As a heads up: steam keys can now be activated here [External Link].

I also found this a few minutes ago to download steam depots without the steam client nor SteamCMD.

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Looks like some people went all the way to reverse engineer the steam platform: https://github.com/SteamRE/SteamKit [External Link]

They also have a "Depot Downloader [External Link]". Which makes it a fully open-source (afaik) way to download steam games. Now, if only we could get a shim to make wine games work with the Linux client, that would be great :)

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: MblackwellI hate to get into the weeds a bit but at a certain point it's just semantics since you could copy the files out if there's no DRM on them and back them up yourself. GOG also isn't DRM free by your logic because it requires you to have a valid account with a purchase license and to log in to their servers to download the game and any patches.

You use some limited definition of DRM that doesn't include installation (why so?), also you confuse DRM with authentication i.e. an account. Both of those are wrong. Account doesn't make it DRM, but lack of installer / package that you can legally back up, does. To put it very shortly, DRM is an artificial restriction on what you can with your digital goods do after purchase. So let's make it clear, backing up something from Steam to work around their lack of DRM-free package, violates their TOS already.

While I agree that the lack of a standard gateway to get the product (no webpage) is a bit concerning, some of the games offered on Steam have no DRM mechanisms whatsoever. You can just copy the files and run them somewhere else, and the game will not perform any further authentication to check whether you have the right to play it (which makes it DRM-free in my book).
I am not sure it violates Steam's TOS, I would have to read those again. But I am pretty sure they stated that it was up to the developer to include DRM in their products. Plus, if I am not mistaken, VALVe clearly allows you to backup your games from the Steam client (they even provide some functionality to this effect).

SteamCMD can also be used to download the games (or servers) without the fully-fledged client. It was bothering me to download a non-free tool to do so; but in essence, your goal is to download a proprietary game, so it isn't too annoying in the end.

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Quoting: CorbenAs N30N mentioned in his post [External Link] on the Steam forums, it might be easier to just set this launch option of Everspace, instead of editing the start script:

ignore="%command%" ./RSG/Binaries/Linux/RSG-Linux-Shipping

Didn't know about the "ignore" option so far. Learning never stops! :)

Well, that's not really an option, you just declare a new environment variable that will contain the original command, and then proceed to launch the executable directly :)

I guess it could work as well with echo "%command%"; ./RSG/Binaries/Linux/RSG-Linux-Shipping 
What I like to do to debug games that won't accept being launched directly is to have Steam launch a terminal emulator, with the original command as an environment variable. Then, I just launch $ignore (or whatever I assigned) in the terminal.

Quoting: ShmerlI didn't really follow the whole thread. So does it work with Mesa git or not?

Some people are saying that it requires LLVM 5.0, I am inclined to believe them.

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Quoting: appetrosyanI keep wondering, why is Nvidia, being an aggressively competitive and For profit company dishing out better drivers than the pro-FOSS AMD?

Short answer: they don't.
AMD always had the more compliant drivers. They will complain when a game does something that shouldn't work according to the spec; while that's not the case with nVidia's.
It is also a matter of optimization: different code-paths provide different performance on the two brands, so the code running when you have an nVidia card is different from the one running when you use an AMD one. This can lead to some issues, as it seems to be the case here. Generally speaking, doing enough testing on both sides avoids these kind of problems, but developers who use an nVidia card are more likely to see bugs on AMD.
Some commenters pointed out that this issue seems to be fixed in the latest UE. This isn't really the devs'fault in this case, as the engine they used had this issue.

And now, regarding user experience, I've personally had it much better on AMD. Your mileage will vary, of course.

Whoops, looks like I was ninja'ed. Well, that will teach me to read all the comments before writing a reply.

Liam, could you update the article with the workaround a lot of people seem to need? (Delete LD_LIBRARY_PATH from the launcher script). Thanks!

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: wolfyrion

Quoting: elmapuli want to buy this games, but i'm not sure if any girl will want to be my girl friend knowing that i have such games on steam xD.
(well some fujoshis will not mind)

Well as a game collector I accidentally got My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant without me knowing and I was using ASF Bot to get the steam cards but friends can see my activity which games I am playing. After a while a friend msg "I didnt know that you like gay stuff".... I was like......... "EEHhHhHH? WTF???? :O

Well thats the price that all game collectors have to pay in order to grab all the games...

Not sure if this post got so many likes because you're a girl who games, or that you have an ex-boyfriend and are single...

But is it this Space Tyrant you're talking about? http://store.steampowered.com/app/562230/Space_Tyrant/ [External Link] Not sure what's 'gay' about it...

Maybe I'm just confused 'cause it' almost 5am here and I can't sleep... when you have insomnia everything is a copy of a copy of a copy....

You sure seem to be tired :)

The capitalization hints at " My Ex-Boyfriend" being part of the game title, though I didn't double-check.

I liked the post because the anecdote was funny, and I can relate as a "game collector" ;)
It seemed to me that wolfyrion was male, although I learned long ago not to make any assumptions about people's gender on the Internet (or to care about it, for that matter... :D)

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Well, after reading these comments, I hesitate a bit...

These games ought to be DRM-free!
Otoh, they have Linux support, and could offer lots of fun (not the least, joke and pun subjects).
The sad thing is that there is little on the way of gameplay or story.

But now that I think about it, it might be the perfect kind of game to practice Japanese at a beginner level (do you have other recommendations?)

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and an experimental KMS/DRM video driver

I've been waiting for this! Hopefully we'll be able to run steam or games directly without even a window manager (Valve, please Listen, and make Steam big picture a Wayland compositor!!!).

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From a quick skim of the LICENSE [External Link] file, it looks like the "engine" is open, but not the art assets. Fine by me.

The game isn't really free software, but I would allow at least the "engine" to be called "open source".
The problem is that I think it requires games maker to work, which is not free software, so I am a bit torn on whether to call the "engine" free software as well. Better than nothing, I wish more developers did this, that's also a great learning resource.

The game looks fun, I may check it out some day if I have enough time :)

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If some modders make a game based on this "novel", I hope they will keep the gender-swapped, renamed version, that would be fun :P

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