Valve Is Making All Their Games Free To Debian Developers

[Kivada]

+1. Saying "DRM done right" is like saying police state done right. It's an oxymoron. But I see it once again. Some evaluate DRM only in the aspect of comfort and completely ignore the unethical principle behind it, or any other related concerns (privacy + security). So for them "right" means "unobtrusive", which simply means well hidden.

No, it's like saying iTunes got it right with music distribution. Sure, there where the Russian shops that sold unencumbered .MP3 files, if you where dumb enough to give your info to a sketchy Russian site that was committing not copyright infringement*, but actual counterfeit** sales.

*
Copyright infringement = a non criminal civil matter, it's just a copy, no money was exchanged to receive it.

**
Counterfeit = an actual criminal act as you are selling fake/unlicensed/knockoff goods, the buyer of which can be charged with knowingly accepting stolen property.

[dee.]

You can sell ice to an eskimo, too, but i don't think i'd describe that as a solid business plan. Everyone trying to make money off gpl software does it by selling services and support, not the software itself.

Depends entirely on the definition of "service".

There are several GPL softwares that do sell the software itself in binary form, even though the user can still get the source code for free. You could argue they're selling the "service" of building the software, but then, you could just as well argue that proprietary software developers sell the "service" of writing, building and maintaining the software. The fact is that if a regular person wants to install and use the software, they mostly don't want to compile it themselves and want a pre-compiled binary instead, and if they have to pay for that binary they'll view it as "buying" the software.

[dee.]

PC only indie games are self published on Steam.

The only say Valve has is if the community wants it and the game actually meets stability and content standards that Valve has set so that users don't feel they've been cheated out of their money with a cool video but a terrible game as well as ensuring theres no content not allowed on the store like porn in the game.

What! No porn? WHY? Valve forces their sex-negative moral views on developers! Valve is discriminating against porn games! Boycott Valve!!!

[brosis]

You can sell ice to an eskimo, too, but i don't think i'd describe that as a solid business plan. Everyone trying to make money off gpl software does it by selling services and support, not the software itself.

You can't make money off GPL, like you expressed it.
But you can sell GPL software.

You write software or even just create binaries, offer them for price. How is that not selling?
Only those who purchase binaries may get source. You can also distribute it for free. Your choice.

Buyers can re-distribute them alright, for price that they see fit. This is no different from torrenting.
If you want source to those binaries, you can ask the upstream and must confirm you received binaries from somewhere. Can't just demand source.

But if you want updates from 1st hand, you can only get them from upstream.
And if you want to support project, you need to work with upstream.

Also, whole support thing is required to be done over upstream, obviously.
So long upstream works on the changes, paying and getting this works.

But the problem it produces is similar to proprietary software - that is you need whole customer verification and with regular people inability to directly contribute to project without purchasing the product. It is also much much better to have software in repository. While "markets", that is repos plus account support, allow both of worlds, the whole account thing is a limitation.

So many projects just drop the sell price and welcome anyone preferring to exist on different use cases - mostly on fixing stuff for money or warranty.
That is, for distribution GPL is perfect. But it does not solve the cumbersomeness of customer/non-customer when applied to free software bazaar like development.

Thus for money making from development process, as in writing code and offering it to people to purchase whilst keeping code base free, this license is not suitable. Is there any?

[brosis]

Depends entirely on the definition of "service".

There are several GPL softwares that do sell the software itself in binary form, even though the user can still get the source code for free. You could argue they're selling the "service" of building the software, but then, you could just as well argue that proprietary software developers sell the "service" of writing, building and maintaining the software. The fact is that if a regular person wants to install and use the software, they mostly don't want to compile it themselves and want a pre-compiled binary instead, and if they have to pay for that binary they'll view it as "buying" the software.

But this detaches "contributing to project (development)" from "paying for a copy" or "paying for distribution", no? For example, Centos was exactly skipping the distribution cost.

[GreatEmerald]

How exactly do you think you can use Steamworks without logging in? Because that's what the DRM amounts to here, logging in. You had to log in to Phoronix in order to post this message, too, you couldn't do that without the "DRM".

DRM is not logging in. DRM is forced dependencies in order to prevent copying. The problem with Steamworks is that it's tied to the Steam client ? you can't create a game that uses Steamworks but runs without Steam (and the DRM is Steam itself, that does calling home and can deny you access to the content you own). There are games where you need to log in, but they aren't DRM because the game itself handles it, and the log in backend is itself swappable, for example, Unreal Tournament 2004. You need to enter the CD key in order to play online, and that verifies that you are a legitimate customer and that you haven't cheated, and then the master server allows you to play. It doesn't require any external clients to be running, and in case the master server ever goes down, anyone can set up a new one on another server (and that's not just in theory ? that actually happened in Unreal II XMP, the original master server is no longer up, but the community created their own and you can still play the game online to this day). It also doesn't force a foreign UI overlay to achieve that, everything is natively handled.

And the comparison with the forum is not even close. If Phoronix went down, the whole forum would go down along with the log in system. If there is no forum, there is no need to log in. But with games, if there is no supervisor, you must still be allowed to at the very least play offline (which DRM prevents you from doing; in case of Steam's offline mode, it will do until you reinstall the OS, but after that you're out of luck).

Sure it does, since it's painfully obvious that you've never used Steam. It's like saying you don't like pineapples but have never actually eaten one. Steam, like pineapples, is pretty damn delicious.

Steamworks ties into the users account, how exactly would this work if the game wasn't on Steam? You do realize that Steamworks is not an integral part of the game right? The same games available on Steam are usually available via Desura and/or DRM free without that Steamworks integration, to no ill effect to the game itself, just to the user's ability to connect with friends and other players for a better gaming experience.

Oh, but I have used Steam. I bought one game on it (Unreal Tournament 3), played it for a while, realised just how awful Steam was and never came back. It was a while ago, true, and at that time offline mode wouldn't work unless you were online when you activated it (completely defeating the purpose of it). Also, at least at the time, even in offline mode Steam would still delay the program's start. The most maddening part of it was that it would do that even when attempting to launch the level editor. It takes long enough to launch it as it is, but with the overhead of Steam it was completely unbearable. I bought the game on DVD after that, and the difference was really noticeable.

As for how it would work ? simple, use OpenID and have the games themselves do all the log in handling. No Steam client required for that, and you get native look and feel for all of those features. That's actually how Impulse Reactor works, it's a library for handling such things (but unfortunately it seems to have been discontinued now that GameStop bought out Impulse). Also, nothing is stopping people from creating such a framework in open source, too, just that one would have to have some good servers to place all the achievement etc. data on (and, of course, market it so that it gets used over Steamworks).

[mmstick]

DRM is not logging in. DRM is forced dependencies in order to prevent copying. The problem with Steamworks is that it's tied to the Steam client ? you can't create a game that uses Steamworks but runs without Steam (and the DRM is Steam itself, that does calling home and can deny you access to the content you own). There are games where you need to log in, but they aren't DRM because the game itself handles it, and the log in backend is itself swappable, for example, Unreal Tournament 2004. You need to enter the CD key in order to play online, and that verifies that you are a legitimate customer and that you haven't cheated, and then the master server allows you to play. It doesn't require any external clients to be running, and in case the master server ever goes down, anyone can set up a new one on another server (and that's not just in theory ? that actually happened in Unreal II XMP, the original master server is no longer up, but the community created their own and you can still play the game online to this day). It also doesn't force a foreign UI overlay to achieve that, everything is natively handled.

And the comparison with the forum is not even close. If Phoronix went down, the whole forum would go down along with the log in system. If there is no forum, there is no need to log in. But with games, if there is no supervisor, you must still be allowed to at the very least play offline (which DRM prevents you from doing; in case of Steam's offline mode, it will do until you reinstall the OS, but after that you're out of luck).



Oh, but I have used Steam. I bought one game on it (Unreal Tournament 3), played it for a while, realised just how awful Steam was and never came back. It was a while ago, true, and at that time offline mode wouldn't work unless you were online when you activated it (completely defeating the purpose of it). Also, at least at the time, even in offline mode Steam would still delay the program's start. The most maddening part of it was that it would do that even when attempting to launch the level editor. It takes long enough to launch it as it is, but with the overhead of Steam it was completely unbearable. I bought the game on DVD after that, and the difference was really noticeable.

As for how it would work ? simple, use OpenID and have the games themselves do all the log in handling. No Steam client required for that, and you get native look and feel for all of those features. That's actually how Impulse Reactor works, it's a library for handling such things (but unfortunately it seems to have been discontinued now that GameStop bought out Impulse). Also, nothing is stopping people from creating such a framework in open source, too, just that one would have to have some good servers to place all the achievement etc. data on (and, of course, market it so that it gets used over Steamworks).

One can easily sum this up as that you're really hilariously ignorant -- no point in arguing with a fool.

[GreatEmerald]

One can easily sum this up as that you're really hilariously ignorant -- no point in arguing with a fool.

What a crowning argument you have there. Goes well with your sweeping generalisations.

[blackiwid]

don't worry, Obama don't want to know the porn that you have in your pc. No insecurity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism

And Maybe Maybe I dont want to have a seperate pc for my business work, then because usa makes with this program industry spionage all that is in danger, and thats only the smallest problem.

Just because a country has votes it doesnt mean its no regime. lets look at russia. So having a regime in usa that turtures people in prisms officialy, that flyes drones around to kill inocent people because they are standing near maybe terrorists.

I dont want to bet my live that they dont make mistakes.

So yes if nsa guarantees that they only scan my porn-watch list, I could live with that. As example your state did search for communists and if they dont wanted to consume the stuff u do in water they are communists.

BTW are you americans even not completly retarded? The nsa is not allowed to spy on you because your bill of rights does forbit that as a man right. But its ok to completly spy and save every data on every person outside of the usa?

Just go ahead bomb some more weddings in afganistan its what amies like to do, it seems.

[blackiwid]

In what world is Steam not already dominant? There is xbox, playstation, and steam. Anything on the PC is dominated by steam.

I did mean steamos. Because Steam on windows is not the same, if they change their behaviour on windows and dont sell for good prices and giving a good service they loose instantly market share.

In a Valve-(Only) environment where valve is the default installer that u dont need to install seperatly and maybe you even cant install alternatives. Its way harder to install another os to play games.

And btw I play today primary 2 games, Tera and Neverwinter and sometimes Planetside 2 all not installed (and I think not installable) over steam.