Supraland, the colourful and inviting first-person puzzle game from Supra Games is now going to be removed from game store GOG after less than a year being there.
Looking at the dates: it released on Steam in April 2019, then came to Linux in July that same year and then onto GOG in that same month. Today, June 9 in 2020 the GOG team posted on their forum that Supraland will be delisted from their store at the developer's request but it will stay in your GOG library. That's not long to be on a store to then ask for it to be removed, so why?
The developer has been quite vocal about it all, as it turns out. Back in July 2019, we posted an article about the developer saying some strange stuff about both GOG and Linux and it seems their opinion didn't change after being live on GOG for some time, as they said on Steam in May this year:
Going onto GOG I expected maybe something like 10% of Steam, but it's more like 1%. Same with releasing a Linux version. It's all worth so little for us that it's rather annoying to have to do the extra work all the time and carry that weight around. I wouldn't do it again.
Sounds like a case of heavily inflated expectations, mixed with some naivety. Still, it's better to request removal than to leave it up and not support it at all, so it sounds like they're doing the right thing overall.
In other posts they also mentioned how in relation to DRM-free gaming that "98-99% of players don't care" and that if there's any "crying about DRM stuff in the gamer scene, it must come from a really vocal but tiny minority. 1-2% tiny". That's some pretty tough words for the DRM-free crowd.
As for the Linux build of Supraland, it appears to have been suffering a few issues lately as posts on Steam will show and the developer isn't sure what they will do so the Linux build may be pulled too see: #1 and #2. They've never been particularly confident about it either as they said before a few times, and it appears they don't know how to support the Linux version. If they do announce a decision on that bit, we will let you know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: Shmerl@Eike, also, if you want a good exposition on why overreaching preemptive policing is bad, I recommend reading Watchbird.
You either addressed the wrong person or you made up a totally wrong image of my opinion (which often happens when people got a pure black and white thinking and guess from being opposed at an aspect of something that the other person got a totally different opinion on everything of the topic). If the latter is true, take two steps back and read again what I wrote about and especially what I didn't write about.
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Quoting: omer666Quoting: EikeYou complained that "DRM doesn't trust you and treats you as a potential criminal apriory." - and that's what you're doing with random foreign people as well, and for a reason. There's bad people out there.I don't know where you're from, but here in France if a shopkeeper starts being suspicious towards his clients, they just leave the shop and never come back.
So, you cannot demand trust from companies (or other foreign people
So, shop detectives, electronic door devices to scan for stolen stuff labels (CDs, clothes, ...) or other theft prevention isn't a thing in our neighbor country? I find that hard to believe (and would search on my own of you insist that would be true).
Last edited by Eike on 11 June 2020 at 6:57 pm UTC
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Quoting: EikeYou either addressed the wrong person or you made up a totally wrong image of my opinion (which often happens when people got a pure black and white thinking and guess from being opposed at an aspect of something that the other person got a totally different opinion on everything of the topic). If the latter is true, take two steps back and read again what I wrote about and especially what I didn't write about.
I did, and it sounded like you were trying to justify the premise behind DRM. May be I misunderstood it, then I'm sorry for confusion. In my opinion DRM has no justification, it's simply unethical.
Last edited by Shmerl on 11 June 2020 at 7:06 pm UTC
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The big thing I wonder about DRM is why they are doing it, if it supposedly doesn't work.
It might be a bit similar to overreactions to a pandemic - if the situation ends up under control, you can say "it worked! Everything is under control", but you could also say "See? Wasn't that bad, so all your measures wouldn't have been necessary".
There have definitely been cases where DRMs totally failed to do their job, cases where they succeeded very well and everything in-between I guess.
How much a game would've been pirated (or bought) without DRM is something only a time traveller could tell us.
You're also throwing all kinds of DRM in the same pot.
If a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.
Of course, those Windows "kernel driver" things are a whole different subject, but that also goes into anti-cheating, etc.
It might be a bit similar to overreactions to a pandemic - if the situation ends up under control, you can say "it worked! Everything is under control", but you could also say "See? Wasn't that bad, so all your measures wouldn't have been necessary".
There have definitely been cases where DRMs totally failed to do their job, cases where they succeeded very well and everything in-between I guess.
How much a game would've been pirated (or bought) without DRM is something only a time traveller could tell us.
Quoting: ShmerlIn my opinion DRM has no justification, it's simply unethical.That may be a reason to you not to use DRM in your hypothetical project, but ethics in the end matter only as long as nothing more important is at stake, e.g. money.
You're also throwing all kinds of DRM in the same pot.
If a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.
Of course, those Windows "kernel driver" things are a whole different subject, but that also goes into anti-cheating, etc.
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat may be a reason to you not to use DRM in your hypothetical project, but ethics in the end matter only as long as nothing more important is at stake, e.g. money.
There is no end to it then. Unethical money can mean anything, from protection racket to something even more sinister. We aren't even talking abut unethical "business practices". We are talking about what's presented as something that should be acceptable, while in reality it does fall in the above unethical category.
DRM proponents attempt to whitewash it, and feed the public with that trash as something normal. But it shouldn't be acceptable.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou're also throwing all kinds of DRM in the same pot.
The kind doesn't make a difference. Their unethical premise is the same for all of them.
Last edited by Shmerl on 11 June 2020 at 8:27 pm UTC
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.
Well, you just probably haven't run into it, so you think it's not a problem. I was on a train fairly recently (before lockdown) and it was a five hour journey. I opened Steam, I had no internet, went into offline mode, and then discovered, infuriatingly, that several of the games I wanted to play wouldn't start, because it had been months since I'd played them on that device, and I didn't have any internet to "prove" I owned them.
It's by degrees, of course, but DRM pissed me off massively that day.
I won't go into the old "what if Steam goes under" argument, because I'm a realist and I don't think it's likely. Even if it happens, I have libraries on Humble, Itch and GOG, so it'll be a first-world problem no matter how much I lose.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPOf course, those Windows "kernel driver" things are a whole different subject, but that also goes into anti-cheating, etc.
Denuvo is a kernel driver for DRM, as well as anti-cheat. It's where I draw the line for DRM. Despite Steam pissing me off a couple of times in the nearly 16 years I've been customer, I can tolerate its DRM. But rootkits, kernel drivers, always-online (Steam needs a check-in every two weeks) checks and other blatantly anti-consumer crap like that can just do one. No money from me.
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Quoting: scaineDenuvo is a kernel driver for DRM, as well as anti-cheat.Denuvo anti-cheat is, but Denuvo anti-tamper is just an obfuscator. It hurts performance on weak CPUs but doesn't mess with an OS afaik.
Steam DRM, on the other hand, prevent Linux gamers from playing a bunch of PS360 era games: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/753. Those games run fine with cracked exes though.
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Quoting: scaineDo you really have to play the actual game to prove you own it?Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.
Well, you just probably haven't run into it, so you think it's not a problem. I was on a train fairly recently (before lockdown) and it was a five hour journey. I opened Steam, I had no internet, went into offline mode, and then discovered, infuriatingly, that several of the games I wanted to play wouldn't start, because it had been months since I'd played them on that device, and I didn't have any internet to "prove" I owned them.
I thought it was like Spotify, Deezer, etc. in that you need to be online like once a month or so and that applies to your entire library.
But I also never keep games around I don't play, always installing/uninstalling them as I need them so I wouldn't run into that problem anyway.
Quoting: scaineI won't go into the old "what if Steam goes under" argument, because I'm a realist and I don't think it's likely. Even if it happens, I have libraries on Humble, Itch and GOG, so it'll be a first-world problem no matter how much I lose.That's never been an argument to begin with.
So what if I lost my entire library over night with no possibility whatsoever to save it beforehand (not gonna happen like that in any case, but let's assume...)?
Here's what will happen: The (very, very, very few) games I have an interest in playing again, I'll just buy again - in case I have the time for it, which is unlikely given my perpetually increasing backlog. Games aren't expensive if you don't buy them in the dozens-per-month. Online libraries are not physical collections where you'd lose your nice display rack or anything like it.
Or I'll just sail the seven seas - given that I already gave a dev money for the game, I find that morally acceptable.
It would be an inconvenience of varying degrees, nothing that anyone should spend their time worrying about.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 12 June 2020 at 6:05 am UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlI did, and it sounded like you were trying to justify the premise behind DRM. May be I misunderstood it, then I'm sorry for confusion. In my opinion DRM has no justification, it's simply unethical.
I find it reasonable for companies not to trust us. Nobody should trust random foreign people they've never met.
I don't want companies or countrys to spy on people.
I don't know what to make is this regarding DRM though, that's why tend to avoid that topic.
If it would be possible to make piracy impossible without breaking anything for legal customers and without spying, I guess I'd be ok with it. It seems real live DRM often did one of those or even both.
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou're also throwing all kinds of DRM in the same pot.
If a game just requires you to run Steam in order to run in, what's the big deal? You open Steam, start your game, done. Big deal. I don't see the problem here.
Worth mention that this game (i.e. Supraland) doesn't require Steam client to run. You only need to download the game from Steam repositories and that's it (you can do that with Steam client or SteamCmd).
Regarding the problem with GOG and Supraland, today I received an e-mail that states this:
QuoteGOGSource
A lot of you already heard about it from all kinds of sources. Due to way too low sale numbers we stopped the GOG support and unlisted the game there. We cannot offer version parity and don't want GOG customers to have a lesser version. Getting the APIs between the game and the platform to communicate properly is no trivial task, but at this point it was financially not viable to do so.
If you are totally outraged about GOG support being dropped, you are completely right of course and I apologize. But what can you do?
- We can give you a Steam key if you email us your GOG receipt of the game.
- If this is unacceptable to you, you can email us your refund wish including your paypal address.
Email: [email protected]
Does anyone know which are the APIs that are required by GOG?
Last edited by x_wing on 12 June 2020 at 3:32 pm UTC
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