Quoting: fabertaweIt's only DRM if it's the only way to play the game. As someone pointed out earlier, going to the cinema isn't DRM, you can buy the DVD if you want to "own" it. Same thing exactly.

It will be the only way to play games through Stadia, i.e. they aren't offering downloads. So it is DRMed. Whether same games will be available DRM-free in other places, remains to be seen, but each store is evaluated according to its policies, not according to what's available in other stores.

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See also:

http://www.openhmd.net
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado/tree/experimental/libsurvive
https://github.com/cnlohr/libsurvive

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Quoting: tuxdeluxSurprised to see all the complaints about privacy / drm / lack of ownership / linux support here

Not sure what to be surprised here about. Making DRM matters worse, not better is a major step in the wrong direction.

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Quoting: ShabbyXWhat's with all the DRM talk? You're not "buying" games with Stadia for DRM to apply. DRM is only meaningful (and bullshit) when you buy something, because DRM restricts what you can do with it.

With Stadia, you are paying for play time. If you go to the cinema, you don't think about DRM because you are not buying the movie, just watching it. Same with Netflix. If you ever played games at a game café, it was a similar situation to Stadia; you paid to play games the café owned, not you, and DRM didn't apply.

If you are not convinced, try to think what you could have done differently as an anti-DRM person if you were the lead of Stadia.

DRM issue here is quite obvious. Streaming idea itself of course doesn't imply renting or DRM and just means certain functionality. I.e. you can have a DRM-free store with streaming... as long as the game is provided for download alongside the streaming option. Unfortunately Stadia doesn't have such choice. So imagine a DRM obsessed publisher, which will figure, that releasing only on Stadia is a neat way to ensure that game can't ever be redistributed. That's like DRM on steroids basically.

Taking streaming and DRM-free examples from other media, consider Bandcamp. It sells DRM-free music, and it as well allows you to stream it as a convenience. In contrast stores like Spotify are DRMed, since they don't offer downloads and you can only rent, not buy music there.

Same thing here, what stops Stadia from selling (rather than renting) games, allowing both downloads and streaming for purchased games? That would make it DRM-free. As it stands now, it's DRMed, since it's a renting service.

TL;DR: equating streaming with renting is wrong, it's an artificial, not a natural combination. You can have a DRM-free store that sells digital products and also uses streaming along with it as a convenience feature.

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Quoting: WJMazepasI honestly believe that devs will port games to Stadia but wont port to Linux.

If they wanted to, Ubisoft could already have released Assassins Creed Odyssey for Linux if they have a build working on Stadia.
Or Id Software, who said that they could easily port Doom to Linux but wouldnt do it because the executives didnt wanted to release on Linux.

Not every company is as messed up as Ubisoft and Bethesda. I.e. I don't expect many legacy publishers starting being more interested in releasing for desktop Linux, but this definitely lowers the barrier for those who are already releasing for Stadia.

Some more forward thinking publishers could be more desktop Linux friendly and Stadia could be the tipping point for them to start releasing for Linux in general. I.e. I wouldn't use Ubisoft and Bethesda as a good case study. Rather like bad ones.

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Quoting: STiATI personally don't see developers going through the hassle natively supporting linux if they can utilize Stadia. If it succeeds.

That's not a good thing. I'm not really interested in browser games limited by bandwidth and latency, that can't even be backed up, when I already have good enough hardware to run them at full performance directly. Let's hope it won't be too difficult for developers to make desktop versions from Stadia ones.

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Quoting: subDidn't many people say NVidia will provide some open-source driver (not necessarily opening the current blob) when there is strong demand by the industry - not Joe user like you and me, ofc?

So are we there yet? :)

That can actually be the breaking point for them indeed. Time will tell.

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Quoting: ShabbyXDisclaimer: I work at Google (though not on Stadia), previously Eidos Montreal (Shadow of the Tomb Raider).

Games running on Stadia are primarily native. Yeap, engines you never dreamed would support Linux, now do thanks to Google.

As Stadia has its own SDK, porting from Stadia to Desktop means adding SDL support and supporting the desktop swapchains. Personally, I think the biggest hurdle with desktop support would be testing and bug fixing, as with Stadia the game is really just tested on AMD. That said, as a desktop Linux gamer myself, I'm certainly hoping this would help get us more AAA games. :) If nothing, all the open source work means better mesa, faster kernel, more advanced profilers etc which are all good for our cause.

Very interesting point about SDL, thanks. For Stadia it indeed makes sense to have its own way of handling input then producing a video stream. Hopefully it won't be very difficult for developers to provide alternatives to Stadia SDK for the desktop case. May be SDL developers can collaborate with Google to make this easier.

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Quoting: subI love it how AMD managed to get the design win for this again. :)
There must be some technical reason behind it, I guess.

Otherwise, NVidia would have surely just outbid AMD to get finally
back into the console-a-like AAA business again.

That's easy I think. Google want to be free to use the graphics stack commercially. I'm not sure Nvidia blob allows that without licensing from Nvidia. Though they probably partnered with AMD anyway in some form to benefit both sides (like getting driver support and so on). But at least they are paying for support which is a normal method for FOSS, not for the right to use.

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Quoting: chancho_zombiethe word is a wink to stadium?? uh ? so maybe they will focus on multiplayer

I suppose. Stadia is Latin plural for stadium.

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