- cross-posted to:
- anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com
- games@sh.itjust.works
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People use steam because it’s good service, and a good product.
In fact, they also gave Linux a boost
They also have things like cloud saving
Developers use them because apparently they have some awesome features too for things like multiplayer and such and a great API
As long as you understand the terms of your agreement with Steam as a platform, everything is fine. Physical media for games are outdated anyway, especially with frequent updates, patches, and DLC releases. Regarding older titles that are no longer supported, well, as the saying goes: “If buying isn’t owing…”
This has literally always been the case with Steam, the only difference is that people are told up front now. Things will likely continue to operate exactly the same as it has until now, I doubt Valve wants to disrupt the giant money train they have.
Chad GOG
Here’s another reminder to sign this initiative if you live in the EU.
I like GOG, but this is just weasel-words to take advantage of the ignorance of the public. Whether you receive the installs directly or not, you still don’t own your games, you are just licensing them, same as Steam.
This doesn’t tip the scales into the “this is wrong” territory for me, but I do think this kind of word manipulation exploiting an unknowledgeable public is a little bit slimy.
I think it is fair. When you buy games through GOG, you get the offline installer. Nobody can take that away from you.
When you buy games through Steam, you can only install them via the Steam client. If the Steam servers are offline, you cannot install your games. In theory, some games are without any DRM, and you can just zip them up, but even then that doesn’t always work, and you shouldn’t have to. That’s not to take away from Steam, of course, it is great at what it does.
Providing an offline installer that works no matter what is as good as “owning” the game IMO, even if “technically” you are just purchasing a license to use the game.
I just like calling it “the kill shot”, as though GOG is about to take all of Steam’s market share some time next week.
please let this be true it would be really funny
I don’t think “weasel words” is the right term here.
You own the GOG games like you own a book you bought, and like you don’t own a DRM-crippled book, even though you might be entitled to read it under certain circumstances. The difference between downloading an installer and downloading a game on Steam is, the installer will continue to work even if GOG folds or decides they don’t like you anymore. But if Steam blocks your account, all the games you bought are gone, and Steam is fully in the right to do so since you don’t own their games.
That’s not true. You still only receive a license to play the game, you do not own it. Directly from GOG’s website:
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.
Practically this means you cannot resell your GOG installer in the way you could resell a physical book.
That’s fair I guess. But you can keep a backup of your GoG games in case the server goes down. With Steam that isn’t possible.
Absolutely. GOG has a much better license and distribution model, but it’s still a license.
I think OP is saying that, while you can buy a book to read it, you do not own the copyright to that book. They’re saying it’s basically the same idea with GOG.
The illustration does break down, but I think their point still stands.
You can resell, trade, give, lend a book you bought. You’re just not allowed to do the same with any copies you’ve made. At least where I live
Like I said, the illustration does break down.
There are no products for which you get the IP because you bought one unit. Edit: IANAL, there might be.
Not a book, nor a car. So I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Sorry if I misunderstood your point.
The amount of people thinking they are getting ripped off by steam now is astounding.
They are the reason this step is incredibly necessary.
I mean I’ve always had an issue that digital goods could always be revoked/taken back. That’s why I didn’t buy things on steam until it became basically the only way (as consoles have less physical media). This is just a great reminder for the public that we’re consistently loosing control over our digital lives.
I’ve been an advocate for forcing companies to change the wording for digital goofs to “lease” rather than “buy”. Cause at the end of the day, no one owns their steam library.
I mean, we are… Gabe became a billionaire that owns a yacht collection, his money came from somewhere, there’s no reason to defend any billionaires or their companies unless you are a billionaire yourself.
Gabe heads a company which is successful because it respects its employees, customers, and suppliers instead of constantly trying to marginalize and abuse them. They are not perfect by any means, but they do fit into the definition of ethical capitalism, which should not be understated. They don’t employ anticompetitive tactics like bribing/coercing developers into exclusivity contracts. They don’t operate with a bunch of 1099 contractors so they can avoid providing benefits. Etc.
Now if we could just have GOG Galaxy for Linux. It would make my life so much easier.
Heroic Game Launcher is pretty cool. It does game save sync with GOG games too.
I know, I use it. I’d prefer an official Galaxy port though.
Lutris lets you add your GOG account and download/install games directly. its not Galaxy, but its pretty flawless.
Lutris is awesome.
Open source games, games with their own launcher, games on steam, gog, etc are all in it. Can pick to run things natively on Linux, use proton (pick your version or just use latest), wine, or choose from others, and it does it seamlessly. For games you already have installed on steam, you don’t need to reinstall them, it finds them and makes them runnable from within lutris once you connect your steam account, you can also install games that you own on any of your connected launchers, and browse/download your undownloaded games from themExamples for some of the stuff I have all in it now:
Catacyslm: DDA catapult launcher (free and open source game - highly recommend you try it out. Takes some getting used to, but there isn’t much you can’t do. Also, make sure you get cataclysm-tiles or use a launcher. ASCII is pure, but hard to get used to. Also, DO NOT buy it on steam.)
All of my installed steam games
Cyberpunk 2077 and the witcher 3 via gog
FFXIV (the official launcher, not steam)
Vintage story (open source but not free - highly recommend if you like open world survival crafting games with a big emphasis on survival)
I feel you. Installing Fallout London was such a pain in the ass for Linux.
I wrote a guide for getting fallout london up and running if you need a hand
Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership… Then surely you’ll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices… Right?
I don’t think it’s Steam setting the prices.
They indirectly are inflating it with their 30% cut
They are also deflating it by providing services that developers would otherwise have to spend time and money on to develop themselves.
G*mers really don’t want the industry to evaluate the $60 price point and apply inflationary adjustments going back to when it became the standard.
The $60 was based on 55%+ going to distribution channels, +physical media costs, so it could be down from there.
regular reminder that digital distribution was sold to us under the false promise that games would be cheaper, because they wouldnt have to pay for printing boxes, CDs, manuals, greebles, Wouldnt have to pay for shipping or storage, or any other burden addition of physical media.
That we’d be able to buy games for 30 dollars, and that that the developers and everyone involved would make more money than they would have paying 50 for a physical game.
Yeah, this is the original sin, they just banked the cost the whole time until they could cry that they need to charge more because of inflation.
Fr tho people seem to forget abt inflation a lot when talking abt the old days
People seem to forget that just moderately decent games sell magnitudes more today than they did 20 years ago, too, thus continuing to bring in insane cash (as long as you arent sony or other companies that are obscenely wasteful…) despite inflation, this stable pricing making them a good entertainment investment for people whose minimum wage hasnt changed in like 15 years
Why compare oranges and apples? Console and PC games were never the same from a price perspective.
This is a really interesting chart. A lot of N64 games were $70 and even $80 at launch which is upwards of $150 today. Just crazy.
Does GOG work on Linux?
Many of their games do have native linux versions, and a lot do work under wine or proton, which can be used as a Non-steam game in Steam or even without Steam.
Their launcher doesn’t yet have a native linux version but it’s completely optional, and does still run under wine if you really want it.
If I’m not going to use their game manager, then why would I buy the game from them instead of just buying it directly from the game studio? I guess because game studios rarely distribute their own games anymore?
Exactly, the game publishers and distributors are often not the developers themselves. Only one to distribute direct in recent memory was World Of Goo 2, and even that was sold primarily through the Epic store.
Tarkov is only direct to my knowledge
If it works on Steam it works on GOG. Nothing about proton is limited to Steam.
There’s a Linux specific Steam program though. Is there a Linux specific GOG program?
The Heroic Games Launcher can download and run GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
How does GOG support Heroic?
They set up a commission with gog if you buy games through heroic
Cool, thanks.
You mean a native version of GOG? I don’t think so, but you can use it through Lutris.
Nowadays the Heroic Games Launcher is the preferred solution for downloading and running GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
Cool, thank you.
NGL This feels disingenuous coming from GOG, Yes, you can keep the installers, but you do NOT own the game.
Seriously not trying to just be contradictory:
What’s the difference? In practical terms, what does this mean for me as the consumer? We don’t own the intellectual property, but may use the software as-is? From a practical, consumer standpoint that feels the same as the days of owning your software on a disc, unable to be taken as long as you have physical control over the device. I’m fine with calling this “owning” personally.
I’m absolutely willing to be wrong on this. I’m by no means an expert. Please, if I have missed something, let me know.
Can you sell them? or trade, give, even lend them? My guess is you can’t. And when I was a kid I did all those things.
It’s not anedoctal IMO, but a change in paradigm. I’m not saying it’s all bad. I buy games on GOG. But I don’t own them really
A 2015 study in France showed 54% where more willing to buy a game when they knew they could sell them when done
There is no drm so zip the installer and everything to your friend and call it a day
We were talking about legal offers. Are you legally the owner of your game.
Of course you can share, reproduce, pirate … but that’s not the point here.
I don’t want to advocate for shoveling money into any company, but if you could sell your steam games it would screw over indie devs in a big way. Many games made by small studies or one person don’t have as much content as AAA studies and would be far more prone to a small handful of copies being distributed back and forth on the used market instead of each being a sale that goes to the developer.
Some devs would see a drop in sales as much as 90% and I just don’t think it’s worth it to shoot the gaming industry in the foot like that.
Just to be clear: my main point was that you don’t own any more the game bought on GOG than on Steam.
And there are definitely upsides to this type of market.
Although nowadays I wouldn’t buy a just released triple A 70€ game knowing I can’t sell or give it (not that I play those much anymore). The games I actually want to keep a few and far between.
I buy second hand Switch games for my nephews. It’s cheap, I’m actually giving them something, and they can trade them with their friends or sell them to buy fortnite skins the little shitsAgain, not hating on GOG, I’ve been a customer for a long time. Mainly because I don’t want any kind of launcher. I play 99% solo games, don’t need no updates or multiple clicks to launch a game.
There really is no difference. For almost all intents and purposes, GOG’s offline installers can be treated the same way as physical CDs of way back then, with one of the only exceptions being that you cannot resell them.
Yeah? And whats the difference in practice?
Plus, unless the installers have the full package, it’ll still require an internet connection. Usually installers download the files and then install them.
They’re called offline installers for a reason.
I’ll give gog this, I have never seen an installer from them that needed an internet connection, That being said, they actively call it licensing in their own agreement
When have they not had the full package on GOG?
I love how this article takes shots at steam despite valve being THE company holding the bar up in the gaming space.
I could list examples but I honestly don’t even think I need to
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.
Also GOG has DRM games now
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.
You can see the info here,
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.
Which ones? Do they disclose that they contain DRM?
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.
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.
I was wondering how all those Sony games worked on GOG.
And has had them for many years before now
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.
Yeah… it’s also a new law in California is it not? Kill shot? Hahahaha. Right. Who wrote this headline xD
It’s like every clickbait gaming website whenever a new MMO game drops and they call it the WoW-killer for the umpteenth time in the past 15 years.
Flashbacks from the advertising for The Outer Worlds, and IGN calling it the “Bethesda-killer”
If anything is a “Bethesda-killer”, it’s games like Outer Wilds, not The Outer Worlds.
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.
The true Bethesda killer was Bethesda themselves
This isn’t about what steam currently is. It’s about what it will inevitably become.
I fucked up going with Steam. Should have just pirated everything Single player.
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.
valve being THE company holding the bar up in the gaming space.
I think you mean holding a monopoly in the gaming space.
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.
I think you don’t know what that word means.
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.
They aren’t really a monopoly. You can purchase games elsewhere. They are simply the gold standard of gaming platforms.
A monopoly on what? PC game storefeonts? Itch.io, gog, epic, gamepass, some are better than others, but steam isn’t anti-competition
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.
Downvote me you bootlickers.
What a weird hill to die on.
Anyway, enjoy being wrong.
You know what’s funny, I used to get this same kind of attitude when I’d bash Elon Musk when he was popular a few years ago.
It’s even worst when the billionaire is being defended by his own con victims.
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.
Your argument was that Steam is identical to Microsoft and Nintendo, and that Gabe is colluding with them. Stop moving the goalposts.
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).
So just a boring, generic anti-capitalist take that deliberately avoids any nuance for the sake of feeling smug.
Gee, why would anyone downvote that!
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”.
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.
Downvote me you bootlickers.
No, you’ll enjoy the attention too much.
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.
Who’s the indie company going under here?
This is an article that was floating on lemmy a few months ago.
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.
I’ll bite. I hate billionaires. Let’s check this out.
Things that hurt indie devs in this article:
- Lack of available talent
- Burnout
- Lack of upfront funding (before a game is ever released)
- Generally bad economy post COVID
- Actual predatory exclusive tactics from epic or gamepad
- The nebulous idea that the entire industry and fans need a culture change
Things not cited in this article as a problem:
- Steam in any capacity. Directly or implied
Lack of funding is mentioned every paragraph?
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.
There is nothing rhat differentiates Steam from Microsoft or Nintendo.
How much do Xbox and Nintendo contribute to open-source projects?
How do I use open-source software OOTB on an Xbox or Switch?
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
from Valve’s original Proton announcement
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.
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
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.
[citations needed]
Get some sources, and stop drawing conclusions from no evidence.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=valve+number+of+employees+2021
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.
Completely ignores financial contributions.
Disingenuous? Dumb? Who knows!?
most of the code was already there
AHAHAHAHAHA every developer in the thread is absolutely cackling at you right now.
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.
Gaben has the only good monopoly, he’s pretty much Jesus.
Preach brother!
100% agreed. just wish GOG was more linux friendly.
best of both worlds: piracy.
Much of the pirated games though will be GOG installers so might as well just install it with lutris/wine
yes
i wouldn’t pirate an indie game tho
Unless you already bought it
Doesn’t steam have a clause to the effect of “if we go out of business, you’ll get X period to download your games so you can manage them yourself”?
Even if that’s not the case, the drm is very easy to crack.
I don’t know if it’s a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them…
It’s not legally binding, since it isn’t part of the user agreement you review when buying games on Steam.
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I’d be horrified, but it’s structurally resistant to that. It’s largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society’s problems
If there’s a grace period, perhaps, however:
- Steam does not provide installers for games, this means that whatever game you want, needs to be 100% functional and already be parsed/deployed/installed by steam on your hard drive.
- That game needs to be DRM free, meaning that it has an executable available that can be launched without steam running or requiring any sort of authentication or input from the steam servers/services before being able to launch, play or even interact with the menus
So only the DRM free games will remain, and only the installed ones at that. Anything that wasn’t will be lost to the wind the moment the distribution service or storage (yours or theirs) bits the dust…
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installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library
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It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it
DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction
Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to
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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.
