Quoting: elmapulwhy would microsoft improve directX for windows, if they already have an monopoly on OS for desktops, and dont make money directly from games being sold for windows?

DirectX is one of the moats protecting Windows' market share and Microsoft's control of the desktop. If game developers switch to OpenGL (or Vulkan now) that moat is breached.

why would microsoft improve DirectX for Xbox, when they DO make money on each game sold for it?

DirectX is the whole point of the Xbox. It's literally a "DirectX box." Consoles doing general computer things as well as games would mean that consumers might do all their gaming and computing on something that doesn't come from Microsoft. This is unacceptable to Microsoft, so they poured loads of money into making a console that used Windows and DirectX so that game developers and consumers couldn't ignore them. And now that they have that additional moat, they can use that to get people to use the Windows Store - Game Pass.

Quoting: elmapulthe question is:
it will run xbox and it subset of games? or it will run windows and all it games?
if it runs windows, valve still would make money since steam is king there, not to mention they would incentive their own audience to use other stores by doing that.

on the other hand if they try to lock it to xbox games, then steamOS will still have more games (not that the ammount is more important than the names involved)

To protect their monopoly it would run almost all games from all generations of Xbox (Xbox games run in a VM already, so the hardware is abstracted), and all games from the Windows Store, and have access to Game Pass. Then they'd flood the market, since they've got more than enough money to absorb loses from hardware costs (exactly as they've done with Xbox). Control over game developers is re-established.

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Quoting: 04ELYNo way Valve and Linux scared Microsoft to put effort, we're going good! :grin:

It's not the first time. As alluded to in the article, Microsoft had allowed DirectX to languish until Valve plugged their own game through their own DirectX to OpenGL wrapper on Linux and had it run faster than DirectX on Windows. Then suddenly DirectX was super important to Microsoft again. Liam covered that incident in his retrospective article.

For this development, should Microsoft actually follow through after all, I think it's great. The Steam Deck comes with SteamOS, and will always come with SteamOS, and normal people use the OS that a machine comes with - that's why our market share is low. Those intrepid few that do install a new OS on their machine should have the least-miserable experience possible - just like those of us that have gone out of our way to install Linux on our machines.

The actual challenge to what Valve are trying to achieve with the Deck - casually turning their customers into Linux gamers - isn't Microsoft making Windows better - just like us making Linux better isn't sufficient to lift its market share. Microsoft releasing their own (Xbox-branded) handheld hardware would be the threat; they've got stacks of spare money, a whole bunch of games studios, and an established store that they're trying to juice. That's the way that a competitor could make the same pricing and platform play as Valve have done, and Microsoft doing it would be to try to sink Valve's lifeboat.

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We did have a previous shonky month where you gave up waiting and put the data on your tracker as the best option, and Valve finally got round to publishing the correct data after something like three weeks.

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Quoting: SuperV1234Could you please elaborate on why AFL might be a poor choice? Is there something bad about it that is not evident from the tldrlegal page?

There's nothing wrong with the AFL as far as I'm aware. It's OSI-approved and is probably fine. If you're unfamiliar with open source licensing, it might be worth having a chat with someone more familiar, so that if there's a particular aspect that you're after - whether your software is copyleft, for example, then maybe they'll be able to find a different licence that better meets your needs, but that part's fine. The odd thing is to license your software as open source, but then put additional EULA restrictions on it when people give you money; normally giving someone money gets you fewer restrictions.

Regarding the EULA, I added it only because it was recommended on several game development pages and forums I follow. I've read that without an EULA a malicious agent might resubmit my game to Steam with minimal changes, even as a paid product, and I wanted to avoid that.

Someone taking someone else's game and listing it on Steam happens rarely regardless of licence. An additional EULA won't prevent that, just like it won't prevent piracy: the people that want to do that will do it anyway. Should it ever happen to you, a ticket with Valve will get the other one de-listed.

I'd suggest having a think about why you want your software to be open source - whether you just want people to be able to study your work, whether you'd like other people to contribute, whether you'd like other people to use your work as the basis of their work, and so on. There is a wide range of different open source licences to achieve different aims; the AFL might be exactly right for what you're after, or there might be a different one that's a better fit. The extra EULA doesn't seem to me to be providing any function; the only people that will pay any attention to it are those that want to follow the rules already.

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That's some weird licencing. The version that's on github is under the AFL 3 [External Link], but the version that's on Steam has an additional EULA [External Link] on top of Steam's normal restrictions that says, amongst other restrictions, "Vittorio Romeo shall at all times retain ownership of the Software as originally downloaded by you and all subsequent downloads of the Software by you. The Software (and the copyright, and other intellectual property rights of whatever nature in the Software, including any modifications made thereto) are and shall remain the property of Vittorio Romeo." Open source stuff being dual-licensed by the copyright holder is fine, of course, but that second licence means that the project can't take contributions from anyone else. And it means that if you give the developer money then you get less of a product than if you don't.

I expect that the developer is worried that people are going to take the Steam version and pirate it for some reason, but the people that want to do that aren't going to not do that just because of his EULA. And the developer of ΔV, who's been quite chatty about their findings from doing game development, has found that people will pay for your game even when they don't have to [External Link], after they accidentally included the whole game as the demo: "But they still chose to pay me, because they want to. Not to get access - they already have that. "

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Quoting: EagleDeltaNo, it's not. Come on now.

The term you're looking for is "material misrepresentation."

From the Kickstarter Terms Of Use [External Link]:
"The creator is solely responsible for fulfilling the promises made in their project. If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers."

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: CatKillerThere's some jank at install time and the text is tiny, but it otherwise works well.

Sleeping Dogs: DE or original? I've got the original version on Steam and the DE on GOG. The DE works after activating a virtual desktop without issues and the original apparently not.

Definitive Edition. The install-time jank was that whatever hooks games usually have to seamlessly pull in the redistributables this game doesn't use, so it popped up a Windows-style window that needed the touchscreen to get rid of. After that it ran fine.

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Quoting: tgurrPromising something in a Kickstarter campaign and then not fulfulling the promise is another cup of tea though but at least they offer refunds.

If they'd promised it, not delivered, and not given a refund, that would be fraud, so... they had to give refunds.

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Quoting: elmapulif your numbers are right, then steam might have half a billion users nowadays... i dont think this is correct, last time i checked it was something arround 120 millions or maybe 160 millions, but not even close to 500 millions.

there is something wrong here, either most steam deck users install windows on their machines, or linux marketshare is wrong or steamOS marketshare...

Nope. Very few users install Windows on the Deck. The Deck is about 1/400th of the Steam market (AMD Custom GPU 0405 is the Deck's GPU). Steam is just huge. The hundred-and-something million is just how many people happened to sign in during a particular month - the monthly active users. The total number of users is bigger.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyOK, so 3 million units. And, how many Linux desktop users are on Steam? It's certainly significant from our point of view. These are the kinds of figures that make Linux a bigger target for game development than Mac.

Not directly. March's figures are still broken by double-counting China, so I'll use February's. Mac was at 2.37% and Linux was at 1.27%, of which 21.05% was the Deck. So the 1.6 million represents roughly 0.27 percentage points of the Steam market*. If we add another 1.9 million, that's an additional roughly 0.32 percentage points, which would take us up to 1.59%. There's still a way to go until we're a bigger market than Mac. Of course Macs come with all sorts of hoops to jump through to develop for, so we'll have an easier time being a better market than Mac. We're arguably there already.

*(obviously this is only an orders-of-magnitude guesstimate; remember to warm up before attempting hand-waving so vigorous)

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