Here's something interesting, Epic Games are launching their Epic Online Services and it will support Linux as well as multiple different game engines.
Building upon the work they've done with Fortnite, it's going to offer support for: Parties, an in-game Overlay, Matchmaking, Player reports, Achievements, leaderboards, stats and so on. Don't get too excited though, as right now it's only offering Game analytics (telemetry about players) and a support ticket system with everything else "Coming soon".
On the official page that's now live, it shows the happy little Linux "tux" logo and in the FAQ at the bottom it clearly states it too:
Epic Online Services will initially come with built-in support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. PlayStation, Xbox, Android, Switch, and iOS support will be added in the coming months.
Regardless of your feelings towards Epic Games and their current exclusive deal strategy, it's still essential that services like this support Linux. Lots of developers use the Unreal Engine which they will no doubt push for developers to use this, also since it will support Unity, other games engines and other stores (So Steam is fine too) if even more developers use it then we don't want another barrier for Linux game development.
As for the Epic Store itself, don't get excited about that either, it's still not even on their (now public) roadmap.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
DragoCubed Apr 20, 2019
Quoting: sneakeyboardQuoting: MalQuoting: sneakeyboardI'm sure the streaming service will be its own headline, so I'll just keep it short and say that this is the start of another market to be heavily influenced by giant corporations' greed.
We don't even know how much actually. Cloud gaming has the potential to be either the best thing ever or to the ultimate catastrophe for us gamers.
In the past music streaming services battled each other with exclusives and other anti consumer practices. Pirate bay forced them to be more reasonable with their plans and now you can choose Amazon, Google, Spotify, Apple and so on for their service, not for their catalog, all at a reasonable price.
Video streaming started all right. But now that greedy video makers try to eat the streamers slice, the market is about to learn the same lesson. It's already starting to be rather annoying.
The battle of the launchers as it is called the Epic/Steam conflict doesn't much differs from the above. In the end the market will settle to a balance were everybody is happy.
But Game streaming? If developers stop to even release desktop versions there will never be a version to pirate in the first place. Then the shit that Epic store is pouring on us today will look like an utopia. Guys like Sweeney and the likes will be free to charge you as many monthly fees as they like. Then you will either start a mortgage to access all the games you like or will need to choose every month what you will like to play. Which for me it sucks: when I want to play, I know what I want to play in that moment, not one month before. Not to mention that in the world of curated shops/cloud services little gems like Undertale, Stardew Valley, Factorio and so on would never have a chance to even exist. Which means worse games to play overall.
Ofc that's just the worst case scenario. The best one is that it ends like for music. We get all the games in the world, at reasonable price and with many streaming providers to choose from. But for me, the kind of person I am, I will stop gaming entirely if the worse case scenario is what is coming. But since I feel that I can't really do do anything to stop it, I will just live by the moment and enjoy my Steam library for a few hours before another Sunday ends and a work Monday begins. :)
Late reply but still adding to it:
The difference from the situation with the music industry is that consumers had a choice, and they chose to vote with their wallets. Cloud services are part of a service that requires internet availability, which implies the infrastructure is there to support their ideal model and/or estimates: i.e. We guarantee 30ms of latency.
There are so many problems that it should be a topic all in its own. So, in my mind, it has zero potential until the US can stop pretending that a 50+year old cable will still deliver a stable and consistent signal to consumers. EU can enjoy it to say the least but the US is usually a target market given its large population.
You should see Australian internet!
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