Latest 30 Comments

Now, about Valve's lootboxes.

First off, I, by happenstance, do not play games with lootboxes. So, I have no experience first hand. That said, I do have a brain. lol

With a package of random unknown items, if they are digital and purely cosmetic. Well, that's the way it should be done.

If other games/companies are selling lootboxes where it may lead to a power advantage or time savings then it's not fair and I would not play those games. I don't think others should either and should urge those behind it to change the system.

Don't blame the "genre" as a whole just because there are some out there being greedy and manipulative. Let other people be free to enjoy a "mechanic" when it is incorporated fairly.

If anything, there should be a temporary law restricting "pay to play". It should be specific and have guidelines for fair ways to provide an income for the devs/artists/publishers that reward players on an even field. Not this type of overreach.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

"Mystery boxes" IRL have become popular over the years. They can range from limited selections of snacks, to beauty or hygiene items, to books, and so on. There's usually a set minimum amount of a selected boxes worth and it averages out to be profitable for the seller and the buyer knows he or she is going to get a specific type of item.

There an companies out there where a very large portion of their business is packing up and sending out whatever is in stock, at random.

It's not too dissimilar from going to the grocery store with the intention of buying marked down items and walking home with an unexpected assortment of produce. A person goes with a certain budget and seeks out whatever fruits and vegetables are on sale. It's a complete mystery until the shopper arrives and the person is well aware.

Personally, I enjoy the variety. I know I am getting something of X item(s) and it costs me more or less what I am paying and I will make use of whatever shows up. It's a great way to promote smaller brands and for retailers not to be dependant on one brand. Especially good for books, CDs, DVDs/Blu-Rays if you ask me. Worst case is I give it to someone I know or donate to a thrift store.

I think these mystery box type items actually teach a good lesson. Be open minded and resourceful. Try new things and don't be fixated on getting something specific immediately; have patience.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I am fine with such things if the option to play vanilla is offered on startup, not removed or hidden in a menu. Otherwise it is not preservation. As I have said before, Nightdive doesn't preserve anything, they simply port them to modern Windows and consoles. And like ports of old, they change a bunch. People need to know it is not an accurate experience.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: GustyGhostI've been playing Linux native games (Unity, no less) that I had bought ten years ago without any issue. What is there left to improve?

Apparently, the quality of unity's opengl and vulkan support.

Source: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/08/heart-of-the-machine-from-arcen-games-dropping-native-linux-for-proton/

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Talon1024I think issues like that can be helped by targeting the Steam Linux Runtime instead of a specific Linux distribution. [...]

Sorry to only quote part of your comment, but I wanted to voice my vehement agreement here. This is why the Steam Linux Runtime exists, and in fact, any problematic ports I've had that have broken with updates or that needed extra packages (which eventually became unavailable), using the Steam Linux Runtime fixed those problematic ports.

• To the Moon
- Its Native Linux port was borked for a while, crashing on startup, but the Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 fixed those crashes. Note that this game got a 16:9 Unity remake by SerenityForge that only supports Windows and macOS, iirc the Native build still exists but is still using RPGMaker. This improved support from Unity could encourage a Native Linux port!

• Half-Life
- A long while back, Half-Life relied on I believe some old version of libpng which was no longer available. At the time, the Steam Linux Runtime didn't exist to my knowledge, but eventually when it did exist and I was still hitting that issue, the Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 yet again fixed it.

• Borderlands 2
- Yes, this port has parity issues that the Steam Linux Runtime can't fix, but it did fix an issue with some cryptography library if memory serves me correctly that otherwise needed to be installed manually, in a similar vein to Half-Life.

• APICO
- This game had issues for a while on Non-Ubuntu distributions, and the Steam Linux Runtime fixed it. There were a couple of threads around launch talking about this on the Steam Discussions.

This is not to say needing to target and run in a containerized environment is not without issues, and I'm not sure how this may impact parity (e.g. if developers wanted to integrate certain SDKs), not to mention the Steam Linux Runtime was historically notorious for causing issues with programs needing to detect a running game (though unsure if there are known workarounds or if this is a non-issue anymore, iirc it gave people headaches with some American Truck Simulator multiplayer software?). But purely in terms of fixing older, buggy ports and in terms of giving developers a stable platform to target, the Steam Linux Runtime is the way to go.

The only thing I have found the Steam Linux Runtime to not really fix is parity issues with those older ports or with abandoned ports, but I think more support from engine developers will reduce friction with supporting Linux and thus make it less likely that we get those abandoned or second-class ports.

As a little aside, too, while this article is about Steam specifically and so we're talking about the Steam Linux Runtime, it is available to use outside of Steam, so Unity game ports to GOG could be ran with the Steam Linux Runtime without needing to be added to Steam. Granted, I'm not sure if any launcher can integrate with it out of the box (iirc Heroic may be able to if it finds it installed from Steam, Lutris may do the same?), but it isn't necessarily a walled solution only for Steam; Linux ports targetting the Steam Linux Runtime will not necessarily only benefit ports coming to Steam but also those released standalone and/or through GOG.

That's my take on the whole thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.

This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users.

They are. Linux runs virtually everything that's not a PC. What types of devices will fall under each law's purview? Smart watches? Routers? CCTV systems? Car entertainment systems? The farther it reaches, the more it hurts people's convenience and risks overcoming their complacency.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

A video showing more about this topic:

[https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e](https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e)

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: GustyGhostI've been playing Linux native games (Unity, no less) that I had bought ten years ago without any issue. What is there left to improve?

This is for developers, not gamers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

a lot of people all over the internet were complaining that valve promissed 4k 60fps, but end up delivering 1080p/ 30fps...

i really hate how people are dumb.
first, valve promissed that all current games on steam would run at 4k 60, with FSR, they are just specifying how well an game have to run without FSR now, not to mention, they promissed the games that were already relased would run at this settings , but they cant do much if the games launched on the future dont run at 4k 60, they cant predict how bloated they gonna be, so instead of pretending an game dont run at all on their machine, they set an minimum spec to get an q/a badge, most console playerd dont care about playing at 30fps, and resolution dont define how good an game look, minecraft wont magically look good just because its runing at 4k, it will not have "graphics better than gta5 running an 1080p" for example, so judging an game by its resolution is stupid as hell.

yet the entire internet is full of people calling it doa or pretending valve is not fullfiling their promisses.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

stand alone 2D titles...
they mean 2D or flat titles? as in non vr titles?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

i really hate loot boxes, in fact i hated it since when i got some pokémon tcg cards, and realized that the system could be turned into pay to win without much effort, and i was an kid back then.

"We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers—it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokemon or baseball card. NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that."

what about transferability of digital games then?

anyway, its hypocrisys to focus on Valve while the entire industry does that, there are something behind those lawsuits.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: tmtvlOn the other hand, it would be neat if Steam paying the royalties meant that products containing copyrighted material could be sold through Steam as long as the royalties are paid; DDR/Audiosurf/GH clones could ship with a ton of songs, for example.

That assumes that these parasitic bodies know, much less care, whose work is being licensed. They don't. These bodies don't have a membership list of artists and composers. They don't know whose music is being played by the licensed facility nor to they require that playlists be filed after each event. They are just demanding a general fee because music is involved with the event.

This puts a lie to their claim that a performing artist putting on a show would pay a fee for performing live music but then get that fee back in royalties as the artist and/or composer. Most of the money they collect is likely being consumed by the organization itself with the balance just being distributed to large record firms to line their already considerably wealthy pockets.

Quoting: tmtvlAnyone could make a Harry Potter/Song of Ice and Fire/Lord of the Rings game.

Well, these "royalties" only applies to music, not other intellectual property...

They actually do (to some extent), if you are a songwriter you have to register each work you create to PRS. Organizations that then pay license to PRS have to also track which song is played so the payouts is actually divided per how much your music was played.

One major caveat happens when a piece of music that is not registered is played and when that happens they hold the payments for 3 years before they simply divide that collected amount to the registered songwriters according to some form of internal ranking.

There are other organizations that collect fees from harddrive makers and mp3 makers and those ofc do not know what is played and when so those organizations simply payout to their members (which are music companies like Sony) and perhaps you are thinking about this type of org.

When it comes to the actual issue itself this lawsuit will not go anywhere, PRS only have the rights to collect license fees for performances and since Steam/Valve does not play music from any of the games that they sell anywhere PRS does not have legal standing.

One small caveat here (I mean PRS is not stupid so why did they file) could be the trailer and gameplay videos that sometimes are shown in Steam, silly I know but this is the way the law is written.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Stella

But I think we can do better with a native solution.

I hard disagree with this statement. Pretty much all existing Linux games suffer from various problems ranging from complete inplayability over control and gameplay/visual issues as well as crashes. Running games over Proton is vastly preferable to Native most of the time because the Windows API is much more stable than the Linux API. I myself have had so many issues with native ports that the Proton versions never have, that I've given up on them completely

I think you are confused. More support for native Linux builds with Unity makes them better, not worse. You still have a choice whether you want to use the Windows version through Proton or the native Linux version.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Still not about to weep for Valve if they lose. lol

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: AsciiWolfSo you think that native Linux apps/games are inherently bad. Why bother with Linux and not just use Windows in that case?

Proprietary games using GNU/Linux APIs are bad. For example, Egosoft's X3 uses a GTK2 application to launch and GTK2 is no longer being updated (it's even been removed from the official Arch repositories). Because it's proprietary software the community can't just take it over and update it to use GTK3 or 4.

I suppose a better way to put it is that native GNU/Linux games aren't bad, they just need more machinery to keep working than games targetting the Windows APIs (although of course one could just set up a system with ancient versions of everything, I mean that's Debian's entire shtick).

But I like having 3 different versions of GTK and Python installed on my machine. It makes it look more haxxorz when I run updates through terminal and there's a million updates. :P

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: tmtvlProprietary games using GNU/Linux APIs are bad. For example, Egosoft's X3 uses a GTK2 application to launch and GTK2 is no longer being updated (it's even been removed from the official Arch repositories). Because it's proprietary software the community can't just take it over and update it to use GTK3 or 4.

I think issues like that can be helped by targeting the Steam Linux Runtime instead of a specific Linux distribution. Steam Linux Runtime may not provide everything, but it is stable, so I think that makes it less likely to cause breakage as the stack of libraries advances.

Quoting: StellaPretty much all existing Linux games suffer from various problems ranging from complete inplayability over control and gameplay/visual issues as well as crashes.

Even the open source Linux games and apps like SuperTuxKart, SuperTux, Veloren, or UZDoom? I would think that, since those games are open source, they would have better support for Linux, since they are open to bug reports and code contributions from anyone who cares.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

More mods on Steam is always great. 🔥

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.

This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users. Linux is not significant enough to overturn this law. Besides, the majority of eligible voters are indifferent sheep ... they are more likely to just accept or ignore the overreach.

Well the alternative is just giving up and result in Linux dying. Is that what you want? BTW California state includes Big Tech utopia Silicon Valley. Love to see Google and Meta trying to run without access to open source.

It appears that Meta is responsible for causing this political upheaval - Lobbying politicians in these areas. (Meta gets to avoid big fines if it passes age verification onto operating systems and app stores.)

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

My thoughts: its a well known fact that there is plenty of sites using steam CS crates for gambling, they claim they've gone through a lot of effort dismantling the operations of these sites... well its a fact that those sites are still operational, you just can search on google or any search engine and you'll get plenty of results, valve is indirectly responsible for this.
I mean as they say, these crates have been on valve for more than 20 years, and still they cannot get their shit together on completely banning these sites?
its the analog of being the organizer of a sports event and not being diligent, strict enough and allowing the resale and scalping of your tickets for an event... yeah they are kinda responsible.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: dimko

Quoting: Mountain ManSony doesn't want to sell games, they want to sell PlayStations and lock customers inside their walled garden.

What is profit from locking someone into their walled garden? Define it and explain how it benefits them. :D

When someone buys a PlayStation, they're naturally going to want to buy games for it, and when they buy a PlayStation game, Sony gets a bigger cut of that sale than they would selling that same game on PC. The more games someone buys for their PlayStation, the more vested they are in the platform, and the more likely they are to buy the next iteration of the console, and the cycle repeats.

I am gonna be pedantic. YOu contradict yourself. You said earlier they don't want to sell games.(which is what I am outisting about), but i get your point now.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

On one hand, how valve does lootboxes is one of my only legitimate complaints with them, and them losing this lawsuit would lead to positive changes in the industry.

But then the New York office makes me opposed to them losing this by default because they bundled the win condition with ID verification. So I hope New York loses, because I hate ID verification normalization more than I hate lootboxes, ESPECIALLY as a Californian that's unsure if I'll be kicked out of using linux distros I want next year cause of the boneheaded, technologically ignorant decrepit boomer decisions of people I didn't even vote for.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

This is very nice. I wonder who else will reveal some revelations!

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

You are wrong!!!

Jokes aside..

I used Fedora Workstation for years. I am now running Bazzite Gnome (because I do like the super button workflow a lot).

I ended up with bazzite because I really had issues with multimedia, codecs, mesa and so on. I would love a plain silverblue with that included.

Even after switching ffmpeg, mesa and installing pulse plugins and orher things, I encountered issues with formats and codecs.

For me that situation is what makes fedora quite a pain. I have the philosophy if it does not run out of the box it does not run well and never will.

Bazzite or generally ublue with codecs is a treat. As is bluebuild (took me like 30 minutes to make a Fedora immutable with codecs and Cosmic Desktop to try out without any prior knowledge on how it works).

And as I found out, homebrew actually can bring me most of the libs and compilers I need for development, so I do not need them on a system level.

I do not like some decisions bazzite makes (I'd like a more ootb experience - who needs that ugly minimize animation they added in gnome, really), but its the best I have for now.

I will probably in time make my own bluebuild for gnome. But there I need some more tweaking for autoupdates and things like that (I do not care about making updates manually... I am lazy).

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Yes, please! More native builds! Proton is great, but there is never anything better than running software without layers and wrappers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: AsciiWolfSo you think that native Linux apps/games are inherently bad. Why bother with Linux and not just use Windows in that case?

Proprietary games using GNU/Linux APIs are bad. For example, Egosoft's X3 uses a GTK2 application to launch and GTK2 is no longer being updated (it's even been removed from the official Arch repositories). Because it's proprietary software the community can't just take it over and update it to use GTK3 or 4.

I suppose a better way to put it is that native GNU/Linux games aren't bad, they just need more machinery to keep working than games targetting the Windows APIs (although of course one could just set up a system with ancient versions of everything, I mean that's Debian's entire shtick).

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: voytrekkI think the only thing that Valve should be punished on is the fact that you cannot use another marketplace to trade items. It locks users into a single marketplace that Valve just happens to collect a fee on each transaction. Either take away the fee or allow other marketplaces to compete with Valve.

You want another marketplace to be able to compete with Valve on selling digital items hosted on Valve's platform...?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

The MtG comparison actually fits quite well, only that trading card games would be even more problematic, because each boosterpack has a chance to give you an advantage while playing. In Valves games the benefits are purely cosmetic.

Gambling is a serious topic and its a discussion we´ve got to have. But I personally dont think trading card games should be banned and - by extension - neither should Valves marketplace.

@voytrekk: You are wrong, there are tons of alternate marketplaces for CS2 stuff etc. I find them all a bit cumbersome and shady, but its one of the great things about Valve, that they dont lock you down. You can trade user-to-user or use these marketplaces without giving a penny to Valve.

For that exact reason, PUBG descided to lock down trades after a while (changing all items to "marketable - non tradeable", because they got greedy and didn´t want to miss out on fees.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: felipecrsToo bad Danger Zone mode isn't playable. I hope they fix that, so at least it can be played in community servers.

It is available in community servers.

https://discord.gg/dangerzone

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I think the only thing that Valve should be punished on is the fact that you cannot use another marketplace to trade items. It locks users into a single marketplace that Valve just happens to collect a fee on each transaction. Either take away the fee or allow other marketplaces to compete with Valve.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I think it's great they're adding official Linux/SteamOS/Deck/Machine targets. Maybe sometimes they won't work and then we will resort to Proton, but it's still a huge step benefiting the developers who otherwise might be reluctant to develop for Linux. It's all about the friction.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment