Game no go on Linux due to suck


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    BTW it's not like Steam requires you to add DRM.

    Well, other than Steam itself.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    BTW it's not like Steam requires you to add DRM.

    Well, other than Steam itself.

    Do you consider apt or rpm to be forms of DRM? Steam is perfectly capable of distributing games unchanged.



  • @smallshellscript said:

    A lot of these use custom 16-bit communications / COM port drivers that someone wrote 25 years ago.

    Perhaps but even something as popular as RSLinx is only supported on Windows 7.

    @smallshellscript said:

    But hey, that's what VMs are for.

    These guys can barely handle a computer let alone a VM. Their heads would explode if they saw a desktop in a desktop.

    @smallshellscript said:

    Now if we could only get rid of the stupid LPT dongles...

    Agreed. Although I'd have to add that the dongles are lot more reliable than the server issued licenses I've been seeing. They all seem to use flexlm which gets even more hairy when there's two packages that require separate installations of the license admin. It's doable but a pain in the arse.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Well, other than Steam itself.

    What does that mean? For games without DRM, Steam is just a downloader. Do you mean you have to log in before you can download the game? Well, yes, but "DRM-free" Gog.com has the same system, so.



  • Does that mean the only DRM-free would be a free game with a donation box?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ben_lubar said:

    Do you consider apt or rpm to be forms of DRM? Steam is perfectly capable of distributing games unchanged.

    Well, you can't play on two computers at once with the same Steam account if you're playing online, so they're doing something.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well, yes, but "DRM-free" Gog.com has the same system, so.

    Actually if you just buy a game and download it the old-fashioned way, as far as I know it doesn't apply any limits,whereas with Steam games, if you are online it will prevent you from playing on two computers at the same time.

    That's a very minimal limit, but it's real.



  • But, on GOG if you buy on a second account, you can't download on the first one.

    More minimal, I admit, but it's real.



  • Hang on, what?



  • Having GoG limit what you can download is still DRM.

    DRM free would mean you could download anything from the site, and you could pay for anything from the site.

    Paying would be functionally optional, but legally required.

    Yes, I know, it's a stupid definition of DRM-free.... but that's the reality of DRM-free, it's a non-necessary concept. What people really want is to not be inconvenienced by DRM.

    I have yet to be inconvenienced by DRM since I started buying from steam.

    Prior to steam, I bought from a store brought home a physical disk, and still had to enter 30 character to play the game.

    GoG has it's foundation on a non-necessary concept, and has made motions to become more like Steam. Therefore, I have doubts that they will continue to be DRM-free.



  • DRM doesn't mean what you think it means



  • @fbmac said:

    DRM

    Digital rights management (DRM) schemes are various access control technologies that are used to restrict usage of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works.


    Is restricting download to an account an access control technology designed to restrict usage of the game?

    Nothing about the definition of DRM requires it to be built into the game itself.



  • Various access control, not all of them. The ones listed by wikipedia are:

    • limited install activations;
    • persistent online authentication;
    • software tampering;
    • product keys;

    All of these have some level of inconvenience against the user. Most people are fine with product keys for example (it would be very annoying if you lost the key).

    The worst cases are the ones were you cannot use your software anymore if the server is taken down. I'm not sure if typical steam games have this problem, but I believe they do.



  • @fbmac said:

    The worst cases are the ones were you cannot use your software anymore if the server is taken down. I'm not sure if typical steam games have this problem, but I believe they do.

    If you put your game into offline mode, you'll have no problem.

    I put all my offline games into offline mode as soon as I buy them.



  • @fbmac said:

    All of these have some level of inconvenience against the user.

    Logging into a website to download is an inconvenience.

    What if you lost your password?

    I know, it's trivial, but it's still real.



  • you're taking it to an extreme, I never see anyone protesting against it like people do with the worst DRM offenders, where some games stopped working after the developer turned down the DRM server.



  • Which is why DRM-free is not necessary.

    As DRM becomes convenient, the demand for DRM-free will fall away. Since GoG has already made moves to become like Steam in features, I don't see them staying DRM-free for very long. It's only going to hurt sales.

    They need to be different from Steam in a way that I value, and I represent a good chunk of the market.



  • It's more realistic for them to cater to whoever steam is not satisfying, in this case it's the people that hate DRM. It's better to have a small fraction of the market than die trying to compete directly with the big guys like steam.

    This is the same reason there will always be a few games available for Ubuntu. Even if it remains forever with 0,1% or whatever of the desktop market, it's a market where you don't have competition with all the other game companies.


  • FoxDev

    @fbmac said:

    This is the same reason there will always be a few games available for Ubuntu. Even if it remains forever with 0,1% or whatever of the desktop market, it's a market where you don't have competition with all the other game companies.

    And your monthly sales amount to about $50.



  • People tell that about android all the time, that they can't make money with it because people have a very low expectancy on game price.

    Then I start searching for the good games for Android, and I can't think of any good game that isn't a port of something I already played on another platform, or that is riddled with bugs.

    I have the database from the google play crawler on my machine, and I spend a lot of time trying to look for the good stuff, but it simply doesn't exist.

    Every single developer complaining that noone wants to play more than one dollar for Android is doing games that wouldn't be accepted by Microsoft on their Xbox store (even on their arcade thing that is a lot cheaper), and shouldn't have been accepted by Google too.


  • FoxDev

    @fbmac said:

    People tell that about android all the time, that they can't make money with it because people have a very low expectancy on game price.

    Thing is, Android has about 75648395674832456087758943076582.9 users, so even if you sell your game for 20p, that's still potentially a fuckton of income.



  • Too bad only 5065 games on my list have more than one million downloads. Only 16 of them are paid. Only 281 paid games have more than 100K downloads. The complete dataset has +- 184500 games (from 1 million apps). There are 1560 android paid games with more than 10K downloads.

    If someone get curious, that 16 aren't great too, they are:

    • Minecraft: Pocket Edition
    • The Room
    • Bloons TD 5
    • Plants vs. Zombies™
    • Fruit Ninja
    • Grand Theft Auto III
    • Where's My Water?
    • Cut the Rope
    • Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour
    • Draw Something
    • Angry Birds Space Premium
    • Need for Speed™ Most Wanted
    • Asphalt 7: Heat
    • Plants vs. Zombies™
    • Where's My Perry?
    • Quizduell PREMIUM

  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Actually curious to know where Monument Valley is on that list.

    Maybe we should make a "Android games" discussion-topic. Because I'd also be interested to know if anybody out there knows some actually fun android games 😃

    Filed Under: Meh, maybe we can have a mod jeff some stuff... I'll leave it to them


  • FoxDev

    Never heard of microtransactions? That's how most mobile games make their money.



  • @Kuro said:

    Actually curious to know where Monument Valley is on that list.

    Looking directly at the play store link, they currently have more than 1 million downloads, so they should be on the list if my data was updated (it's some months old, because updating sound like work)

    @RaceProUK said:

    Never heard of microtransactions? That's how most mobile games make their money.

    But then they aren't good games, they are games designed to be frustrating enough for you to pay, but not so frustrating that you stop playing, I refuse to play these sort of games.

    Even so, they need a lot of downloads to make money, clash of clans has more than 100 million downloads. There are only 23 "free" games with more than 100 million downloads, that are:

    • Clash of Clans
    • Subway Surfers
    • Candy Crush Soda Saga
    • Temple Run 2
    • Candy Crush Saga
    • Despicable Me
    • Fruit Ninja Free
    • Farm Heroes Saga
    • Hill Climb Racing
    • Angry Birds
    • My Talking Tom
    • Temple Run
    • Pou
    • Glow Hockey
    • Pet Rescue Saga
    • Jetpack Joyride
    • 3D Bowling
    • Angry Birds Rio
    • Drag Racing
    • Ant Smasher, Best Free Game
    • Angry Birds Seasons
    • Pool Billiards Pro
    • Shoot Bubble Deluxe

    There is around 20K games that have more than 100K downloads.


  • FoxDev

    And it doesn't take many of those buying stuff in-game for the devs to make the money



  • My rant was about the developers complaining that they can't make money anyway. Lot's of people doing terrible games and complaining about the platform and it's users.



  • (post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 42 hours unless flagged)



  • This post is deleted!


  • @fbmac said:

    <snip depressing list of depression>

    This is pretty much why I've given up on gaming on Android, or mobile gaming overall. Bleh.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I only play mobile games while having a poo at work as there's no mobile or WiFi signal in the cubicles. Normally Angry Birds or Alphabetty Saga.



  • This post is deleted!


  • This post is deleted!


  • @xaade said:

    Logging into a website to download is an inconvenience.

    What if you lost your password?

    Needing an internet connection to download is an inconvenience.

    What if you lost your connection?

    :rolleyes:




  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Never go full FBMac


  • Java Dev

    Post to mark whisper as read.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I wish it inserted whispers right after the post I replied to instead of at the end. It'd make more sense when reading the thread and avoid the problem you're having.



  • If "whispers" require spamming up my thread, could you maybe just refrain from using them?

    And yes I know we're switching forum software this weekend. I'm looking forward to see all the new ways NodeBB has for people to spam up my threads with pointless bullshit.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Yamikuronue said:

    It'd make more sense

    Yeah, but Discourse.
    The whole "whisper in a topic" idea is retarded, even on Discourse levels of retarded.


  • Java Dev

    I couldn't see the whisper, that's why I needed the post. Whispers never get read (since you can't see them) but they're still counted as unread on the front page and I can't stand having an unread marker.



  • So you're spamming my thread because you have OCD.

    Awesome.



  • In other news, GOG Galaxy is not actually as 'optional' as it might seem.

    Master of Orion: Collector's Edition is on there in what passes for Early Access. Essentially the crowd that now owns the Master of Orion IP (Wargaming.net) has produced a 'remake' which is interesting.

    Want to play multiplayer with the GOG version? Log into GOG Galaxy.
    Want to play on LAN? Log into GOG Galaxy. (Yup, no 'one copy for all the LAN users' deal)

    Want to report a bug? GOG Galaxy or a wargaming.net account.

    Still DRM free?



  • @Arantor said:

    In other news, GOG Galaxy is not actually as 'optional' as it might seem.

    Could've told you that back in January 2015. Double Dragon Trilogy had the same requirements for it's online play, you had to play through GOG Galaxy (and worse, when it came out, the normal installer installed GOG Galaxy along with the game).

    They do get to say they're not lying, though:

    No activation or online connection required to play.

    And on the Master of Orion page:

    Multiplayer Notice: GOG Galaxy is required to play multiplayer.

    But that's crammed onto the right side (on desktop, mobile sees it after the reviews) in smaller text. Double Dragon Trilogy doesn't even say it requires GOG Galaxy even though it does to play online.


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