I’m surprised that people feel safe to discuss those things in a Slack of a company that creates American Imperialistic propaganda. It’s a certainty that crypto-fascists are among them, no matter how progressive the companies policies are. The stuff they make attracts right wingers.
Poor guy. I mean he’s ridiculously lucky to be as famous as he is and to have been compensated fairly for the rest of his Sonic/SEGA music but it sucks that one of his most famous works has effectively been stolen by a corporation’s sense of entitlement.
Gog goes another step and provides a guarantee on stuff they’ve modified to ensure it works, and provide an offline installer that’s entirely self-contained for archviing purposes.
Eh, i wouldnt say they are better. They explicitly pulled all unreal games off all stores ( steam, epic store, gog, … ), killed all servers and when asked acted like unreal never existed. They are pieces of shit for doing it and they had no real reason in doing so imo…
While I don’t approve of Epic’s stabs at exclusivity, Steam needs a competitor to keep it in check, and one that is making some efforts to support the preservation of art is a welcome choice.
My experience with GOG is that it is a fringe option, at least in the combined North American (USA+Canada) culture. Plus, the unfortunate reality is that in many cases GOG’s principles preclude it from being a genuine competitor to Steam. Insisting on being DRM free means half of released games never go to the platform, so it will always be the secondary “better if” option.
I worry about Steam’s functional monopoly on PC game access. It hasn’t been an issue so far, because it has remembered that it is, first and foremost, a service, providing consumer protection through a generous refund policy and supporting devs with easy access to simple matchmaking and anti-cheat systems. But without a healthy competitor, it would be easy for Steam to start milking it’s users and developers alike.
Winning move from Epic. Showing what should be done for abandoned games. Give it back to the people so it can continued to be enjoyed by the community that will continue to care for it.
There’s literally no reason not to do that. The game has long since made money and keeping it out of public ownership is now not doing anyone any favors.
UT2004 Onslaught is still the best game mode ever btw. Haven’t played in a long while but like ten years ago there were still a good number of servers around. Not enough players for the big maps, though, those need like 20 people per team and good luck convincing a server full of deathmatch players to play as teams.
The agreement wasn’t made with the Internet Archive but with OldUnreal so that they can distribute an installer that automatically downloads the games.
But hopefully it can be expanded to the later games as well.
I hate that we have to live in this world where something as vital as archiving the internet is a volunteer-based operation that requires permission from copyright holders. In a better world, the Internet Archive would be an international enterprise funded by mandatory contributions from UN members, and IA would have open license to archive everything. Maybe they wouldn’t allow regular users to access archived items that have active copyright, unless the items become inaccessible.
I go back and forth on this. Clearly there are downsides to a service being provided by a government agency. But someone has to be in charge of it, and every option has downsides. Obviously a for-profit private venture is the WORST option. The current system of volunteer/nonprofit is great, but lacking in stability, funds, and power to push back against copyright. You could argue that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, I just think it would be nice if my tax dollars supported vital services like Internet Archive or Wikipedia.
gamedeveloper.com
Aktywne