Quoting: seamoose

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: seamooseThat is incorrect. What Wolfire is alleging is that Valve tried to prohibit Wolfire from selling its games on other stores at a lower price than what they are priced on Steam even if Wolfire did not provide Steam keys for purchases on those other stores (e.g. DRM-free, Epic keys, etc.)

If true, I do feel that Valve is abusing its dominant status in the PC games market. I can understand the requirement that if you distribute Steam keys in other stores then you should not price your games lower than on Steam, but that's not what Wolfire is saying.

That's confusing. I mean I could easily be mistaken, but why on earth would Valve even file the motion regarding:

Quote"Plaintiffs’ allegations that Valve's Steam Key rules amount to an unlawful PMFN* fail for the straightforward reason that Valve, which created and owns Steam, has no duty under the antitrust laws to create a method (here, Steam Keys) for game developers to sell Steam-enabled games in stores that compete with Steam."

if it wasn't involving 3rd party distribution of Steam keys? It seems extraneous and non sequitur if that's the case.

Not sure who's telling the truth, thus my use of the word "alleging", but here's some previously posted background: David Rosen of Wolfire Games explains why they're taking on Valve in a lawsuit

In particular, from Rosen's blog post: "But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM."

Yes, but then in the actual lawsuit they don't mention this case at all which is highly suspicious. I mean that since he claims that this happened to Wolfire directly then he should have access to first hand evidence but yet the single mention of anything like this in the lawsuit is point 155:

Quote155.Valve has also threatened publishers that offered lower prices on other platforms, insisting that customers using the Steam Store should get a similar deal or else Valve may remove the publisher’s games from the Steam Gaming Platform altogether.

Valve has also interrogated publishers about their deals on smaller platforms like Humble Bundle or Discord that offer lower commission rates than Steam.

For example, Valve contacted publishers who released their games at a lower price on those competing platforms to demandsimilar deals on Steam.

Because of Valve’s pressure tactics, publishers were forced to revise their deals with Humble Bundle and Discord or withdraw their games from those platforms all together.

This could also be interpreted as some publishers simply replying "its, its, it's because Valve forced us" when Wolfire and Discord asked why the publishers withdrew their games. But then in his blog he claims to have first hand experience and yet zero mentioning of this in the lawsuit, it's not even in there as a claim so Rosen cannot even be used as a witness of his first hand experience (but IANAL) by Wolfires lawyers and that is beyond suspicious.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: KlausThe other part (mostly relevant for corporate environments) is that a natively or indistinguishable-from-native running version of Microsoft Office releases from the last ten years isn't optional. I tried with OnlyOffice and LibreOffice, but the moment your working with a customer who uses Microsoft Office, you will need it somehow, or the customer will be annoyed at you for breaking their documents; The only solution working properly here is a virtual machine with Windows and native MS Office.

Office is for sure a big issue. Luckily my work doesn't really fiddle documents in that kind of detailed way where an odd looking font here and there will cause any problems, and I don't use any really advanced spreadsheets, so I can get away with LibreOffice. Which is nice, because I hate the bloody ribbon; at this point, I actually like LibreOffice's UI better. But none of that changes the fact that Office remains the standard and for a whole lot of work-type requirements, from document exchanges to high-end Excel features, you really need it.
Does Office work in Wine these days? Man, if I were massively rich I would pay some outfit to get Office, Acrobat and Photoshop all working hiccup-free on Wine, no muss no fuss, maybe with special installers or something just to give people a button to click.

Office365?

Dunno. That's the web thing, right? Does it have all the features of the real thing?

I have zero idea, have not touched Office in over 15 years. Considering that Office365 is a subscription service though I guess that it's where the future of Office lies.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: KlausThe other part (mostly relevant for corporate environments) is that a natively or indistinguishable-from-native running version of Microsoft Office releases from the last ten years isn't optional. I tried with OnlyOffice and LibreOffice, but the moment your working with a customer who uses Microsoft Office, you will need it somehow, or the customer will be annoyed at you for breaking their documents; The only solution working properly here is a virtual machine with Windows and native MS Office.

Office is for sure a big issue. Luckily my work doesn't really fiddle documents in that kind of detailed way where an odd looking font here and there will cause any problems, and I don't use any really advanced spreadsheets, so I can get away with LibreOffice. Which is nice, because I hate the bloody ribbon; at this point, I actually like LibreOffice's UI better. But none of that changes the fact that Office remains the standard and for a whole lot of work-type requirements, from document exchanges to high-end Excel features, you really need it.
Does Office work in Wine these days? Man, if I were massively rich I would pay some outfit to get Office, Acrobat and Photoshop all working hiccup-free on Wine, no muss no fuss, maybe with special installers or something just to give people a button to click.

Office365?

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Quoting: andythe_greatNot even openSUSE and Fedora can share the same spec file (a file that contain build instructions) since they some time use difference RPM macros. Maintaining a package across many distros are very tedious.

Yes that is one of the problems with rpm that is not really there with deb:s (I use the exact same files to build deb:s e.g when building for both Debian and Ubuntu). However in their defence, RPM:s where never intended as being used by third parties, they where intended to be used by the distribution maintainers only and there this problem does not exist. That said this is an are where rpm:s could be greatly enhanced, there is nothing in the format itself that prohibits the same .spec to work between distributions.

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Quoting: WorMzy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: PublicNuisanceI don't have a horse in the race but here is an article worth reading as devil's advocate.

https://flatkill.org/2020/

Yes this "next generation" packaging is really the stone age packaging while rpm/apt is the real next-generation. That said, for games the security issues are basically zero (basically but not to 100%) since few games have open external ports or handle random files/data that you feed it like it is for applications.

lol, I've never seen rpm/deb described as 'next-generation'. I can kind of see it with rpm, but deb is something that deserves to be consigned to history as a terrible mistake that future generations should learn from.

Sorry to be so "slashdot" in my reply here but saying so about deb vs rpm show that you don't know how they both actually work. The thing is that rpm and deb are extremely similar with the main difference being that deb:s have far greater helper scripts that among other things means that what does require platform specific .spec files for rpm can be done in a single deb.

RPM/DEB is "next-generation" in the sense that stone age distribution is files in a archive, then came files in a archive with some basic script (this is where the current Windows installers are), then came rpm/deb which is files in a archive with several scripts (pre-install, pre-update, post-install, post-update, post-delete) and most importantly with a dependency tracker. This makes rpm/deb next-generation functionality wise of all the types of packagers available today.

Then comes flatpak, snap and so on which are back to files in a archive but now in a sandbox (sometimes). To me this is a huge step backwards, but it allows the dumb Windows type installers that millions of developers are used to so therefore it became popular.

edit: And I should perhaps add that there are some environments where flatpaks and snaps are the obvious choice and that is for people running virtualized servers.

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Quoting: PublicNuisanceI don't have a horse in the race but here is an article worth reading as devil's advocate.

https://flatkill.org/2020/

Yes this "next generation" packaging is really the stone age packaging while rpm/apt is the real next-generation. That said, for games the security issues are basically zero (basically but not to 100%) since few games have open external ports or handle random files/data that you feed it like it is for applications.

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If one looks at the source code dumps that they did for some of their older games (they where once part of the Humber Open Bundle) it's quite clear that they sent their entire codebase to an external porting house that rewrote huge chunks of the game for Linux so #1 they have no Linux devs inhouse and #2 all their Linux versions where complete separate code bases which is a huge hassle for a small studio such as Frozenbyte.

So given the situation that they are in I would say that Proton is the best choice, and as other have already said this is a decision they actually made at least 5 years ago.

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Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: CatKillerMicrosoft of the 90s seemed undefeatable; Microsoft now seems like they've already lost. But it might all be wishful thinking.

I'll go on record saying Microsoft has indeed already lost. According to the verge there are over 3 billion active Android devices in the world.

Numerically, Android/Linux is king. iOS is probably second, and then the desktop operating systems after that.

Edit: If you look at Microsoft's behavior over the last few years too they have started to do some odd things like create their own line of computers, begin to promote SaaS Software as a Service and strengthen their server divisions, Xbox and so on -- reducing Windows 10 price to $0 for a while -- essentially their OS license wasn't their bread and butter anymore and they realized it so they subsidized it. They also bought Mojang to get control over MineCraft and several other game studios to steer the teenage demographic back into their Walled Garden -- because they realized most kids and teens experience with electronics is on Android and iOS phones and they literally had 0 interest or need for Windows -- Microsoft was not "needed" -- a problem Microsoft intended to correct.

Edit 2: Microsoft also got the sense that their grip over developers was weakening too, developers no longer focused on their obscure technology as the web evolved and popularity rose with iOS, Android, and Linux. They also "corrected" this "problem" by buying GitHub and [ installing ] themselves into the center of the developer community to try to ensure their longevity to exert influence to ensure their survival.

RIP GitHub, especially after the illegal AI stealing code from their users and literally breaking licenses & laws to do it.

And of course there is also this: https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner no desktop, only server, but still :-)

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: jens

Quoting: F.UltraConsidering how quickly they managed to port Wolfenstein Youngblood to not only Linux but also ARM Linux shows that those rumours that they had DOOM running natively on Linux way back where highly likely true.

Yes exactly, having the driver ready for ARM is one thing, showing an ARM port of an AAA game is at least equally impressive (and serves indeed food for lots of rumors :)).

switch has ARM hardware and it has AAA titles all over
afaik switch runs freeBSD which is kinda linux
so i think its not that hard to make a switch ARM TITLE run on LINUX ARM

The switch port was handled by an external company though, Panic Button, the demo on Linux ARM seams to be inhouse?!

does it make any difference? the game and all of its source codes are property of bethesda, so why would they do it all over again?

First of all not sure if the porting contracts works that way (wasn't there a game on Stadia where there did exist a native port but the studio rewrote their own native port for Stadia alone), and only means that they have a build for the Switch SDK which is it's own thing and not FreeBSD.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: TeodosioI would like to see a new game from Valve, released on GNU/Linux only.

Exclusives are bad.

yes they are, but for once it would be "fun" to hear the Windows crowd huff and puff over the evils of "exclusivity". At which point we can just tell them how easy they could just dual boot :)

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