Amazon Is Hiring DXVK, Mesa & Proton Linux Developers For Luna Cloud Gaming

[board]

Stop with this cloud gaming bs!
We are already dependent enough to renting online services and this is going too far.

A world where our computers are not even belonging to us anymore feels really terrible and frightening.

I wish them the exact same success as Stadia.

I've thought about this too. What I fear is that if cloud-services replace offline software that the end-user controls, then there is no financial incentive anymore to make computational resources available to the average consumer. This could cause hardware that we take for granted today to be less available. This might not hit companies and large institutions, but it will very likely hit the average person who doesn't have the money to buy, what might become, specialized enterprise hardware.

In this worst case scenario, we will end up with locked-down low-powered devices (such as Chromebooks) that are dependent on being constantly connected to large corporations for any meaningful work to be done. All files, private or otherwise will be in the cloud, and people's privacy will hang by merely a promise that it will not be infringed upon, which of course will turn out to be an open lie, as usual.

In an age where everything is becoming digitized, and where people are unable to live without these devices, digital freedom becomes increasingly important. This includes having control over computational power.

tl;dr; We need to control our own hardware just as much as we need free software, so that we can maintain our digital privacy and freedom.

[middy]

Honestly, I don’t think that it is the technology that’s in the way. We may not get down to latencies that get PC players excited. But its good enough for a large audience that doesn’t care or notice anyway.

At the end of the day, the likes of Stadia and Luna have to compete with the already inexpensive Xbox Series S + Game Pass combo. That leaves relatively little room for a business model that needs to cover the cost of cloud and network resources, incentivise publishers to port their games and to produce a controller (unless you want to game with your TV remote), all while yielding a decent profit margin.

But time will tell, if nobody ends up building a commercially successful game streaming service then its certainly not for the lack of trying.

this has been my take too. look at all the people that stick to console gaming. sub 30fps gaming with wireless controllers. not all that great for latency and response time. but for most people, its good enough. they have fun. and really looking at steam's hardware survey results when it comes to pc gaming, seeing the type of rigs a lot of gamers, at least on steam have, 1080p and lower resolutions, cpu's and gpu's that honestly i would argue consoles would probably make a better experience. i think those that actually care about having the best possible response time and latency are in the minority. i think most people just care about it being good enough.

as long as they can get the overall latency down enough to be just good enough, then i think it will become good enough for a lot of people. i don't think its a threat to normal gaming. streaming didn't kill private ownership of media. streaming just showed a lot of people never really cared about owning every piece of media they consumed. only some of it they wanted to keep. and it varies among person. i look at myself, the only stuff i buy to privately own and keep is stuff i care about. but stuff like watching flip or flop with my wife, i don't care about watching ever again after we finished it. game streaming once it takes off, if it does, will be similar. i can see a lot of people just using streaming to try a game or those games you only play once. while people only buying games to privately own that they care about, has meaning to them, and like playing over and over again.

[tildearrow]

It's as deceptive as someone tries to overhype it. If properly advertised for what it is, it doesn't have to be deceptive.

Either way, if Amazon are hiring for it, they think they can make money. Hard to say if that's correct or not. Google tried it, and so far Stadia had some hard time. But unlike some Windows/Xbox focused services by Nvidia and MS, looks like Amazon are at least going with Linux like Google did.

I wonder who will be next. Netflix gaming?

Problems with "cloud gaming":

- Cloud service may spy on your gameplay even if it is unlikely
- You don't own the hardware
- Requires a very good connection and even so there is more latency than playing locally
- If a game in particular is retired from the service then you can't play it anymore

[shmerl]

Problems with "cloud gaming":

- Cloud service may spy on your gameplay even if it is unlikely
- You don't own the hardware
- Requires a very good connection and even so there is more latency than playing locally
- If a game in particular is retired from the service then you can't play it anymore

All these are obviously problems by nature of these services. It doesn't mean they aren't useful still. As long as they don't pretend they can replace buying games proper and being able to run them locally. Which is why I said they shouldn't be overhyped by marketing.

Idea of thin clients is nowhere new. In fact it even predates personal computers because that's how it worked before PCs were even a thing. They just realized it can be applied to gaming too. So nothing wrong with the concept if it's a choice, not the only option.

[Quackdoc]

Cloud gaming is actually really nice in theory, but I don't care for it, I wonder if they will be using the vulkan virtio-gpu, or a vgpu solution from vendors? im thinking towards the former given they want devs to help with mesa

[cytomax55]

Amazon hiring vulkan proton and mesa developers... Hell yes .. all the fixes will be sent upstream and benefit everyone while Nvidia is off to the side wondering why noone wants to play with thier shiny new ball

[ATFx]

Ubisoft Hiring and Amazon also Hiring is actually related: Amazon has partnered with Ubisoft to create a gaming channel exclusive to Luna, which will give Luna subscribers access to Ubisoft's titles the same day they release. The Ubisoft+ (Beta) channel costs an additional $14.99 per month. Ubisoft is porting their Games Natively to Linux for Amazons Cloud Gaming Service.

[Leopard]

Problems with "cloud gaming":

- Cloud service may spy on your gameplay even if it is unlikely
- You don't own the hardware
- Requires a very good connection and even so there is more latency than playing locally
- If a game in particular is retired from the service then you can't play it anymore

Counter points can be made as:

- That is not likely a concern for many
- Owning hardware is a legit problem for 3rd world country citizens, so having a suitable internet connection is much more likely for those people rather than having HW
- Only an issue where you can compare local gaming against it because you have luxury of owning HW
- Not likely an issue. Steam has tons of delisted games, if you have them registered on your account it is being on sale or not doesn't matter. You can just install and play. So same would be also valid here.

[Quackdoc]

- Owning hardware is a legit problem for 3rd world country citizens, so having a suitable internet connection is much more likely for those people rather than having HW
.

as an appendage, I would say owning hardware is an issue for MANY people right now lol

[tildearrow]

Counter points can be made as:

- That is not likely a concern for many
- Owning hardware is a legit problem for 3rd world country citizens, so having a suitable internet connection is much more likely for those people rather than having HW
- Only an issue where you can compare local gaming against it because you have luxury of owning HW
- Not likely an issue. Steam has tons of delisted games, if you have them registered on your account it is being on sale or not doesn't matter. You can just install and play. So same would be also valid here.

Counterpoints to your counterpoints:

- From a company's point of view
- Indeed, but ironically the cost of hosting the servers that run the games is much higher in such countries
- Yes, but anything above ~40ms is easily noticeable
- Is an issue if that particular game is exclusive to a "cloud gaming" platform and said platform does not offer an option to play the game locally