Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

I'm certainly speculating, but if you want a biased source:

90% of visual novel players don't buy the game (the game was bought 50,000 times, but the patch was downloaded 500,000 times) [External Link]

Most visual novels today are released without DRM. I can think of only one visual novel localizer today that releases the game encumbered with DRM. MangaGamer previously used Soft-Denchi for its DL releases about a decade ago, but didn't include it in physical releases. Their audience helped change their mind, and many other localization companies also followed suit and now only release DRM-Free editions. Even in Japan, most physical releases are unencumbered by DRM today, with some exceptions.

Johren, on the other hand, also localizes games into English but only releases them with always-online DRM for which you only get 3 activations, after which they tell you to purchase another license. They haven't released any numbers, and I doubt they will, but they're a much larger company than most localizers as a DMM operation. Many people openly express distaste for Johren for how badly they feel they're treated as a customer, however. Limited activation, always-online DRM is something that will incense most-everyone, I suppose.

These sources are clearly biased, but do with this information what you will. I think the only thing you can conclude is that it depends on the game. I've always thought the games that don't end up having their DRM circumvented are games that few people are interested in playing.

For what it's worth, visual novels are mostly released on Windows, but there are some console and mobile releases, so PC sales make up most of the overall sales.

So 50k people bought the game and 450k pirated. Your example shows that piracy exists, ok.

But there is no data about what those numbers could have been with DRM; 100k sales and fewer pirates? 50k sales and fewer pirates? 40k sales and whatever pirates? Or did I misunderstand your comment?

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

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Quoting: dpanterGood news everyone! We will continue to make games compatible with future OSs and available for you for years to come.*

*

Spoiler, click me

Unless the OS is Linux of course, then we will continue to ignore you, fart in your general direction and revel in the tears of the several Linux gamers on the planet lolololoLLOLOLOL!!!!!11one

Obviously Linux is not a *future* OS :D

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Quoting: Lestibournes

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: LestibournesI haven't read the article yet, but before reading it this is what my opinion is:

The big steps in verification should be:
1. The developer tests the game internally.
2. The developer submits the game for review.
3. Valve tests the game.
4. Valve either certifies the game or sends the developer back to step 1, with notes on why the game failed.

Steps 1 and 2 are missing from Valve's process.

To be fair, the majority of the games on Steam are too old for the developer to want to or even exist to do anything about it.

Your idea only makes sense for games released in the last O(months) time.

Older games are more likely to work anyway, but Valve is likely focused on games that are popular or highly anticipated right now. They should be working with developers to have the games be tested like they are proper ports to a new console platform, even if that platform is Proton.

No arguments there. I was just pointing out that's not a universal solution.

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Quoting: LestibournesI haven't read the article yet, but before reading it this is what my opinion is:

The big steps in verification should be:
1. The developer tests the game internally.
2. The developer submits the game for review.
3. Valve tests the game.
4. Valve either certifies the game or sends the developer back to step 1, with notes on why the game failed.

Steps 1 and 2 are missing from Valve's process.

To be fair, the majority of the games on Steam are too old for the developer to want to or even exist to do anything about it.

Your idea only makes sense for games released in the last O(months) time.

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Quoting: asmoore82

Quoting: gabberInstalling Windows in 2022 on the Steamdeck is like installing Linux 10-15 years ago. Some parts work, some don't.

Also, exactly like installing Windows 10-15 years ago. Like 2 or 3 comments above you just said most people have no idea how difficult it can be to do a clean install of Windows especially with a retail disc and not an OEM disc. Especially 15-20 years ago!

Also, exactly like installing windows right now. You install it, then half the hardware doesn't work until you download and install drivers (and wifi is one of them, so you need to boot to Linux to get the wifi drivers first :P).

It's only Linux that once you install it, everything just works.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Cerberon

Quoting: spacemonkeyI am curious about the performance difference. But no matter the results, I will never ever install Windows.

Well a lot of games already run better on Linux, and given how vale should be able to optimize the OS specifically for the hardware and that windows will not be so optimized I would be surprised if windows is noticeably faster at anything.

there is an advantage on windows, at least on general hardware:
windows can hot-swap drivers, linux cant AFAIK.
that is quite usefull because you can use the best driver for each game or even make an driver specifically for an single game, and that do happen automatically without the user noticing.

i dont think that feature will apply to the deck, but it cant be under estimated.

nor can not having an translation layer.

You can *most definitely* hot swap drivers (i.e. kernel modules) on Linux... as long as the driver isn't busy serving a user. You might be referring to the graphics driver, which _seems_ like it can't be swapped, but that's because the GUI is using it. If you log out, you can hot swap the graphics driver too (but at that point you might as well take a 10s hit and restart).

That said, what you said doesn't make much sense. You can have per game optimizations inside the same driver, so you don't need to swap drivers. Even if you did, all that logic would be in the user-mode driver; that's the heavy part of the graphics driver which lives as a user-space library. The kernel driver is very thin. There is absolutely no problem swapping user-mode drivers on top of the same kernel-mode driver (if such a thing even made sense).

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Quoting: whizseNvidia source release on friday?

So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either:

–Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret

OR

–Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too!

YOU HAVE UNTIL FRIDAY, YOU DECIDE!

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/cybercriminals-who-breached-nvidia-issue-one-of-the-most-unusual-demands-ever/ [External Link]

It's sad really. As much as "violence" gets things _done_, it's not the right way. I'm sad to see this kind of behavior (threats) from open source advocates (though fanatic is probably the right term).

Way to kill our image.

---

Edit: I see now that they are crypto people rather, not so much open source people. Sad, but less so for us!

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Quoting: MarlockAs for mounting the Deck like an external storage via usb on a host computer, this is mostly an android/iOS aberration. In short, the same partition can't be safely mounted on 2 OSs at the same time, and those devices have unremoveable media and aren't ever actually powered off, so one has to actually mount it and serve as intermediary for the other, which carries significant overhead and limitations...

The device acting as external storage is not actually a mount operation on the part of the device, and the PC mounting it is unrelated to the device's own mount. The device can very well use its current mount to read/write whatever the PC says through USB.

The above paragraph is highly inaccurate.

Quoting: MarlockPeople expect that feature from appliances (what the Deck looks like) while on PC (what the Deck is) we have normal network shares... and those are much superior, but are consistently pushed aside from being an OS feature in android in favour of cloud solutions (same as with microSD slots being ommited in Google Nexus / Pixel phones "because Google Drive")

Two things. Copy over network is not superior to over USB, simply because it's so much slower. The Deck _could_ even turn the USB connection into a 1-to-1 network the PC could connect to, and yes, copy over that would be fine, but that's just adding extra steps.

Not sure what your gripe here is, but connecting the Deck with USB and accessing it as external storage would be the fastest, least intrusive way of moving files between it and a PC.

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Quoting: EikeOT question: I guess Windows has something comparable? (Controlling media player and YouTube replay from phone, having phone notifications on PC and vice versa, sending SMS from PC, transferring files, sending custom commands to PC, ...)

I've also heard windows is an Android accessory now, but I didn't understand, what is that comparable to here?

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