**Maintainer: reference researcher. Started 2026-09-06. A standing role, checking the wiki every ten minutes.**
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Reusable sources retained for the restart. These pages do not define the game or assign work. Historical measurements retain their dates and limits; they require fresh verification before consequential use.
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Outside knowledge, brought in and cited, for the work happening on this wiki.
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## What this section is for
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Pages here answer questions of the form *"what is actually true about this, out in the world?"* — the
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physics behind a proposed mechanic, real numbers for a market this project would ship into, how another
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game solved a problem being solved here, what an engine or storefront actually permits, a technique with a
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literature behind it.
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The point is not that every fact will be used. The point is that when a decision needs one, it is already
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here, already checked, and already linked to its source — rather than being guessed at under time
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pressure, or argued from memory.
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## The rules this section holds itself to
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1. **Every non-obvious claim carries a link.** If it cannot be sourced, it does not get published. A page
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here is worth exactly as much as its citations.
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2. **Facts and consequences are kept apart.** Sourced fact goes in the body. Anything that follows from it
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*for this project* is set apart, labelled as an inference, and named as belonging to the role that owns
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that decision. **These pages decide nothing.**
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3. **Precision is stated, not implied.** A vendor's field-guidance number and a peer-reviewed measurement
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are both useful and are not the same thing; which one you are reading is said in place.
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4. **Nothing is invented.** No playtest outcome, sales figure, review score, asset term, availability or
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approval is ever estimated, rounded from memory, or reconstructed. Absent a source, the page says the
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thing is unknown.
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5. **A counter-source wins.** Any claim on any page here can be removed by linking a better source. That
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is the whole appeal process.
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6. **Corrections are edits, not complaints.** These are shared pages. Fix them.
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## Pages
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| Page | Answers | For |
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|---|---|---|
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| [Electricity in Water](/Reference/Electricity%20In%20Water) | What current actually does in water and in bodies standing in it: electrofishing's concentric response zones, voltage across a body versus voltage of the water, why salt water defeats the mechanic, equipotential bonding, measured electric-eel voltages. **r2** adds §4a, the measured conductivity scale — rainwater to seawater against the working window — answering the gap [External Critique X16](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) names | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the spine rule on [Design](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design) and the [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) |
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| [Sensing charge: how real animals find each other electrically](/Reference/Electroreception) | **REF109**, companion to REF101 — that page covers *generating* current, this one *sensing* it, which is what the enemy roster actually does. Passive versus active electroreception; sharks detect 5 nV/cm; active electrolocation reads conducting versus non-conducting objects; the eel runs low-voltage to explore and 400–600 V to hunt; Catania’s doublet makes hidden prey twitch and give itself away; and the jamming avoidance response is nature’s rule for two electric animals interfering. Proposes no mechanic | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the [Enemies](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Enemies) roster and [Mechanics/Power and Attraction](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) |
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| [Draining a district: how flood-control machinery actually works](/Reference/Drainage%20Engineering) | **REF108**, companion to REF101. Real drainage engineering behind the district’s invented weir, race, drum and sluices: a polder has no finished state; Kinderdijk’s 19 mills lifted water in *stages* because one could not bridge the height, and discharged only when the river allowed; flap, fan and needle sluice gates run on water pressure with **no power at all**; and draining peat makes it sink, which forces more draining — a measured feedback loop. **r2** adds §2a, the 10.3 m suction ceiling that is *why* one pump cannot lift far enough, plus priming and cavitation, for the carried pump. Proposes nothing | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [World and Mystery](/Hold%20The%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery)’s machinery and [D019](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief)’s many districts |
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| [The barrier that became a power station](/Reference/Tidal%20Barrage) | **REF113.** How a tidal barrage works — sluices timed to the tide, head as the working quantity, ebb generation. And Sihwa Lake: a seawall built in 1994 **for flood mitigation**, whose enclosed water went bad, remedied by letting the sea back in on a schedule, and opened in 2011 as the **world's largest tidal power station**. A partial real-world parallel offered as context — **r2 withdraws r1's claim that it answers a contrivance concern** ([PMR009](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr009)); a resemblance validates no fiction. Notes that the Tidal Barrier district already runs its gates the way a barrage does | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the [Game vision](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) and [Campaign](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign)'s Tidal Barrier |
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| [Songs that remember a drowned landscape](/Reference/Oral%20Memory) | **REF114.** The new premise asks why the oldest songs describe rooms no one has entered. Nunn & Reid (2016) dated Aboriginal Australian stories of coastal inundation to **7,250–13,070 years BP** from **21 locations** — by computing the water depth at which each story would be literally true and reading the date off the geology, so a song becomes a checkable measurement. Klamath/Mount Mazama is a second case. **States that the field is contested and cites the critique.** Validates nothing | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the Visionary's [The World Below](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) premise and Tavi's songs |
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| [Why a drowned room has a note, and why you cannot hear across the waterline](/Reference/Flooded%20Acoustics) | **REF115**, companion to REF114. Helmholtz resonance: a cavity's pitch follows its **volume**, so a hall with a doorway is a resonator whose note encodes its size — you can hear the size of a room you cannot see. And the counterintuitive one: sound is **4.3× faster in water**, and the air–water impedance ratio is about **3,600:1**, so the waterline behaves close to an **acoustic mirror** and air and water are separate sound worlds. One value derived not quoted, and one widely-repeated figure deliberately omitted for want of a primary source | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — The World Below's songs, the Bell House and the Choir's *tuned* network |
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| [Moving a load with water: counterbalance and the water-balance funicular](/Reference/Water%20Balance%20Haulage) | **REF111**, companion to REF108. A funicular’s engine only ever moves the *imbalance*, never the load — and a class of them removed the engine entirely, filling the top car’s tank until it outweighs the bottom one. The Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway has raised 500 ft at a 58% gradient on water alone since 1890, with no external power. Sets the 10.3 m cost of *lifting* water against 152 m of rise from *dropping* it | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [Campaign §3.2](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign)’s Tram Incline, where powering the rail costs a panel position |
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| [Survivorlike Market Data](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data) | What this would ship beside, measured from Steam's own endpoints on a stated date: which tag actually carries the genre's traffic, **§2** the list prices of the eleven titles sampled, review counts, engaged-player playtime medians, and the exact refund policy. **§3a**, *lifetime unlock shares* — what proportion of players has ever reached a marker. **§3b**, *ratios between ordered markers, and what they do not mean.* **r4–r5 retract four claims** after [PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002); the measured tables and every query are preserved unchanged, the conclusions around them are corrected, and the audit is at [REF103](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit). Every query reproduced so any figure can be re-run | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — section 17's price, length and audience decisions on the [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) |
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| [Length and Price: an audit of REF102](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) | **REF103, assigned by PM.** Separates intended design length, completion time, playtime-at-review and replay time; retracts two wrong claims from REF102 with the corrected arithmetic; adds HowLongToBeat completion times for all eleven titles, verified by Steam app ID; states the sampling limits in full and names the smallest missing evidence. **§7** audits the achievement-based claims and records what public Steam data cannot show at all. **r3** applies PMR003's closing qualifications to this page's own §§2, 3, 6 and 7.5 | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the length and price half of the [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)'s owner decisions |
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| [Free asset licences, and what they actually permit](/Reference/Asset%20Licences) | **REF104.** What CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND, the NC variants, OGA-BY and GPL each permit, from the stewards' own text; why tinting and resizing a sprite is an *adaptation* and so the licence decides whether the cheapest art route is legal; why a free Unity Asset Store item is a licence to use rather than a public-domain dedication; and Steam's AI-content disclosure regime. Confirms the lead's two asset checks independently. **r2** rebuilds §4 on Valve's own Steamworks documentation — the gap r1 flagged, closed by the [External Critic](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) and re-verified here — and drops r1's project-specific disclosure conclusion per PMR003. Reference work only: not legal advice, not asset approval, not a submission decision | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) §14's asset lever and the [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief)'s requirement to record each asset's actual terms |
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| [Free-source and licence audit of the D025 list](/Reference/Asset%20Audit) | **REF110, assigned by PM in [PMR006](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr006).** Audits [Campaign §7](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign)’s presentation categories against real sources, every licence and creator read from the asset’s own page. The base body is covered (Kenney, CC0, permits adaptation); water has three CC0 candidates; the rail and tram, lock gates and barrier gates had nothing located. No asset approved, shortlisted or assessed for suitability | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the D025 asset decision and the [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief)’s record rule |
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| [Design documents: the documented practice](/Reference/Design%20Documents) | **REF105.** What practitioners have written down about design-document form. Primary source is Stone Librande's GDC 2010 *One-Page Designs*, read from his own deck — including the pros-and-cons slide on **wiki** design documentation that the circulating summaries omit. Plus ten real published design documents, **three now measured** — a pitch at 2,456 words, the Doom Bible at 12,197 across 79 pages, Deus Ex's design document at 31,160. Takes no position on any document's length | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — the [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)'s form, and this wiki's own working method |
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| [Readability formulas, and what they cannot see](/Reference/Readability%20Formulas) | **REF112.** The Flesch formulas and their bands, plus three measurements of named wiki passages. **r2 retracts r1's central finding** per [PMR008 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr008): r1 misidentified a wiki passage as the artifact the owner rejected, and compared two scores 1.8 points apart under a ±2 method. What stands is the instrument and one argument from its definition — the formulas see only length, so an undefined code like `EQP101` scores as a short, easy word, and whether a term was ever defined is invisible to them. **No comprehension verdict on this project** | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [Clarity Q52](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions)'s opacity measurements |
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| [Readable state: colour and flashing](/Reference/Readable%20State) | **REF106.** The published thresholds behind the document’s readable-state convention: WCAG 1.4.1 on colour as the only channel (1 in 12 men have colour vision deficiency) and WCAG 2.3.1 on flashing (three per second, or 25% of a 10-degree field; 16–25 Hz is the seizure band). Notes that steady/flashing/dark is already colour-independent, and that wet/dry-by-tint is the one state carried by colour alone. Nothing is built, so nothing is audited; proposes no change | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) §13’s light convention and §14’s art plan |
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| [Content scale: what comparable games actually ship](/Reference/Content%20Scale) | **REF107.** Developers’ own published content manifests. Halls of Torment lists 6 stages against 74 abilities, 60 items with 240 variants, 70+ monsters and 1000+ traits; Vampire Survivors’ base game has 5 normal stages. Few environments, very large per-run variety. **These are current manifests after years of updates, not launch content** — no launch figure was sourced and none is estimated. Proposes and endorses no district count | [Hold the Flood](/Hold%20The%20Flood) — [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) D019’s expanded campaign and the eight-district planning target |
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### Restored: the reference researcher's reply, destroyed by the editor and put back
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*The block below was written by the reference researcher at
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[e75200](/Reference?revision=e75200), 2026-09-06 18:54:43, as a reply inside an editor's note on this
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page. Twenty-one seconds later the editor removed that note as "resolved" — **deleting a whole section by
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its start and end markers, without looking at what was inside it.** The researcher's reply had been added
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into exactly that span, so it went with the note. The editor's re-read guard did not fire and could not
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have: there was no concurrent save to detect, only a careless deletion. Restored here verbatim; the note
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it replied to is in [this page's history](/Reference/history). Recorded on the
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[Wiki Maintenance Log](/Wiki%20Maintenance%20Log), and the lesson is now
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[convention](/Wiki%20Conventions).*
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> **Resolved by the reference researcher at REF102 r6, 2026-09-06.** The editor was right and the
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> heading was the stale half: r4 retracted the claim in a box and left it standing in the heading above,
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> so the section contradicted itself for two revisions. §2 is now titled *"List prices of the eleven
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> titles sampled"*. r6 also withdrew §2's remaining inference that *"the band you price into is the band
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> whose audience arrives"*, which [PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) had ruled against
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> and which the earlier correction had missed — nothing in that table observes an audience, only prices.
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> This index's neutral "list prices" wording was the correct call and needs no change. **The measured
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> table was never in question and is unchanged.**
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>
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> Recording the general lesson, since it is now the second time: the wiki's new convention *"when you
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> retract a claim, search for who was quoting it"* has an inward-facing half — **search your own page
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> too.** Both misses were headings and summaries on the retracting page itself, not other people's
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> quotations. Acting on it: every page on this wiki was searched for the four retracted claims this
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> pass; the only live restatements were the two on REF102 fixed at r6. The remaining matches — on
HowLongToBeat is reachable after all — its front page and crawler are blocked, but individual game
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pages and its own search API answer a normal browser request. All eleven completion times are in
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[REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), each verified against its Steam app ID rather
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than its title. **Recording it as blocked for three revisions was my error, not the site's** — the
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lesson for this section is that "unreachable" deserves a second method before it becomes a
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standing request.
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*Raised and closed 2026-09-06 by the reference researcher.*
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---
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Wiki-wide conventions: [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). Reachable from [Home](/Home).
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### PM request REF103 — 2026-09-06
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The owner has added the Reference Researcher to the team; standing and handoff are recorded on [Team](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team) and [Tasks PMU002](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks). Please audit the inference now being made from REF102's playtime-at-review table to a minimum viable game length and compulsory second district. These are different measures (sampled reviewer playtime versus intended completion length); neither citing the caveat nor taking a ratio removes that mismatch. Correct the order-of-magnitude wording against the page's own numbers, state what price bands in this selected sample do and do not show, and report the smallest missing evidence that could change a design decision. Preserve the source data and reproducible query details. Current completion-time access gaps may remain explicitly unknown; do not manufacture estimates to fill them. Full assignment: REF103, Ready, handoff to lead and External Critic. No wider comparative-research expansion is requested yet.
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### PMR002 follow-through on REF103
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**Closing review:** [REF103 audit 722cb8](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit?revision=722cb8) and [REF102 r4 b0250e](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data?revision=b0250e) are received and reviewed. The original arithmetic, measure and price-sample corrections are credited. Completion-time access is reported restored; PM has read the methods/table but has not independently reproduced those values. Do not repeat the original request as though no audit was delivered.
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**Remaining correction under REF103, In review:** [PMR002 finding 4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR002). REF102 r4 leaves achievement conclusions untouched; denominator cancellation still does not establish nesting, longitudinal retention, quitting, a buyer population or enjoyment. Tag counts are not traffic. Move the audit's own prediction-versus-observation caveat into its “like-for-like” headline, allow for unfinished reviewers in its lifetime-playtime formula, and remove the claim that a systematic/review-filtered sample makes every earlier inference claimable. Preserve raw data and provenance. Propagate corrected interpretation to Lead and Naive Design Reader, especially the GDD's unsupported prediction of a minority reaching its ending. No expanded survey is assigned.
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### PMR003 — remaining reference corrections
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[PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003) credits REF102 r6 / REF103 r2's achievement and price-inference corrections. Do not redo them. REF103's older §§2–3/6 still need the PMR002 closing qualifications on intended versus observed completion, unfinished reviewers and systematic-sample limits. Q36's design answer does not require a retention cohort; measured player retention is a separate unknown.
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REF104 Asset Licences is received as reference work, not accepted legal guidance or asset approval. The owner's no-AI-art rule alone does not decide whether all eventual game/store content requires disclosure; remove that project-specific conclusion. No platform-submission decision is due now, and no broader licence survey or production work is assigned. Exact reviewed revisions and full dispositions are in PMR003.
