narrator told me there’s a star—which might be a stone, which is also a goddess. A goddess of destruction, even! She’s bad, but she was shattered, and some people have pieces of her, which could be good—but maybe only if you’re bad?
Love gog but fuck them for spamming my email. I found out to claim the new games it’ll auto subscribe you to the news letter. So I stopped claiming the games. But still I get emails for promotions and crap. More annoying then freaking scam callers. I’ve unsubscribed every time I get one and stopped claiming free games. I’m so close to just cut my loses and delete my account but I feel like that still won’t stop those parasites
You should not be getting promotional emails if you opt out, so something is wrong with your account/settings specifically. Contact them or filter your emails.
That’s what I figured… Some bug on their end or something because every time I get one I unsubscribe. I plan to just delete my account and go back to a mix of pirating and steam
If you buy through Heroic, Heroic gets a cut. So it creates a data point that they can use to see how big that market is, so they know what they have to do to get 100% of my sale in their own pocket.
A proton is a positively charged subatomic particle doing in the nucleus of an atom. But in this context, Proton is a translation layer that allows games that were built for Windows to run on Linux.
Lutris + GE-Proton + umu works. If you use GE-Proton as the runner, Lutris automatically uses umu to launch the game which launches within the Steam Pressure Vessel container.
You can manage GE-Proton downloads using Protonplus. The latest version, last I checked, is GE-Proton9-15.
I’ve been playing more GoG games with Lutris + Wine in Linux than Steam games with Proton and I even have one situation of a game were the copy I bought in Steam doesn’t work with Proton, but the pirated copy I downloaded to see if that would work runs absolutely fine with Lutris + Wine.
For me at least it’s actually easier to sort problems out with games when using Lutris + Wine than it is with Proton and I can even make sure all games I run from Lutris are wrapped in a “firejail” sandbox, which amongst other things blocks all network access, something I can’t do with Proton.
It’s a vendor-tied solution meant to keep you in the Steam ecosystem, so for all the great work they did in past getting it to have broad compatibility, the future is not Proton, it’s Wine.
Proton in Steam is absolutely easier. Lutris just automates work that some other user did, and if you’re doing it in something like Heroic launcher instead, you have to figure that out yourself. It often involves things like installing other Microsoft components that are bundled with the application on Steam, and in one case, even though the game was verified on Steam, there was no Lutris script, and I just couldn’t get it working on the GOG version.
Proton too just automates the work that somebody did in the form of install instructions, same as Lutris.
The difference is that those making the install scripts for Proton are paid for and you don’t get the option to fix them or make your own, which means that there are in fact fewer games with Steam install instructions (i.e. Steam Support) than games with Lutris install scripts.
Further, there are fewer things you can tweak in Proton and they’re all either changing the proton version or some badly documented text parameters that get fed to its command line, whilst Lutris actually has most such options in menus: the learning curve for just starting a game is lower in Steam that in Lutris when it works but the learning curve for fixing it when it does not work is lower in Lutris and sometimes you simply don’t have access to change what’s needed to fix it in Steam but you do in Lutris.
If you use Lutris with its GoG integration the experience is generally the same kind of Click & Play as Proton of Steam and whilst the rate of problems seems to still be a bit bigger in Lutris, surprisingly (at least for me) it’s not by much.
For me in Lutris having to go and install Microsoft components using Winetricks is generally only needed for some standalone installer executables, not when using GoG integration.
Steam is great when it works and a massive headache and pretty limited on what you can do when it doesn’t, whilst at least with GoG integration Lutris is great when it works and still a headache when it doesn’t but not as much as Steam and it gives you a lot more options to try and get it to work, plus the coverage of pre-made installer scripts in Lutris (which is what makes games “just work” in it) seems to be broader than in Steam, including covering older and more obscure titles, plus that coverage is probably growing faster because the scripts are user contributed rather than the work that can be done adding support being limited by how many people Valve (who are notorious for having very few employees for a company that size) hired to work on it.
Paying someone else to do it and verify that it works is exactly part of why I parted with my money in the first place. At least GOG has a very generous refund policy, but it’s a lot more work on my end.
The point I’m making is that with its process Lutris + Wine are scaling up much faster to seamlessly make all sorts of Windows games Click & Play in Linux, than Steam can or even will try to (don’t expect Steam to get around to cover older games that aren’t successful AAA titles).
It’s the same old same old, open source software solution vs closed corporate software solution that happens in so many other domains: the open source one starts clunky and quirky and it will always tend towards the side of “giving users enough rope to hang themselves with” (too many option, many very powerful) whilst the closed corporate one will from the very start be slick and easier to use but very limited when it comes to what users can do to customize it or even fix it when it doesn’t work, but over time and if it manages to survive the open source one will be better and far more capable and flexible than the corporate one simply because contributions to it scale up with interest in it and number of users whilst that’s not so for the corporate one.
It’s what you see with for example Blender vs Adobe’s suit of 3D modelling programs or Linux vs Windows (if it weren’t for the well entrenched ecosystem of Windows-only applications, I doubt Windows would still be around).
That’s why I think something like Lutris + Wine are the future, not Proton integrated into the Store application of Steam.
But really what I’m asking for, as a customer, is for GOG to do this work for me before I buy. Because it’s all open source, there’s nothing stopping them. Valve pumped a bunch of money into the projects to improve things for everyone, but they’re still doing more work on their end.
Valve is a much, much bigger company than GoG, plus Valve’s Linux strategy is really a “have our own console on the cheap” strategy.
But yeah, GoG should be doing more for gaming on Linux, maybe not as much as Valve but proportionally so. At the moment they’re doing almost nothing at all: they have Linux offline installers available for games which do support Linux directly, but that’s it.
So whilst I find it unrealistic to expect that GoG should be contributing to gaming on Linux as much as Valve, I do agree they should be doing more.
PS: Mind you, I’m not trying to make the case that GoG is perfect and Steam is shit, I’m trying to make the case that open and flexible to use is better than closed and tightly integrated with a specific store, which is why I generally prefer GoG with their offline installers, as well as Lutris + Wine (quite independently of GoG) and would be happy enough even if Lutris had no GoG integration since long before moving my gaming rig to Linux I had the habit of downloading and using the offline installers and did not at all use GoG Galaxy.
If there’s one thing that 30 years of being a Software Engineer have taught me is that you want your system to be as decoupled as possible from any business, because even if they are nice at the moment that’s no guarantee that at a later date they won’t leverage people having their systems integrated with theirs to take advantage of their customers (the phenomenon of enshittification being a good example of that).
Lutris has GoG integration and it’s exactly that same 2 step process if you use it (I believe it passes you through 3 screens of options were you invariably do nothing but click “Continue”, so strictly it’s 5 steps were 3 of the are just “Press Continue”)
The difference is that when it does NOT just work, it’s easier to figure out and there are more options to fix it with Lutris + Wine.
I even have some weird weird cases on Steam - like Borderlands 2 were Steam would often and randomly, before actually starting the game spend almost 1h doing shader conversions that if you stopped it the game would fail to start (the solution was to force an older Proton version and now you just get random downloads from the Internet that last a few minutes before the game starts).
IMHO, here too what one sees is the general design philosophy difference between open source software and corporate solutions - the former gives you tons of options and lots of ways to tune it so it looks more complicated to use and has a steeper learning curve but that also means when things go wrong you have a lot more ways to try to fix it, whilst the latter is click & play until things go wrong and then you have very little info and just a few things you can change to try and fix it.
Mind you, Lutris itself seems to be an attempt to also be click & play (hence why you generally get a steam-like experience if you use its GoG integration) but all the “buttons and knobs” are still there (those 3 screens of options that’s usually fine to just press “Continue” on that I mentioned above) just in case you want to muck about with them, making it look daunting to use.
Lol that comparison was also going through my head. I remember it being a fun game though, more than any Bethesda games from the past decade or so, but frankly that bar wasn’t really high either.
Absolutely. I mean, I love the fact that GOG has DRM-free games. It's really incredible how many games are available without DRM because of them.
But I'm not going to make Valve out to be the bad guy here. Valve is like 99% of the reason why gaming on Linux is viable right now.
Valve seems like a great example of how, if you don't sell your company to venture capitalists, you can just be cool nerds that make good products. As much as I want DRM-free to be the norm, I'm also not going to vilify a company that is one of the best examples of not enshittifying right now.
A lot of Steam games are also DRM free. It’s up to the individual developers whether they enforce DRM checks or not.
I’ve copied files from Steam folders directly to a flash drive, plugged them into an offline, Steam-less computer that I don’t have rights to install anything on, and ran them perfectly. But it is a game-by-game thing.
The info is here and none of that “DRM” means you can’t in the future, after the servers are down, install the game from your copy of the offline installer and play it.
None of that is DRM in the sense we’re talking about here: the kind of mechanism that allows the game to be taken away from you or won’t let you install it or play it in single-player anymore when the publisher decides they don’t want to pay for servers anymore.
It is, none the less, a deviation from the No-DRM promise, IMHO.
If we’re talking about DRM as in a measure to prevent copying, or require online security check, or anything like that, then no GOG game has DRM. One of GOG’s core policies is that all of their games are DRM free. However, some people have stretched the definition a little to include other stuff. For example, if an online multiplayer game requires GOG Galaxy to connect to its online servers, some people consider that to be DRM.
There are some posts on GOG’s official forums where people try to list all the games that have “DRM” of any kind. So if you’re interested, that’s where you could look. But if you just want to have confidence that you’ll be able to install and run the game in the future, then don’t worry about it. No GOG game has anything that would prevent that.
Not in the sense we’re discussing it here, they don’t.
There’s a list of about 20 games said to have DRM in Gog and when you actually read the list rather than just it’s title it turns out none of them has what we would call DRM - any sort of phone-home validation or anti-piracy measure.
It’s mainly things games with add-on content that requires you use Gog Galaxy or register online, some that send analytics to a server and stuff like that.
Whilst it’s still nasty and still shouldn’t be happening, none of that makes the game unusable in the future after the servers are down if you still have the offline installer.
Yeah, the only caveat is that you don’t get an installer with steam, so if you copy the installed game onto a pc that doesn’t have all the correct dependencies installed (like the correct DirectX version for example), then the game won’t launch. But it’s not too complicated to install the dependencies manually
Lmao, he is colluding with the rest, not holding up the bar.
There is nothing rhat differentiates Steam from Microsoft or Nintendo. The only difference between Gaben and Bezos is that valve has a really good advertising team that’s managed to convince everyone he “isn’t your average billionaire”.
They charge 30% because they have a soft monopoly, it’s basically robbery and it is affecting the indie scene and the quality and amount of games we receive.
Gaben has 6 mega yatchs and a number of submarines. The yatchs alone are worth around 1 billion and cost an estimated 75 to 100 million per year just to maintain.
Now I sit and wait for the Gaben simp squad to come compare him to Jesus and tell me how “he has the only good monopoly”. Both of these things literally happened last time.
No one thinks Gaben is the second coming. His platform just, actually doesn’t suck, and genuinely functions as a service to its users. It’s a low bar, sure, but it’s a good one. Comparing it to Microsoft axeing any studio that produces something worth talking about while they force more datascraping malware and adware into Windows is just dishonest.
Your comment reads more like you get off on being controversial than having actual insightful thoughts and the comparisons in what these three companies you listed are actually doing.
Ya well if it’s such a fucking low bar, it’s probably because they aren’t holding it up which is my point.
They do the absolute minimum, yet receive mountains of praise. Call me when he brings down the cut to something reasonable like 5% or just let’s dev choose what price they sell their games for on other platforms ffs.
Indie companies are closing left and right, these mega stores and their soft monopoly is having a net negative impact on the industry.
Stop defending billionaires. If steam was fair, he wouldn’t be able to afford a billion dollars worth of fancy boats.
Okay, so to be clear, I’m saying they don’t have enough difference between them when it comes to being a gross monopolistic company to warrant the praise.
All four of them suck, I’m saying they are all in the same group of shifty companies that take advantage of the gaming industry and it’s clients (us).
There’s not enough nuance to justify drinking Gabens sweat.
Why is he the only billionaire that gets his own little simp squad. Can you imagine going into a thread about how Elon Musk is being a dick and 90% of the comments are praising him?
Amazon is super convenient, yet people still can understand the nuance of it and how it’s harming small businesses, how the government should probably do something and deal with the dragon at its head that’s hoarding all that wealth.
Where’s your nuance? Other than “I like steam and I use it, so it can do no wrong”.
The nuance is here in this thread, in multiple comments that have clearly demonstrated that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
But you’re too busy backpedaling and jerking off about how much you hate billionaires to actually engage with any of those points. Or more likely, you know you’re too ignorant to respond to them.
They charge 30% because they have a soft monopoly, it’s basically robbery and it is affecting the indie scene and the quality and amount of games we receive.
Gaben has 6 mega yatchs and a number of submarines. The yatchs alone are worth around 1 billion and cost an estimated 75 to 100 million per year just to maintain.
This is from my first post, I’ve repeated myself 4 times now (over two threads because you have answered mutiple different comments). I won’t be answering anymore of your comments, all you are spitting in my face is childish rhetoric.
And, to be clear, Capitalism is bad. I’m on board. But riding Gaben’s dick, or the dick of any boring dystopian billionaire instead of the people actively fighting to maintain the system is just grossly missing the point
Not all evils are equal, and any perceived slight by Steam is honestly smoke for the thousands of disgustingly rich venture capitalists constantly abusing the system that exists and lobbying the shit out of any attempt to fix it. I don’t blame Gaben for owning more yacht’s than anyone needs, because, at the end of the day, he’s providing a quality service through an unfair system. He’s not the one fighting to provide shittier and shittier systems, demanding fatter and fatter paychecks and encouraging us to blame each other for the state of the world while he runs off with the largest slice of the cake.
Should he have the wealth he has access to? Fuck no. But, again, the dishonest and disgustingly simplified argument that homie is making is only idiofying the cause. Target the problems, not the lucky guys who are providing halfway reasonable services through our broken-ass system.
Its kind of a shame that you respond to him instead of me, you are literally circle jerking each other.
Homie over her is just tired of seeing simps defend this pos billionaire and his company. The fact is the government will never act if this is the kind of vibe they’re getting from the community. Bootlickers are holding us back.
He is not just part of the unfair system, he is 1/4 of it. You make it sound like poor old gaben is a victim here and was forced to participate in collusion and robbing a whole industry blind.
I respond to people when they say something worth responding to. You think my post makes Gaben sound like a victim. Either your reading comprehension has completely failed and you aren’t capable of having a real conversation, or my first comment about being far more interested in saying controversial shit than thinking things through was spot on, and you’re arguing in bad faith and/or to pleasure your ego. Since it’s not my job to educate you, nor satisfy you, even giving you this much recognition is a compliment. Have a good one.
You responded to him not only to get his praise, but so I’d miss it and wouldn’t challenge your opinion. It’s the definition of a circle jerk. And you literally talked about me and my previous inputs in the comment in a derogatory way. It’s rude.
I don’t blame Gaben for owning more yacht’s than anyone needs, because, at the end of the day, he’s providing a quality service through an unfair system.
This is what I mean by bootlickers being the problem. I’m exaggerating when I say you make him out to look like a victim, but this praise is way too heavy. He is the unfair system. He could have taken a step back after his first mega yatch but he choose to keep the ball rolling with his buddies at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
You responded to him not only to get his praise, but so I’d miss it and wouldn’t challenge your opinion.
Seek help. The fact that you need to create such insane delusions is a problem. The real answer is I ignored my phone, went about my day, and enjoyed my time with my hobbies and loved ones. When I found the conversation later, I stepped into the most recent comment. And I had much more to add to their comment than your inane ramblings, so it worked out.
Yes, I have been rude to you. As you have been to the imaginary “bootlickers” you have created, and defined everyone who disagrees with you as. I think you are so busy creating enemies out of everyone who is on the other side of something from you, that you fail to differentiate between the problem and the symptoms. And I don’t think I can convince you of that, so this is honestly a waste of time.
If you are arguing with someone, and then stop doing so to respond to others that are arguing with him instead, so you can pat each other on the back, it’s a circle jerk.
If you don’t want to be called a bootlicker, stop defending billionaires.
They leveraged open source to compete on the console front without actually investing dev time. If he could have created a closed system for the same cost, he wouldn’t have hesitated. It was nothing more than a smart business decision, not a nice favor because he likes you.
Most of the Gaben simps just throw back the same thing, “well, they aren’t as bad as microsoft”.
Mussolini wasn’t as bad as Hitler, can you image defending him though? Stop bootlicking billionaires.
I’m also not saying Microsoft is better, I’m saying they are all in the same club and they all suck.
They leveraged open source to compete on the console front without actually investing dev time. If he could have created a closed system for the same cost, he wouldn’t of hesitated. It was nothing more than a smart business decision, not a nice favor because he likes you.
I asked you a question. Show me contributions to open-source on the same scale by Xbox and Nintendo. If it’s so much cheaper, why aren’t they doing it too?
Most of the Gaben simps just throw back the same thing, “well, they aren’t as bad as microsoft”.
Mussolini wasn’t as bad as Hitler, can you image defending him though? Stop bootlicking billionaires.
I’m also not saying Microsoft is better, I’m saying they are all in the same club and they all suck.
No, you said they were exactly the same and that Gabe was colluding with them. Now you’re backpedalling because you realized how stupid of a take that was.
Microsoft contributes a lot of stuff to open source but that’s really far away from my point. I’m not back peddling, I’m explaining myself because you are being a child and taking my words way to literally. Microsoft being slightly worse does not make steam “good”.
Valve can run and offer the same services it does now on a fraction of what they charge.
They could easily properly compete, every store could drastically lower their pricing, but they don’t, because they like having a soft monopoly.
“Explain it to me or you lose” is insanely childish behavior, specially when I just explained that’s not what I meant and you are being too literal but I mean, here:
Explain to me why you think Gaben deserves a net worth of 4 000 000 000 $.
That is who you are being a mouthpiece for, stop defending billionaires.
Microsoft contributes a lot of stuff to open source but that’s really far away from my point.
Microsoft is not a fair comparison to Steam, hence why I refocused to Xbox.
I’m explaining myself because you are being a child and taking my words way to literally. Microsoft being slightly worse does not make steam “good”.
“Obviously I didn’t mean what I said, don’t be a child!” 🙄
Valve can run and offer the same services it does now on a fraction of what they charge.
They could even do it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts!
“Explain it to me or you lose” is insanely childish behavior, specially when I just explained that’s not what I meant and you are being too literal but I mean, here
“I was told there would be no fact-checking”
Explain to me why you think Gaben deserves a net worth of 4 000 000 000 $.
Wow, those goalposts are really movin’ now!
That is who you are being a mouthpiece for, stop defending billionaires.
See my previous comment about how boring and smug your take is.
I’m not moving the goalposts, I’m making fun of your attitude.
My point is that steam is a piece of shit company like the rest, not that they are exactly the same. Two PoS will still stink even if they aren’t exactly a like.
That’s what I mean man, sorry if it wasn’t clear before and then the next two times I explained it again.
They could even do it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts!
Are you being sarcastic about being robbed? The money’s coming out of your pocket, either directly or in terms of the quality and quantity of games. Is their cut justified in your eyes, even after I outlined his networth and how much money he’s racking in?
They leveraged open source to compete on the console front without actually investing dev time.
This is just false.
Valve has funded a lot of extra work though to get things like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for the translation from Direct3D to Vulkan into a state where performance can be really great! Valve also funds work on Linux graphics drivers, Linux kernel work and the list goes on.
The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. Here are some examples of what we’ve been working on together since 2016:
vkd3d, the Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan
The OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges
Many wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11
Overhauled fullscreen and gamepad support
The “esync” patchset, for multi-threaded performance improvements
Modifications to Wine are submitted upstream if they’re compatible with the goals and requirements of the larger Wine project; as a result, Wine users have been benefiting from parts of this work for over a year now. The rest is available as part of our source code repository for Proton and its modules.
In addition to that, we’ve been supporting the development of DXVK, the Direct3D 11 implementation based on Vulkan; the nature of this support includes:
Employing the DXVK developer in our open-source graphics group since February 2018
Providing direct support from our open-source graphics group to fix Mesa driver issues affecting DXVK, and provide prototype implementations of brand new Vulkan features to improve DXVK functionality
Working with our partners over at Khronos, NVIDIA, Intel and AMD to coordinate Vulkan feature and driver support
You should try doing some research before making such claims. Valve has been directly cooperating with, contributing to, and financially supporting several open source projects related to gaming since at least 2016.
Valve had 71 peoples working in their steam division in 2021. 31 where admin so that leaves 40 people for all their hardware. I’m going to take a wild guess and say maybe 3 to 5 were working on things linux related.
Edit: They had 79 in 2021 for Steam, and 41 for hardware
I’d call that leveraging at that amount of people, for a company that brings in an estimated 6.5 billion a year, and the fact that most of the code was already there.
Edit: They brought in 10 billion in 2021 (covid helped)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad linux got a boost out of it but there’s no doubt in my mind he would have built a private OS if it could be done with 5 people. It was a bargain for him, it wasn’t a favor.
I’ve never actually blocked someone on lemmy before, but you’re just following me in the thread and answering every one of my comments with mindless dribble lol. Grow up bro, learn to actually form an argument.
This isn’t hard to find. I don’t give sources when it’s literally in the first few links on Google.
Edit: The actual quotes are below. I missed the mark on total number of steam employees by 9. They have 79 employees total for Steam. 71 or 79, it is still an insanely low number of employees when you take into account that:
it is estimated that Steam generated more than 10 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2021
This is from the statistica article that is the first link on Google. I moved my other links to the other comment so it would reply to the guy that couldn’t be bothered to even open them apparently.
One data point I found interesting: Valve peaked with its “Games” payroll spending in 2017 at $221 million (the company didn’t release any new games that year, but that spending could have gone toward supporting games like Dota 2 and developing new games like Artifact); by 2021, that was down to $192 million. Another: as of 2021, Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet.
“Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a relatively small part of the company, with just 41 employees paid a gross of more than $17 million in 2021.
From the verge article
Here’s the topline from 2021: Of those 336 employees, 79 directly worked on Steam, while a whopping 181 remained in the “Games” department—pretty much the reverse of what I expected, given Steam’s importance to company profits and how rarely Valve releases new games. There were just 41 employees working on hardware development at that time
From the PC gamer article right under.
Literally the first two links after the statistica link (which also has it but you have to make an account), at least for me. Are you done being an idiot?
Just so we’re clear here – you pulled your original numbers out of nowhere, but made them oddly specific (71) to give the impression that you were citing an actual source.
That is hilariously pathetic.
And barely even matters since you’re ignoring 90% of the comment you replied to (financing and partnerships).
Just really paints a picture of how boring, basic, and uninformed your opinion is, for all the cockiness you came in here with.
Note that most people that valve pays to work on open source were preixisting maintainers and not actual employees, or employees of companies like Blue Systems
I’m guessing you don’t remember what the market was like for indie games before Steam. Valve’s platform has done a lot of work to expose small game developers, and made it economically viable to work on and publish games independently. Before this it was very difficult for small titles without the advertising budget of a AAA publisher to get any attention at all, let alone actual sales. There’s nothing else like Steam for small studios trying to find buyers for their games, and Valve does deserve credit for that because it’s improved the video game market overall to have more people making more games and able to earn a living doing it.
The other major effort that Valve has made is Linux compatibility. Even before their work on Proton, Valve released native Linux versions of their games (they were one of very few publishers to do so at the time). I’ve been gaming on Linux since 2006, and Wine was great but rarely easy or complete. Proton has made things so straightforward that people have forgotten just how difficult it was before.
Credit where it’s due. No other major publisher has contributed to the gaming community the way Valve has, except maybe id Software when they just handed the entire Quake 3 Arena source code to the open source community in 2005 which spawned countless new open source game projects.
Indie games came about because of multiple factors, steam only being one of them but they did help a lot. That being said, they are currently having a detrimental effect and I think Gaben has been more than properly rewarded.
It’s not the early 2000s, steam is bringing in massive amounts of cash and I’m tired of seeing an other indie company go under because Gaben wants another boat in the 9 figure range.
The government will never do anything if we aren’t vocal about it and the community is doing the opposite.
25% more of the profit can go a long way, if Steam were to only take 5% for example. And it’s not only about bankruptcy, it’s budget for more features, dealing with bugs and potential sequels. The quality is affected as well and Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony don’t deserve all that money instead of the devs, just for being the middle men.
belt-tightening can often mean simply shutting down.
Sheffield says it’s hard not to feel guilty when other studios go under, even as his own struggles. “We’re all kind of fighting for a tiny slice of the same pie,”
“When an indie doesn’t get funding for its game, you just quietly never see their work again,”
The industry is struggling because steam and the other stores keep them on the brink, they have no leeway. I don’t know how steams greed could be seen as unrelated.
Do you know of any other company that racks in as much cash and gets defended this hard? All I’m seeing is people defending an other billionaire cunt just because they use his product.
Would you tell me to shut up if I was denouncing Elon Musk or Bezos? You can’t be anti-capitalism and pro-Steam. The moment you defend a billionaire, you are part of the problem.
Sure man, keep condescending me, that’s really helping you and isn’t indicative of anything about you in any way. You’re really doing a good job of representing us out here in the internet trenches.
Reread our conversation. You are the one being agressive.
I shouldn’t have to be silent in what I believe in because you think it makes you look bad by association. It’s a silly reason to begin with and mostly imaginary.
You have basically called me an idiot multiple times and threw colorful language like dogshit at me. I dont mind but it does make your perceived slight seem hypocritical. Stop playing the victim, no one is asking you to respond.
I’m also not here to represent you. Im not part of your club. For one, I can’t be because I hate all billionaires, not just the ones that aren’t popular.
I’m not playing the victim, I’m pointing out why your rhetoric is counterproductive and bad optics. If you want actual change to occur, you’re going to have to fix that. Or you can just keep making things worse, if you really want to. Go for it. It’s really worked out for you well so far, hasn’t it?
And… again… I didn’t say I support steam or Gaben. See how you’re using strawman tactics on people that agree with you? That’s what makes us look like idiots. You’re doing a great job, bud.
I don’t care about this argument anymore, keep doing what you want, I hope you’ll realize that engaging in public humilitation on the behalf of anticapitalist ideals is counterproductive to normalizing them.
You are genuinely in the midst of a mental health issue at this point. Please just take a step back from this specific argument thread, just the one between us, and take a deep breath. I’m sorry I riled you up so bad.
I’m highlighting when you responded to the same comment three times in quick succession.
Your one word lol replies imply I’ve lost my cool but the above behavior kind of points to the opposite and that it is in fact projection.
You came into this conversation angry, seeing as how I insulted your hero. You came in barging saying I was embarrassing you and called my opinion “dogshit”.
Remember that you sought me out and responded to my comment, and have continued for quite a bit of time.
I suggest you revise the conversation and review your behavior in a more critical way, so you can learn from it. I’m not judging you but this isn’t very productive so have a nice day.
Heck, even if you want to blatantly ignore every other platform and site you can buy games from, which there are plenty, Valve gives devs a supply of Steam keys they can sell anywhere they want, they don’t even get a cut from those despite providing the bandwidth to distribute the files.
The reason they hold most of the market share is not because of bad business practices it’s because the opposite. People use their service cause it’s the best.
The gov only considers a large business a monopoly if it’s doing anti competitive practices to maintain or grow it’s market share. That description in no way fits steam or valve.
The reason they hold most of the market share is not because of bad business practices it’s because the opposite. People use their service cause it’s the best.
I have physical copies of PC games that require a Steam Account.
Which is why you don’t have physical copies of those games - you bought a steam key, exactly like you could have done digitally from humblebundle of greenmangaming or myriad of other stores, this one just had it printed on a piece of paper instead of sending you an email.
Helped you (and Valve) to save some bandwidth. But yes. If it requires a Steam account to play, you bought a license allowing you to access a game and not an actual game you own.
Valve is holding up the bar not because valve is great but because everyone else is so shit. I’ve had a ton of issues with steam throughout the years and it’s just… nothing else is better. I was actually excited for the epic store launch and it’s… Well, not the worst, because being the worst is a challenge some places take seriously, but certainly not a good steam replacement especially for low data people.
Steam may not let me control the updates to steam, but it won’t force refresh my library causing ping spikes all the time as an intended feature.
You didn’t fuck up. You can always still pirate. Wait it out and see what happens, the moment it goes to shit put on your pirate hat and don’t give a fuck.
You don’t need to ever interact with Galaxy to play your games, not even to download the offline installer. And the download option is not hidden on the website.
All online storefronts doing business in California will soon be forbidden by law to lie to customers with words like “buy” when they really mean “license”. GOG is no exception.
My understanding is that GOG is an exception to this. Here is a quote that I got from an Ars Technica article
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
Since GOG does offer permanent offline installers that can be used without an internet connection, GOG’s sales are exempt from this new law.
Even DRM-free, all digital purchases are still just a license, legally speaking.
Pragmatically speaking, they can't forcibly take the bits off my hard drive. But it also bears pointing out that these days most games on Steam don't bother enabling Steamworks DRM either.
Put the installer on a USB stick and sell it.* I assume you’ve never gone back to the electronics store where you bought your dishwasher and expected to sell your used dishwasher there.
But that’s against the User Agreement with GOG. You don’t have that right, DRM or not.
GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.
I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).
Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there’s really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You’re effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there’s nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn’t much.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn’t be much of problem.
MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.
MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.
But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.
I’ll stick with my Steam cloud saves and game notes and community forums and community guides and custom controller configurations and community controller configurations and overlay and workshop and screenshots and steam deck and steam link and …
Also, the very first game I ever bought on Steam was almost 15 years ago, and it was delisted and has not been available on Steam for over 10 years. Yet I can still re-download and play it right now.
Steam is not the evil corporation people pretend it is. Take your rage to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.
Steam is not the evil corporation people pretend it is.
Indeed. They’re not saints either but for my personal demands, they offer the best arguments right now. I rank funding improvements to the FOSS Linux stack higher than a DRM-free pile of shame. That may change in the future but for now I prefer Steam over GOG. CD Project is a rich company. They could make a Linux version of Galaxy, put it onto Flathub, make it behave well under Steam Deck Game Mode, and put a tiny fraction of their revenue into Linux improvements.
GOG is funding the FOSS Heroic Games Launcher through an affiliate partnership
GOG has an affiliate links program. Heroic signed up for that. GOG isn’t specifically funding Heroic. Wake me up when CD Project / GOG is hiring a developer of Mesa or something along those lines. You know, an actual part of the technology foundation that’s being used by a wide range of Linux distributions.
An office worker sitting at a desk somewhere at a Linux-running PC is benefiting from technology advancements upstreamed by Valve as part of Steam Deck performance improvements.
Steam colludes with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It’s all one big club meant to extract as much profit as possible.
Steam could charge 2% and Gaben would still be able to afford the 75 to 100 million he spends every year to maintained his fleet of 6 mega yatchs, worth an estimated 1 billion.
Meanwhile I’m over here thinking about how I greatly prefer to put my saves in my own cloud storage (too many games these days not giving me as many slots as I’d like), the community forums are some of the most toxic places on the Internet right now, it’s a coin flip whether Steam’s going to give me a problem with my DualShock4, I hate how the Workshop is a walled garden, and I’m so much happier with my streaming now that I’ve dropped Steam Link and moved to Moonlight.
I guess the guides and Big Picture Mode can be nice?
Steam’s still the #2 best option for me on PC storefronts; the battle.net launcher has some aggressive advertising, as an example of hellscape we’re avoiding here. But Steam continues to not offer me much added value. I go there only because some of my games aren’t available on GOG.
I will say I appreciate what Valve is doing with the Steam Deck, and I’m really hoping it continues to grow an ecosystem that directly competes with Nintendo. They are actively burning up banked goodwill right now, and that segment of the market is getting unhealthy without someone keeping them in check.
Probably the same reason it’s happening all over the corporate web: fewer eyeballs moderating content. I was never enough of a regular on Steam communities to be sure, unlike GameFAQs (which I can tell you has always been that way).
I do agree the community discussions have gone to shit. But that’s true of the entire fucking internet. People are assholes when veiled behind anonymity. That’s not a Steam issue. It’s a human issue.
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn't really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it's better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
For current exports, it's some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there's any tools for working with it, seems like it'd be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
GOG has the same drawbacks as Steam without any of the useful features. They should cut down on their “owning games” lies and spend time improving their platform instead.
It does not. You can download and backup all your GOG installers, making the games functionally equal to games you purchased on CD ROMs back in the day. They can revoke your license all they want, they wouldn’t be able to keep you from using the software you acquired this way. That makes all the difference.
and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content.
Which they define as:
1.3 Also, when we’re talking about games, in-game content, virtual items or currency or GOG videos or other content or services which you can purchase or access via GOG services, we’ll just call them “GOG games” or “GOG videos” respectively and when we talk about them all together they are “GOG content”.
The license is with regards to “GOG Service”, not “GOG Contents”. You need the former to get access to the latter, sure. But what isn’t clear about this?
You still own the contents (though, as mentioned, individual titles may have additional blablabla). If you don’t think this distinction makes sense when it comes to GoG vs Steam, then maybe you’re just discussing something entirely different?
I like GOG and I like steam too. While it is true that GOG can’t take the offline installer from me, this does not make it true I can play the game forever since many games are dynamically linked to libraries that may not be available in the future. This happened to me with games I just had bought. Steam also dynamically links to libraries but what I like about the way they are doing it is that these are part of the base installation so as long as you keep these files, the games should keep working. Nothing being perfect, I think they both try to do things in their own way and try to convince us that it is the best one.
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