The hero kind of reminds me of the Ballad of Dan [External Link].

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Slender Threads, huh? So it's a game about finding slimming clothes?

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Quoting: Desum

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Desum

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: DesumYes, like those half dozen scholars interested in stories like Beowulf other ancient works.

Yes, exactly like. And I was serious when I said I think scholarship is important. I've taken Beowulf courses myself. But nonetheless, you were giving an overstated impression of your point.
(In fact, I probably like copyright less than you do; it's an antiquated system intended to preserve the profits and control of owners of early industrial revolution printing presses. To this day it remains mainly a tool for top-down class warfare, but now it's a tool poorly adapted to current technologies. There are other possible models for encouraging and supporting creative work. But IMO the biggest problems with the current copyright model aren't really about the deep future)

Copyright paired with a short duration is worth the trade for the works in the arts it generates. But that's another topic. If you are in favor of doing away with copyright in total, whatever issue is there you could have with piracy? Even I don't advocate making unauthorized copies of games less than twenty years old and passing them around. But without any copyright, that is exactly what one could do.

You're reading into my words. I never said a thing about piracy, pro or con. Something can be true and yet there can be false arguments for it; I can agree that something is true but still insist that some specific reason has nothing to do with why. So for instance, I believe the world is round, but if someone was trying to convince a flat earther by saying that obviously, people's heads are round and God made the world in our (heads') image, I'd be saying hang on a moment.
So no, I'm not arguing against piracy, I'm just saying a particular argument you made for it is overblown. In fact I'm not particularly bothered by piracy as a rule, although I don't think it's a cut and dried question. For instance, I become a lot more uneasy if it's piracy of small developers' stuff. And I do think there is some value in sticking to the law until it can be changed, even if it's not a good law . . . although there are limits. And I'm not in favour of replacing copyright with nothing, I'm in favour of replacing it with something else. I could discuss some suggestions for that something else, but it would get pretty wordy. But without any alternative in place or even very widespread perception that there could be alternatives, I will have to accept copyright limping along a while longer. On the other hand, piracy helps make the current copyright regime gradually less viable, which is fine by me . . . so yeah, my views on it are complicated.

Oh, preserving cultural artifacts is an overblown reason? M'kay. Are video games the only thing you feel that way about?

Mmm, I think this conversation is over.

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Quoting: Desum

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: DesumYes, like those half dozen scholars interested in stories like Beowulf other ancient works.

Yes, exactly like. And I was serious when I said I think scholarship is important. I've taken Beowulf courses myself. But nonetheless, you were giving an overstated impression of your point.
(In fact, I probably like copyright less than you do; it's an antiquated system intended to preserve the profits and control of owners of early industrial revolution printing presses. To this day it remains mainly a tool for top-down class warfare, but now it's a tool poorly adapted to current technologies. There are other possible models for encouraging and supporting creative work. But IMO the biggest problems with the current copyright model aren't really about the deep future)

Copyright paired with a short duration is worth the trade for the works in the arts it generates. But that's another topic. If you are in favor of doing away with copyright in total, whatever issue is there you could have with piracy? Even I don't advocate making unauthorized copies of games less than twenty years old and passing them around. But without any copyright, that is exactly what one could do.

You're reading into my words. I never said a thing about piracy, pro or con. Something can be true and yet there can be false arguments for it; I can agree that something is true but still insist that some specific reason has nothing to do with why. So for instance, I believe the world is round, but if someone was trying to convince a flat earther by saying that obviously, people's heads are round and God made the world in our (heads') image, I'd be saying hang on a moment.
So no, I'm not arguing against piracy, I'm just saying a particular argument you made for it is overblown. In fact I'm not particularly bothered by piracy as a rule, although I don't think it's a cut and dried question. For instance, I become a lot more uneasy if it's piracy of small developers' stuff. And I do think there is some value in sticking to the law until it can be changed, even if it's not a good law . . . although there are limits. And I'm not in favour of replacing copyright with nothing, I'm in favour of replacing it with something else. I could discuss some suggestions for that something else, but it would get pretty wordy. But without any alternative in place or even very widespread perception that there could be alternatives, I will have to accept copyright limping along a while longer. On the other hand, piracy helps make the current copyright regime gradually less viable, which is fine by me . . . so yeah, my views on it are complicated.

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Quoting: DesumYes, like those half dozen scholars interested in stories like Beowulf other ancient works.

Yes, exactly like. And I was serious when I said I think scholarship is important. I've taken Beowulf courses myself. But nonetheless, you were giving an overstated impression of your point.
(In fact, I probably like copyright less than you do; it's an antiquated system intended to preserve the profits and control of owners of early industrial revolution printing presses. To this day it remains mainly a tool for top-down class warfare, but now it's a tool poorly adapted to current technologies. There are other possible models for encouraging and supporting creative work. But IMO the biggest problems with the current copyright model aren't really about the deep future)

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Quoting: Desum

Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.

Hundreds of years from now, it will be thanks to "pirates" that people will be able to play the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. NOT the large corporations who cannot even be trusted as custodians of their own source code. "Piracy" isn't even a necessary evil, it is an absolute good for humanity in the long run because of the oppressive copyright scheme we had foisted on us.

Hundreds of years from now, maybe half a dozen historians will be interested in playing the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. And that's assuming civilization survives the next 40 years. Mind you, I think scholarship is important, I'm just saying--in terms of ordinary people, in hundreds of years they'll want to play their games, with maybe a little vogue for playing those retro games from only (hundreds - 20) of years in the future.
(Well, maybe the Koreans will still be playing Starcraft, kind of the way we still play chess. In competitive matches they will ceremoniously have a drink of tea before the match, except for reasons nobody remembers they will have to chant "Do the Dew!" after the first sip)

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I hate trailers for this kind of game. They want the trailer to go fast like a shooter, so they zoom everything past you too fast to tell what's going on or read any of the cards.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: fagnerlnJust a question, how good is EAC? I know that VAC has a lot of vulnerabilities, and there's cheaters in all valve's games.

It's curious how fast EAC conquested the market, and most of the newer games have it.

It's really "cheater-free"?

I think it's more like a virus scanner. It weeds out the easy to catch stuff. I've heard plenty of reports from cheaters in games that have anti-cheat (any kind). While some reports might be sore losers, I have no doubt there are people with enough time on their hands to beat it. Just like any other cracking, it becomes a sport in itself.

If it's that weak then why can't we just convince the dang thing it's talking to the kernel even though it isn't? Sure, that might not be an ideal solution from the game developers' point of view, but hey, if they don't like it they can make Linux versions of their games.

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Can't argue with the price.

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Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: MohandevirGoogle Stadia... Atari VCS... I still wonder if we'll ever see a Linux gaming system that starts with a "Bang! Nailed it!".

It's not impossible... Sony's Playstation is similar to a BSD platform... They did it.

They did it because they could legally own the underlying pre-existing operating system, and because it's relatively easy to support uniform hardware of dedicated vendors with drivers. It did not help people wanting to play games on their BSD boxes.
To support Desktop Linux means wanting to support open gaming on a wide variety of hardware and drivers.

Totally... Still, I'm wondering what would have happened if Valve decided to go all in in the Console market with a Steam Machine initiative like Microsoft's Xbox. I mean, with a dedicated Steam Machine store that's a subset of what you may find in the desktop client (100% Linux/Proton and controller supported titles only) and optimized for the Steam Machine (dedicated hardware built by Valve)... But the games you buy on the Steam Machines' store are then available and synced on any other desktop clients...

Well we'll never know, I guess...

Maybe Valve is sort of "all in" already. The question is what they want to achieve.
I think you have to look at the revenue side and the expenditure side. Someone who wants to market a closed console system like XBox, has to spend money to solve a manageable technical problem. The more defined the hardware and OS to be supported, the smaller the amount of money needed. Much more money is needed to get developers to support the console with games and to establish the platform on the market. In return, the owner of the platform earns an exclusive share on the software, while the hardware is often sold at a loss in the beginning.
Valve seems to pursue (or have to pursue) the exact opposite goal with its Linux initiative. An open system consisting of various hardware and OS variants, which even starts the (partly outdated) software of other platforms, sometimes even coming from other distribution platforms. It is the approach which needs the biggest technical effort, but has the advantage of lots of existing software. They get money for all they sell on the Steam shop and support the software they already sold. The Steam Machine plus Steam Controller could have been an attempt to standardize the hardware and the controller concept. This didn't work very well, baybe partly because the Steam Machines weren't nessessary to use the software.
I also see the VCS as a kind of in-between thing with a uniform controller concept for Atari retro software and the possibility for other more open uses, which probably will be very limited considering the performance of the hardware, and from which Atari won't earn anything or at least not much.

You got my point. Thing is Valve tried a "middle" solution that resulted in a confusing offer... Was it to bring PC gamers to the console market, or console gamers to the PC market? They failed at both. Nobody knew who it was for.

I think it could have been possible to create a pure Linux based console (SteamOS, remember?), based on one or two sets of x64 PC hardware built by Valve (Just like the Atari VCS) and support the PC market as two separate offers, that would benefit both, software side (it's all open source afterall); one for the console gamers and one for the PC gamers. Yes, it requires more investments and that's what I would have liked to see. More investments also means more determination.

This said, don't get me wrong, Valve is doing awesome things for Linux on the desktop and I'm really thankful for that, but for the Steam Machine thing, they seem to have got it off the door, and never looked at it again. Like they knew, from the start, that it would fail. Just maintaining SteamOS looked like it became a burden, early on.

But I'm no insider and I don't want to underestimate the work of anyone. The guys who worked directly on the project have all my admiration (PLGriffais, Timothee Besset, JVert and others I can't remember)... It's just my impressions.

My point is: If Valve did create an open console with a narrow set of hardware and just 64bit Linux, then most pre existing software on Steam would not run on it, and the software made for this platform would not nessessarily run on existing Steam-users Linux boxes. I don't think such a platform would take off any more than Steam Machines did.

I really don't see why this should be true . . . unless maybe by "just 64bit Linux" you mean leaving out 32 bit compatibility libraries, but I can't imagine Valve doing that since Steam itself needs them.
I mean, my computer has "a narrow set of hardware" (specifically: one set) and runs 64 bit Linux, and lots of pre-existing software on Steam runs on it. And I've never even used Proton! Once you add up the Linux-native, the stuff that works well in Proton, Dosbox and Boxtron, not to mention a few more specialized engines (plus, these days, for better or worse it'd run Stadia stuff because everything does), I don't see why one solid hardware configuration shouldn't be able to run pretty major metric buttloads of stuff.
The major problems with Steam Machines were not, even then, that there weren't enough games in terms of numbers. The problems were lack of multimedia integration, lack of polish/finish, insufficient big high profile current AAA games, lack of a massive marketing push, and price. And some technical issues around graphics and drivers.
Most of those were issues around Valve not doing a great job with the release, basically. The other issues are significantly smaller now, although they are not gone. They wanted Wine to handle the missing AAA games, and Wine was not ready to do that; but currently, Wine/Proton is getting close. When Proton handles anti-cheat, I think the technical underpinnings would be there for a re-do of Steam Machines which could succeed if Valve took it seriously and executed well (and dropped a major wad of cash on marketing). I'm not totally expecting them to do that, just saying they could.

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