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PayPalIt might still be rough but Google's Stadia game streaming service is starting to pull in more games, with a bunch being announced today that look interesting.
Firstly and perhaps unsurprisingly, The Serious Sam Collection which will blend Serious Sam 1-3 into a single experience was announced for Stadia. Not surprising since Croteam spent a lot of time getting Vulkan support in with Serious Sam Fusion, plus Alen Ladavac co-founder of Croteam went over to Stadia. No exact date yet for The Serious Sam Collection.
Direct Link
Also announced is Lost Words: Beyond the Page, which is a "First on Stadia" title which seems to be the branding Google are going with for their limited-time exclusives.
Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a narrative-driven, atmospheric puzzler set inside the pages of a young girl's diary. With a story written by Rhianna Pratchett that's in development by Sketchbook Games and published by Modus Games - coming in the "Spring".
Direct Link
They also announced Panzer Dragoon: Remake that is apparently "true to the original", Stacks on Stacks (on Stacks) - another First on Stadia and Spitlings - yet another First on Stadia. You can see all the announcements for Stadia right here.
Stadia has a huge amount of competition so they're going to need plenty of games. NVIDIA's own GeForce Now service actually launched recently too, to then quickly have Activision Blizzard pull all their games from it—ouch! However Google already have NVIDIA beat in one respect which is Linux support since Stadia works on Linux, GeForce Now currently does not. There's also reports that Microsoft have teamed up with Samsung for the xCloud streaming service and Amazon will eventually fully announce their own too. I'm also anxious to find out what Steam Cloud Gaming will end up as.
Game streaming is here to stay it seems. While it may never replace traditional downloads like Steam/GOG/itch and so on for a lot of people, it's definitely got the convenience factor as long as you have good internet.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It sucks that Blizzard / Activision pulled out of GeForce Now but it isn't a loss for us, since Overwatch, WOW, Starcraft 2, and Diablo III all work fine in Wine + Lutris. The only real loss for us was Call of Duty franchise, since the newer games don't work in Wine; That said, I can live without that hugely 'over-milked' game franchise.
Maybe Stadia will get these games removed from GeForce Now?
GeForce Now has an impressive list of games supported, including many anti-cheat enabled free-to-play titles:
https://www.gfnlist.com/
GeForce Now is unsupported on Linux and doesn't work in Anbox, Wine, or even a Windows VM but there is a way to make the Android client work in a VM. I painstakingly wrote a guide on Reddit on how to do it for those that want to try it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/f0jkja/guide_geforce_now_app_on_linux/
Last edited by Xaero_Vincent on 14 February 2020 at 12:35 am UTC
randomgamerguy1997 Feb 14, 2020
Quoting: Xaero_VincentWith Anti-Cheat systems unsupported by Proton and Wine and used by the hottest games right now, cloud gaming is a very viable option for us Linux gamers.
Unless you have bad internet like I do.
Quoting: randomgamerguy1997Quoting: Xaero_VincentWith Anti-Cheat systems unsupported by Proton and Wine and used by the hottest games right now, cloud gaming is a very viable option for us Linux gamers.
Unless you have bad internet like I do.
Well GeForce Now has a minimum requirement of 15 Mbps; I currently have 40 Mbps VDSL service in my home.
That said, I did notice that you can lower the max streaming bit-rate all the way down to 4 Mbps in the Android app. So perhaps it can work on slow internet at 720p30 @ 4 Mbps as long as your internet speed is at least a bit above 4 Mbps?
Last edited by Xaero_Vincent on 14 February 2020 at 1:21 am UTC
QuoteHowever Google already have NVIDIA beat in one respect which is Linux support since Stadia works on Linux, GeForce Now currently does not.
More importantly, Stadia actually runs Linux, while Geforce Now runs Windows. Not something Linux gamers should be striving to support.
Quoting: melkemindI hope Google learns from Nvidia and starts offering a away to play games you already have in your Steam/GOG libraries rather than having to buy online-only versions of those games.
For whatever reason, Google decided not to use Wine, so they are only adding native games which will be a slow process. If anything, I expect Valve to roll out some streaming service where Wine will be used to expand the library of native Linux games. After all, they directly invested into Wine / Proton development.
Last edited by Shmerl on 14 February 2020 at 2:17 am UTC
The biggest problem is you have to buy the games AGAIN to play them on Stadia and if Google decides to remove the games or cancel their service, you're out the $60 or whatever you've spent on the games.
Yeah, I hope Valve hops onto the Streaming bandwagon. They already have Remote Play that works over the Internet and on a LAN and the next logical step is to offer cloud servers to stream the games.
Last edited by Xaero_Vincent on 14 February 2020 at 3:04 am UTC
I've tested Remote Play (more) and it will be a decent solution when I need to stream. That said, if Stadia's success will bring alot improvements to Linux ecosystem (particularly Desktop), then I am all for it. It's understandable to me though if anyone on Linux uses Stadia, afterall it lets you play games you couldn't otherwise and you are still using Linux for that.
EDIT: And if Google wanted positivity both for ChromeOS and Desktop Linux, they would encourage developers to not only provide their games via streaming on both platforms, but also local versions. But they aren't doing that...
Last edited by Linuxwarper on 14 February 2020 at 9:26 pm UTC
Quoting: melkemindI hope Google learns from Nvidia and starts offering a away to play games you already have in your Steam/GOG libraries rather than having to buy online-only versions of those games.
they have to, or else i dont see a reason why anyone should use stadia
and nvidia has to support more platforms, or put it into a browser
i still wonder how they can offer it for free. there are no ads. just waiting time sometimes
Quoting: mylkaWell, they don't have to use Stadia exclusively. I think the idea is, people would use Stadia for Stadia exclusives because they have no choice, and maybe increasingly for a few other games as games are added, and they'd still use Steam the rest of the time. Gradually over time Google would hope for the Stadia libraries to grow and maybe for people to spend more time with Stadia games because of, say, the convenience of being able to continue the same game from different locations or something (although I suppose cloud saves on Steam would get you that anyway), and thus over a few years for people's libraries of Stadia games to gradually supplant other ones.Quoting: melkemindI hope Google learns from Nvidia and starts offering a away to play games you already have in your Steam/GOG libraries rather than having to buy online-only versions of those games.
they have to, or else i dont see a reason why anyone should use stadia
I have doubts it will work, but I presume that's the idea--you don't have to do a hard cutover.
Quoteand nvidia has to support more platforms, or put it into a browserYet. There are no ads yet. For how many years were there no ads in Youtube videos?
i still wonder how they can offer it for free. there are no ads.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 February 2020 at 10:07 pm UTC
i havent tried stadia yet, but some games on NOW
apex, crew, assassins creed, mad max,... they work pretty good and it is free for 1 hour sessions
if i want stadia i have to buy at least the games
i hope NOW comes to linux soon, then i stick with it.
i appreciate that google uses linux for stadia, but for now i think its best, if we theoretically can stream all games from steam, uplay, epic, origin, etc instead of waiting for ports on stadia and have to pay twice
for me the latency wasnt that bad. maybe some win users come to linux, if they can stream fortnite and apex... both are not on staida for now
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