework because that's the system we all have to exist under, and artists are not in any special position to be exempt from what it takes and demands. That, to you, sullies all art and every artist who is able to live off of their work? That's just an extremely depressing way to look at your world.

isaac mewton Mar 1, 2025

@pendell @pluralistic @mosiejczuk

since we're still on speaking terms, might as well try to address the points you're making here — hope that's alright with you? it'll end up long winded, i'm afraid.

— "your world", who said it's mine? did i make it? no, i was just born in it. then am i somehow accountable for what i perceive? the world is this immense, ancient, intelligent thing, more so than even the most arrogant of talking monkeys! so if it's chosen to reveal itself to me in a way that you find "extremely depressing"... maybe it has a point and i should check what that’s all about?

— "depressing", as in the major illness that kills people in an agonizing way? not a great piece of vernacular, save for one thing: people don't choose it. nice example of how the dominant culture teaches us misleading notions from the get-go (it was the goth emo shit that sold us on “depression” as a matter of worldview. fallout of capitalist "art" right there, gets the kids to switch from smack to prozac or some kpi shit like that)

— so, are you saying that the good and sensible thing is to doubt one’s own perceptions and preferences, just because someone else appears more content? tried that too, it's a wash. rather skip it entirely and just say "this shit right here i dislike, anyone else?". this exposes me to the harsh words of fellow humans who happen to be more content (no incongruity in their behavior, no siree!) but lets me spend time on figuring shit out, wall of text style, insult others into activity, etc, rather than on deluding myself that it's all mine and it's all fine, when it evidently ain't. can't be "a me problem" and "not a problem" at the same time, you know?

but enough about subjectivity, perennial topic to waffle on. now let's pass judgement— we are on social media after all 😁

— making money sullies artists? no, it's just that making art that perpetuates the present world order is kinda pointless. in a more equitable system, even shitty art would have value, exactly like you say. i could write a shitty song about the shitty lives of my shitty friends and we’d have our shitty fun. instead... this.

— should artists be exempt from the demands of the market? most cultures throughout history have answered that with a resounding yes, while the culture we’re stuck with is a slow death cult. its "content creators" may have their own kind of integrity, appropriate to the markets in which they operate... but me, i'm just monke from third world! to me it looks like an elaborate and extremely unconvincing hoax, which people are half bribed, half blackmailed into perpetuating. it’s got me paying to not play

— "can you not believe?", meaning it's a matter of faith to you, worthy of exasperation? of course it would not be the same art if it were produced under different circumstances, it would be some other art! besides, what's your basis to make that comparison, capitalism vs no capitalism?

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic this got me thinking whether they mean cameron avatar or airbender avatar - most importantly, i never consented to knowing about the existence of either one

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I've heard good things about the original cartoon for The Last Airbender, but the Shyamalan film was hilariously lame, though I do have a fond memory of going to see it in theaters with my dad and older brother because he was a hardcore fan of the show 🤣

@pendell @mosiejczuk @pluralistic hellboy... frank miller... 😴 sure, less dumb than marvelslop, maybe a nice hack'n'slash setting, but interesting? hell nah.

compare with moore, or gaiman, or, for that matter, ur-proto-rightcel and diy publishing pioneer dave sim. worth a read - even though those dudes tend to turn out to be massive creeps. but at least they're original - it's what they thought would save 'em (it didn't. only money saves)

so... what do we have? by paying for your "media consumption", you get to fund either the careerist managing cadre's abuse of a large replaceable workforce (crunch time!) or the perverted psychopathic artistes abusing people on an individual basis. not ideal

even if you believe you can separate the great art from the conditions of its autorship, paying for it is morally wrong, since it's the money that enables the abuse

how, oh how did people tell stories without financing from a global electronic media industry

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk to answer your last question, the people who told stories were paid directly by the people who enjoyed their stories. Or, if we're going to before money, they were given food and a place to sleep. The closest modern equivalent to this would be Patreon, and I do subscribe to a few people whose stories I truly value. I also still buy blu-rays and CDs, mostly from smaller boutique labels and companies that will actually see benefit from my support.

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I've no qualms pirating whatever latest Indiana Jones or Star Wars slop is being churned out - though really I don't pirate or pay for it because I just don't watch that stuff. But I did recently order the 4K Blu-ray of The Substance which is a great film, from the boutique streamer/label Mubi, far from a big name. I also stopped by a lovely record store earlier this week and picked up some old CDs of The Moody Blues, Styx, and Elton John.

@maimun @pluralistic @mosiejczuk You really are projecting that insufferable critic image with reacting to frank miller with a snoring emoji and calling it an uninteresting hack'n'slash. To that I say: where's your art that supercedes Hellboy? You go make something better than that, and then you can tell me how uninteresting it is.

@mosiejczuk @pluralistic

That kind of email warrants a reply of, "if buying ain't ownership, piracy isn't theft".

Maria Keet Feb 25, 2025

@ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk no doubt that in the fine print it doesn’t say you bought it, but that you paid for de facto *renting* it or ‘buy the rights to read it for a limited amount of time on limited device and with limited software’. Many companies went for that route as it’s more lucrative (e.g., you can’t lend it out for free to friends, like you can do with hard copies of books, cd’s, dvd’s), and you all fell for it in favour of saving some money and convenience in the short term. Harsh lesson, and I’m sorry! DRM issues popped up before and more like it is bound to appear elsewhere 🙁

@keet @pluralistic @mosiejczuk

Yeah. As someone that managed FlexLM servers in the 90s, I'm unfortunately all too familiar with "Right To Use" licenses. That said, back in the 90s, they didn't try to hide that you were "buying" an RTU. So, no surprises when you had to call a vendor because the RTU was tied to the MAC (or similarly hardware-specific identifier) of a host that just died and had to be replaced.

@keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk Fine print can get fucked. If they refer to it as "buying" anywhere in the marketing or UI, you bought it and have every right to preserve your purchase however you can.

Maria Keet Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk It depends. Not if it's phrased as a "buy a licence to use it", as compared to the buying to own the product (that the only semantics of 'to buy' was before someone came up with that sneaky variant to the concept of buying something)

ferricoxide Feb 28, 2025

@keet @dalias @pluralistic @mosiejczuk

When selling things to businesses – who tend to have lawyers – they tend to be significantly more forthright about what the nature of the transaction is. When it comes to fleecing the proles, "buy" is often asterisked shorthand …in much the same way that "unlimited internet" has been since the late 90s.

@keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I guarantee the button to purchase does not contain long winded phrasing like that. If there's *any one place* where they advertise it as simply "buying", you are buying it. Not "buying a license" or whatever bs legal fiction they want to make up.

Maria Keet Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I'm sorry to be the messenger of bad news, but it does have that sentence. Here's an example, with a screenshot of an eBook on Amazon and the click-through to the relevant part (ToU of Dec '24). I've seen similar stuff elsewhere a few years ago already when I had to look it up for my lectures on software ownership and IP.

ferricoxide Feb 28, 2025

@keet @dalias @pluralistic @mosiejczuk

Honestly never bought Kindle content: initially, I avoided it solely because of the DRM problems, but those were subsequently exacerbated by the 1984 fiasco.

@keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk Nope, it says "buy now with one click". You don't get to qualify that with something else ("fine print"). Not sure what you're getting by simping for abusive corporations & their fraudulent marketing practices.

@keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk The fine print there doesn't even say "limited-time license". Nothing in it clarifies that it's not permanent. The limits are in an out of band "terms of use" link.

A non fraudulent button would say "rent for a guaranteed N years" with fine print clarifying that you'll get a refund if access is terminated or limited before N years, and that access may remain longer but isn't guaranteed".

Maria Keet Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk ??? Not simping at all; merely providing a sampling of evidence that your “ the button to purchase does not contain long winded phrasing like that” is not true, but that the unpleasant small print is actually there. If you were to search on buying to own vs to licence, you’ll see it’s not something new and quite pervasive. I’m not endorsing the practice by mentioning the fact.

Amber

Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk yeah if I have big bold letters going "BUY NOW" and a 1px tall paragraph below talking about how by purchasing this item you agree to give me the soul of your firstborn it should be pretty clear that’s unreasonable. I genuinely despise the current trend of giving people 20+ pages of legal documents behind an "I agree" button on first login. It’s a deliberate choice, they know people won’t read all of those pages before hitting accept. Even still, assuming you could read all of those pages you better be good at legalese which is its own beast. If you took the age old suggestion of "have a lawyer review everything you sign" it’d take days for you to be able to purchase a product off of Amazon. They’re betting on you needing something right that moment so you accept their terms without thinking and then fuck you over.

Amber

Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk I really liked the legal analysis of something recently... https://youtu.be/0pomC1CfpC0?t=2206 this is tangibly related, in this case it was NZXT offering these "rental" computers with this downright atrocious terms that fuck you over every step of the way. The lawyer briefly talks about how this is such a common practice and how even he knows it's unrealistic to expect everyone to read all of the EULA. Like, I remember distinctly one of the things that stood out to me was the fact you had to ship the computer in the original packaging in order to return it, how vague that was and how that could lead to them invalidating your return because you didn't ship it in the original packaging. Something you wouldn't know about unless you spent hours reading through it all.

Do Not Buy NZXT | Predatory, Evil Rental Computer Scam Investigated

YouTube

Amber

Feb 28, 2025

@dalias @keet @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk Sure sure sure we can all repeat the sentiment of "well everything is like this" because it's true Netflix, Steam, etc. That doesn't actually take away from the fact this is an extremely predatory practice that should have been made illegal about 20 years ago give or take. It's insufferable, although I'll take the fact we can actually read the EULA in apps now. Anyone remember when you'd buy software on cd/dvd and it'd have small text "by opening this you agree to our terms" so you couldn't even put the thing in your computer without being bounded to it. didn't help that they also didn't fucking include the terms giving us a url to the website.

@puppygirlhornypost2 @pluralistic @ferricoxide @keet @mosiejczuk And we shouldn't be lending credibility to that shit. These terms are not valid or enforceable unless they're what a reasonable person would assume makes sense in the context where you don't have time to read. A contract you have not read, and that the counterparty makes you say you read when you couldn't possibly have done so, is not a contract.

derptron Feb 28, 2025

@ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk OK...gotta ask.

Why the proper use of "isn't" in the latter case but use of the illegal word "ain't" in the former?

@crazyeddie @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk ... illegal word?

Kool Depeche Moe Dee Feb 25, 2025

@mosiejczuk @pluralistic well this is some bullshit but serves me right for reading Darth Vader exclusively in digital print.

@eviljarred @mosiejczuk @pluralistic

Ultimately, it comes down to "fool me once". These companies are ensuring that they will never sell further digital content (and probably ensuring that companies not currently resorting to this kind of fuckery also won't be able to "sell" digital titles). They're also bolstering the case for piracy.

Beggar Midas Feb 25, 2025

@ferricoxide @pluralistic @eviljarred @mosiejczuk Bloody hell. Not everything is some coordinated plot to steal your bottom fucking dollar. It was an experiment in what publishers thought was the wave of the future, and they discovered otherwise.
Jaysus feckin christ. Too many in this political wing are starting to sound like a hard left pulling Q-anon.
...Yeah, that'll end well. Not.

@Beggarmidas @pluralistic @eviljarred @mosiejczuk

If they were "selling" these things for a significant discount to physical copies, I might agree. But, in the cases I've dealt with, there's no "you don't actually own it" discount. It's rent-seeking behavior.

Kool Depeche Moe Dee Feb 25, 2025

@ferricoxide @Beggarmidas @pluralistic @mosiejczuk if it makes everybody feel better I realized it was Star Wars and not Vader

Beggar Midas Feb 25, 2025

@eviljarred @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk Crazes and fads are just as prevalent among businesses as they are among individuals. Is the solution always to withdraw from the fight? Avoidance rarely holds any dissuasive or needle-bending power. It is unclear why this lesson needs to be relearned every fourteen years or so, but apparently it does. The last time it was Occupy Wall Street and its branching offshoots learning this the hardest way.

Beggar Midas Feb 25, 2025

@eviljarred @ferricoxide @pluralistic @mosiejczuk sorry, Jarred. The original response poster decided to get snippy & dismissive, didn't even give me a chance to read their sour grapes dismissal before they banished me troubling their thoughts & screens...Well, TBT just their screens. So you got stuck holding tail end of a severed thread. Hopefully the original poster will reconsider giving them a chance to understand where I was going with this. But i'm not holding my breath.

rndeon Feb 25, 2025

@mosiejczuk @pluralistic there should be a fine for every time you use the word "unfortunately" to mean "i decided"