Quoting: tmtvlYou loved The Spirits Within? I was baffled at why it was called Final Fantasy aside from 'we have the trademark, might as well slap it on this completely unrelated project and try to get more eyeballs' (the Baldur's Gate 3 strategy).

Having no experience with the games themselves, I enjoyed the quality of the animation and the story really resonated with both my wife and I.

I have to admit that afterwards I started to look more closely at the games and was somewhat confused because there didn't seem to be a counterpart in the games themselves. It had nothing in common with Advent Children, which I bought on DVD and only watched once.

I am surprised to learn that Advent Children was considered the highly successful movie while The Spirits Within was deemed a failure. I guess because I am not invested in the Final Fantasy franchise, I've always felt it was the other way around.

Looking back at it now, they should have just titled it The Spirits Within and left Final Fantasy out of the title. I see your point there.

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I've never played any of the Final Fantasy games. I always thought of the franchise as mostly a console thing, and I've always played my games on PC. Never got around to it once there were PC releases.

Loved the first animated movie, though!

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Quoting: MarlockIIRC the code is opensource, but "Bazzite" is a trademark and he is part-owner of that trademark.

The trademark is not held by the open source project but by the individuals contributing to it? How strange.

Given that he was technically no longer a member of the project, I wonder if GPD can sue him for misrepresentation and fraud?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyBy which you agree that yes, it is a tax.

Not at all. Taxation is something done by government (usually on net earnings, property values and/or final purchase price). It is a gross misinterpretation of the meaning of "profit" to associate it with taxes.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway. How much profit?

What gives the public the right to tell any business how much profit they are allowed to make? As long as the business pays its taxes, it's none of the public's business. Yes, most countries have laws to deal with monopolies, but Valve is NOT a monopoly. You said so yourself.

How much experience do you have with business operations? Not that you likely care but I have nearly 35 years of practical business experience in all aspects of retail operations (not that corporate bureaucratic nonsense they teach at academic institutions). From your comments here, your knowledge of business practices and business math seems rather lacking. What you are talking about has nothing to do with the retail distribution channel, which is what governs Valve's business model (and any retailer, for that matter).

I don't want to go into a point by point analysis, so this is the last I'm going to say about this matter. You are, after all, entitled to your own opinion, whether or not I agree with it.

As always, it was good debating with you ...

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: pb

Quoting: drenAgain this is misleading. Once you download your game from GOG, you can completely remove them from the scenario of installation at all. You have the files, you can install it on as many computers as you want and you don't have to login to play the game. You absolutely cannot do that with Steam.

You absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

Have you read the link you provided? Steamcmd is nothing like a GOG offline installer. You are not downloading the game installer through Steamcmd, you are installing the game! It is just an incredibly convoluted command line version of the Steam client (for which, the client is likely the GUI). Yes, you can run some of the games without the client but that does NOT make it the equivalent of an offline installer. There is one fundamental difference: if you lose Internet access or Valve's servers go down, you cannot install the game!

This is not entirely true. Once a game have been downloaded but before it has been installed, there is a game installer.exe in the game path. If the game is released DRM free by the publisher you can copy this .exe to wherever you like and install it there instead.

Quoting: dren

Quoting: pb

Quoting: drenAgain this is misleading. Once you download your game from GOG, you can completely remove them from the scenario of installation at all. You have the files, you can install it on as many computers as you want and you don't have to login to play the game. You absolutely cannot do that with Steam.

You absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

@Caldathras is absolutely correct. GOG provides standalone executable installers, steam has no such feature. Games being DRM-free on steam isn't normal. Devs can and sometimes do add Steamworks DRM after initial releases, etc. The permanence of the Steam install being DRM-free isn't there. Also the Steam installation doesn't include other necessary dependencies, such as DirectX or C++ redistributables, that are included as part of an actual installer. Steam also doesn't advertise or tell you which games are DRM-free. On GOG EVERY game is DRM-free with all dependencies included as part of the installer (both Windows and Linux). In a lot of cases, these DRM-free directories still need the Steam client to act as a wrapper or handle activation. With GOG, you don't even need to use Galaxy, you can just download the installer from the website and install it where you want. This is why Heroic is able to provide direct access to your GOG library and is able to install everything you need for a game. It just feels like you are trying to make an equivalency argument that isn't actually equivalent.

But they do (if the game publisher have decided to release their game DRM free on Steam). In that case there is a perfectly fine old time .exe installer at the game location in Steam.

Well, see, this is an important tidbit of information. I was not aware of that. Here's a question or two. Does the installer remain on your system after the game is installed? If not, with the installation being automated, how do you get to that installer and back it up before it is removed?

Finally, while this is closer to parity with GOG's offline installers, it is still not the same. It is more like obtaining the installer through the back door whereas GOG is giving it to you upfront. At best, it is a loophole in the process. Most people are not going to be aware of this factoid, so few would be able to take advantage of it.

Thank you for telling me about it, though.

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Quoting: The_Real_Bitterman*Cries in Kepler GPU*

My other laptop is a Kepler. I sympathize.

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Quoting: clatterfordslim

Quoting: CaldathrasAnd I've been holding off on 580.126.09 because someone here mentioned problems with XFCE.

Yes it was me I think. Screen flickering in Xfce and Cinnamon. To fix screen flickering, make sure you setup composition pipeline in Nvidia Settings.
Next put this command into your terminal and reboot.
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -s off
What this command does is switch off vblank in Xfwm4.
That is why the screen and opened apps start flickering, vblank needs to be switched off. Once rebooted Flickering gone forever.

Thanks for this.

I sort of accidentally installed it last night. I haven't experienced the problems you've described but Mangohud (v0.81.0) was behaving rather bizarrely afterwards. I need to look into further.

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Quoting: amataiFrom what I understood, Antheas claims part ownership of the brand and will block attempts to change the trademark rule to allow its use by hardware vendor.

I don't understand. This is an open source project. At the risk of seeming naive, how can any one individual claim "part ownership"? Doesn't that kind of go against the whole concept of open source development?

I also fail to understand how that could prevent the current Bazzite team from working with GPD if they so choose.

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: drenAgain this is misleading. Once you download your game from GOG, you can completely remove them from the scenario of installation at all. You have the files, you can install it on as many computers as you want and you don't have to login to play the game. You absolutely cannot do that with Steam.

You absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

Have you read the link you provided? Steamcmd is nothing like a GOG offline installer. You are not downloading the game installer through Steamcmd, you are installing the game! It is just an incredibly convoluted command line version of the Steam client (for which, the client is likely the GUI). Yes, you can run some of the games without the client but that does NOT make it the equivalent of an offline installer. There is one fundamental difference: if you lose Internet access or Valve's servers go down, you cannot install the game!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: williamjcm

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe basic question is whether the 30% cut generates windfall profits. If it does, then lawsuits that successfully reduce that cut will leave Valve in place but reduce costs for the consumer.

It most definitely will not. It's not a "tax" that gets added on top of the game price like Tim Sweeney would want you to think.

Really? What is it then? Monopoly money?

Profit?

Good, old-fashioned profit. Be it gross or net, it is the lifeblood that a business needs to survive. It is the incentive that motivates the business owner to open the business and continue offering the products and services year after year. This is not a government department, after all. If all the business does is break even, where is the incentive for the business owner to continue investing his time and resources over the years?

Note: I am not talking about corporations. Although they are similar, they are not the same "animal".

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