Quoting: dhellion

Quoting: silentprocyonTL;DR... Outcome of Oracle feuding with Google is that APIs can now be copyrighted. It started with Oracle acquiring Sun, wanting to make lots of money from Java; not satisfied with just some money, they also attempted to launch their own smartphone venture that failed; after failing in the smartphone business, Oracle sought to make more money from Java by suing Google over the latter copying code from Java (which was not the case) and claimed they owned copyright of the APIs; Oracle had lost in court and appealed, then another court ruled in Oracle's favor over copyright, but ruled that Google's use is "fair use"; not happy with the "fair use" ruling and wanting $9 billion for copyright infringement, Oracle appealed again, battle is still going on in Federal court; might or might not reach Supreme Court.

This will be an epic battle.

And I feel like I want to take it on. I'd happily give money to Valve to help the proceedings if something like this were to happen, for the chance to see Microsoft break some teeth on Linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I like how Valve seem to also be pushing for Vulkan adoption with this in their statements. And with Google funding Photoshop compatibility via Wine [External Link], that's more and more barriers falling before a new Windows exodus.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hot damn that is both unexpected and very welcome. I feel like all the work put into WINE by the community over the years will now really pay off and provide even more value for Linux as a whole thanks to Valve's participation. And if Valve does the tinkering for me, all the better. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. If they get good, continued support going for enough high-profile games, they may very well drive Linux adoption up in the coming months. It might make some devs lazy in the short term, but a bigger market share in the long term could well turn that around.

I do hope porters can continue to thrive in this new context. Fewer games may be suitable for native ports if they already work well via Proton, but they will likely have a bigger audience to sell to for the games that can still benefit from a proper port, especially if they can convince publishers of doing simultaneous releases thanks to Linux being a more valuable demographic.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou can blare about FOSS and idealism all you want, but if you have a choice between a small FOSS project that does what you want, but has like a handful of people developing it in their free time - and a closed source alternative that does the same thing and doesn't cost a lot, then you pick the closed source one if you can afford it and the support is known to be good.
Because that gives you access to people who are paid to aid you in your requests - while FOSS gives you the chance that nobody does anything about your issues or the whole project gets dropped.

To this, part of me wants to argue that I can pay anyone I choose to work on the FOSS solution if and when needed, if I'm going to pay anyway, but you would be right to counter that in many cases that would end up more expensive than a subscription/license-based model where the cost of development is shared by a number of customers. I still think it makes sense in several scenarios, though. When it comes to government entities, when you consider that it helps protect citizen data, creates local jobs and contributes to publicly-accessible software (i.e. added value for the entire population beyond your specific office's needs), preferring FOSS over proprietary solutions seems almost like a no-brainer and I'm eager to see more governments make the switch.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Considering how much press the game got, that must have been one hell of an expensive porting job to only make back 25% of the cost without it even being properly finished. Too bad they didn't go with one of the more reputable porting houses.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I wish I understood the gameplay from watching the trailer, but even at half speed I have no idea what's going on with that dial... :dizzy:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: razing32Humm
Never knew my country had a games industry.
Well , even an indie one.

I do believe they mentioned other developers existing in Romania, perhaps even Transylvania itself, at some point. This particular team is originally part of a mobile-focused company, though, which I feel is a market that's probably easier to get into for small companies in atypical countries than console/PC gaming dev (since mobile games usually have a smaller scope).

Quoting: NanobangI imagine that the devs of this parody are intimate with his work. Straight, so called, 'Lovecraftian' games almost universally fail to convey the deeply unsettling 'otherness' of Lovecraft's world, but I could see a parody set in a Lovecraftian setting being wildly enjoyable, especially to the fan of good 'ol H.P..

Oh, they certainly are. They've made plenty of references to his works, sung songs about Chthulu and cited it as the main inspiration for the theme. But as far as I can tell this will be a comedy/parody above all, so I wouldn't really expect it to be actually disturbing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Backed it, they had a Linux demo from the start and I liked the style they had going :)

It's been a real passion project for them and I hope it does well after the countless extra hours they've put into it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Gotta love French animators :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This is tough. I'm not that big on puzzle games, but the aesthetic and sound look extremely nice and remind me of Epistory [External Link]. Will wait for reviews.

View this comment - View article - View full comments