Facebook announced yesterday that they're throwing their controller into the Cloud Gaming ring, although they seem to be doing it differently. Joining the likes of Google with Stadia, NVIDIA with GeForce NOW, Amazon with Luna and Microsoft with what was originally called xCloud (now bundled under Xbox Game Pass Ultimate).
In the blog post they go into a fair amount of detail about how it's going to work, and it seems it will be playable on Linux just like their current smaller games are as it will be directly in the browser at fb.gg/play. It's not going to split off into a new name or new service like others have done, it's just being integrated into what they're already doing with Facebook Gaming.
Facebook look to be doing it differently by coming out of the gate explaining they're not trying to over-promise, they don't want to replace existing consoles / gaming methods and just be an additional way to play games. Fair enough. They're also keeping the types of games down to a minimum to begin with, along with it only being open to the US right now in these places:
California, Texas and Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states including, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia
With more locations through 2021 as they scale up their infrastructure to cope with more people and more games.
It's also interesting to see what types of gaming they will do, as it seems they're not going for premium purchase games like Google Stadia and no subscription like Amazon Luna. Instead, the mobile-gaming way is coming with free to play games along with "cloud playable ads" and in-app purchases.
They also announced they will add in gaming-specific Player Names and Avatars so you don't have your real name and profile picture shown up when on Facebook Gaming. Due to the way it works, it seems cross-play will only happen between Facebook Gaming and supported mobile game downloads that support Facebook's login for gaming. No cross-play with other cloud gaming or other native desktop gaming, as they seem currently firmly focused on free to play games you would find on mobile.
The question is: will you use it? All the games being free sure does bring down a big barrier.
I sure as heck won't use it though. The last thing I want to do is spend longer than 5 minutes with Facebook checking for messages from family.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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More offers to play games on Linux is certainly good.
Personally I have closed my Facebook account a few years ago due to Facebook's role in the US elections four years ago.
Personally I have closed my Facebook account a few years ago due to Facebook's role in the US elections four years ago.
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Arehandoro Oct 27, 2020
Facebook, F@*£ OFF!
8 Likes, Who?
"The question is: will you use it? "
Definitively not. I avoid FB since years (except WhatsApp, that is hard to avoid as it would cut me off from friends etc.)
And the kind of games they seem to offer is not my style of game. I doubt that there will be games like Stellaris, TW3 or X4.
And I prefere to pay with money instead of privacy.
Definitively not. I avoid FB since years (except WhatsApp, that is hard to avoid as it would cut me off from friends etc.)
And the kind of games they seem to offer is not my style of game. I doubt that there will be games like Stellaris, TW3 or X4.
And I prefere to pay with money instead of privacy.
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Facebook couldn't pay me to use their service, let alone the gaming stuff.
Last edited by vskye on 27 October 2020 at 11:40 am UTC
Last edited by vskye on 27 October 2020 at 11:40 am UTC
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I do have a Facebook account, but I really only use it for family & friends stuff.
But I don't think I'm even remotely the target audience for this.
But I don't think I'm even remotely the target audience for this.
1 Likes, Who?
After what they did to Oculus, I'm gonna give this one a body swerve, as I suspect most Linux gamers would anyway. I agree with TheSHEEEP - we're not the target audience here.
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"They also announced they will add in gaming-specific Player Names and Avatars so you don't have your real name and profile picture shown up when on Facebook Gaming"
finally they realized that this is an bad idea that break the roleplay and imersion on the game.
"The question is: will you use it? All the games being free sure does bring down a big barrier."
hell no, i already played free to play games for long enough to know that none of then is worth of my time.
in the begining they were supported by ads on the same page that the game was on, and many of then were good, but as the time passes this model was not sustainable anymore and the games adopted more and more predatory business models. (pay to win etc) and got worse over time (simplified mechanics to reduce the skill factor in favor of grinding/luck/paying)
there is no way i will fell for this trap again, just let me get ride of the current game that i'm adicted to, to kiss godbye to this.
even if i was willing to try, after what they did with oculus, i would not trust facebook anymore.
their terms of services were bad enough when aplied to facebook itself, but extending it to: if i'm kicked from facebook, i'm kicked from their entire ecosystem including games that i spend money on? hell no.
if an game is ocullus exclusive, it dont exists for me.
on an side note, i'm curious to see what they're running on their stream servers, hopefully its linux.
finally they realized that this is an bad idea that break the roleplay and imersion on the game.
"The question is: will you use it? All the games being free sure does bring down a big barrier."
hell no, i already played free to play games for long enough to know that none of then is worth of my time.
in the begining they were supported by ads on the same page that the game was on, and many of then were good, but as the time passes this model was not sustainable anymore and the games adopted more and more predatory business models. (pay to win etc) and got worse over time (simplified mechanics to reduce the skill factor in favor of grinding/luck/paying)
there is no way i will fell for this trap again, just let me get ride of the current game that i'm adicted to, to kiss godbye to this.
even if i was willing to try, after what they did with oculus, i would not trust facebook anymore.
their terms of services were bad enough when aplied to facebook itself, but extending it to: if i'm kicked from facebook, i'm kicked from their entire ecosystem including games that i spend money on? hell no.
if an game is ocullus exclusive, it dont exists for me.
on an side note, i'm curious to see what they're running on their stream servers, hopefully its linux.
0 Likes
I'll join Facebook when they decide to pay me cold, hard cash for my personal data. Actually it's hard to imagine anyone --- let alone actual video gamers --- not already on Facebook giving this service a second thought. I'm older than Marky Zuck, but I hope he dies before me so I can have a shit in his honor.
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Nevertheless Oct 27, 2020
They'll do the exact same thing as Google with Stadia. So no, letting them misuse my Linux installation, plus another one on one of their servers is out of the question for me!
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Why did you think that we would be receptive to this? Is it simply because it's gaming that can be done from a Linux installation? It's not running ON our Linux installations, it's running on remote servers which may or may not be running Linux. But even if it does, so what? It takes away the freedom and agency that we get from Linux. All that's relevant to this is just the kernel. And if that's all you care about for this, I guess that's that. Looks like most of the people commenting here really care about the freedom that Linux provides. And that precludes not only Facebook but all the cloud gaming services. We want to play games ON OUR computers, not on remote servers owned by corporations who are only beholden to special interests who might be hostile to some of us. And if you think that this is going to lead to these games being made available to us on our Linux computers in the future, that's some optimism that I'd like to get behind, but it's starting to look like that's not in the cards. The best thing that we can do is to wash our hands of cloud gaming altogether, bolster our numbers and use the numbers to get more and more indie and the occasional AAA devs to support us directly.
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tommystig21 Oct 27, 2020
facebook privacy mess aside, this cloud gaming is getting out of hands... up till now we got six major cloud services with facebook being seventh, it's like having seven consoles to play their exclusives.
Answering the question "will you use it?": no, definitely no... not this nor stadia or luna or apple arcade... I've sold my ps4 to focus on steam in my PC because i couldn't keep track of two game libraries. I prefer the simplicity of having a single store to play my games.
Answering the question "will you use it?": no, definitely no... not this nor stadia or luna or apple arcade... I've sold my ps4 to focus on steam in my PC because i couldn't keep track of two game libraries. I prefer the simplicity of having a single store to play my games.
1 Likes, Who?
Why did you think that we would be receptive to this?I didn't, and I don't need you to "like" or want everything that I post. What a weird way to think. A lot of what we cover is industry news, like this.
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Perhaps. I'm just getting really rankled by all the hype that cloud gaming is getting, and like some others here, I want absolutely nothing to do with it. Last night, I read something about the United Nations having a plan for their Agenda 21 that by the year 2030, they'll have it that governments and major corporations will own everything. And the rest of us will be relegated to services or rentals. What does this mean for gaming? It means EVERYTHING will be cloud exclusive if they have their way. And the days of us having agency of our own hardware will be over. This is the kind of future that I dread, and every single positive article about cloud gaming getting bigger and better seems to be cheering on this agenda. It hurts so much to hear about it this way.
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I wouldn't touch anything associated with Facebook with a 10 20 foot pole.
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Definitively not. I avoid FB since years (except WhatsApp, that is hard to avoid as it would cut me off from friends etc.)If people want to contact me they can use email. Damn kids, get off my lawn!
5 Likes, Who?
Last night, I read something about the United Nations having a plan for their Agenda 21 that by the year 2030, they'll have it that governments and major corporations will own everything.They already do.
But it didn't have much to do with the United Nations, which is a talking shop that does little but, with a couple of important exceptions (eg Libya) does on average more good than harm. Theories that the United Nations is going to impose some big bad thing on us all fundamentally misunderstand the nature of both the United Nations and international political economy. The United Nations has a tiny budget that depends on voluntary national contributions, no taxation powers, indeed very few powers of any kind. The only powers of coercion available to the United Nations depend on all the permanent members of the Security Council to agree about something. Since the US decided it couldn't live without the Cold War and started it up again, it can't get Russia or China to let them push any important coercive measures through the Security Council, and similarly there's no way the US would fail to veto anything important Russia or China wanted, so the Security Council is for the foreseeable future effectively a dead letter for anything big.
In short, the UN is not a significant player in international politics or economics. In the sense of some sort of autonomous political force with its own separate agenda the UN doesn't even exist. It's a category error--it's like talking about what the house of Congress plans, independent of either the Democratic or Republican parties and their Congresscritters. The UN is a creature of all the national governments that fund it; it's a place where they can argue and try to influence the little departments that do research and produce reports the media talks about, so they can score points off each other when some human rights rapporteur says bad things about the other guy. Occasionally they'll also let something like the World Health Organization do a bit of the real work they're hypothetically supposed to be doing, because most sane people agree it needs to be done. That's it, that's about all the UN is. It's not a bogeyman with vast plans.
3 Likes, Who?
Perhaps. I'm just getting really rankled by all the hype that cloud gaming is getting, and like some others here, I want absolutely nothing to do with it. Last night, I read something about the United Nations having a plan for their Agenda 21 that by the year 2030, they'll have it that governments and major corporations will own everything. And the rest of us will be relegated to services or rentals. What does this mean for gaming? It means EVERYTHING will be cloud exclusive if they have their way. And the days of us having agency of our own hardware will be over. This is the kind of future that I dread, and every single positive article about cloud gaming getting bigger and better seems to be cheering on this agenda. It hurts so much to hear about it this way.This isn't something the UN can pass and Agenda 21 is fundamentally a non-binding plan, not to mention I doubt it has anything to say about video games and cloud gaming, considering it was drafted in 1992. This is probably just a case of you getting fear-mongered by conspiracy theorists. The text is freely available, so you should probably start from there to verify any such claims: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
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