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Latest Comments by rkfg
Feral Interactive are teasing a new Linux port, time to start guessing
15 Nov 2018 at 4:09 pm UTC Likes: 7

That's some self-referencing joke. The radar items are always cryptic obscurities how is this one different?!

Seriously, I hope this is SotTR. A good story-drieven stealth shooter is always welcome. I admit, the story part is never the strong side of this franchise but seriously, who cares? The graphics, gameplay and Lara <3 are good and I heard in SotTR the baddies are more lifelike and properly motivated so that's already deep. Anyway, my GPU is ready for some serious Vulkan eruption. Bring it!

Feral Interactive are asking you to send the game port suggestions again
13 Nov 2018 at 12:11 pm UTC

I'd want to watch the actual Dying Light 2 gameplay and read some reviews. They have many bold ideas there but it's always a gamble whether they work or not. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a must.

And about Denuvo, I was pleasantly surprised that Proton/Wine could run Prey with it. Part of the success is actually the restrictive Windows policies that prevent games from installing their own low level kernel drivers (like the dreaded StarForce). So the protection should be implemented purely in the userland and that can be emulated good enough. Anyway, Feral rebuild the game from the source and Denuvo AFAIK is a binary protector (and even if it's not, I guess it's trivial to clean the source up). So it's a non-issue, really.

Book of Demons no longer getting a native Linux port, developer plans on 'supporting' Steam Play (updated)
5 Nov 2018 at 4:17 pm UTC Likes: 8

Quoting: PatolaIn theory, yes, they should only support Ubuntu and SteamOS, but in practice users of different distros complain in the forums, give negative reviews and return their games as much as they have problems. So it doesn't help giving this advice, those users feel entitled to the game as much as any user of the support distributions.
This is the first time I hear about such an issue. Do you have any examples of negative reviews because the game didn't work on Arch or Gentoo? I had an impression that non-mainstream distro users (as well as most of the Linux users in general) are very eager to report the bugs and support the developers in their quest. And the reports come quite detailed also. If the game still doesn't work, they're usually quite understanding.

Book of Demons no longer getting a native Linux port, developer plans on 'supporting' Steam Play (updated)
5 Nov 2018 at 3:55 pm UTC Likes: 9

Quoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
If they can get Linux support basically for free they'd sure go for it. Especially if they don't have any personal feelings for Linux and FOSS in general (I'm not judging of course). So yeah, it's not good but considering the market share it's much better than nothing. And if they see any significant Linux share, they might reconsider.

Steam Play thoughts: A Valve game streaming service
1 Nov 2018 at 12:15 pm UTC

Quoting: ArdjeI would really love Valve to make cloud streaming possible for users doing it themselves...
In the end cloud streaming suffers from latency, so I won't be really paying anybody for renting games.
Not all games suffer that much from latency though, and I even succeeded playing a mission in Saints Row 3 on a GPD WIN with about 1..3FPS (winning from a bunch of zombies).
So I want to be able to do it, my way, on hardware I have available (or rent).
Uhhhh, you already have home streaming, why not use that? For internet that might be tricky but I succeeded with tap VPN, played Dying Light from work on my home PC using this feature. You just need to setup OpenVPN or any other software so that it provides a tap adapter (L2) and setup the IPs from the same network on both sides. No routing/gateways needed, it's all fully "transparent" for any program, broadcast just works etc. so Steam thinks you're on the same LAN and allows to stream.

Steam Play thoughts: A Valve game streaming service
1 Nov 2018 at 12:10 pm UTC Likes: 2

So we're gonna make a full circle from the fears of Windows Shop/Market walled garden to Valve's walled garden. You already know what's in the spoiler, right?

Spoiler, click me
Yeah,

It didn't quite work for OnLive, although Sony bought them and now have this thing [External Link] I've never even heard about. If they leave the streaming service as an option, it's fine by me. Considering the wide range of game prices and their quality, I imagine there could be different tiers like "basic", "indie", "AAA" or such with different minute/hour price. At least because they could optimize the hardware and power consumption based on the game you're gonna play, some cheap integrated Intel card is enough to run Rimworld but you'll need a beefy GTX for Tomb Raider, Serious Sam or Prey. So that + per minute (or hour) tariff + regional prices + play any¹ game without purchasing = could be pretty competitive.

________
¹ not really any but from those participating in this program, could be slightly dated games (2-3 years old) to boost profits because it's easier to start playing instantly without downloading and installing anything.

EA's experimental Halcyon game engine has Vulkan and Linux support
28 Oct 2018 at 9:17 pm UTC Likes: 5

Oh well, I was mostly referring to the Linus' book with that title. Hope it will grow into something bigger and all. Honestly, EA is the last company I expected to move into this direction. Bethesda would have been more logical.

EA's experimental Halcyon game engine has Vulkan and Linux support
28 Oct 2018 at 9:09 pm UTC Likes: 3

it might just be a bit of fun for the engineers.
It always starts "just for fun".

Game developer revokes a user's Steam key after negative review
20 Oct 2018 at 2:02 pm UTC

Quoting: Guestedit: To address this point:

There's no way for Steam to know if the key was paid for or just given away
Yes there is. The key can be marked as beta/preview/testing etc, or retail.
That's good, I didn't know that! Thanks.

Game developer revokes a user's Steam key after negative review
20 Oct 2018 at 12:47 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: rkfgI participated in a closed beta test of one game, the dev sent the keys to activate the game on Steam. After the test and before the actual release they were revoked. I see this as a completely legit practice, they gave it for free and took it away later. There's no way for Steam to know if the key was paid for or just given away, maybe for a limited time so I don't see why this should be explicitly disabled for all developers. Of course, if it was a paid key that's been revoked just like this it's unacceptable but it's the first such case and it must be settled with Steam support and legal means. After all, that's not the only way the dev could scam the customers, they can ban them in-game using Steam IDs or remove the game for everybody (push empty depots or such). It's not possible to prevent this reliably.
No problem with free beta keys being revoked, happens all the time, especially to me when testing Linux builds for developers.

In the case of getting a key for supporting a developer early with your money, it's absolutely mad to take it away with reasons like this.

The bit I can't get over is this:
Sorry about that, but I thought I you weren't interested in playing the game.
That's a real face-palm.
I'm not denying that this is unacceptable, both behavior and actions. I simply point to the fact that Steam can do nothing to prevent this in future. Some people here suggest to disable this revocation function for the developers but it won't solve the issue and would possibly create even more problems. On the bright side, I hope Steam will add some rules against such actions and punish the developers doing such tricks in future. Everyone would benefit from that.