So I just went back and finished Icewind Dale after leaving it parked right before the final boss battles for a year and a half. Guess I will wait on starting Heart of Winter until after the update is available for GOG.com buyers.

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Is that Blackbox I see there? Good man.

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Quoting: elmapul1)i dont remember the last time i pirated something, but last time i checked i didnt missed any feature, it was an offline game anyway.

I already gave an example with Duke Nukem Forever earlier in the thread. Sure, you can come up with a list of games that do work flawlessly once cracked, but I can do the same for Windows games running in WINE. It is not that they can not be made to work, it is the uncertainty and volatility that is the problem. In both cases you are left on your own without support.

Quoting: elmapul2)with the current marketshare we dont have both, drm-free games or games with drm, currently we dont refuse to play games with drm because we want to boycot drm, but because we CANT play then.

I mean, that is exactly what I have been doing. There are many Linux native games I refuse to purchase and play because they come with DRM solutions, most prominently Steamworks. And I am happy to say I still have a large backlog of Linux native DRM free games to get through.

Quoting: elmapulyou would still have the option to only play drm free games, the difference is that you will be able to play everything else. its not just about us paranoid with privacy , security and freedom, but about everyone else too

Sure, as things stand it is a personal consumer choice. But the way you presented it makes it a false dichotomy. You can have both, or neither, and one compromise is not greater than the other. Your preference is for more titles on Linux no matter what, my preference is for more DRM free titles. In the end we are both buying Linux games and supporting the industry. I am not hurting Linux marketshare by using Linux to only play DRM free titles.

What I will say is a DRM free Windows game that works well in WINE is in the end more accessible to me than a Linux native game that requires DRM in order to function. And while my objections to Windows native games are on a technical level, my objections to DRM systems are on an ethical one.

Quoting: elmapul4)drm seems to be an thin layer compared to an operating system, there is a reason why it take so little time to break the drm of most games, but its taking years to make some games work on linux.

DRM is deliberately antagonistic by design, unlike the APIs that make games work on other platforms. You are both hugely underestimating the effort it takes to break DRM systems and underestimating the effectiveness of emulators like DOSBox or compatibility layers like WINE. But I am not going to deny that both take a great deal of talent and effort to pull off. And the difference still remains that one is legal and the other often is not.

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Actually, to answer my own question, there is a difference: running a game through WINE is still legal. In Canada at least ANY attempt to break a digital lock is explicitly forbidden by law due to the Copyright Modernization Act, even for software you paid for and otherwise have a licence to use.

I knew someone who after thirteen long years wanted to finally play Duke Nukem Forever but was old school enough to not want a Steam account. So he played a cracked version of the game which, by deactivating Steamworks, also meant that the Ego system in the game was broken. He completed the entire game with the lowest amount of health possible, not even getting the first boost you get right at the beginning of the game from using the urinal.

My playing the copy of Shadow Warrior 2 I was gifted by GOG.com through WINE and DXVK and having a few issues with video playback is a small point in comparison.

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Quoting: elmapulthat is, if the game RUNS. a lot of games dont, or run without a lot of features.

Which is exactly my point. How is that any different than running a cracked version of a game with broken multiplayer or other quirks related to breaking the DRM system without developer support?

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Quoting: elmapuldrm can be broken later on, windows users dont have an issue with that, because there are enough hackers on the windows comunity to break any drm they might have.
meanwhile we dont have neither all the games nor the cracked games.
we would have both if we had an better marketshare.

Let's be honest, if running a game with a crack to get around DRM is considered an acceptable user experience, so is running a Windows game through WINE with no support. We can do better on both platforms.

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Quoting: aokamiValve always came up with innovative gameplay, hl introduced story in fps and interaction mechanics, hl2 defined physics, portal was about bending space (and really neat rendering tricks)

Since someone has to be the pedant, they were not the first to introduce any of those things. They popularized them, sure, and could even be said to have pushed the envelope with regards to what could be done with them. But Valve has a nasty habit of getting exclusive credit for things that others were experimenting with at the time too.

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Quoting: elmapuli think we should let the fight against drm with the windows users, while we fight for linux marketshare, we can join they in their fight later on, but we dont have enough people/resources to fight in both fronts at the same time run today, live to fight tomorrow.

The thing is, if I was of the mindset that was okay with DRM solutions, I would not be using Linux in the first place. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

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As a demonstration I recorded a video of all the Blood demos being playing with DOSBox Staging at 640x480 using the GOG.com wrapper and OpenGL output for showing the framerate with Gallium HUD:
https://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php?title=File:DOSBox-Staging-Blood-640x480.webm [External Link]

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Just gave this a try and for Build Engine games it is so much better than mainline DOSBox. I was able to get a stable +60 FPS in Blood at 640x480 which looks glorious on my ViewSonic Q71 16" CRT. And the CD music loops properly now and has a working volume slider. Even 1280x1024 was achieving a playable +30 FPS in Blood. A massive improvement.

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