Valve Is Making All Their Games Free To Debian Developers

[shmerl]

Yes, if the game allows it.

Are you talking about Steam official "backup", or about manual copying games yourself? I was talking about the former.

[shmerl]

Also: Why the fuck are you so against it that a developer get's paid for what he did?! OpenSource is nice 'n stuff but it's not a feasible option for most developers. You can't make money with it, only by providing support.

What does this have to do with anything? Buying DRM-free release pays the developer. DRM has nothing to do with getting paid.

[RealNC]

Are you talking about Steam official "backup", or about manual copying games yourself? I was talking about the former.

I don't think so. But does it matter? Obviously if you create a zip archive, you're gonna need a zip program to unpack it again. If your requirement is "allow me to unzip this without a zip utility", then I'd say your requirement is weird. You archived the game in Steam's format, you obviously need Steam to unpack it again.

[shmerl]

RealNC: You answered to my answer to Detructor where we discussed official Steam "backup", so it was confusing, since you meant that some games can be manually copied. Yes, it is so. But you have no clue if that would be sufficient beforehand and it's not the way company should support their distribution.

[mcirsta]

oh come on ...

Would you people please stop complaining about DRM and so on ... Valve is actually bringing gaming to Linux, which suffered from serious problems in this regard for a long long time. You can already see the improvements to Linux GPU drivers and these improvements will benefit all Linux games DRM or no DRM and even Linux desktops that use the GPU.
Those that have a problem with Steam and all that comes with it can just avoid it, no one's making anyone use it but no matter how you look at it this is a very good thing for Linux, period.

[shmerl]

Merits can be complimented, faults can be criticized. Valve does provide a boost for gaming on Linux. But it doesn't make the problem of DRM proliferation any less.

[brk0_0]

The only thing I miss regarding DRM on Steam is this: developers should be able to know if an Steam account have or not the game. Why? Because then they would have a way of distributing DRM-Free game bought on Steam. DRM-free games should be distributed using other means that not Steam (if Valve doesn't like this idea). Steam does not loose anything with it.

This info should be displayed when you were buying a game. Would work like GOG, that devs/dists have to know if you own bought a copy of the game before they give it to you. But users would read this and ask themselves: what and why DRM? Why all games on Steam are not DRM-free? Is there anything bad with Steam? What can't I do with Steam (with DRM) that I can do with DRM-free games?
This would be a risk to their. So they just keep quiet (but, after all, they don't force DRM)

I like Valve because, besides DRM, they did right with open-source until this point. They listen to the community, their OGL-debugger will be open-source, they are working on upstream projects, working with Debian (better than Ubuntu), SteamOS is done the right way (even if you don't see it's point), Steam gave a new life to Linux and may bring more users to the open-source-side of the force.

Even if they support DRM, they returned freedom to the community. For me, we are better with Valve than without it.

For the transparent DRM: I agree they are a risk, because users don't know that DRM is beign used. But if DRM is not transparent, it makes users loose more freedoms, and it's not good at all. You should be able to use software anyway you like. "Almost anyway" is much better than "the way they like". Steam approaches the first one.

[brosis]

How can anyone "love" DRM? It's like saying that mass surveillance and police state should be loved because it empowers people with many good features (security), while it doesn't really stand in your way much, since surveillance can be hidden.

I dislike DRM.
If I purchase game via Steam, I make sure to get Steam-free copy just for the case.

To me, Steam is a delivery platform, that allows developer to get paid and get in touch with community.
I dislike the locking out aspect a lot, but if its what needed to make the title profitable for developer (in his opinion <- heavy emphasis) , why not.
This is not the only way to monetize development and VAC comes handy to fight off cheaters in online.

I dislike only one situation - where developer decides to deliver Steam-only plus with DRM.
This is very bad, as Steam can't cover all the upcoming platforms, is closed source and will hinder mod development.
Its exactly same issue with DVD/BluRay. But in case of Valve they differ in two things:
They are optional - leaving choice onto the developer, not enforcing it, and they do a lot for Linux gaming as whole, not just cutting themselves a walled garden out of its guts.

It is possible to make distribution platform DRM free, but it will not be possible to enforce limitations such as only one machine etc (they are done at developer discretion, so I don't see them as source of Valve criticism, rather than criticism of developer), and anticheat will be very problematic (for FPS, it matters A LOT).

[Veerappan]

Would you people please stop complaining about DRM and so on ... Valve is actually bringing gaming to Linux, which suffered from serious problems in this regard for a long long time. You can already see the improvements to Linux GPU drivers and these improvements will benefit all Linux games DRM or no DRM and even Linux desktops that use the GPU.
Those that have a problem with Steam and all that comes with it can just avoid it, no one's making anyone use it but no matter how you look at it this is a very good thing for Linux, period.

Agreed. 8 pages of DRM whining, 4 of which were debating whether you could back the games up when anyone who had actually used the software already knows that you can.

1) You install the steam.deb from valve
2) You launch it
3) You sign in and download/run games
4) If you ever have to back-up steam, you can either back up the games from the Steam menus (In offline mode if the server is unavailable), or you can just back up "~/.local/share/Steam" and restore it as needed via a recursive copy.

If Valve ever goes belly-up, just launch Steam in Offline mode to access your games and then back up your home directory. If that's too much, the shell scripts that launch each game can be tweaked to remove the steam overlay and they should run just fine (I'm sure someone will come up with a patch to take care of this). I've already launched some steam games that way in order to get debug traces from them.

And with regards to the removing of the network cable when playing, it was cited as an attempt to prove to some users here that you can play steam games without an internet connection, and also without having to contact with the steam servers... NOT because you're trying to prevent the system from monitoring you.

I personally like Steam. The cloud saves of my games between machines are very nice (I play a game on my desktop, and my save game is automatically accessible on my laptop). The community and match-making services are nice. The fact that I can chat with friends who are playing entirely different steam games is also nice (I can play Civ 5 and they can be in TF2 and we can chat via the Steam Overlay). If a few surmountable hoops are required in order to get the developers to actually release games to Linux users (a platform where the developers would normally be very concerned with piracy rates), then I'm ok with that.

[brosis]

Er, Valve has no control on Valve's games, meaning published by Valve? Are you on crack? :-P

Note: they don't provide "all Steam games." They provide "all Valve games." You know, those made by Valve which is a very small subset of the Steam library, not generally everything that's on Steam.

On contrary, they have control, and they want users to use Steam, so they choose Steam only. I agree, that this is dumb.

I hope they do provide all Steam games, not only Valve games as they do with Reviewers Account. Perhaps it happens after the official launch of Steambox as they will need to boost the attention to SteamOS.