Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut

Well, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.

That seems like an overly negative attitude :dizzy:

It's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.

"Should" all be able to agree on?? how's about we can all at least agree on definitions for words like 'greed'? that is if we're going to use them and bother trying to communicate at all. personal gain != greed. if i work for food, i want personal gain. that is not the same as greed.

" You can call it" .. tell ya what, i'll call it what's most accurate and not accusatory. sounds like a serious case of characterization. is it really honest to start making assumptions about people's motives?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

what in the...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut

Well, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.
I think it's pretty clear EGS is running a strategy where they run up short term losses, which they can afford to do thanks to a huge war chest from fortnite and certain investors, in order to grab market share; once they've pushed that as far as it will go they can be expected to boost the price up again. But the question of what cut is fair remains open--we don't have information about just what the expenses and revenue are, so we're forced to judge based on not very relevant data, like wossname from EGS seeming like kind of a jerk.
In theory this whole war of each against all in the marketplace is supposed to lead to efficient pricing and not overly huge profit margins due to competition. But that lack of information (among other things, like barriers to entry, network effects creating economies of scale and many, many more) mean that doesn't necessarily happen.
So it may well be that Valve's cut of each sale is in fact excessive, giving them windfall profits while most devs barely get by, and they've been guffawing all the way to the bank for years. Or, it may not. We don't have the info we would need to tell the difference. (If it is true, EGS are still not our saviours, they're just an outfit who wants to replace Valve as the ones grabbing the dough, and they see the only way to do it is by loss leaders)

The only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.

i don't think asking for compensation for your time, or coming to an agreement on what time, effort or a product is worth, or renegotiation make you greedy. i don't think simply wanting something is quite the same as greed. sure you could work just for food, but what if you want to work harder and have more than just needs? i know yall wanna turn this political, but really... if you don't think an asking price for a service is reasonable, do something else. capitalism isn't even required, technically, and lack of it never stopped anyone from making agreements and trading.

Quoting: AsuI don't mind Lord Gaben laughing all the way to the bank. He's the only reason I can play on linux and was able ditch windoze finally.
Epic supports blender and unreal engine is on linux. Still no store on linux...
I'm angry at GOG because galaxy is still not on linux, yet I'm still shoveling money their way. And I still need to use 3rd party launcher. God bless gamehub.
Cyberpunk2077 better be on linux. Or on wine at the minimum. Still undecided on which store I want to buy it. If it needs proton then it's steam.

same, and i'm the anti-DRM zealot, but i consider some things a donation to the cause of getting a game market on linux. there are still better ways and one day i'll probably take em into my own hands, but hell, steamplay is idiotproof and the whole reality is pretty impressive

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: HoriIn my eyes this is a good move.

The store can't be completely open, and it cannot be completely controller either. A fine balance must be struck between what should be open, and what should be controlled. This feature is IMO a good example of something that has to be put under control, as it was heavily abused and caused more harm than good, for most people. Cleaning dirty parts like this could allow others to stay (or become) open. That is, of course, if the authority behind it (Valve) stands by the original idea - and I personally think that they are doing quite well in that regard, keeping in mind their past actions.

However I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

afaik, valve are still only charging what people are willing to pay to sell on steam. they DO offer much more to the community and far more features than EGS, for example. i mean are they losing enough money to EGS yet? EGS exclusives seemed to be more about upfront handouts than anything else.

i also don't see the harm in having multiple places to buy videogames from. choice def puts the power right in the hands of the consumer. also the devs in this case. money talks, specially when you have the right and power to withold your own.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

i don't think this has anything to do with open or not; it's changing a valve-controlled feature so it can't be abused, which was defeating the purpose of the feature. they COULD also just not have the feature at all, would that be more open? you're on steam to receive a service.

the first thing i thought of when i saw this, though, is EGS and those exclusivity bribes. this isn't mean to keep people from charging for preorders and then suddenly setting only the steam release date back a year? tbh that shit oughtta be illegal anyway. breach of contract, based on a common understanding of what a preorder is. of course i didn't follow that story very closely so idk how it turned out.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: WorMzyHnnn, I'm really tempted to pick up Cuphead, but I don't want to buy "new" games to play in Proton. In my opinion it encourages devs to be lazy and treat Linux users as second class citizens (at best). I'd rather buy games from devs that actually support Linux directly.

Is there data to support the claim that Steam Play / Proton harms Linux gaming or it causes game developers to ignore Linux users?

As far as I know, the developers of these games do not make Linux versions even before Steam Play.

- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- A Plague Tale: Innocence
- Void Bastards
- KartKraft
- Wreckfest
- Xenon Racer
- NieR:Automata
- Vanquish
- The Surge
- Yakuza 0
- Prey
- X-Morph Defense
- Grim Dawn
- Tekken 7

They won't be intimidated by the "No Tux, No Bux" attitude.

I use Linux for gaming (no dual boot) for 2 years now and I also believe Linux is the future of PC gaming. What we need right now is to increase the number of Linux gamers. We can do that by showing to the PC gaming community that Linux is not limited to games from indie devs or games ported by Feral Interactive or Aspyr.

well i don't have any illusions that my passionately linux-loving tail can hold a dev hostage with my few pennies, and i don't think proton hurts linux desktop adoption, haha.. but if a dev doesn't at least explicitly support the game on proton/linux, you are spending your money on something that could break in the future, with the dev only throwing a "not our problem; unsupported platform" at you. and there are actually many things that a dev can change that can cause breakage.

see, it may not really be so much about getting devs to support linux natively as it is about their explicitly supporting it by any means. i want my DRM'd or multiplayer software to stay working even after updates or changes to anti-cheat or something.

and yeah, this does look like they're working feature by feature. what an incredible project. i had just said to a friend that it's enough that modern games meant to run on a windows kernel and ecosystem can be made to run on anything else at all. that it can do so as fast or in some cases faster than on windows is hilarious... and maybe sad xP

View this comment - View article - View full comments

this project is amazing. so much heart and work put into it, i don't think the game could be done more justice. even the added features are very fitting. incredible is a good word. i've yet to try the multiplayer though

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoBut, remember that in the 90's it wasn't necessary to buy the games for to play them. We were able to RENT games for consoles like Sega Genesis, SNES and playstation Cd's, etc..
And We were able to rent games for computers with MSDOS, totally DRMFREE in Cd's, or even Floppy disks.
I miss that freedom!

yeah, it wasn't perfect, but they were still much better times for consumers. remember when the game you bought was the game you were still playing years later, and wasn't patched into an entirely different experience from what you paid for? golly i miss being treated like a human being

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestG2A (and other grey market sites) are not the problem, they are a symptom. The whole system is flawed and G2A are simply taking advantage of it. This misdirected anger will ultimately solve nothing.

i'm just gonna say it and let it sit here, unsupported because i won't write a book in a comments section: the IP system itself does not reflect reality, and resulting business models are screwed at a fundamental level. inb4 angry mobs. i have some theories about what the future holds, however... =P''

EDIT: i shouldn't have to say that this is not in defense of G2A whatsoever. shady Ayy Eff, as the kids say.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: 14I haven't played with Mint for a long time. Man, that was my first dual-boot choice when I started migrating my general computing and some gaming to Linux. I found messing between Steam and PlayOnLinux and USB WiFi drivers not to be fun on Mint, and I wasn't a fan of the Ubuntu desktop environment back then. I also wanted to get away from major OS upgrades. Anyway, I'm still somewhat fond of the distro. I'll throw LMDE into a VM and take a peek.

i read as my vm lmde install finishes, haha ;3 very similar story here

View this comment - View article - View full comments