UAC

Simon says shoot yourself in the foot
Sep. 28, 2004 - 1:02 am

by: Deacon

Reportedly, Vivendi Universal may get a court order to delay the release of Half Life 2 while they waste more money paying lawyers to whine (in legalese) that they aren't getting a cut of all the sales made over Steam, the electronic distribution system which they neither helped build nor have any interest in maintaining. They merely want to make sure that Valve, who not only conceived and assembled the Steam network but also created HalfLife, the greatest single player experience in the history of mankind (or so I've heard), don't walk away with the whole pie.

I'm no fan of Steam, or Counterstrike, or any of the other atrocities Valve has unleashed upon the internet. Lord knows I groaned when I heard Gabe Newell flapping his fat gums about how he's going to use his customers' bandwidth to force broken updates and crappy mods on the people who pay for his Big Mac benders. However, the fact remains that although the system may be buggy and possibly rotten to the core, it was still hatched (or possibly excreted) by Valve, not Vivendi.

Vivendi is a publisher, which means they want to sit around and get paid for doing as little as possible, except possibly hookers and blow, and get paid buckets of money. That in itself is a noble aspiration, but it is by no means a right. The ironic thing here is that the only way Vivendi makes the mad ca$h is by selling cartloads of Half Life 2, and the only possible way to not sell cartloads of Half Life 2 is to not release it. You could wrap Half Life 2 stickers around a box full of AIDS infected needles and you'd still get 100,000 preorders.

It's like a whore cutting off her nose to spite her pimp. Except that Vivendi is more like the pimp, and Gabe Newell wouldn't do too well in the business, if you know what I mean. So maybe it's more like a pimp beating the shit out of his whore till she's too ugly to work, but not being able to recruit a replacement because this is a weird alternate universe where there are only about a half dozen whores who actually make money.

Vivendi kind of has a point, in that electronic distribution is going to push them out of the space in the same way that online "dating" sites have cut into the profit margins of real world madams. However, when your business model is obsolete the astute strategy is to adjust your business model, not waste what assets you have left on lawyers and court fees. Or embezzle as much as you can from your stockholders and move to a non-extradition country. Y'know, different strokes for different folks.

The Hype is Overpriced
Sep. 28, 2004 - 3:05 am

by: Fuzz

There's been a lot of criticism recently, of myself and of UAC. This is insufferable, UAC refuses to acknowledge or accept any criticism whatsoever, of any kind. A lot of people have been saying I try too hard to be "cool" or "edgy", these people can garlic press their genitals and pour them out over a nice hot cup of french onion soup. This is who I am; a mean-spirited, vindictive, lazy son of a bitch, there's no acting here.

It's not all bad though, in accordance with our agreement whereby you all click the ads and donate to the UAC Charity Defense Fund like it's going out of style (which it is), I love you all. And I made up a handy document for you, all by myself:

Quick reference guide to reading UAC (all webcomics if you disregard 5)

1 - Get to know the characters, read profiles, bios etc. The better you understand the characters, the more laughs you will get out of their behavior. In the case of UAC, the characters are poorly conceived and very shallow, so this step shouldn't take more than a minute.

2 - Start reading from the beginning until you're up to date. It's very important to have read every comic, because a lot of times new comics reference older ones, and if you don't know what's happened before, you might not get the joke. This is your fault.

3 - Mood. Some comics are more effective when you're in the right mood. Generally speaking, if you're feeling hatred towards something or someone, you're in the right mood for reading UAC.

4 - Try to read all the news. Comics like UAC and Penny-Arcade feature news that is at least intended to be entertaining or informative to read. Most comics are not like this, and it is not necessary to pay attention to their news "component".

5 - If you're still not enjoying it, you have 2 options. You can try to stop reading, but that won't stop the problem. Instead you might try donating to the UAC Charity Defense Fund or buying merchandise in the hopes of shutting the comic down altogether by forcing us into an early retirement of trophy wives, mistresses, drugs, gambling, and inevitable imprisonment for life.