Unfortunately, Nintendo has so many patents in their arsenal, that they could have sued half of the game industry back in 2017 [External Link] if they really wanted to. We can at least be thankful that they generally don't go after Nintendo-style games, or games inspired by Nintendo games.

So I believe the real reason Nintendo went after Palworld is because, as many have pointed out, some of the Palworld creature designs are blatant ripoffs of well-known Pokémon creature designs.

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On the other hand, SEGA did announce some new games for their IPs during last year's Game Awards, so I wonder if this delisting has anything to do with that.

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Quoting: PyrateAnd just a couple days ago I was praising this collection as a great way for a company to provide ROMs for retro titles.

No kidding. And just as I got the retro gaming/console emulation bug, too! I had also been planning to save up this month, but so much for that!

I really hate when video game companies do these sorts of things!

What a sad day for video game preservation... :sad:

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This article serves as a good reminder of a significant reason to avoid multiplayer games.

Still, stuff like this is only going to hurt Linux in the end. Imagine someone wants to switch away from Windows; then they hear they can't use Photoshop Affinity Photo; and they can't play games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Roblox, Apex Legends, Valorant, etc.

If we're lucky, Linux users will still be able to play these games via cloud gaming services like GeForce NOW, even if using such services requires a sizable sacrifice in terms of control and privacy.

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Gosh, whenever you hear of a PC game being released only on a particular storefront, it's usually the Epic Games Store, because they are known to bribe game developers and publishers with exclusivity deals. Makes you wonder why they decided to release only on GOG.

Even though GOG is a more established storefront which has been around longer, and offers more features than the Epic Games Store, IIRC GOG doesn't really offer any benefits over Steam. For example, AFAIK both Steam and GOG take a 30% cut from the developers' earnings from their sales. In addition, one of the requirements for releasing on GOG is to be "DRM-Free".

To help GOG grow? Or is there something else going on behind the scenes between Argonaut and GOG?

And maybe the game will come to Steam in the future. For example, the Kingdom Hearts PC releases are now available on Steam, but that's only after Square Enix decided to change their strategy because they weren't earning enough from selling on the Epic Store.

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I think a big reason developers choose non-free licenses for their video game source code releases is that they don't want other developers releasing cheap knockoff titles, whilst putting in little effort to make their own derivative/knockoff substantially different from the original.

We also cannot ignore the elephant in the room [External Link]. Most people don't want their code, writing, or artwork being used as AI training data.

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Bullshit like this is one reason I consider myself a proud member of the PC master race. Some of my other reasons include video game preservation, video game ownership, lack of "generations" (AKA backwards incompatibility), and modding.

Microsoft doesn't have total control over MS-DOS game development, and MS-DOS games can be found in places other than the Microsoft Store. In fact, many classic DOS games are available on GOG and Steam, and there are even some newfangled DOS games on itch.io.

Emulating MS-DOS requires DOSBox or a fork of it. No illegally-ripped console firmware, cartridge ROMs, or keys from a TPM are needed to run DOS games with DOSBox.

Microsoft doesn't restrict Windows game developers either. I believe that's a significant attraction for independent game developers, since they don't have to pay a fee or sign a non-disclosure agreement to develop for Windows.

The organizations and companies that support individual Linux distributions don't place restrictions on third-party developers either. However, most proprietary software developers don't release for Linux because the market share and fragmentation of Linux is generally not profitable.

In addition, emulation and API copying is 100% legal under United States law.

PC game developers can still sell their old games on modern digital storefronts, and many do! And even if players experience some technical issues playing the game on modern hardware, that doesn't make the game unplayable.

I don't have a Switch, but I've heard Nintendo is now making their beloved retro classics only available through the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service. In addition, console game developers generally have to re-release their games for each new console generation, due to the backwards incompatibility.

Furthermore, while some companies like Capcom may try to stop modders from making mods for their games, that doesn't make game mods as a whole illegal, and some very cool companies like id Software actually encourage it!

Modding a console game entails getting access to the game data from whatever storage medium the console uses. The act of ripping a game from a console disc or cartridge may be illegal under the laws of your country, and I've also heard that devices that rip game data from console cartridges are illegal.

I wish video games were easier to preserve! Unfortunately, the interactive nature of video games means that most video games are going to be tightly coupled to one computer hardware/software platform or another, unless the game in question has a public source code release (most do not).

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To me, this serves as a good example for why I wouldn't trust game developers to support Linux with a native build, unless the game and/or engine is Open Source.

Even if a certain game developer uses a FOSS game engine that supports Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean the game will support Linux.

Also, it's incredibly hard for game developers to release their source code in this day and age.

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There's also Piccu Engine [External Link], a fork of the Descent 3 open source engine, with several QOL improvements over the original.

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Sort of. Maybe I'm just fearmongering, but don't forget that other game industry companies have been making lots of shitty, greedy decisions lately.

Games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora have microtransactions and lots of bugs, thanks to Ubisoft.
Some of the studios eaten (bought) by Microsoft were shut down in May.
Good independent game studios like Mimimi are going to shut down in the near future.
As for other indie games.. There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.

Also, I haven't heard of any other indie studios hiring the recent layoffs. I do remember some former Ubisoft employees forming their own studio and developing the game Stray.

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