Quoting: 14

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: BlackBloodRumI used to love playing tropico. And I really appreciate the tux support. But at £101 (all dlc+game.. I'll wait for a steam sale 😂

DLC is getting out of hand. Like with all the DLC that was out for Crusader Kings II? I'm pretty sure there are a few games that when you look at them without sales and all their DLC, are like 1k...

Then you have games like WoW where they just keep releasing expansions so people have spent far more on that game, not to mention all the people that hire others to farm for them or whatever goes on there...

Video games have become such a crazy industry. Wonder if anyone had any sort of dreams back in the 70s when it all started, that it would get so huge.

DLC, expansions, subscriptions... I don't see why they're seen as a problem. If gamers are buying them, then they want to play them (or have a collection problem)! A lot of games used to be 8-14 hours and then it's over. What would you do then? You'd buy another game. Buying more content just means you are still enjoying the same world and want more of it. And it's optional. In the case of WoW, when you play a game that can eat up sooooo many hours of time, you're probably not buying and playing other games, so I don't see the big deal in spending your gaming money on a single game rather than a couple per month. The only problem I see with lots of optional content is marketing because the shopper has to figure out what's valuable to them or not. It's a little bit of a mental hurdle especially when you're trying to make a decision within the time frame of a sale. But, if you can force yourself not to worry about the addon content, just buy the base game every time and add more later when you want more. A new player coming to WoW has no reason to buy all the extra races and unlock the higher levels. Just jump into the trial version.

TL;DR Try to ignore DLC until you wish you had more content.

/rant

Bolded my issue. I want the FULL damn experience. I just don't buy the soundtracks / wallpaper stuff, unless I really want the developer to keep making more stuff for it. But that's never a guarantee. I bought all the DLC for Conan Exiles, and for the majority of them, they didn't even add anything beyond some cooler looking gear with the same stats. But seeing as the style of that game is all about who can build the cooler looking stuff, it's almost 'needed'. But the ones that are really bad are the Paradox titles where they nickle and dime the various empires / etc. Though to be fair, their soundtracks are also amazing!

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: drlambIt's about the long term here. Stadia has helped Linux game development 10X what Valve has been able to do thus far in terms of AAA studios developing for/on Linux. While you may never benefit directly from this, its benefits are there.

Uh... what?? Do you mean "Stadia has helped Linux game availability 10X what Valve has been able to do thus far"? Because the points being made above are that Stadia has only very indirect impact on actual Linux game development.

And the benefits aren't there. They probably won't be for years, and even that's assuming that all the other AAA studios don't do what CDPR did, which was to pass the buck on Vulkan entirely to another company to deal with. Which bypasses the one benefit we thought we might get from Stadia - greater engagement with Vulkan.

To be completely clear - I'll never use a streaming games service, so I'm talking here as a Linux gamer, who is wondering whether Stadia can have any useful/positive impact on my future gaming experience.

I doubt they will. I mean are they doing anything like Valve with hiring coders to actually work on Linux drivers, libraries, etc? I'm betting no. At least nothing they're sharing with the community at large. Google's whole thing has always been about using the Linux kernel for their own purposes, but not really giving us open platforms to work on.

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Quoting: Avehicle7887

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: damarrinThere’s always the option to buy a box, eg here W3 costs around 33€ from a shop. I haven’t actually looked at the box to see if it’s a steam key. It’ll be rather useless to a Linux user if not, plus there’s always the debate about whether it counts as aLinux sale or not.

I vaguely remember boxes might not count as Linux sale even with a Steam key. (I had been so proud of my box with "Linux" printed very small somewhere on the backside back then...! :cry: )

The first time I saw Linux logo on a retail game was many years ago with Unreal Tournament 2004. Much as retail boxes are becoming a thing of the past, it would be great to see Linux icon on them. :smile:

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Yeah, I ended up buying Pillars of Eternity as a physical copy, but was sad that it didn't have a penguin on it. Pretty sure that was the last game I bought as a physical copy for a computer.

Also, Wasteland 3 was 35% off Steam a few days ago, so I went ahead and snagged it since I knew they were going to release the Linux version with this coming update. Now if I can find time to play it!

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: HamishAny word on Linux support for Wasteland Remastered?

I don't think that we will ever see one, the remaster was outsourced to Krome Studios who have zero Linux experience.

Yeah, I think it's the same for the Bard's Tale remastered versions. They work fine through Proton though. Haven't tried Wasteland Remastered.

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Quoting: Linuxwarper

Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, even the fact that the Facebook VR headsets can be jailbroken, I still wouldn't buy one because it gives Zuckerberg more money.

I wouldn't ever touch Stadia because it's Google. I mean how many projects have they put out there then went 'meh, we're bored of this now' and shut down?

And Google is somehow much better? The problem isn't that they shutdown projects, they are the problem. I've seen many sites and services respect GDPR. But Google? They have already opted you into everything when you use their services. And when you click to opt out they add in a extra layer of barrier that is a prompt asking you if you are sure. Making the process of protecting yourself from their data collecting cumbersome and tiring.

Their way is a proprietary and anti free way. Just because they deal with open source and Linux doesn't mean their values align with what users of FOSS distributions love. It's not about closed or open. Even closed source software can be good as long as it respects users choices and privacy. So you can provide open source software but that doesn't make the provider a champion of FOSS principles.

Ha, did you miss the part about me saying I'd never use Stadia because it's Google? I just didn't mention that I don't like Google because of all the things you mention. I stay away from Chrome for the same reasons. Google is full of suck. I use DuckDuckGo everywhere as well. So yeah, we're on the same page :P

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjeBehind every heartless corporation is of course the actual developers who are people who are generally very creative and are creating worlds for us to run around in and find bugs and complain about and mod and overall enjoy. Sure CDPR is a very wealthy corporation that is that way because of some very successful games. So yeah, the heart and soul of the coders is still there. The crunch time is because games that are this huge need deadlines or it would probably never be releases, and you know... people need to get paid.

Do you think the same of every corporation? How about Facebook developers? Or maybe EA and Ubisoft? Should we worry about their "heart and soul" when we complain about their business practices? After a point, there's a clear separation between employees and management, and my criticism was clearly aimed at the people making the business decisions.

I'm not sending hate mail to their technical support, you know, or claiming that their programmers and artists are to blame. I'm not that silly. I simply don't buy stuff I don't want to support. And I do avoid supporting companies who take advantage of their employees and/or customers.

To be fair, if you're a programmer and you get hired on at Facebook at this point in time, you know what you're getting into. If you had started out there and thought the vision for the company sounded great and then you just got so involved in it and the years had passed you by, I could still kind of see how you'd have this 'vision' of what it was supposed to be and feel you could make a better difference to the direction from within. So yeah there could still be some 'good' people there. Or maybe they indoctrinated their coders like Scientologists do and they are just too afraid to leave!
Regardless, it generally isn't the coders and such that are the 'evil' ones, but the upper management that generally have no clue, and only see $$$. Cyberpunk 2077 is clearly a work of love and they really tried to do a great job of getting the genre correct and following the RPG it's based upon. Just like the Witcher Series seems (I haven't read the books) to be a labor of love to put in all the little details into it.

Quoting: slaapliedjeLook at Croteam, you know there was someone there that had a love of Linux, so they started porting all of their games over to Linux. But then something happened to that employee, and now Serious Sam 4 was not released for Linux. That doesn't mean the programmers didn't necessarily want to not support Linux, they just decided based on time and being able to get it done or not. That still makes some of the more vocal Linux people get all pissed off and claim they'll never bother supporting them again, etc. This is the wrong way to do it. People just need to simply let them know that it's a shame that they're not releasing for Linux, and simply not buy the game. The messed up thing is there is no standard that people follow here, and simply buy Cyberpunk because it's THE game that everyone wants right now.

Quoting: tuubiYeah, I agree with all of this. Doesn't have much to do with what I said before, or with how a larger and more corporate game dev like CDPR works. Or at least it didn't. Don't know how Devolver's recent acquisition of Croteam changes things, but I doubt it's still nearly at the same level. Anyway, I'm not one of the people who gets pissy at developers when they don't support Linux, so you're barking up the wrong tree there. I bought and enjoyed Witcher 2 on Linux BTW, and I'd very much love to see Talos Principle 2 some day.

Yeah, I wasn't particularly saying you were. Just pointing out what happened.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRumI used to love playing tropico. And I really appreciate the tux support. But at £101 (all dlc+game.. I'll wait for a steam sale 😂

DLC is getting out of hand. Like with all the DLC that was out for Crusader Kings II? I'm pretty sure there are a few games that when you look at them without sales and all their DLC, are like 1k...

Then you have games like WoW where they just keep releasing expansions so people have spent far more on that game, not to mention all the people that hire others to farm for them or whatever goes on there...

Video games have become such a crazy industry. Wonder if anyone had any sort of dreams back in the 70s when it all started, that it would get so huge.

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Quoting: Linuxwarper

Quoting: drlambI took your question as Stadia vs. Steam, apologies.

In the question of GoG vs. Steam I agree with both of you.

If it hasn't been clear, I honestly have a really bad feeling about Stadia. Consider this, do you want GOG on Windows to flourish or Stadia on Linux? GOG is a drm free platform while Stadia is as close to drm sun as you can get. Yes, I know Stadia is most likely excellent streaming but at what cost? Vulkan renderer for Cyberpunk on Steam/GOG is likely not happening. So where did we benefit with that game? Didn't we expect Stadia to help native development or at very least make Proton compatibility better by devs using Vulkan? That didn't happen.

It's not a uncommon thing though. People trade their rights away for convenience all the time. Then later when companies who provided the convenience do something they don't like, they are then surprised. Facebook and their VR headsets being cheap as opposed to waiting to buy VR from Valve a company that is much better than Facebook. I rather wait with VR than buy from Facebook. I also will wait for a better streaming service from Valve or a other company than use one from a company that uses open source but often clashes with FOSS ideals.

Yeah, even the fact that the Facebook VR headsets can be jailbroken, I still wouldn't buy one because it gives Zuckerberg more money.

I wouldn't ever touch Stadia because it's Google. I mean how many projects have they put out there then went 'meh, we're bored of this now' and shut down?

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: The_Aquabatit surprises me taking into account how buggy Cyberpunk currently is. It's a bad sign that devs are getting away with buggy releases imho.

This is nothing new. Many years ago, I read an article in PC Gamer titled "Best and Worst Gaming Trends of 1996", and the top worst trend was games being released in a bug ridden and unfinished state.

Yeah, it isn't like the old days pre-Internet when a company couldn't risk the reputation of releasing something buggy as crap, it was too hard to get things patched.

I'm shocked that one of the few games I decided to register, Ultima IX, they actually sent me an update CD to patch in DirectX acceleration!

In this day of digital distribution, they more or less can send out zero day patches to try to fix more obvious things. Granted they also can keep selling DLC to 'warrant that we keep developing the same program'. The problem I usually have with DLC is the pricing model is usually pretty extreme. The only one that suckered me into enough to get it all is Conan Exiles, but my brother and I put in a lot of hours playing that!

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjePour your heart and soul into something and just have fans rip you a new one.

To be fair, this applies much better to tiny indie devs than big business like CDPR. Their billionaire CEO might get grilled by some investors for the bad press, but in the end they'll be all laughing all the way to the bank. If you've already made a nice profit from pre-orders after a successful hype campaign, who cares about some heckling from the peanut gallery.

Well, if you recall people were sending death threats to them for releasing a buggy Witcher 2 version for Linux!

Indie developers tend to have a much smaller audience and hopefully not as deeply disturbed gamers playing their stuff. The anticipation for games at this level is also much lower. Cyberpunk 2077 has had a HUGE amount of anticipation for it for years, and the delay triggered those same death threat level douche bags.

Hmm... Reading this, you'd almost expect that there's a correlation of some sort between the amount of marketing and hype and the amount of disappointed people if you don't manage to meet all the expectations this hype has created.

No but seriously, of course it's bad that there's an abundance of immature idiots who get all bent out of shape when things don't go their way, but that has little to do with legitimate complaints about a faulty product. You have to admit that at least some of the bad press CDPR are getting is justified. And I just have a hard time seeing how your "heart and soul" comment applies to a corporation known for their punishing crunch time practices.

Behind every heartless corporation is of course the actual developers who are people who are generally very creative and are creating worlds for us to run around in and find bugs and complain about and mod and overall enjoy. Sure CDPR is a very wealthy corporation that is that way because of some very successful games. So yeah, the heart and soul of the coders is still there. The crunch time is because games that are this huge need deadlines or it would probably never be releases, and you know... people need to get paid.

Look at Croteam, you know there was someone there that had a love of Linux, so they started porting all of their games over to Linux. But then something happened to that employee, and now Serious Sam 4 was not released for Linux. That doesn't mean the programmers didn't necessarily want to not support Linux, they just decided based on time and being able to get it done or not. That still makes some of the more vocal Linux people get all pissed off and claim they'll never bother supporting them again, etc. This is the wrong way to do it. People just need to simply let them know that it's a shame that they're not releasing for Linux, and simply not buy the game. The messed up thing is there is no standard that people follow here, and simply buy Cyberpunk because it's THE game that everyone wants right now.

Can't say I always do that, but more and more I think 'Oh, I would like this game. Is it for Linux? okay, it is not, so I won't buy it because I have enough games.' Or if it IS for Linux, I'll probably buy it and figure I'll eventually play it. Granted sometimes I'll just buy a game because it looks interesting and is on sale.

What it comes down to, new AMD and nVidia cards are hard to come buy, and Cyberpunk 2077 really deserves to be played on a newer GPU. So may as well wait until you can get one, because the damn cards won't be available for a few months, and that'll let CDPR get the bugs ironed out :)

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