With the talk of some big players moving into cloud gaming, along with a number of people thinking Valve will also be doing it, here’s a few thoughts from me.
Firstly, for those that didn’t know already, Google are testing the waters with their own cloud gaming service called Project Stream. For this, they teamed up with Ubisoft to offer Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on the service. I actually had numerous emails about this, from a bunch of Linux gamers who managed to try it out and apparently it worked quite well on Linux.
EA are pushing pretty heavily with this too with what they’re calling Project Atlas, as their Chief Technology Officer talked about in a Medium post on how they’ve got one thousand EA employees now working on it. That sounds incredibly serious to me!
There’s more cloud services offering hardware for a subscription all the time, although a lot of them are quite expensive and use Windows.
So this does beg the question: What is Valve going to do? Cloud gaming services, that will allow people with lower-end devices to play a bunch of AAA games relatively easily could end up cutting into Valve’s wallet.
Enter Valve’s Cloud Gaming Service
Pure speculation of course, but with the amount of big players now moving into the market, I’m sure Valve will be researching it themselves. Perhaps this is what Steam Play is actually progressing towards? With Steam Play, Valve will be able to give users access to a large library of games running on Linux where they don’t have to pay extra fees for any sort of Windows licensing fee from Microsoft and obviously being Linux it would allow them to heavily customise it to their liking.
On top of that, what about the improvements this could further bring for native desktop Linux gaming? Stop and think about it for a moment, how can Valve tell developers they will get the best experience on this cloud gaming platform? Have a native Linux version they support with updates and fixes. Valve are already suggesting developers to use Vulkan, it’s not such a stretch I think.
Think about how many games, even single-player games are connected to the net now in some way with various features. Looking to the future, having it so your games can be accessed from any device with the content stored in the cloud somewhere does seem like the way things are heading. As much as some (including me) aren’t sold on the idea, clearly this is where a lot of major players are heading and Valve won’t want to be left behind.
For Valve, it might not even need to be a subscription service, since they already host the data for the developers. Perhaps, you buy a game and get access to both a desktop and cloud copy? That would be a very interesting and tempting idea. Might not be feasible of course, since the upkeep on the cloud machines might require a subscription if Valve wanted to keep healthy profits, but it’s another way they could possibly trump the already heavy competition.
Think the whole idea is incredibly farfetched? Fair enough, I do a little too. However, they might already have a good amount of the legwork done on this, thanks to their efforts with the Steam Link. Did anyone think a year or two ago you would be able to stream Steam games to your phone and tablet?
Valve also offer movies, TV series and more on Steam so they have quite a lot to offer.
It might not happen at all of course, these are just some basic thoughts of mine on what Valve’s moves might be in future. It's likely not going to happen for VR titles, since they need so much power and any upset with latency could make people quite sick. Highly competitive games would also be difficult, but as always once it gets going the technology behind it will constantly improve like everything. There’s got to be some sort of end game for all their Linux gaming work and not just to help us, they are a business and they will keep moving along with all the other major players.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
unless someone invents faster network than it is currently. that is not really easy as MB/sec doesn't matter. what it would need is increase in data transfer speed from x to y location. currently that is limited to speed of light which means that in perfect conditions lag would be 140ms. sadly, that number is not even remotely everything. you have to add lag on all routers, server and client processing...
most action games are barely playable even if you try playing with bluetooth controller which by itself has lag around 100ms.
the big clue that people miss is that they equate game with video on youtube which is plain wrong. video can be buffered, game cannot unless someone perfects future prediction. while video starts with delay, game cannot and as such every action you do is countered by full amount of lag from network, computer and input.
it is enough to watch NVidia Grid presentation where presenter plays racing game and be a little bit cautious on hw screen and his input are desynchronized. while game seems to run smooth, input insanely lags. and the catch is that servers and client were practically at the same spot for that. now imagine playing from home
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think you are having a fundamental misunderstanding, based perhaps on the currency of the deliberately misleading term "intellectual property". Let's take it away from digital for a second, because the lack of a physical thing tends to confuse people. If I buy a book, like go into a bookstore, pick up a paperback, give a store clerk some money in return for the book and leave the store with the book, I own the book. I can do almost anything I want with the book; I can shred it, I can lend it to a friend and so on. I cannot legally bludgeon someone to death with it, but that isn't illegal because I don't own the book, it is illegal because it's murder. Another thing I can't do is publish it. That is not because I don't own that book, the one I paid money for, it is because just as murdering someone violates criminal law, violating an author's copyright violates copyright law. You could say the author in some sense "owns" "the work", but the author does not own the copy I bought. If the author showed up on my doorstep and wanted my copy, I could say no. If they took it, that would be theft, theft of my property. Note that if I published the book that would not be theft, it would be violation of copyright.
If I buy a game, I also own a copy. I paid money for that copy and the situation was framed as "buying" it, so it is mine. The fact that the copy is digital does not in itself change this. It does make certain legal uses impractical, or their legality difficult to verify, since it can be hard to distinguish between moving a file and copying it, and it does make it possible for the seller to include some practical barriers (such as DRM) to actually treating it as your property. But none of this makes a thing you bought not a thing you legally own.
I agree with you, and it's also what I said. I think we just define "to own" in the context of software differently.
You yourself said you own the physical book, but can't publish it, because you'd violate copyright, as you do not own the work. Software is similar, you do not own the work, but you may own the digital (or physical) copy.
I would just argue that "copyright" is like a license; further restricting what you can do with your "owned" item. Be that a game or book, doesn't really matter, thus not really fully owning it.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyFirst, a cheap streaming flat rate for all games does not seem to be on offer. Rather, what we're discussing is you buy a game, and then you access it via the "cloud" instead of actually downloading it, and presumably you pay a subscription fee for that because hosting costs money. Second, those millions of people you are pointing to are precisely the people who are likely to have either lousy internet because they're in countries where the internet infrastructure is lousy, or lousy internet because their internet providers are predatory and they can't afford a good plan and so they have usage caps which would be crippling for such a service.
A cheap streaming flat rate for all games might be attractive to many consumers, but how do the game companies make money? What's their incentive to hand the rights to do this over for what would have to be a pittance? I don't think it would be practical.
Not sure where you have gotten that first "business-model" but of course what you described wouldn't work. I don't think anyone serious is even discussing that (maybe those loonies at EA?). The Flatrate would be of course not for the latest triple A titles, but those slightly older but still good titles they are already selling for a few dollars on sales regularly (or in general in many places of the world due to regional pricing). Maybe there will be options to also temporarily "rent" a AAA game as an addon, but what will draw people in and will make them use such a streaming platform will be some sort of cheap flatrate like Netflix etc.
Oh and I don't know which part of the world you are from, but these days the internet is about the worst in US/EU; expensive and a lot of old legacy tech that makes it slow. All the semi-monopolies there also don't help. In the larger cities of most Asian countries you can get fast and cheap internet these days easily.
Last edited by Julius on 1 November 2018 at 6:08 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestVery helpful.Quoting: liamdaweHe's right, tho.Quoting: GuestThis is just shit.Solid feedback, thanks.
Doc Angelo Nov 1, 2018
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Doc AngeloI don't need beefy hardware with costly cooling equipment directly beneath my desk. Most of what I do with my PC can be done with a way worse computer. The only thing I need a big computer for is gaming (and video compression a little bit... and Boinc...) But... honestly? I think it would a good thing if you don't need to replace your system every few years. Saves money and resources.
Okay, this fallacy needs to stop.
Just because you don't consume the energy locally does not mean that the energy isn't being consumed at your request. Pushing movies and games from massive data centers through the internet is vastly more energy exhaustive than having a disc at your disposal.
You're right that the energy a GPU uses stays the same. What I mean with resources are for example cooling for multiple GPUs and CPUs - that would save resources. You can use a big power supply unit for all systems.
Buying a new computer every 2-3 years is just a big waste of energy on its own. New mainboard, new CPU, new GPU, many people buy new cases and so on. Producing those does use a lot of resources. You don't have to use the same components in game streaming data centers. I think Nvidia already produces hardware that is meant for such cases which differs from end customer hardware.
100 players would need 100 system in order to play. 100 streamplayers wouldn't need 100 systems, it would be lower... just a guess: maybe 60 systems? There are of course people who game every single day, but not all do.
I think overall it would lead to less waste. Such calculations are of course tricky because there are a lot of things to consider, and also a bit of looking ahead of what's available right now, but I think centralizing such processing power while stopping the upgrade cycle at home can be quite effective.
Last edited by Doc Angelo on 1 November 2018 at 7:16 pm UTC
Doc Angelo Nov 1, 2018
Quoting: GuestWhat I don't understand is how displacing that GPU footprint from one location to the other and squeezing the same end-user result through the friction-filled internet reduces resource consumption.
For example, it is correct to say that regardless of transportation method, one passenger still weighs 70kg and has the same inertia. A car needs to overcome that inertia to transport 4 passengers. A bus needs to overcome ten times the inertia to transport 40 passengers. But it can achieve that with less air drag, less friction and less material (engine, chassis, etc..). On top of that comes the fact that people who only use public transport don't need to buy a car, so the energy and resources for the car are saved.
It's similar with centralized game processing. You don't need a power supply/hard drive/disc drive/case/etc for every system. They can be shared. This kind of hardware can be built differently, just as the engine of the bus can be built differently. The cooling of all the system can be designed bigger and differently and maybe even used for warm water in the region.
Things like that. I think there's a lot of overhead for producing and running single game systems in every house hold in comparison to a centralized system. As I said, as soon as the centralized systems are being built all over the country in order to reduce latency, the network load would be reduced and with it the necessary energy used.
It really is a bit like with public transport. If more people would use it, the system can be enhanced and structered differently and would work way better.
Edit: Maybe... those processing centers could be used for scientific calculations. Researching new drugs, calculating other important science stuff... that could run on the systems while its not being used fully. That would be nice. But you don't have to wait for that: There's Boinc and World Community Grid. You can install that on your system right now and start helping scientists with their work. Just thought to throw that in. :)
Last edited by Doc Angelo on 1 November 2018 at 8:46 pm UTC
I take the force of the bus analogy . . . but on the other hand, routinely playing games via cloudy stuff means loads of data going to and fro again, and again, and again; it seems plausible that this would be a serious power-use overhead. It wouldn't be the first time a new computing use turned out to hog a ton of power--look at cryptocurrencies.
but of course game streaming is the future, but first we need failsafe internet
valve may try to stream, but i dont think they have enough infra structure to do that.
servers are different from desktop computers, servers has an ridiculous ammount of ram and most of the time they are just copying/moving data instead of processing it, so their current infra structure will not fit.
google is trying to enter the desktop operating system market and they will have an bad time convincing people to buy their games all over again, so they might make an partnership with valve to solve that, or just make it easier to install steam on chromeOS so they solve the problem with old games while still try to stream new games.
we can bet that the google streaming service will be linux based instead of windows based and if valve ever enter this market, it will be linux based too.
valve has some streaming capability since they use it for home streaming and their video service, so they may try it solo instead of with an partnership
in any case the good news for us is, linux is better at servers and developers may target servers since they will be able to sell their games for windows, mac, linux and android all at one shoot.
they may have an backup plan with an native version for those who dont want "online only" games, but at least they will have an big incentive to adopt vulkan.
xbox is more profitable than mac and linux, so they may still have an DX version, but xbox didnt sold so well this generation.
the future looks promissing, but i will not create to much hype just now, i was burned over and over again in the past.
the government of my country (Brasil) tried to push linux, i got excited, but it failed, and all those cheap computers sold with tax incentives (in case they came with linux) and for cheaper since they didnt include the price of an windows licence, became , instead, windows machines and linux reputation got burned in the process (since the games werent there back then and the distro that the oems chose was really bad)
android promissed a lot, but android apps and games were not compatible with desktop linux neither the opposite, and most android games are crap anyway.
then valve promissed the steam machines, i got hyped all over again, only to get disapointed again.
no marketing for it, no exclusives, no reason for the average joe to buy one, and the killer feature that may help it sell at least a little bitch was also avaliable on another product: steamLink.
html5 promissed a lot of things, but instead of geting good games on the browser, all i found is a bunch of crap games (at least sketchfab was borned), the games from the flash era were much better, back then it was possible to fund good games with only the budget from the ad's.
web assembly promissed a lot, but i still dont see the fruits of it, i know it takes time, but i got over excited, game developers will not port their game to it no matter how small the performance hit may be, it still there and they arent willing to sacrifice having the best graphicss to sell their games in order to gain more market selling for mac and linux.
valve made proton and it is great, but only for old games, we still have to wait to play an game, and the average user will not switch to linux unless he can do everything he could on windows or almost it and have something exclusive on linux (theming is not enough)
now this, streaming, its my last hope to see things change for better.
but even if that happens, it will not be without an cost:
we can say good bye to piracy and mods.
you may be against piracy but its the only way to make sure an product will never disapear without legit consumers having anyway to acess it.
Last edited by elmapul on 2 November 2018 at 4:59 am UTC
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