Could be any number of half finished games, but probably DA Inquisition, possibly testing it with various wine/proton builds.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: etonbearsI would expect that a high proportion of your Steam titles could be easily recovered if the service disappeared, so long as you have kept a copy, since you may no longer be able to download.

Just an educated guess: Chances are that they are the same games that are playable in offline mode, and there are quite a lot of them.

Probably more, depending on how each game works. If necessary, you can work out what game does and replace the bits you don't want. Machine code is not easy to read, but it is perfectly transparent. It can be reversed to assembler trivially, and to higher level call structures with a little more work. Stepping through the code with debugging and profiling tools allows you to find the parts you don't want to execute and overwrite with a jump instruction to where you wish to continue. Sometimes all you need to do is replace a dynamic library with an equivalent with do-nothing function calls. This would be the case for anything just requesting steam services as authentication/DRM.

The inability to truly obfuscate software is why malware and piracy are so rampant, and why DRM is nothing more than a delaying tactic.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt's pretty simple for me.

I already have a Steam account.

I already have over 200 games in Steam.

I have no desire to see Steam suffer, because any threat to Steam is a treat to my game library.

Steam is run by Valve. Valve heavily supports Linux, more so than any commercial entity would while thinking rationally and I am infinitely grateful to them as a result.

Exclusives aren't competition, exclusives are the opposite of competition. I refuse to be forced to use a platform due to exclusives.

I wouldn't buy a game from a store that doesn't even have a native Linux client, even if I was interested in shopping elsewhere.

What cut Valve takes from devs is irrelevant to me, as Steam's prices are usually better than what I get in retail stores, they run frequent specials with great discounts.

Steam's service is fantastic imo, and I am not on board with the mindset of 'Everything needs to be redesigned every 2 years to stay cool', that's not actually user friendly at all. If something is already great, it doesn't need to be redesigned, it just needs to be refined and Valve have been refining Steam for a decade. It's almost perfect the way it is.

Fortnite needs to die as soon as possible to cut off Epic's source of revenue, I can't believe I use to think they were an OK company.

Great post. I can't believe @Shmerl is holding his/her(?) tongue over this thread so well, because of course not only is the shoe on the other foot (exclusives outside of Steam), but also you've raise the excellent point that a threat to Steam/Valve is indeed a threat to your carefully horded (and paid-for) steam library. We're just renting those titles (permanently) rather than owning them.

Is Epic running the same gig? Or can you download a DRM-free version of their titles for play without the need for the Epic launcher? Knowing Epic, I'd expect both a forced launcher AND draconian, bullshit DRM on everything. In fact, isn't Metro getting the Denuvo treatment now too?

Shmerl's probably cackling away at the irony of us Steam users realising that Steam's DRM threatens those precious libraries. Okay, probably not. Shmerls always struck me as a fairly mature dude. I'd be cackling away though, if I didn't have nearly 800 (!) titles on Steam right now and precious few are DRM-free from Humble, GOG, or Itch.

I am buying more Itch titles these days though. Love those guys. Especially love the fact that you can overpay on that platform if you choose. Not so much of a fan that they apply VAT at the end of the transaction though. I wish they'd tidy that up.

I can't say if it applies for a lot more titles than this, but I'm able to launch Steam's Witcher 3 without even launching Steam, as a standalone game, just with Wine+DXVK and the Witcher.exe launcher. All is not doom and gloom in an hypothetical Steam failure. That's what I was doing before Proton. You just need to keep a backup of those games. Is this what you are referring to?

CD Project Red have been vocal about not believing DRM is a good tool, so they don't add it to their games ( although I find it ironic that they only write their games for platforms that themselves are DRM-encumbered ).

There is no requirement for Steam Developers to use any form of DRM, and the actual DRM function provided by Valve is, by their own admission, very weak. Their advice to developers is not to bother with the DRM functions, but just to embed Steam features that need an authenticated account.

I would expect that a high proportion of your Steam titles could be easily recovered if the service disappeared, so long as you have kept a copy, since you may no longer be able to download. I'm not clear how you would prove your rights though.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: etonbears

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: etonbears

Quoting: slaapliedjeMaybe NWN is another game we should get a persistent world set up for Gaming On Linux users. :)

Would be cool if they could figure out how to add real time ray tracing for those that have cards that support such things.

It looks beautiful in Quake 2.

They are building a new renderer eventually, so they might include ray casting/tracing. At the moment they are more focussed on adding the texture layers they need to make a new renderer worthwhile; without normal mapping, displacement mapping, and additional material properties, ray tracing wouldn't help much except to improve shadows.

They look to have done a good job improving the static assets where the low-poly geometry doesn't matter, but the characters/monsters now look a bit out of place. Maybe they can use tesselation to automatically add extra character-smoothing geometry.

I think I might have to take a closer look at their plans...

I'm hoping they hire someone to specifically look at making the toolset cross platform finally. I think that would help get the hacker ultra nerd people that tend to flock toward Linux to build modules. Of course maybe I'm dreaming and most Linux users these days aren't the weird cyber-dwellers they used to be :P

I expect the toolset works pretty well under wine, given how old it is. I think a new toolset may eventually be required if they change a lot of the underlying tech. As long as the data formats are published ( and I'm sure they will be ) a Linux hacker ultra nerd could build their own toolkit :D

There was at least one (I think probably two or three) projects to build toolkits, but they ended up in open source limbo.
It's been a while of course, but last time I got the toolkit working in Wine it was unstable and slow. Kind of like the GURPS Character Assistant. It works, it's just slow and a bit buggy (like windows don't update like they should).

Well, it's a fair amount of work to build a toolset, even after the data definitions are locked down. I might take a look, though, once they get a bit more information out about what they are aiming for.

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Quoting: scaineMinor point to the above - Valve is privately owned, so there's not shareholders to pay dividends to. Not only is it privately owned, GabeN owns more than 50% personally. He's valued at just $4Bn as an individual. Richer than Trump basically (assuming you believe his $3Bn valuation... I'm sceptical).

So, stinking rich. Just outside of the top 500 richest people on earth. As an aside, while Epic is raking it in, Tim Sweeney, as CEO, is only (ha!) worth $75m, reported mid last year.

I don't know what the articles of association for Valve Corporation are, but in general private companies can, and usually do, have shares. They are simply not listed anywhere for public trading, but can be sold in private transactions, and used in share option schemes etc. Similarly, private companies can, and do, pay dividends.

I would think that Gaben's net worth is primarily his 50% stake in Valve. Valuations of people and companies ( public or private ) are, of course, of questionable real value, except as an indicator of immediate financial clout. And valuations can often change quite quickly if not based on diversified assets.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: etonbears

Quoting: slaapliedjeMaybe NWN is another game we should get a persistent world set up for Gaming On Linux users. :)

Would be cool if they could figure out how to add real time ray tracing for those that have cards that support such things.

It looks beautiful in Quake 2.

They are building a new renderer eventually, so they might include ray casting/tracing. At the moment they are more focussed on adding the texture layers they need to make a new renderer worthwhile; without normal mapping, displacement mapping, and additional material properties, ray tracing wouldn't help much except to improve shadows.

They look to have done a good job improving the static assets where the low-poly geometry doesn't matter, but the characters/monsters now look a bit out of place. Maybe they can use tesselation to automatically add extra character-smoothing geometry.

I think I might have to take a closer look at their plans...

I'm hoping they hire someone to specifically look at making the toolset cross platform finally. I think that would help get the hacker ultra nerd people that tend to flock toward Linux to build modules. Of course maybe I'm dreaming and most Linux users these days aren't the weird cyber-dwellers they used to be :P

I expect the toolset works pretty well under wine, given how old it is. I think a new toolset may eventually be required if they change a lot of the underlying tech. As long as the data formats are published ( and I'm sure they will be ) a Linux hacker ultra nerd could build their own toolkit :D

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: dannielloIt could be possible that Valve is preparing Steam Machine 2, but after failure of first initiative (with Dell cooperation) - it could be difficult. Also let be honest - Valve is too small company to subsidize Linux PC console that will be sold cheaper than production cost. Sony/Microsoft/Google/Apple are big enough to subsidize unprofitable initiatives for years - without economic threat for company, because they have plenty of income from other sources.

You're probably right about the size issue, but that makes me wonder about something:
Does anybody know just how big Valve is, or how big a war chest they might be sitting on? Because they're not publicly traded, I don't think they have to tell anyone much of anything. Even their competitors may not really have much of a handle on it. Anyone have any idea?

Figures I have seen suggest Steam has about $5BN annual revenue, with Valve's share being $1.5BN. Headcount suggests $200MN personnel/overhead costs plus the infrastructure costs to run the Steam platform. I have no idea what that might cost to run, as I have no data on the throughput and latency requirements.

But you could guess that Valve operational profit is in the order of $1BN annually at 2018 rates. What they do with it I don't know, but I assume that it is not all paid out to the shareholders. Some will go into their warchest/corporate investments, some will go into non-operational expenses ( some R&D, sponsoring, outreach marketing, developer support etc ).

I think you can assume they have a comfortable financial reserve, and the ability to suffer significant sales reductions while still being operationally solvent.

On the other hand, Epic are reported to have $3BN annual operational profit from Fortnight and Unreal Engine, so they can't be seen as an underdog. They are definitely more focused on the developers viewpoint than Valve, at present, given their 12% take. Whether that is good or bad for the market as a whole remains to be seen.

It would probably be wrong to see Epic as anti-consumer simply because they are making commercial decisions to build their store presence against a strong incumbent. There will be a lot of people ( judging by the "Internet Outrage" over M:E ) that don't want to support a company that breaks their idea of how gaming should be, but Epic do have a player base of 125m who don't think they suck. And I expect many Windows gamers will just shrug and buy the game from the Epic store if they particularly want it.

Linux gamers have less reason to like the Epic Store, or Origin, or UPlay etc, because any ability to access games through them is not guaranteed in any way. As I recently acquired a large SSD, I invested some time setting up Wine Prefixes to access EA Origin and the Epic Store. Both can be made to work, after a fashion, as can some of the games ( Subnautica on Epic - as a free game - Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 3 on Origin from old Windows purchases ), but other games are more difficult, and there is clearly no support or any guarantee of games continuing to work.

I certainly would not buy anything at full price on these non-native stores, but might take a risk of a few £$€ on discounted games. So, Metro Exodus I will be unlikely to get until it reappears on Steam, particularly as I haven't finished 2033 and Last Light yet ( too many games, not enough time... ). If it is not native, maybe not even then.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeMaybe NWN is another game we should get a persistent world set up for Gaming On Linux users. :)

Would be cool if they could figure out how to add real time ray tracing for those that have cards that support such things.

It looks beautiful in Quake 2.

They are building a new renderer eventually, so they might include ray casting/tracing. At the moment they are more focussed on adding the texture layers they need to make a new renderer worthwhile; without normal mapping, displacement mapping, and additional material properties, ray tracing wouldn't help much except to improve shadows.

They look to have done a good job improving the static assets where the low-poly geometry doesn't matter, but the characters/monsters now look a bit out of place. Maybe they can use tesselation to automatically add extra character-smoothing geometry.

I think I might have to take a closer look at their plans...

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Just a shame they are not building multiplatform by default, since X4 does not seem to be playable under wine.

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Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBy definition, an open source engine could not have "the current license situation" because whether something is open source is determined by whether the license gives you rights that don't allow this kind of situation to happen. It's about freedom, not just being able to look at code.

It's about freedom, but you can add commercial limitations. Just like Mysql license does.

My understanding of the MySQL situation is, it's dual licensed. It's available under the GPL, or if you want to do something the GPL does not allow (like, mainly, embed it in a closed source thing and then distribute that thing), you can buy it under a commercial license which is not open source. So there is not one open source license which enforces weird commercial-license-type shenanigans. There is an open source license which works like open source, and there is a commercial license which does not.

That's my point. You can be open source (because your code product is freely available) but you can put limitations on commercial products that were based on your work.

That depends on what you mean by open source. My personal understanding of the term is any licence that complies with The Open Source Definition [External Link]. The first clause of this definition is...

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Which essentially means you can't call a licence open source if you are not giving the software rights away gratis, which means you cannot restrict direct commercial use.

*****
Edit2: Purple Library Guy correctly pointed out that the preceeding statement is not clear.

To clarify: an open source licence requires you to make the source code of binary distributed software readily available at no additional cost, and with no restriction as to the purpose for which the software is subsequently used.

This does not restrict the licence holder, or others, from distributing the software in binary or source form for money, so long as those receiving only binaries have a reference to a source version readily available without charge.
*****

The remainder of The Open Source Definition [External Link] deals with availability of the source code, and the ways you CANNOT restrict it's further use.

As far as I remember, this definition was deliberately constructed to accomodate the two major viewpoints concerning source licences at the time. It allowed the GPL ( Free Software Foundation ) to add cascading restrictions to how source code could be further used, and it allowed BSD ( University of California, Berkeley ) to permit derivative works that are not themselves Open Source.

What unites Open Source licences is the intent to give away the covered software. Beyond that BSD and friends are permissive, while GPL and friends are restrictive.

A number of commercial entities have used Open Source licences to promote adoption of their software, but doing so does not guarantee that they will be the ones who make money from the software.

Others, like Unity Technologies, make source code available under a proprietary licence, ensuring that they explicitely retain copyright, IP, trademarks, and control of further use, to ensure that they retain control of who makes money from their software.

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