Feral Interactive have no plans to put their Linux ports on GOG

Quoting: ShmerlWhat this is about is convenience and user rights. DRM is user rights' hostile by definition. It also degrades some user experiences in different ways.

There's a lot I could have commented here, but I think the above quote well represent the core of the argument. And I disagree with it, if - IF - we keep this in the context of Steam.

First off: User rights. What user rights are violated here? It's not even clear to me if we talk about "rights" from a legal or moral perspective. If you guys talk morally, I'm off that part of discussion. But if we talk legally, then I'd really love to see what exact right are breached here?

Secondly: Convenience and hostility. What is it about the Steam way of doing DRM that is so hostile? From a purely practical point of view - what's the inconvenience? Heck - I got around three hundred games on Steam, some of them with the DRM implemented, others without (they can be run outside the steam client) - and I can't even tell what games do indeed have any DRM implemented. How the heck do I even find out, without trying to actually run them outside? And THAT, my friends, are the level of transparancy we talk about here. We can't bloody tell if it's there or not!

And finally, I'll round this up with a sweet little recent example of bad DRM. A couple of weeks ago I tried to watch a blu-ray. I could not watch that film - who I legally bought - without me going to some website and receive a code, to then insert into a screen on my tv with the remote control. There were some hassle with that too, because we weere sitting there with our mobiles, trying to press a code into a form on a website not optimised for mobile screens, then my blu-ray player is so critically underpowered that it actually became a lagfest to insert that bloody code we got in return, and by the time we got past this we lost ALL will to watch that bloody movie.

Now THAT is bad DRM. That is not user friendly. That is punishing legal customers for what others do.
But Steam? They are the good guys in this scenario.

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Yes but i can tell you immediately why DRM exists, Companies like money staff are fond of being paid too. If you release a game drm free on gog i can tell you for a fact it is up on torrent sites day and date and yes even the linux version have been going up lately too. I know this as one of the parts of my job is to monitor several torrenting severs to see what has been uploaded and how often and when gog launch a new game it typically gets uped exactly 5 hours after being avilable for purchase.

Surprise, even if you release it with DRM, it will be still on torrent trackers, with that DRM removed. So pirates aren't affected by it and DRM only hurts legitimate users. It's one of the stupidest ideas ever (to treat your own customers like that), but it's not done for business reasons. It's a crooked control scheme which has nothing to do with piracy.

Quoting: adamhmThe real question though is: does DRM actually help sales? Because from all of the information I've seen, even when it's effective at stopping piracy for long periods like Denuvo has been this does not translate into an improvement in sales figures.

Nope, DRM directly translates into lost sales.


Last edited by Shmerl on 19 June 2018 at 1:26 pm UTC

Quoting: sbolokanov

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYeah, I also don't get the problems people have with Steam.
"You need to have Steam open and running to play the games!" - So I open Steam and run the game. No problem here. In addition to an inbuilt chat, I also get an inbuilt browser, community, workshop... all of which is optional, of course.

You fail to see the technical side of things. Like the requirement to have 32bit, just to play your 64bit games.
And I know you have nothing against that. No need to tell me.

You mean having a few libraries available in 32bit to run Steam? The horror!
The other way around might be problematic for a few people with ancient rigs, but certainly not this.
Sorry, I have an actual life and simply can't be bothered by trivial nonsense like that.

Besides, it would be silly to assume Steam won't upgrade to 64bit eventually.

Quoting: sbolokanovTime and again, I've seen sheepies do unreasonable stuff only on the will of the shepherd.
when they have realised what had happend, they would probably swear the shepherd if they could.
But what does it matter? In the end we ate The sheep.

A whole paragraph comitted to my nick.
Never seen that before.
So creative.
You should write a book. And fewer forum posts.

Quoting: sbolokanovBy the way, you all have forgotten that you could actually play all this games on Windows… to begin with.
I see no one condemning, all the demand to get game X on GNU/Linux.

That's true. And I do.
At least those games that do not run natively or via Wine. Thankfully, both Windows and linux boot so fast by now, switching isn't really much of a loss any more.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 19 June 2018 at 1:52 pm UTC

Maybe it's because GOG still has their heads up their butts when it comes to supporting Linux and its users. Maybe it's because Feral doesn't want to have to hold GOG's hand in supporting an operating system that GOG can barely understand themselves. Maybe it's because they don't want to be treated as if they don't know better than GOG when it comes to simple issues, such as how to sanely package software without resorting to forcibly shoving binary data onto the end of a shell script like it's some sort of virus. Maybe it's because JudasIscariot can be painfully arrogant and belligerant when told he's not doing things correctly.

I find dealing with GOG to be a pain to deal with and I'm just a user. I'd hate to be an actual developer and have to put up with their constant, neverending nonsense. At least with Steam it feels like Valve has a bit more respect for us Linux users. They try harder. They develop, maintain and support Linux games, APIs and tools, a distribution client and even a freaking distro. They have a personal vested interest in Linux. To GOG, Linux is this mystical, strange thing sitting on a cobweb-ridden box in the darkest corner of their office that only gets booted up when we whine hard enough.

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: orochi_kyoIt so easy to come here and sound like a popular guy between these selfish human beings who thinks devs doesnt have the right to have a minimal protection of their intellectual property.

I'm not interested disproving this nonsense for the Nth time already. I'll just sum up key points:

1. DRM doesn't protect any property, but it violates users' rights because it's unethical overreaching preemptive policing.
2. Reasons for using DRM aren't related to increasing sales, because in practice DRM only decreases them.

Yes but i can tell you immediately why DRM exists, Companies like money staff are fond of being paid too. If you release a game drm free on gog i can tell you for a fact it is up on torrent sites day and date and yes even the linux version have been going up lately too. I know this as one of the parts of my job is to monitor several torrenting severs to see what has been uploaded and how often and when gog launch a new game it typically gets uped exactly 5 hours after being avilable for purchase.

There is no evidence that piracy does anything to negatively effect the overall profit margins with most games. Hell, there is some evidence of the opposite. All DRM is, is a safety blanket for investors and suites.

Quoting: RybladeMaybe it's because JudasIscariot can be painfully arrogant and belligerant when told he's not doing things correctly.

I really hated that guy. He felt like the PR guy who drew the shortest straw and was told "just keep 'em happy, and don't directly promise anything we can't deliver on".

If he's any indicator of what the rest of the developers who want to put a Linux port of a game on GOG is like, no wonder Feral may have balked at it. Treat people a little more like intelligent beings and not just a tiny group of that need to be appeased every once in a while to keep them around. I won't kiss the foot that keeps kicking me, it's abusive. (Not implying anything about the law here, it was just a matter of self-respect.)

Even if Steam's staff don't speak directly to us as often, at least they've gone all in on Linux instead of this half-assed toe-dipping shit.

Finally, maybe Feral didn't want to work with GOG because their own newest games don't even have a Linux port? Or their client? Even itch.io has a Linux client and I'm sure their user share is miniscule for Linux in comparison to Steam *and* GOG!

If I were Feral, I'd see GOG as not being serious as a company when it comes to Linux. That's what I believe.

Quoting: GustyGhostGosh, I haven't bought a Feral game since... Warhammer? And on Warhammer they failed to make the online component cross platform even. I have since cleansed nasty DRM out of my life so bhttps://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/3262/post_id=15363ye bye Steam. Feral if you want me to buy your games you're going to have to loosen that death grip.

The lack of cross platform multiplayer has nothing to do with DRM and is entirely because of the fact that the Windows version uses proprietary math libraries that are not available for Linux or OSX, and without an identical math library in all versions, you will get sync issues in multiplayer. So blame Creative Assembly for that one.

Quoting: namikoFinally, maybe Feral didn't want to work with GOG because their own newest games don't even have a Linux port? Or their client? Even itch.io has a Linux client and I'm sure their user share is miniscule for Linux in comparison to Steam *and* GOG!

Do you see Feral games on itch.io? Feral don't release their games DRM-free anywhere, not just on GOG.

Quoting: johndoe

Quoting: Avehicle7887In my opinion there's the most important thing - Ownership.

Games that require Steam running to play are more of a longtime lease than something you actually own. I buy my games DRM-Free because I can play them anytime and anywhere without depending on any service.

What will you do with all your collected games in ten years when no Linux distro ships the old libs it needs to run?
Sure there are some great games that can be played/replayed many times. But these ones normally get remastered at some point of time.
I personally think it's a waste of time and resources to collect games for longer than "a long time lease".

This is where I fall on this debate: If people are worried about game preservation then the warez community already has us covered. For example, people who still have a working Commodore 64 and stack of floppy disks to play their favorite games from decades ago are likely few and far between, but hundreds of Commodore 64 games are available online and can be played with an emulator. Now I am generally opposed to piracy, so I find it ironic that a vast majority of these classic games would no longer exist if it wasn't for the warez community.

All this is to say that if your "lease" ever runs out on Steam then the games you paid for will still be available in one form or another.

Quoting: BeamboomWhat is it about the Steam way of doing DRM that is so hostile? From a purely practical point of view - what's the inconvenience?

You've obviously never been anywhere that you didn't have internet, and Steam refused to start in Offline mode. It's rather inconvenient to not be able to play any games that require the client.