Quoting: EhvisI'm going to buy some bread at the supermarket. When I finished it, I can't use it anymore. It's not DRM free!

What, the store enforcers run after you and grab your bought bread away on a whim? Or the bread has a self destruct trigger attached that can be activated by the store? What kind of bread do you buy??

Hint: be careful with analogies from physical merchandise to digital goods. They are not always matching one to one. But if you are using one, at least find something close enough.

I see no point in arguing about definition of DRM. Please don't waste time in this thread on it.

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Quoting: EhvisThere is no store. You're paying for time on service that allows you to use something that you can't use in any other place. Everything you said so far is irrelevant.

I don't care if you call it a store or a "renting service". You yourself said "there is nothing to buy". Being able to buy is part of definition of being DRM-free. So it doesn't fit the definition of being DRM-free, that's it and your claim that it's not DRMed is simply false.

And let's wait for ShabbyX to answer my points, since he was asking "how else streaming could be done to actually be DRM-free", which I answered above.

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Quoting: EhvisI know you're a DRM free advocate, but that's just nonsense in this context. There is nothing to buy, so this definition does not apply.

There is nothing to buy, so it doesn't fit the definition of being DRM-free, ergo it's a DRMed digital store. Not sure what's hard to understand here. Commonly, renting digital stores are DRMed because of the above.

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Quoting: EhvisAs I wrote above, Stadia is by its very design DRM free.

It's by design super DRMed, since it's a renting service that doesn't allow you to buy a game, have a backup and use it without relying on any store and such in the future to play it.

The definition of DRM-free is roughly "buy and don't have any restrictions placed on the purchase after you bought it". Stadia clearly doesn't fit it. For instance you won't be able to play anything there if your account is closed or Stadia itself closes down. Same issue affects all DRMed services which have a perpetual requirement of connecting to their backend to use digital goods they are offering.

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Quoting: ShabbyXLike I said, please think about what _you_ would have done if you were the lead of Stadia. Being large-distributed-data-center-based, how could you ensure that games that are built for that scale could run on a PC? Besides, you are not buying games individually to play on Stadia (if you did, yes your concern would be totally valid). If you pay a 10$ subscription fee, you can't expect to be able to download and play every game Stadia offers outside of it as if you owned all of them.

If 15 years ago they described Netflix, there would have probably been similar reactions: "Can't own the movie anymore. I can only watch on Netflix. That's bad". But here we are, and I don't care at all if I don't have the DVD to something I once watched on Netflix and moved on.

I have a library of ~200 games on steam, and honestly I have rarely ever went back to any of them after one playthrough. I think this is less of a DRM issue and more of a paradigm shift from people buying games individually to subscription-based play-whatever-you-want-without-having-to-buy-it-first-and-return-if-shitty. I don't think Google is actively trying to implement DRM in Stadia. As I see firsthand at Google, we are all trying to build amazing stuff, and have little time for bullshit like that.

I answered your question about "what _you_ would have done if you were the lead of Stadia", you missed it. Please see:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/google-announce-stadia-their-new-cloud-gaming-service-built-on-linux-and-vulkan.13792/comment_id=150843

Regarding "being large-distributed-data-center-based, how could you ensure that games that are built for that scale could run on a PC?" I don't see any problem here. Most high end PCs are going to be better than supposed instances that Stadia is offering. And most PC games are already built to scale according to hardware. So noting should stop them from running both on Stadia and on regular desktop Linux (as long as they provide those options as you said with SDL and different swapchains).

About coming back to games, I often replay my games which I bought in DRM-free stores like GOG, itch.io and others. I'm not using Steam due to DRM, and surely not going to use even more DRMed Stadia for same reason.

And I agree about Netflix being a bad option. It doesn't offer a DRM-free ability of downloading films that you could buy straight. And the reason DRM-free video stores still don't exist is simply stupid backward thinking of various lawyers who are afraid of it

See about first hand experience of those who were trying to open one: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 [External Link]

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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 [External Link]
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado/tree/experimental/libsurvive [External Link]
https://github.com/cnlohr/libsurvive [External Link]

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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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