Quoting: pete910

Quoting: GBeeHmm, time to get that GTX 1070/1080 then ...

Speaking as someone that has a 1080, go for a 980/ti and save some £££/$$$

I would stongly disagree with that statement. I agree not to get a 1080 as the performance gain over the 1070 is negligible compared to the difference in price. The new Pascal architecture is just plain superior to Maxwell in power consumption, features, clock speeds and the 1070 has more VRAM. Being the newer card it also has a longer life/support expectancy ;)

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Quoting: Crazy PenguinSo if Aspyr does need more time to evaluate a Linux port, they can have it.

The biggest problem here is the uncertainty. Linux users usually have a few options with games: Wine, Dual Boot, VM, and due to the long years of little to no games most of us know how to work around games that don't show up on our platform of choice.
Don't misunderstand me - I'd rather wait half a year for a linux port than having to play Civ on Windows but for me to make the effort I will need a commitment by the developer that I will not wait in vain. The uncertainty is what will probably push me to just get it over with, buy the game on windows together with a new motherboard (and add my old graphics card) and run it in a virtual Windows box in my Win10 VM.

Uncertainty means that every day a certain percentage of the target group will cave in. Uncertainty means that every day they wait with the announcement their potential customer base is shrinking and the financial rationale of porting the game will look less and less appealing. It is already bad enough that they created this uncertainty at the worst possible moment: during the actual release when most people make their buying decission.

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Just watched a twitch event by Aspyr and somebody was asking if there are any news regarding the linux port. This is the answer he received:

AspyrMedia : Aspyr is not working on Linux currently. That doesn't mean we won't in the future.

Source: https://www.twitch.tv/aspyrmedia/v/96324124 [External Link] (around 8 minutes into the video in the chat)

I'm afraid that we'll have to lower our expectations. From what they write it seems like they haven't done a thing yet and even in the most positive outcome we're going to be in for a looong wait.

What I don't understand is why they first announce it and then have no plan in place... I mean games like that take forever to be produced - there should have been enough time while Firaxis is working on the main version for them to develop some idea of what they're doing or going to do... and not a "Uh... Linux, uh, we have to do some feasibility analyses first!". This sounds a lot like Brexit all over again ;)

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Now if Firaxis would have only given Civ 6 to them to port... I'm not into games like Mad Max but I will definitely pick up Deus Ex... loved that series from the start and will get Dawn of war as soon as my time allows me to play it. Thanks Feral! Keep it coming!

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Quoting: scaineFrom that article, it's crystal clear that copying in Germany is ONLY allowed:

for their own private use without profit
and this not be distributed or published

So your example of making a copy for your friend is still obviously illegal.

I provided the link, now I actually have to translate it for you, too??? Come on!

Whatever, here it is:

Der Bundesgerichtshof hat als Anhaltspunkt die Obergrenze bei sieben Vervielfältigungen gesehen (BGH, GRUR 1978, 474). Die Kopien dürfen nur für den eigenen privaten Gebrauch gemacht werden, zum Beispiel für den CD-Player im Fahrzeug oder als Zuwendung für Personen, zu denen man eine engere persönliche Beziehung hat, wie Verwandte oder Freunde.

Translation:

The Bundesgerichtshof (highest civil court of Germany) ... Copies are only allowed for private use, e.g. for your CD player in your car or as a present for people that you have a personal relationship with, like relatives or friends.

Quoting: scaineYou're getting confused here between "is piracy legal?" and "is DRM a good thing?". I don't care about your justifications for why people pirate material. I'm asserting that in most (relevant) countries, the answer to that first question is "no, piracy is illegal".

I'm not getting confused at all - I am pointing out that the industry has a totally oposing view: Rather punish your customers for paying you than doing what I consider reasonable and what GOG shows very clearly to be a sound concept. I was trying to show to you that going after the pirates is a useless waste of energy because the ones that could pay won't be deterred and the ones that can't just can't - no gains to be made here, yet a big potential for unnecessary suffering.

I also fail to see where you asked that "is piracy legal" question above. Please do point me to it.

Quoting: scaineAnd as for this:

Quoting: voyager2102Now that you ask - I actually would expect people to download and pirate it as that is the way things are. If they can't afford to buy it they are indeed welcome to download it for free and if they wouldn't have bought it anyways and read it because they pirate it then all the better - maybe they will find it fun and pay me afterwards or buy my next work!.

Well bravo. We agree to differ and you're a bigger man than I. But it sounds like you can afford that attitude because you don't rely on copyright law to pay you for your work.

Hmmm... to the contrary. The largest part of my income actually comes from some form of copyright. So you couldn't be further from the truth. What you fail to get is that I extract my money from those that can actually pay for my software. We usually make all the tools we create while building our own products freely available to the general public and many thousands of people are using them - probably even some of the game developers ;) (Actually I know that some do since we've already been mentioned in the credits ;))

Quoting: scaineMy point was that if you were starving on the street because, despite your talent, piracy deprived you of income, I'm pretty sure there's not a human being in the world who would defend piracy let alone advocate it.

I am not on the street because people were nice enough to make software freely available in various forms and shapes (e.g. Linux). I am not afraid to ever end up on the street either since most people that can pay will pay and our users are happy users. I also never advocated piracy as such - I justified it in some cases e.g. when people cannot afford to buy the product anyways. I stand by what I said and I also live by it.

Quoting: scaineIt sounds like both sides are pretty entrenched here though, so like Liam I'll try to duck out of this now. No promises though...

Ok, thank you for pulling the emergency brake ;) This has already cost enough time and seing that topics like that are highly emotional for me I doubt I could have extracted myself from this debate without spending more time on it - and as you said, both sides are entrenched already and there is little hope for concessions ;)

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Quoting: liamdaweOkay then, humour me. In what country is it acceptable to take a computer game that you're legally supposed to pay for, without paying for it?

I'll do that right after you told me where you read that in my answer ;)

But you just asked for a counter question: Why is it legal in most countries to resell physical game copies? How does that differ from stealing from the creator? Why can games be rented at the local video store? Or from a different angle: If I own a game on steam why can't I sell that anymore like a physical disk?

Do you get what jar you are opening there? We have laws and perceptions that were good an true and worked for hundreds of years and suddenly they totally clash with this new digital thing that removes duplication costs... oh my... and some people think that digital and physcial is the same or even similar... hahaha ;)

Quoting: liamdaweThe digital vs hard copy for computer games is a pathetic strawman argument used by pirates to try to sway people towards not paying for others hard work. The fact is, if a developer wanted people to not pay, they wouldn't put a price tag on their works. If you argue against that, then I don't consider your opinion to hold very well. People need to earn money to live, it's as simple as that.

Ok, so are you actually calling me a pirate and my argument pathetic or am I being too sensitive here? Name calling instead of arguments is not cool.

I did not say - at any point - that people should give their work away for free. I was arguing for you not to point your morale finger at people that use games without paying since I am of the opinion that this is ok in some cases. If you actually think that what you interpreted into my words, do please point me to where I said that.

Quoting: liamdaweLet's remove all other things like water and food which are necessities to live. You cannot lump those together to make this argument, a hobby is completely different.

Hmm... I do not know about your country. In mine the social security payments include help to pay for a phone and TV. I am not aware of e.g a TV being a necessity to live and yet the measure is listed under "minimal necessities" in the "Help to live" section of the social security code.
If the government pays for underage children 11% of the money are allocated to a section called "entertainment and culture". Again not necessary to just survive but society obviously thinks that even those that don't have anything else should at least participate as part of their "minimal support".

Of course not every country will have that. Some societies have different values ;)

Quoting: liamdaweI have a pretty broad view already, but the counter-arguments I've all seen so far, to repeat myself, are from people wanting a world that as far as I am aware, does not exist.

I'm not talking about things that could be or should be, neither is anyone else, we are laying out our arguments for things as they are in the world right now.

And that is why I replied to your "a world, that as far as I am aware, does not exist": That world does exist. I am pointing that out to you. That is why I asked you to broaden your view.

But oh well, I saw that you said in another post that you will not respond anymore... so be it.

I appreciate your work on the site though - great work! Thanks for your effort!

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Quoting: scaineInteresting! But a bit of googling seems to completely disagree with your example of German Law. Can you point me in the right direction? What I've found appears to suggest that German law is very close to UK law - you can make copies for your own use, but copyright law is still in effect - that is, only the author of the works is allowed to redistribute/reproduce it for anything other than personal backup purposes. There appeared to be a debate around this in Germany around 2002/3, but nothing I can find suggests that the law changed significantly.

Your google-fu is bad ;)

German law interpreted by a lawyer [External Link], please use goole translate or the like to translate it. The paragraph is linked from there, too.

Quoting: scaineBottom line, ask yourself how you'd feel about selling one hundred copies of your work, only to discover 100 thousand such copies were being enjoyed by the masses? I'd be pissed off. How about you?

It's true - I really don't understand anyway who defends piracy. At all. Happy to be "educated" however, but that education must address not just laws and jurisdictions, but more importantly how that defender-of-piracy would justify and accept living on the street if they were the artist with no income and not the pirate.

I actually answered that in your other post (going bottom up). It is a mental excercise - you need to overcome the reflexes learned in countless hours of education, TV, advertisement etc.

Ask yourself:

1) Are you going to prevent piracy with any form of protection? No, you are just going to make life harder for your paying customers and maybe prevent the pirates to use if for a while. Everything gets cracked sooner or later - law of nature ;)
2) Why did those evil pirates download your software? There are different groups:
a) The ones that do it because they don't care about you and download it to save a buck. Those are a lost cause to you - no amount of arguing will make those customers and they are the bad apples.
b) The ones that don't have to funds to pay you anyways. They are welcome to take the game - if I later donate my profits to charity or if I am charitable by not caring that they take something without actually hurting me is kind of the same to me. I was there when I was young and I am grateful to all the people that made my life more fun then. Look at me - I am a loyal customer of a few coders/companies because I profited from their work in the past... advertisement!!!
c) The download first and reward later crowd - they potentially download a lot that they will never actually even look at but will buy because of various reasons if they actually use your software (e.g. support, extra content, being lazy) - I'm also ok with that group since they will support because quality convinced them or they will go away without bothering me about the things they don't like about my product ;)
3) Do you actually loose enything by them copying your software (see a-c above)? What?

Now why would you think the way you do? When I was young, copyrights were much shorter and less strict than they are now. Since then "intellectual copyright" holders have lobbied and advertised our society to make laws and opinions more to their liking. Things that seemed normal and logical at that time are now "unthinkable" like that people should be able to make a copy of something that they bought, or even that things they buy are actually theirs and can't be controlled by others (e.g. amazon -> kindle (deletes), steam -> account removal, etc.). The worst problem of this is that they have gotten into people's minds so people actually side with their views. Difficult to see from inside your personal perception bubble but that's what's happening here.

But this whole thing is only a side branch of the much larger issue of inequality in society, so we can discuss about this till the end of time and reach no consensus.

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: voyager2102Anybody who discounts that there is a severe difference between a physical and a digital good can't be taken serious, I'm sorry. Of course there is a fundamental difference between me taking an apple from a tree and me copying the technique that the apple farmer uses to keep the birds off of the apple tree. In one case I dimish what he has and in the second case I do not unless I take away from his customer pool.

So if you write a book, stick it on Amazon for six euros, you'll be cool when I and thousands of others download the torrent instead? It's only digital, right? I wasn't going to buy it anyway!! Apparently I'm entitled to your cultural contribution without paying?

Man, I'm really trying here, but I just can't understand it.

Now that you ask - I actually would expect people to download and pirate it as that is the way things are. If they can't afford to buy it they are indeed welcome to download it for free and if they wouldn't have bought it anyways and read it because they pirate it then all the better - maybe they will find it fun and pay me afterwards or buy my next work!

This is not a theoretical thing for me. My company creates and sells software. I have actually written parts of an actually published book. What kind of person would I be to ask money of you that you don't have if it does not rob me of anything? I will come after you if you start using my things commercially and shame on you if you could have afforded to buy the work - but that is on your conscience.

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Quoting: scaineBut in the musician example above, we're not talking about piggy-backing a live performance, a closer example would be a copied CD. You're paying nothing for a perfect copy of what other people did pay for. You are stealing. This can't be debated. It just is.

Wow... another one of these judgmental phrases so devoid of any actual fact, yet, oozing with sense of mission! You are moralizing. You just are ;)

Counter example of what you say: In Germany copyright law says that you can take a CD that you bought, bring it to a friend and even make a copy for him as long as you don't charge for it.

The law explicitly allows this and here you come and say it's stealing an "that is just so"! Wake up! We should adopt the Jolly Roger as our new flag!!!1!

Quoting: scaineSure, there is nuance, but when people start talking about digital vs physical, that's just rationalisation for the fact that pirates deprive artists of revenue. Weren't going to buy it anyway, hence not a sale? Largely false, because if you weren't going to buy it anyway, then why did you pay peanuts for a pirate copy? Don't think it's worth the asking price? Wait for a sale, or debate that price.

But piracy is stealing. Fact.

Anybody who discounts that there is a severe difference between a physical and a digital good can't be taken serious, I'm sorry. Of course there is a fundamental difference between me taking an apple from a tree and me copying the technique that the apple farmer uses to keep the birds off of the apple tree. In one case I dimish what he has and in the second case I do not unless I take away from his customer pool.

Repeating previously used arguments gets boring after a while and the discussion is not new. I don't mind you leaning one way or the other but you are a bit quick to state the term fact where none is to be seen. If you really don't see this then please tell me that you don't and I will go to the trouble of disecting your example.

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Quoting: liamdawe@buenaventura, the problem here is that you repeatedly use the same argument too. Your arguments are based on a fantasy world that just doesn't exist.

Liam, I think that if you'd broaden your view a little bit you'd see that most of the arguments he mentioned are maybe not so popular in the type of country you live in but are vastly more popular in other areas and certainly are not based on a fantasy world that does not exist. Philosophers have talked about them and other cultures might have tried a few of them with more or less success.

Quoting: liamdaweIt would be great if everyone could be paid fairly, and people gain access to things without paying if they have zero spare money, but that is not the world we will live when it comes to a hobby like computer games which people are really not entitled to what-so-ever.

Hmm... let's see... Germany's GEMA is basically a cultural flat rate for music consumption. Music is a hobby, isn't it? It also coexists with music being sold and it seems to be working pretty well.

The "access to things without paying" thing might not be true for your world (I don't actually know where you live) but in other parts of the world people have access to things like housing, food, water, even telephones and TV plus many other things if they cannot afford them - provided by the rest of the people. And that's not just in communist countries but e.g. in the market economies of the EU, or in Canada, to name just a few. And culture is considered in some of those countries to be a universal access good. That is also why we have copyright laws - not only to protect the creative creators' rights to what they create but also to ensure that society as a whole participates (i.e. limitation of copyright period, fair use clauses, registration, personal excemptions, etc., etc.)

Let's not discount new/foreign ideas just on the basis of them being "unthinkable" in the environment you grew up. Universal healthcare used to be unthinkable... so was travelling to the moon... the earth not being the center of the world... I guess you get the drift ;)

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