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

Quoting: hummer010

Quoting: Mountain ManMost publishers only really care about hindering pirates for the first week or so since that's usually when a hot game will put up its best sales numbers, and people will be more likely to buy if they can't simply download for free.

This is the crux of the matter right here. Are the people who want to pirate a game really more likely to buy it if it's not available to pirate? Or are the people who buy the game in the first week or so the people who weren't going to pirate it anyways?

I don't know the answers, but my gut feeling says that the pirates don't readily become buyers just because it hasn't been pirated yet.

DRM rarely deters the hardcore warez crowd, but it does deter "casual" users, especially when services like Steam offer such an easy and convenient way to legally obtain software.

Quoting: namikoPost-purchase authentication was the original purpose of DRM in its earliest forms. Fucking around with your game's digital access, gameplay capabilities, not to mention data scraping from your machine without telling you, the more egregious DRM stuff all came later. Even Wikipedia's definition of DRM is defined as "access control".

Apparently, even Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges would make you look up things in their manuals to prove you had bought a game; I remember DOS and Windows games did that too. It was all about access control. It's still about access control, authentication, today.

That was a common form of copy protection on Commodore 64 games, too. It was preferable to the other popular method that would intentionally write bad sectors to the floppy disk that would cause your drive head to rattle about which didn't prevent the software from eventually loading but was enough to stop most disk copy programs. Unfortunately, all that knocking about of the drive head could eventually cause misalignment which necessitated a trip to the local computer repair shop.

Quoting: Mountain ManDRM rarely deters the hardcore warez crowd, but it does deter "casual" users, especially when services like Steam offer such an easy and convenient way to legally obtain software.

Hardcore crowd are ones that take said DRM and break it to make DRM-free torrent releases. Casual pirates don't need anything hardcore, they just download what the hardcore ones prepared for them. So in the end DRM deters nothing. Those who want and can buy DRMed version will buy it and will be punished with DRM for buying. Pirates which don't buy will be rewarded with cracked DRM-free version. That's a rather perverted approach designed by DRM proponents.


Last edited by Shmerl on 19 June 2018 at 9:52 pm UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPLet's be honest, over 90% of games you play exactly once, what good does it do you to own those after that? Nothing.

Not really, no. Almost every game I have ever played in my life I have come back to play again at some point later on. And for those few that I have not, I still very much value having the option to do so. I have never understood how people can find media to be a disposable as they do. Yes, I do find myself going back to old favourites way more often than I end up trying something new, but because of that I end up getting way more value out of the games and media that I do choose to engage with. Gaming for me is not about having one night stands.

Off-topic: I want to write a poem (even do my English is bad). Not about DRM at all!

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Small indie developers

Small indie developers is small
Small indie developers is poor
Small indie developers is inefficient
Small indie developers is aficionados on gaming
Small indie developers is willing to accept criticism
Small indie developers is willing to fixed bug, even they had no resources
Small indie developers is always proud of their arts
And small indie developers always thankful to their supporters.

BUT...

Small indie developers is not public company/corporation
Small indie developers is not have hundred millions dollars in revenue
Small indie developers is not listed on stock exhange
Small indie developers is not having multiple subsidiaries
Small indie developers is not having hundreds of employees
Small indie developers is not place for job hoppers
And small indie developers never against their supporters wishes.

I want to say thank you small indie developers, the real one
For everything that you done
Be best and keep getting better
For Linux gaming future.

p/s: My poem is DRM-Free.

Quoting: Hamish

Quoting: TheSHEEEPLet's be honest, over 90% of games you play exactly once, what good does it do you to own those after that? Nothing.

Not really, no. Almost every game I have ever played in my life I have come back to play again at some point later on. And for those few that I have not, I still very much value having the option to do so. I have never understood how people can find media to be a disposable as they do. Yes, I do find myself going back to old favourites way more often than I end up trying something new, but because of that I end up getting way more value out of the games and media that I do choose to engage with. Gaming for me is not about having one night stands.

I really don't get this.

Why would you replay a game that doesn't even offer replayability?
If you know the story, you know everything that will be coming, there will be nothing surprising or interesting.
If you have beaten the game, there will not be any new challenges to put yourself against.
If you have seen the world of the game, there will be nothing new to see.
Or, I don't know, maybe my memory is just better?

To me, replaying a game despite it not offering anything new would be like visiting the same holiday location every year.
Or reading the same book dozens of times.
What's the point? What new knowledge or skill is being gained?
I'm not trying to offend anyone (for once ;) ), I am just really irritated.
I play games to discover new worlds, new gameplays, improve my knowledge and my skills.

I'm like Captain Picard, discovering new worlds, expanding boundaries. I would wither inside if I was visiting the same planet every time like a freighter captain.

Obviously, there are games offering more replayability value, some you can go to almost endlessly (like EUIV, Mount & Blade, ToME4, etc.) but most really don't.
Or so little that it is barely worth another playthrough (like Pillars of Eternity - I can see trying out more than one character class, but certainly not all of them as the rest of the game will be identical).


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 20 June 2018 at 6:02 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlHardcore crowd are ones that take said DRM and break it to make DRM-free torrent releases.

What comes to game piracy, p2p groups cracks only a fraction of all games. Cracked games are almost always cracked by warez scene groups and are shared originally only in their own "services" like highly secured ftp's etc.
What I'm saying, usually those who cracks drm from said games, doesn't make any torrent releases. Torrent releases are more like leaks from scene and that also means that not all scene cracked games comes to torrent.

GNU/Linux game pirating is a thing and thank God. For if it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to play the Steam games I have actually paid for…

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI really don't get this.

Why would you replay a game that doesn't even offer replayability?

And how about "Why would you reread a book that doesn't even offer rereadability?" :P
Different people have different tastes. You do not need to "get" their reasoning on this, just take for granted some actually enjoy replay the games of youth (like I, for example, sometimes replay "Fallout 2" despite beating it several times 10 years ago).

Maybe I ought to install Pop!_OS and enable popcon and make popcorn while reading this thread.

Anyway, DRM is one thing, but how about the fact you're running proprietary code you don't know what's doing even if you use GOG. If you're gonna be a hardliner, do it properly.