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Comment by poulpy123 | Hacker News Reader

They chose to have social security over a keyboard only interface for a game they continue to publish for free.

It's sold for $30 now. The old version is free but that's not updated anymore apparently.

When he asked whether long time supporters would want to pay $30 bucks for the game I don't think that was implied? Seems fair to be annoyed.

The free version is still being updated. Both the free version and the paid version are on v53.16:

https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ https://steamdb.info/app/975370/history/

Yes, but apparently the latest free versions don't have the keyboard UI either. In this context old version means keyboard version.

So, the developer updates both the free version and the paid version with the latest features (the only difference is the free version is sans GUI), and continues to serve the older free keyboard only 0.47 version on his website, and I'm supposed to be upset by this? Because he dropped the keyboard UI feature?

DFHack already added back the keyboard cursor, anyway: https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/docs/tools/toggle-kbd-curs...

This DFHack command just toggles the 'enable keyboard cursor' feature. The issue is that the new keyboard cursor only works under specific scenarios, like designating digging sites. I don't think there's a way to use the keyboard cursor for everything like in 0.47.

(I agree with your broader point that it's not reasonable to be angry at Bay12 for dropping this feature.)

I think it is fair for die hard fans to be annoyed if they paid to support and that way triggered a timeline where devs drop features they like in favor of friendliness to noobs. When economics kicks in, there's more money to be made from noobs.

Also it's not either or. If it is paid or free it's irrelevant. For example even if you pay, the seller doesn't owe you anything than what you paid for. And by contrast with totally free software we still file tickets and want things.

We can be frustrated by somebody's actions knowing we can't really demand something.

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