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Latest Comments by scaine
Denuvo announced Denuvo SecureDLC to protect DLC
5 Jul 2022 at 9:35 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: mr-victory
Quoting: finaldestI am looking at you, Paradox
Does Paradox implement non-Steam DRM? Why are you looking at Paradox?
Because the Paradox business model is based entirely on DRM. If they implement this, and you resent Denuvo enough to avoid buying anything encumbered with it, then this will affect a LOT of DLC.

For example - Surviving Mars is £28, but its DLC is another £80. City Skylines is £23, but its DLC comes to a cool £160. Crusader Kings is free... but (brace yourself) has £220 of DLC available.

I actually don't mind the model - I like that they support their older games with constant expansions (unlike Ubisoft [External Link], and at the end of the day, you buy what appeals to you. But that's a lot of DLC to apply DRM to.
While the Paradox business model is certainly based on selling a bunch of DLC, as far as I'm aware they don't even have DRM on the base games, let alone the DLC, so I don't see how you can say their business model is based entirely on DRM. At least, I'm pretty sure I've played Stellaris off-line.

Anyway, aren't the DLC DeNuvo are talking about more like all the stuff people get for aesthetics or pay-to-win in free-to-play games? Seemed to me it was more like that, making sure you can't copy what you get from microtransactions. No doubt it would work for real DLC too, but I feel like that isn't really the focus.
Oops, I meant DLC. Their business model is based on DLC, and no, they don't (yet) use DRM, but I was suggesting a hugely negative impact if they did. Apologies. Goddam TLAs... :grin:

Denuvo announced Denuvo SecureDLC to protect DLC
4 Jul 2022 at 9:17 pm UTC Likes: 1

I'd buy Deathloop at full price if it didn't have Denuvo. Also, Dying Light 2.

Otherwise, I think I'm pretty lucky that most of what Denuvo gets pushed onto tends to feature some kind of anti-cheat anyway or is a seasonal sports games like FIFA, neither of which interest me.

But huge Arkane Studios fan, so Deathloop really hurts.

Denuvo announced Denuvo SecureDLC to protect DLC
4 Jul 2022 at 8:16 pm UTC

Quoting: mr-victory
Quoting: finaldestI am looking at you, Paradox
Does Paradox implement non-Steam DRM? Why are you looking at Paradox?
Because the Paradox business model is based entirely on DRM. If they implement this, and you resent Denuvo enough to avoid buying anything encumbered with it, then this will affect a LOT of DLC.

For example - Surviving Mars is £28, but its DLC is another £80. City Skylines is £23, but its DLC comes to a cool £160. Crusader Kings is free... but (brace yourself) has £220 of DLC available.

I actually don't mind the model - I like that they support their older games with constant expansions (unlike Ubisoft [External Link], and at the end of the day, you buy what appeals to you. But that's a lot of DLC to apply DRM to.

Denuvo announced Denuvo SecureDLC to protect DLC
4 Jul 2022 at 8:08 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: AppelsinThat’s a common misconception
That's exactly what I meant by "fear of piracy". I think you're pointing out the difference between early release piracy and long-term piracy? I think?

But it's all piracy and there have been quite a few studies (or at least polls) like the one covered here [External Link], that show that the people who pirate games wouldn't (or can't) actually buy the game anyway, so it's all bullshit. Indeed that particular study suggests that piracy increases sales - an outcome unique to the gaming industry.

All DRM does is piss off paying customers and spread misery amongst the people who can't or won't buy the game anyway.

Denuvo announced Denuvo SecureDLC to protect DLC
4 Jul 2022 at 2:50 pm UTC Likes: 9

Quoting: PublicNuisanceI refuse to buy games with Denuvo on principle even if they work with Linux. This will be no different.
Yup, any game that uses any Denuvo product is dead to me.

Publishers don't care - they're buying the snake oil out of "fear of piracy", so losing a few sales to people like me won't bother them, but I like the irony that Denuvo market their shit "product" on the basis that it protects sales, and I'm living proof that the opposite is true.

GOG finally remove the false "in progress" note about GOG Galaxy for Linux
2 Jul 2022 at 5:59 pm UTC Likes: 5

Another case of someone completely missing the point of what I wrote, and in this case, trying to put words into my mouth (or into my text area, as it were).

Well shit, I'm done. Can't contribute to a discussion without that happening. Too many people are far too eager to go nuts at me instead I guess. I mean, how dare I have what's viewed as an opposing opinion (whether it even is or not).
I'm sad to see you go, Mirv. That last sentence is a bit ironic though, eh? I have an opposed opinion to you, how dare I?

I always enjoyed what you brought to the table - a developer's view of Linux gaming, but still with a gamer's perspective. I'll miss your chat, although I stand by what I said about Microsoft.

GOG finally remove the false "in progress" note about GOG Galaxy for Linux
2 Jul 2022 at 12:44 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: GuestValve gets too much credit in my opinion, and have basically bought goodwill by contributing to open source projects for the explicit purpose of having people reliant on their proprietary client. Microsoft also contribute to open source projects, yet hardly anyone (who isn't paid to do so) praises them in such a fashion.
Good grief, Mirv. You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft should get more goodwill for open sourcing stuff than Valve. Which is either delusional, trolling, or you're just really young and just don't remember what Microsoft is.

Because while they're both big corporate entities which only do stuff to further their own gain, Microsoft could open source another 10 thousand tools and still be as untrustworthy then as they were 20 years ago when they were funding SCO to blackmail entire industries with patent trolling. And just one example of how utterly shitty Microsoft are from top to bottom.

Valve get a lot of praise incidentally, sure, but their motivations aren't, unlike Microsoft, directly opposed to Linux as a viable desktop.

GOG finally remove the false "in progress" note about GOG Galaxy for Linux
2 Jul 2022 at 12:36 pm UTC Likes: 5

I just a had quick gander at their current wishlist, and I suppose this was always the direction of travel:



Four of the top 13 I snipped there relate to FOSS or Linux. So 30% of items that will never happen despite a combined total of 62000 votes. With another 30% of them complete already, the rest of the items, combined, amount to 61000 votes.

You know, maybe they have millions of customers. But repeat customers? I doubt it.

And maybe there's overlap in the votes, so they're downplaying it? You can see that I voted on two of the Linux items (they're in orange), at least. But still - if GOG released a Linux client, I'm pretty sure they'd be guaranteed AT LEAST 33K new customers. The synergy between anti-DRM and Linux users is pretty big. I'd be supportive and I think if you care enough to vote on a tracker like this, those others care too.

But I've spent over TEN TIMES more on the Steam summer sale in one week than I have on GOG in over eight YEARS. Because they don't have a Galaxy client.

Anti-cheat work on Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for Steam Deck & Linux 'on hold'
1 Jul 2022 at 11:23 am UTC

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.
Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.

There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???

Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.

In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.
Well, all I can say is that from what I've seen (and personally experienced) really don't be so quick to judge the coders.
Also "a week or two" is really....intense, if someone is moving from Windows to GNU/Linux. Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but even counting coder reprioritisation in weeks can be something a manager will baulk at. Better ROI spending the time to improve something else. Which is exactly what's happening here.
It's been nearly 9 months. They started looking at this in October 2021.
And I doubt they continually looked at it all that time. There's nothing to suggest they only just handed it over to Epic and Valve to sort out now - it would've been done some time ago. Yet nobody seems to be suggesting Epic and Valve have bad coders because they haven't sorted it out yet either.
I'm not suggesting they're bad coders. I just don't think they care. They'd have known about, raised and fixed the issue within days or weeks if they did. It's been 9 months while many, many other games have easily and simply enabled EAC or BattlEye.
I'm still unwilling to say that it's as easy for them as for others. They have, by their account, done everything that was supposed to make it easy and...it didn't work. Considering they're in the middle of Darktide, works fine under Windows (their actual target environment), I doubt the audience would be that large even with the Deck, and they could've spent ages getting nowhere, I think they absolutely made the right call here.
Sounds like you agree - they don't care. They have other priorities. Because if you genuinely think that if they did care, but still couldn't get this working in 9 months, then we'll agree to differ. If there was money on the table here, they'd have it working.

But I won't be buying Darktide now because I don't trust them to care about Steam Deck or Linux. That's their call. It's my money.

Anti-cheat work on Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for Steam Deck & Linux 'on hold'
1 Jul 2022 at 9:21 am UTC

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestI feel obliged to go off-topic and say that it might not be the coders, it might be management pushing for continual rabbits out of hats instead. I've seen that so very much that it's actually the more likely scenario. The coders themselves have probably performed miracles to get anything running at all under such conditions.
Usually, I'd agree.
But with Fatshark you really have to look at the history.
They have been taking forever to make even simple changes (you know, reminds me of CA a little) in their previous games.

There's also the fact that lots of other devs have exactly the same thing working just fine now.
Only Fatshark and their custom engine can't do it right ... ???

Of course, it is entirely possible that they don't have the manpower in the software-side that they'd need and they are just crunching the few coders they do have.
And those then don't have the time to look into Linux properly - we've all done it, it takes a week or two to get acclimated development-wise if you come from the crutch-driven world of Windows.

In the end, though, even bad coders are a management fault for not detecting that, so you're definitely right in that sense, no matter the actual issue at hand here.
Well, all I can say is that from what I've seen (and personally experienced) really don't be so quick to judge the coders.
Also "a week or two" is really....intense, if someone is moving from Windows to GNU/Linux. Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but even counting coder reprioritisation in weeks can be something a manager will baulk at. Better ROI spending the time to improve something else. Which is exactly what's happening here.
It's been nearly 9 months. They started looking at this in October 2021.
And I doubt they continually looked at it all that time. There's nothing to suggest they only just handed it over to Epic and Valve to sort out now - it would've been done some time ago. Yet nobody seems to be suggesting Epic and Valve have bad coders because they haven't sorted it out yet either.
I'm not suggesting they're bad coders. I just don't think they care. They'd have known about, raised and fixed the issue within days or weeks if they did. It's been 9 months while many, many other games have easily and simply enabled EAC or BattlEye.