The big thing I wonder about DRM is why they are doing it, if it supposedly doesn't work.
It might be a bit similar to overreactions to a pandemic - if the situation ends up under control, you can say "it worked! Everything is under control", but you could also say "See? Wasn't that bad, so all your measures wouldn't have been necessary".

There have definitely been cases where DRMs totally failed to do their job, cases where they succeeded very well and everything in-between I guess.

How much a game would've been pirated (or bought) without DRM is something only a time traveller could tell us.

Quoting: ShmerlIn my opinion DRM has no justification, it's simply unethical.

That may be a reason to you not to use DRM in your hypothetical project, but ethics in the end matter only as long as nothing more important is at stake, e.g. money.

You're also throwing all kinds of DRM in the same pot.
If a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.

Of course, those Windows "kernel driver" things are a whole different subject, but that also goes into anti-cheating, etc.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: razing32Hmm , we seem to be getting a lot of adventure games lately :)
Though - what is up with the graphics - feels like they are all done in mspaint :(

I gotta agree with that.
The art style just seems... sluggish? As in, the artist is just starting to learn the craft and maybe shouldn't be doing an entire game just yet.

Harsh. :grin:

The style is quite simple and cartoonish, but there are worse looking games out there. And some of them are excellent.

Sure, I also didn't mean all of the art. The backgrounds, for example, look very good.
What doesn't work are the characters, the faces, the animations, the anatomy - I've seen these mistakes a lot during my time as a student & teacher at a game dev school. I'm not an artist, myself, but of course saw a lot of artists-in-learning and the "not quite getting human anatomy & movement right" is really exemplary here. Just pause the video at 1:17, for example and look at it - the position of the arm & hand (seems like it's coming out of his stomach), the perspective, the lighting, none of it really fits.
Humans are very hard to get right as an artist, especially in 2D. And being humans ourselves, we just tend to notice mistakes in our depiction a lot ;)
This isn't a style decision, either - except if you assume the characters don't fit in with the rest on purpose, which would be odd to say the least. I think it is really just lack of experience of an otherwise promising artist.

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Quoting: razing32Hmm , we seem to be getting a lot of adventure games lately :)
Though - what is up with the graphics - feels like they are all done in mspaint :(

I gotta agree with that.
The art style just seems... sluggish? As in, the artist is just starting to learn the craft and maybe shouldn't be doing an entire game just yet.

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Quoting: mphuZ

..how in relation to DRM-free gaming that "98-99% of players don't care"

But it's true. Does anyone disagree?

Nobody in their right mind would disagree with that.
People care about being able to play games. In what form exactly isn't really important. Convenience trumps all.

The 10% were very obviously highly inflated expectations, the dev didn't do their research then.
I also bought the game and loved it - but like others, I quickly switched from the linux native version to the proton one, it just ran that much better.
Which is to be expected given the dev has shown no interest whatsoever in dealing with the linux-specific problems. And, well, that was not the latest version of Unreal, and Unreal is known to now have the best linux support out of the box to put it mildly.

Dev is doing the right thing here. They have no investment in either DRM-free-ideologies or linux, are a very small team, etc.
I'm not too surprised that the work of maintaining a GOG presence isn't worth it to them.

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Alone in the Dark + Alice? Interesting.

Though I do have doubts that anything will come really close to American McGee's Alice again.

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At this point, it is almost easier counting the games coming out that do NOT have card battles ;)

*goes back to playing Monster Train*

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Quoting: GuestPersonally i think 30% is perfectly fine for AAA devs. I however think that Steam [and other Stores] could lower that Cut for Indie devs.

Funny enough, it is actually the other way around.

Edit:
There's this, which strongly favors AAA to begin with, I just remembered it as AAA devs getting a better cut to begin with (not that the end result is that much different):
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-new-revenue-sharing-favours-big-budget-games-and-indie-devs-arent-happy/ [External Link]

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI've seen that argument a few times, and frankly, it is a myth.
Ever since Valve opened the floodgates and accepted every piece of garbage game on their platform without any moderation whatsoever, the number of games coming out is so huge that a developer gains pretty much nothing from the fact that they are on Steam. This is especially true for indie developers.
Valve doesn't "present" a damn thing, users have to actively wade through the masses of unmoderated games.

Tell how awesome being on Steam alone is to all the developers who didn't do their due diligence, didn't do any marketing, and as a result barely sell anything on Steam.
And if you have to do the marketing routine anyway, what exactly is so great about being "presented" on Steam, again?

What does that have to do with anything? There is too much of everything. Moderation doesn't change that. You won't notice the trash anyway, but do you complain about spotify and bandcamp, too? Everybody can upload their stuff there. There's a billion musicians. Not all of them can break through.

What that has to do with anything is that you were trying to make the point that being on Steam alone would somehow be a good thing for a developer. It is a necessary thing, or at least it used to be, but developers don't gain anything from the mere fact.
Because of the reasons I outlined. Just like simply being on Spotify doesn't do anything for musicians.

And moderation makes a lot of difference, especially strong moderation. There used to be a time when you'd actually notice an interesting new release on Steam. Now there are so many of them that you'd basically have to go through the list every day. Who wants to do that?
On GOG and EGS, there are way fewer new releases per day (sometimes, there might not even be one in a day!), so those do get noticed simply by the fact that they got released.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot a huge profit margin, mind you, it might be only covering their expenses. And I do expect them to raise it somewhat, as I wrote above.

And covering your expenses is good enough?

Of course it is, while you are growing. Just look at Spotify, etc. I'm not even sure they make a profit at this point, but they sure as hell didn't initially.

Quoting: kuhpunktbut when transfer fees can be up to 15%, it's not covering costs. Sweeney himself once said it's not sustainable in certain areas. And they lose money with their sales, too.

Which is irrelevant as Epic forwards those fees to the users, encouraging them not to use services with absurdly large transfer fees.
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/epic-games-store-faq?lang=en-US [External Link]

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou don't see anyone complain because complaining could make you enemies you don't want to have. Also, it would be entirely pointless. What are devs gonna do, not publish on PS4 because they don't like the cut?

And that makes it less hypocritical?

Makes what less hypocritical?
Saying that Steam's cut is way larger than it needs to be? Nothing hypocritical about it, that's just the truth.
Pointing at others doing the same (or worse) is whataboutism and adds no valid points to any discussion.

Quoting: kuhpunktI'm not sure who started with the 30%, but once upon a time it was a dream for developers/publishers to get 70%. And what's so bad about them making profit? I don't think it's exploitative.

Nothing bad about it, I'm just saying that it is better for developers if that cut was lower and that the cut can absolutely be lowered while storefronts would still make a profit.

Quoting: kuhpunktAlso you didn't address the monthly fees for XBOX Live etc. that you don't have on PC.

Because they have nothing to do with anything discussed here. It's just another way for Sony, etc. to make more money to allow them to heavily subsidize their consoles to sell them at a lower price than what would otherwise make sense.

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Quoting: kuhpunktEpic at the moment takes 12%. Do you honestly think they make profit with that, when the payment methods alone can cost more?

Yes, I do. Because I actually work in the same field (not exactly gaming storefront, but hosting and payments costs are hosting and payment costs, no matter what exactly the servers do and which goods are sold) and know the costs. What exactly was your qualification here, other than "I saw it on TV"?

Not a huge profit margin, mind you, it might be only covering their expenses. And I do expect them to raise it somewhat, as I wrote above.

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd you think 10% is fair... Epic is losing money to get into the market.

Yes, they are. Because of their exclusivity deals. Not because of their cut.
Also, I said 10-20%, don't put words in my mouth just to try to make a point.

Quoting: kuhpunkt30% is the standard everywhere and I have yet to see developers complain about MS, Sony, Nintendo, Apple etc. - and I don't think they offer as much as Valve does - and when they do, they charge for their service.

You don't see anyone complain because complaining could make you enemies you don't want to have. Also, it would be entirely pointless. What are devs gonna do, not publish on PS4 because they don't like the cut?

Do you honestly think 30% would have become the standard if there wasn't a fat profit margin in it?
Capitalism, baby!

Only on PC, there is now the situation that someone comes in with a lower cut and exclusivity deals and all that is shaking up some rusty structures.
It will be interesting to see where it leads. For developers, I think this is all-in-all a very positive development. And as a developer - even if not games, yet - that is my perspective.

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