https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digit...
California new law forces digital stores to admit you're just licensing content
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663432 - Sep 2024 (11 comments)
(2) There is also a submission from today related to this article (though TFA and this other article are both rather light and shallow at ~1 paragraph each):
Steam now tells gamers up front that they're buying a license, not a game (engadget.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193 (15 comments)
(3) Finally, a marginally more informative article from Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/steam-now-reminds-you...
Then I wanted something else - literally a second game: and it wouldn't recognise either of my cards; all kinds of shenanigans.
I gave up and found Gog. Zero issues. No need to deal with their desktop app if you don't want it. I even bought the original game I had on steam, again, on Gog just so I don't have to deal with their stupid shit.
I realise not everyone has the "luxury" of starting over but I will never understand why if you're forced to start over, you'd choose the same company again.
My account is almost 20 years old (I signed up because you had to in order to play HL2) and I've purchased a lot of games over the years.
I only buy maybe 2-3 games a year from Steam directly. Most of the games in my library are from humble bundle (or similar sites). It's just been easier to click the Paypal button for the occasional impulse buy than to track down my wallet.
I'll probably go ahead and put my CC details in now that I know Paypal carries risk.
Once burned twice shy.
I just stole the games instead!
Maybe someone will create a gaming model that 'borrows' from every known game in existence, so that we'll finally get an Artificial Gaming-you Intelligence.
with the current console games. Even with disk, it's a huge download on first play. I wonder how playable these games are in there initial state without download...
I had a bunch of 32bit Mac games that will never run again, when they transitioned to 64bjt only software. I don't often replay and like many have a backlog o steam games I'll likely never get too. With steam and proton I have high confidence things will continue to run in the future..
Kind of like emulation keeps working.. or I can play my old doom wad files in a new doom executable.
But you are right that I’m kinda betting that things will continue as is with steam.
I've switched to retro gaming and find I enjoy it more. For example, exploring 90s Japanese games that never saw wide release in the US. Recently I've found some real winners exploring the X360 and PS3 back catalog of indie games via emulation. I'd never seen many of these because they were only released on their respective online services. Of course, with the shutdown of those stores, these titles would be lost to time were it not for the preservation and emulation communities archiving them. This is why I'm a fan of publishers like GOG who're at least making an effort toward perpetual availability.
Games are getting definitively worse. You are a revenue stream, not a customer or a person to app Al to in any way but the most lazy and base ways possible.
Each successive graphic generation places additional production cost to build models and world's, arguably to the artistic detriment of any game: first, since there is so much labor, corners are cut and artistic vision can't be applied everywhere to an army of graphic artists, many outsourced. Second, the overall production costs, much like movie production, makes producers conservative and cookie cutter in pursuit of a reliable return on investment.
The emulation community is preserving not just games, but an entirely different culture of gaming.
Perhaps AI can help with better mass generation of artistic assets, but really an AI is a mass averager of it's inputs: artistic vision is fundamentally a deviation from a norm, and large AI models are anything but
but if you rewind your render quality expectations by about ten years, there are still great games being made for way under $100mm. I'll plug two of my current favorites:
* factorio ($20). if you don't already know what it is, I can't really summarize it here. the entire team is < 10 people, but it's rare example of engineering excellence combined with a carefully curated user experience. I try to get all the devs and PMs I work with to read their blog.
* zero k (free). a bit more wacky, but one of the best rts of all time. they also have an interesting dev blog, and for a nice cherry on top, it's open source. some feature requests on the forums get the reply "great idea, I look forward to your PR", which I find pretty funny.
Modern games are wrestling with a lot of uncanny valley stuff still. They've improved a lot from the polar Express movie, but it's still an issue.
I recall the recent ads for first descendant where a guy is clearly smoking, which I thought was some vaping thing in realtime, but the smoking is even worse. Probably cigarette companies shadow funding things there.
It's been pretty lightspeed how the days of google do no evil has went to the great woke purge after covid and now is no holds barred mamma sociopathy. It was like 5 years.
I get the MBA sociopathy has been bubbling under the surface and lots of scary movements around the borders, but it is scary what is going on with big tech.
Then the post-COVID layoffs happened, and poof nobody does that anymore.
I don't necessarily oppose a lot of the agenda that the employee advocates were pushing for, it was the pitchfork mob tactics that went hand in hand with those people. And without those loud people, the companies have very rapidly pursued much more diabolical ends.
> (b)(1) It shall be unlawful for a seller of a digital good to advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental...
> (4)This section does not apply to any of the following: ...(C) Any digital good that is advertised or offered to a person that the seller cannot revoke access to after the transaction, which includes making the digital good available at the time of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.
https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab...
> 2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
> 17.2. Our right to terminate the Agreement. If you materially breach this Agreement, we reserve the right to suspend or cancel your access to GOG services and GOG content.
That they have provided you an installer is interesting but not legally relevant; if they revoke your license, your use of the installer is unlicensed and therefore, in theory, prosecutable. (This is of course difficult to enforce, but that’s only relevant if it’s theoretically prosecutable.)
(hint: the LA in EULA stands for "License Agreement", not Bill of Sale...)
I treat games as mostly consumption items. I play them for a while, and then I might as well throw them to trash if they were physical items. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't accept lack of source code anyway, just like with the OS and important personal computing software.
Machine code has always been enough.
I'm just stating the fact. If you want to own software, you need to get the source code. If you don't get the source code, you're paying $10-$60 per perishable consumable, and should be always be aware of that, not deluding yourself about some "ownership".
I own my personal computer software, from the Linux OS, through code editor, compilers, etc. I have the source code. I personally care, so I do own, and pay extra (in time and money) for that privilege and look down on people who don't, as I think they are foolish. I do not care about the games, so the license deal is fine with me. I played the game already, if I really want to play it again, I can pay $5 on sale again.
If you and others care about owning games, or any other software for that matter, demand and pay for the source code. Otherwise you own nothing.
And even if source code is provided, it can be next to impossible to build it on your machine, so hopefully it has a docker image or what have you. Would also need to know the GPU requirement to compile it.
Not saying I wouldn't want the source code to be provided, but I'd like it purely for research and modding purposes, not to make sure I can build from source 10 years from now.
I'm not sure about today given stuff getting "smarter", but home appliances do typically include the schematics. You typically find them inside an envelope as you disassemble the thing.
Same thing with open code -- one may say that depending on its license you also may not own it. But I say it's one step better.
All software is kept "alive" by human effort. As hardware, operating systems, drivers, and runtimes change, all software is kept running by additional human intervention. Even physical media like DVDs and cartridges will degrade at varying speeds. Bits containing an unlocked installer must be stored somewhere. Consoles stop working and need components replaced.
Software is the music that we play, it just takes a few decades for the echo to stop reverberating.
Websites are the worst. How many versions of gmail.com have been discarded for us to get to the current version? I'm sure Google currently has them backed up, which will survive until Google goes away and the millions of versions will likely disappear like vapor in the sun.
Software with a required public API will likely end soonest. If it needs an old architecture or hardware, that is a risk. If you have an unlocked installer, what OS dependencies does it have?
Someone in this chain said they only feel like they own software if they have the source code. Which is another way of saying, if they have the sheet music, they can play the song themselves. But it isn't "permanent" it's just another song in the wind.
GOG Galaxy has been experimental until recently and it is more concerned with being a unified gaming client rather than the primary way to distribute GOG games. In the last couple of years it has actually become quite unstable anyway and it is barely being maintained, clearly not a focus, Linux or not.
“Forcing its users to be at the whim of Microsoft” is quite a stretch.
I don't have any inside knowledge but there is clearly an internal battle at CD Projekt (and their investors since they are a public company) between those who want to print money doing the unethical stuff that other game developers and stores do and those who want a more customer friendly approach. They tried a more ethical online focused thing with GWENT (that ended up partly under GOG due to relying on Galaxy and was a big reason they pushed for higher Galaxy use for a while) but it ended up not really making much money. Things like this California law are great to help support the availability of DRM-free games.
Also, GOG has around 6500 games now and I'd be supprised if they were involved in getting more than about 100 of them to work on modern systems. Galaxy has been around over half the time GOG has been in business (as an online store, not counting the early CD Projekt days). You are thinking of the early days of GOG but they are quite a bit larger now and CD Projekt as a whole is much larger now. I still think they are the best option to support DRM-free games but they are not the same as when they started (not only in bad ways, the refund policy is great now).
But if the idea is that other platforms might screw you over some time down the line and this platform will have your back, I am not convinced if they entirely dismiss Linux. I know it is not practical for CDPR to develop Proton like Valve. The bare minimum they can do though is to show they have contingency plans in case Valve stops upstreaming its translation layer. Otherwise, why not stick to the platform that is too big to fail and is actually doing something useful?
Also consider the fact that a large fraction of GOG games are painstakingly restored old games, where revenue is clearly an afterthought, they sometimes seem like a nonprofit. You can’t reasonably expect them to also add Linux support to games from an era where Linux gaming was practically nonexistent, modern Linux translation layers will most likely be completely incompatible.
And again, they have not had a client for most of their tenure, and I cannot think of anything more consumer-friendly or consistent with Linux ideology than literally letting you download the files and do what you want with them without any DRM.
And you can just download the games from their website, they don't force you to use gog galaxy.
Proton itself is open-source[1].
If someone wanted to package up standalone Proton binaries for a Linux distro, then I don't see any particular barriers that would prevent that.
On GoG's part, they do provide the ability to just download a game with a web browser (the old-fashioned, DRM-free way). From there, I can manage the games I that own in any way that I choose.
Thus, I'm simply not seeing a problem here that needs solved. I already have the freedom to do whatever I want.
Which part of this situation is broken, do you suppose, and why does GoG in particular need to fix it?
[0]: https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton...
What does a person buy when they buy a game from GoG?
In my own experience with buying from GoG: What I buy is a copy of a Windows installer, and [often] a Steam code.
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If I then want to do something on my Linux box (or my Amiga 500) with that Windows installer, then: That's on me.
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I don't think that they owe me anything else here. YMMV.
The only way to ensure I have a working backup of a GOG installer is to download the Windows release even when Linux is an option.
also game developer that made Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077.
Can we please for the love of all that is logic stop repeating this cartoonishly inaccurate stereotype?
Of course, Linux users might pirate the games, as do Windows users. I am purely talking about legal rights here. I have to imagine there are quite a few developers with a primary Linux PC who are much more inclined to purchase a game if it doesn't require pulling out a special purpose Windows machine or dealing with an unofficial hack that barely works. Maybe those potential revenues don't justify the high costs of changing some compiler flags to CDPR.
Linux compatibility layers are actually getting pretty good anyway, and it's easier to get your game to run that way than to actually properly port it to linux.
Isn't this not the usual way we talk about ownership? If I buy a book at the bookstore, I own the book. I can put the physical object on my bookshelf. If someone breaks into my house and takes the book, they have stolen the book from me. I have the right to give or resell the book to someone else. I have the right to read it when and how I want to. I have the right to bequeath it when I die. That's "ownership" for all intents and purposes, even if the rights to do certain things with the book are reserved to someone else. I can't, for instance, place the book on a photocopier, press the copy button for each page, and give the copies to someone else. I can't read from it into a microphone at a public event.
I don't see how ownership in the digital realm is so different. I don't have a physical artifact, and copies of a digital work are exactly identical, rather than distinguishable. But that doesn't change very much about what ownership ought to mean. It basically means that I'm not limited in my rights to use the (digital) book however I'd like for private use, although certain things I might want to do with the work are illegal. I can't make a copy and give it to someone else. The fact that copying is "easier" doesn't change the fundamental nature of that restriction.
When Steam got in hot water recently for saying that you couldn't give your account to someone else (e.g. through a will), I think the reason people were mad about that because it meant that having a game in your Steam account is definitively not owning the game. On the other hand, having a game on CD-ROM or purchased on GOG might count as ownership.
what you're talking about is not ownership, but the first sale doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine).
Unfortunately, this old doctrine doesnt work in the digital realm. So consumers _lost_ some of their rights in this regard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Applicatio...
- Steam must clearly state it is selling you a license
- GOG is not required to say this (because you can download once and play forever)
I'm just sort of amazed that this law got out to benefit the citizens of california where so many others got veto'd or neutered on the way.
> "In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we'd do our best to make it happen. We're willing to handle such a situation and preserve your GOG library—but currently we can only do it with the help of the justice system."
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gog-will-let-you-beq...
I've had to refund a few games, I've never had a problem.
Allow me a short incoherent essay on my thoughts on the subject.
Public domain is a fascinating concept to me, My view is somewhat US centric, for example, some countries have no legal equivalent of the concept. but I think the idea that we the public can collectively own something is neat. Nothing wrong with copyright, I think copyright is a very important legal structure recognizing the effort to create something. but I also think it somewhat enlightened to say after a given amount of time the public owns this. Or the way the US government says "works created by the US government are for the good of all US citizens and as such are in the public domain". should a person be allowed to say "I made this for the public good and release any claim of ownership over it". sqlite infamously has trouble because some countries are legally unable to recognize a work put in the public domain. But all of nasa's software and papers are available under the same consideration.
A manufactured item is fairly hard to copy and the law on counterfeit goods is correspondingly weak. There is some law there, but it is hard to get it enforced, usually requires a court battle, etc. for example design of garments are infamously impossible to protect, garment manufactures tend to have to lean hard on trademark law to get any protection on design.
But printed works, It is easy to get a perfect copy, and computers are even worse. Trying to make a computer not copy something is like trying to make water that is not wet. This is the domain that copyright law started to appear. Basically laws explicitly saying you own what you wrote and get rights about decisions on when and where it can be copied.
But the point of my rather long-winded and incoherent rant is to say they can and do sell copies. when you buy a work those bits belong to you. you can do whatever you want with them... well, almost whatever you want with them. It is illegal to distribute them to others as this runs afoul of copyright law.
Running software without a license is literally illegal (at least in the US). Now, whether that is enforced, and to what extent in practice is a different story, just like how piracy in general is not really enforced against.
Mere execution and usage of software is simply not something copyright law cares about, which is why your assertion that
> Running software without a license is literally illegal (at least in the US).
is wrong. There is nothing in the law that gives copyright owners an exclusive right to "usage", only to the making of new copies, their distribution, derivative works, public performance, etc.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/
Also, Steam should not offer buying games. Renting games would be more accurate.
With a bit of luck, this story will get wide enough distribution that GOG will gain a bit of market share.
Sadly, if GOG gains enough new market share to have a material effect on Valve's bottom line, I imagine Valve's initial response will be a "most favored nation" clause in future publisher contracts allowing Steam to introduce offline, DRM-free installers for the subset of Steam games also available on GOG, diluting GOG's unique value proposition with a move that will nevertheless be hailed as a victory for consumers.
Such people are taken by surprise when it turns out companies can take away your “bought” content simply by virtue of changing licensing agreements or corporate structure without public input. Some recent cases:
• Crunchyroll and Funimation merged. People who had “permanent” digital copies purchased from Funimation lost them.
• Sony’s license for Discovery Channel content was not renewed, so all Discovery videos people had purchased (most notably, 20 seasons of Mythbusters) were removed from customers’ libraries.
• Ubisoft shut down the servers for The Crew and removed it from purchasers’ Steam libraries, despite the presence of a 20‐hour single‐player campaign that was online only for no good reason.
Maybe people will get used to this and consider all purchases ephemeral. I hope not. That’s why I buy and advocate for DRM‐free media.
What happens when Gabe Newell dies is another very important question that adds some urgency - one or two decades - to establishing more balanced policies.
I thought it was common knowledge you’re only buying a license to play via steam. You never own the game outright forever.
Yes there was confusion, and the warning will probably help.
While that wouldn't make sense these days, knowing the installer you downloaded will still work decades from now is great, and I hope to see more companies like GOG start doing this.
Removal of ownership from the working class is what has been silently forced upon all of us.
And not just that, license usually also greatly reduces liability for the provider.