I believe what Eike is getting at is that there are cases in which free speech creates actual harm. There are always edge cases--the main point of free speech is to protect expression of political opinions in disagreement with either the authorities or the majority of the citizens.
But stray from politics and there are always necessary limits; a naive extension of free speech absolutism about political expression to other realms just doesn't work. Examples of speech that nobody ever worries about criminalizing: Speech intended to seduce minors, speech in the service of fraud (eg phishing), false advertising . . . speech rights can come into conflict with other rights. The question is always just where to draw the lines, not whether there are any. Personally, I've found for instance that well moderated discussion lists which draw some lines are way better than "anything goes" lists because while in theory "anything goes" allows more freedom of speech, in practice what it allows is intimidation and the tactical use of offensiveness to drive away people who aren't megacombative. Given that, it could be argued that in largely declining to draw any lines, Valve are copping out, failing to protect other things, as much as they are protecting speech.

But it's all about the specifics. I don't really see the need to put a lot of limits to "speech" in the case of offensive computer games. There are very few games I see as posing a huge issue offensiveness-wise, and those few are probably covered by Steam's "trolling" category. Everything else might cause someone who stumbled upon it with tender sensibilities some mild shock, but that's about the least important reason for limiting speech and just not good enough IMO. Further, most games that could be a problem are only offensive if they are pushed at a customer against their will. But those games aren't going to be--the headline games you just see on the front page aren't like that (unless you can't handle the basic computer game foundation that ultra-violence is OK, but then you should maybe go play scrabble), and the "recommended" games are generally only going to show "offensive" content of types your history suggests interest in. So for the most part, if you want to be offended by a game you're going to have to search for it. In which case, your problem--if someone actively goes looking for things to be offended by, they can live with what they get.

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Quoting: elmapulthat is one of the reasons why we have games with constant updates nowadays and all mobile games tend to follow this trend, even if someone manage to reverse enginering the game to pirate it, it takes time and when that happens, they update the game with new features and maybe an new drm scheme, the pirated version is always fighting to keep being updated so the margin for profit of the crackers or margin of enjoyment of pirates is reduced.

So wait, you're saying that pirates are responsible for game companies releasing updates and new features for games? I never realized pirates were so awesome!

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Quoting: edenistIconoclasts

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Arguably those open source attributes could apply equally well to polytheism. But it's certainly an appropriate joke for someone who wants "iconoclasts".

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Quoting: Lakorta

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: shigutso

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat's a good idea, but my hope is that such functionality should be made official and implemented within Wine itself.
After all, Wine's biggest problem is that is simply doesn't "just work". There's always some fiddling around required.

Not quite... all software from this page Just Works (tm):
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iappVersion-ratingOp0=5&sappVersion-ratingData0=Platinum&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true [External Link]

Well, no. My understanding is, Platinum means it works perfectly if you set the fiddly stuff correctly, not that you can ignore the fiddly stuff. In this discussion at least, I think people are using Just Works to mean you just click something and it installs properly and happens, rather than having to figure out how to configure it first.
There is probably some Platinum stuff that Just Works in that second sense as well, but plenty that doesn't. So things like this, and PlayonLinux and so on, have always been welcome initiatives and I really hope at some point one becomes really solid--achieves critical mass so most stuff is there, and is easily maintainable so it doesn't rot.

Definition of the Wine Platinum ranking: "Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation"
Gold is the one you described: "Applications that work flawlessly with some special configuration"

I stand corrected . . . partially. Presumably this means you don't need to download anything, but there's a lot of potential not-so-"special" configuration in an "out-of-the-box Wine installation". There's all these settings on tabs--which Windows version, which this, which that, and I tend to have no clue which of them matter for any given application.

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Surviving Mars sure beats the alternative (failing to survive Mars).

Never hire a Linux-using cleaning lady. Obviously, she doesn't do Windows.

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Quoting: shigutso

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat's a good idea, but my hope is that such functionality should be made official and implemented within Wine itself.
After all, Wine's biggest problem is that is simply doesn't "just work". There's always some fiddling around required.

Not quite... all software from this page Just Works (tm):
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iappVersion-ratingOp0=5&sappVersion-ratingData0=Platinum&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true [External Link]

Well, no. My understanding is, Platinum means it works perfectly if you set the fiddly stuff correctly, not that you can ignore the fiddly stuff. In this discussion at least, I think people are using Just Works to mean you just click something and it installs properly and happens, rather than having to figure out how to configure it first.
There is probably some Platinum stuff that Just Works in that second sense as well, but plenty that doesn't. So things like this, and PlayonLinux and so on, have always been welcome initiatives and I really hope at some point one becomes really solid--achieves critical mass so most stuff is there, and is easily maintainable so it doesn't rot.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPSpeaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

Yeah . . . although a lot of people use 5 or 10 star systems a little oddly. Like first, if the average rating isn't as high as the person's individual rating, they will tend to rate it 5/10 even if they think it's actually somewhat lower than that in an attempt to pull up the average; or contrariwise if they don't like it they'll rate it 1 to pull down the average. Second, there is sometimes an odd compression . . . I guess you notice it more on 10-star systems, where I've seen a tendency that 10 means excellent, 8 means mediocre, and 5 means horrible piece of shit I wouldn't pollute my precious saliva by spitting on.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Stupendous ManBig publishers buying small studios is never a good thing for the customer. Do we really want a few large publishers only and not small independent studios with creative freedom?

Yet this is the way indies usually grow into AAA studios. I'm not a fan of big companies in general, but this isn't as simple as you might think. It's entirely up to the publisher if they give developers free rein or play it safe. Usually things go to shit when the bureaucracy grows big enough that the ones making decisions have no interest in the end product beyond how much money it brings in.

Wandering off topic, I think this is why Valve seems to be somewhat odd for a big company--the top guns and ownership are mostly nerds who are still interested in nerd issues and maybe even still get their hands dirty sometimes.

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Quoting: TcheyI'm not sure i like that. Paradox may be quite Linux friendly, but they are becoming big, and big stuff tend to act like they own the world. I prefer to deal with several little studios, and that's why i mostly play indi games rather than large "AAA" ones.

I'm ambivalent about that. I don't disagree with your point as such--I'd prefer a world dominated by lots of little studios rather than a few big ones. And I'm not personally that invested in AAA games coming to Linux, but the people who say we need AAA games in order to be considered a serious gaming platform (and thus grow in market share) have a point. And the way things are with the current AAA game publishers, I'd say we're more likely to get games through Linux-friendly studios becoming AAA than by existing AAA companies becoming Linux-friendly.

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Quoting: 14At the end of the day, I barely rely on the Steam store page to find new games that I might be interested in. The avenues that make me curios of new games: GoL, Twitch, GOG, Co-Optimus.

I basically use GamingOnLinux. When a game is talked about here that seems like my kind of thing, I put it on my Steam wishlist. Never end up with Windows-only games that way!

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