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Latest Comments by slaapliedje
Dev of crowdfunded WW1 survival-horror game CONSCRIPT cancels Linux and macOS versions
30 May 2024 at 5:42 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI have this feeling that there has been a shift over the years when it comes to this stuff. Some time ago, when someone cancelled their promise of a version of the game for an OS, they would just cancel the Linux version but they'd usually still do the Mac version. These days, they cancel Linux and MacOS if they're going to cancel at all. I'm not sure that's good, misery loves company maybe? but it's different.
I have a growing theory that a lot of these are actually being canceled by publishers who want deals with Microsoft or Sony... The amusing thing is that Linux users/developers have worked their way around such exclusivity with Wine based solutions. Apple on the other hand... basically depend on those same Wine-devs even to the point to incorporate Crossover into their Game Porting Tool (or whatever that thing is called).

I recently was having the conversation about Valheim, which is apparently developed on a Linux system (which explains why it supports OpenGL or Vulkan) and there is no Mac version. After Apple dropped all 32bit support and more or less killed support for vast swaths of games with that move, I can't imagine anyone else really trusts Apple to do good for gamers in general. So, it's no surprise that publishers/devs are dropping Mac support. They also figure 'Proton will let Linux users play the game' which is why some believe Proton is dangerous to the Linux ecosystem. I think Proton serves it's purpose (as older games for sure would never be ported) but I still maintain most newer games should be cross-platform.

Dev of crowdfunded WW1 survival-horror game CONSCRIPT cancels Linux and macOS versions
30 May 2024 at 4:12 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: M@GOidAnd one more time, don't pre-order anything. The warnings are there for anyone to see.
Yeah, I have given up on backing any video games at all on kickstarter. The only things I consistently back (because they consistently deliver) is anything by Gaming Ballistics LLC, and SJGames. They both are excellent at delivering within the same year, usually. Any others seem to not have the basic development even started, so it takes years to show up at my door...

Hell, even ordering something from Limited Run games... I ordered Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken at the same time, a friend of mine ordered the latter, and it already showed up. It took them longer to get Maniac Mansion put together... but last I checked (a few days ago) it said it was ready to ship... but hadn't shipped. Not even a kickstarter, but a pre-order issue... Once a company has your money, the incentive for delivering the goods seems to diminish...

No leaving a Steam account in a will after you die according to Valve
29 May 2024 at 3:11 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LachuFor example in License of Windows 10 exist text told, the software is not sold, but licensed.

And so is Linux.
The difference is in the license that Linux has. It's Copyleft, so you can get the full source code and do whatever you want with it. If you choose to distribute any changes at all, then you are required to also distribute the source code of those changes. This means you could, legally, 'own' your very own copy of it and do whatever you wish with said copy.

I still remember the days of no EULAs, where you bought a copy of a game, and that copy was yours to do with as you pleased, like taking it out of the floppy disk and watching it soar when it pissed you off...

No leaving a Steam account in a will after you die according to Valve
28 May 2024 at 11:25 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: TheRiddickI wonder if Valve will setup a expected death of account owner timer. So once you turn 80yo they consider you dead and invalidate your entire library, lol. That would be dystopian but I suspect in 40years time we will all have MUCH more pressing issues to deal with other then computer stuff.
Shit, I hope not... like 90% of my Steam library is intended for when I retire! Granted, maybe by then I'll just have something hooked up to my brain so I can make my way through the Atari ST and Amiga library, along with my Steam one... Maybe my brain can be put into a Dalek-like vehicle... EXTERMINATE!

No leaving a Steam account in a will after you die according to Valve
28 May 2024 at 6:13 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: BogomipsI am pretty sure people are still wondering why piracy will never die as they continue to treat paying customers like criminals (piracy reminders everywhere, DRM, locked platforms, mandatory online connections, etc.)

I still remember using no-cd cracks on my purchased games 25 years ago to avoid putting a CD-ROM into a player that would make as much noise as an airplane during take-off…
Way back when, I had a friend that I repeatedly told him where and how to use the no-cd cracks... but he could never get it through his head. The funny thing is, these things are required now for a vast majority of games made during a certain period of time, because SafeDisc has been been purposefully broken on newer versions of Windows.

Hilariously, these games still work just fine in Linux/Wine.

Racing game BlazeRush ending support for Linux, macOS and SteamVR
27 May 2024 at 8:28 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Mambo
Quoting: kokoko3k
Quoting: StoneColdSpider
Quoting: kokoko3kSo, let me understand.

I've this game on native Linux on steam and after the update i will not have the possibility to download it anymore?

Does this feel right to anyone?
Welcome to the state of gaming in 2024........ Over priced DLC........ Microtransactions out the warzoo..... Out of control in game gambling........ Gaming as a service....... Changing account requirements after purchase........ And now...... Changing OS support after purchase....... What a time to be a live......

Quoting: jams3223I am blacklisting this studio, and I'll never buy a game from them.
Targem Games has made...... The list...... I will do doing the same.......

This is Valve enforcing game updates vis Steam.
Blaze Rush is a lightweight title that works on an old netbook which is unable to run Vulkan, unable to run Proton via dxvk, I don't want even imagine what would happen via wined3d.

They are reducing my possibility to play it, and I've paid for it.

Instead, people pirating games are FREE from all of that, really, this time shame on you, Valve.

Steam supports beta branches, which are often used to keep around old versions before disruptive changes. That publisher should still take the responsibility and face demands for refunds though.
Think this option is on the developers though, right?

The game is developed by Russians, maybe they are being forced to add in a rootkit, which won't work on Linux and mac, so they're just ditching those platforms?
Nah, any government enforced rootkit will support Linux and Mac, unless it is target specific.
Basically all journalists, rich businessmen and activists use Mac.
Basically all valuable servers run Linux.
The low level Iphone jailbreak bugs mostly come from discovered government malware.
Against Linux source code poisoning is popular.
"Write your first rootkit" is a training exercise for mediocre kernel developers.
Just, because ransomware writers don't have standards and are willing to settle for Windows, because it has the less capable admins and has the security of an open door doesn't mean governments don't.
Edit:
In this rant I'm assuming they can get super user permissions from their users, but with the "anti-cheat" claim for a native game this could work.
We're talking gaming here, right? There isn't any government enforced rootkits here... unless you're buying games from CCP sponsored companies... of course they're target specific.
I don't know about journalists and rich businessmen using macs. I'm sure most activists do. The first two likely use a mix of Linux/mac/Windows. A lot of proper journalists are going to be stuck on MS or be more about openness of Linux. 'Creative' types are likely to be using Macs. Not game players though.
Ha, all 'useful' servers are running some form of *nix at this point, with few exceptions running Windows.
Ha, no clue where you're getting the iphone Jailbreaks from, they're just vulnerabilities in Apple's somewhat shitty software.
Source code poisoning... has happened like once or twice ever... at least that has been found/noticed. It is far from 'popular'.
Haha, I wonder where you find info on writing your own rootkit, there have literally only been a small few of those ever found in the wild.
There aren't even that many ransomware writers. There is literally a black market where people buy said things.

I actually work 'in the industry' to know most of these things, so there is that...
On the presence of governement enfroced rootkit.
I was reacting to your:
Quoting: slaapliedjeThe game is developed by Russians, maybe they are being forced to add in a rootkit
The only situation I could see nationality mattering was if the government was the one forcing.

I'm a student in the field and I told you only about things I had found on the net, so you're probably more right, but here's where my (mis)information came from.
At a certain point I picked up an interest in syscall interception for writing a patch to Darling.
I found that that had been made harder in a semi recent Linux release, because it was very suspicious behavior(I really hadn't thought of that, I felt so stupid).
I can't find the exact article anymore, but here's a tutorial: "how to write your own rootkit".

Qua source code poisoning:
This was my most recent source of takeover attempts(no this isn't only the xz attack) as far as I understand it, it's more common among front end stuff.
Here's a forum post of maintainers discussing some stories.
There was also a highly publicize one in the linux kernel where a check did UID =0 instead of UID == 0 and some javascript library that replaced the whole screen with some angry post.

On the Iphone jailbreak exploits.
Government involvement is only true for the most recent.
A.K.A I was wrong.
The KTRR bypass comes from the kaspery findings.

About the number of ransomware writers. I didn't know that, but yeah, the amount of bottlenecks in cyber crime is always surprisingly big. You would think that a profession under permanent attack would scale down to a point with very little bottle necks, but it's nearly as bad as with normal infrastructure. For ransomware it's tool building and for game piracy it's cracking, for media piracy it's key extraction.
As far I'm aware call center scamming is quite resilient.
Ha, my comment about Russia forcing a rootkit in there was very 'tongue in cheek'.

You can blame IBM for the rootkit stuff, according to this; https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/trace/kprobes.html :P

Really they had to add a feature for it?
I feel a lot less stupid now.
I understand that in theory wirting a rootkit should always be possible if you've root, but adding a feature specially for syscall interception is kind of over the top.

Edit:
This seems to be deeper and an actually part of the POSIX standard in the shape of ptrace.
POSIX has it there for debugging.
Ha, yeah as I was looking into the documentation, it seemed more like 'sure you could use this to take over the kernel, but it's purpose is for debugging and tracing code around to see what went funky'

Nightdive Studios confirm Linux and macOS ports of System Shock are cancelled
27 May 2024 at 6:33 pm UTC Likes: 3

I still maintain the worse offender of this was Tower 57. They have an AmigaOS4 port, but not a Linux one...

This is weird to me, since Atari bought Nightdive Studios, and they definitely are a bit more friendly to Linux than your average publisher, though it does weird me out a little that they literally have native versions of games like Yars Recharged (on the Atari VCS) but do not have a native linux build on Steam.

Atari acquires Intellivision brand and over 200 games
26 May 2024 at 9:16 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: pilk
Quoting: slaapliedjeWhile the Atari VCS 800 was delayed a year or so due to Covid hitting right as it was about to be made / shipped, at least it's a proper Linux install and not Android! It was a fully Linux OS on a game console before the Steam Deck, which I know was mostly due to them being cheap asses, but the new CEO has been getting some decent support out of it!
I assumed that the VCS was running Windows because I saw Fortnite screenshots in the promotional material. Guess I was wrong lol, though I guess you can install Windows on the thing.
Yeah, AtariOS itself is a Debian based system, https://www.apertis.org/

Sure you CAN put Windows on it... I have Debian set up on an internal drive I can dual boot too, or save AtariOS games to. They're DRM free, and you can just copy the directory over to a Linux desktop and play the game natively. I quite like the little thing.

Racing game BlazeRush ending support for Linux, macOS and SteamVR
26 May 2024 at 3:00 am UTC

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Mambo
Quoting: kokoko3k
Quoting: StoneColdSpider
Quoting: kokoko3kSo, let me understand.

I've this game on native Linux on steam and after the update i will not have the possibility to download it anymore?

Does this feel right to anyone?
Welcome to the state of gaming in 2024........ Over priced DLC........ Microtransactions out the warzoo..... Out of control in game gambling........ Gaming as a service....... Changing account requirements after purchase........ And now...... Changing OS support after purchase....... What a time to be a live......

Quoting: jams3223I am blacklisting this studio, and I'll never buy a game from them.
Targem Games has made...... The list...... I will do doing the same.......

This is Valve enforcing game updates vis Steam.
Blaze Rush is a lightweight title that works on an old netbook which is unable to run Vulkan, unable to run Proton via dxvk, I don't want even imagine what would happen via wined3d.

They are reducing my possibility to play it, and I've paid for it.

Instead, people pirating games are FREE from all of that, really, this time shame on you, Valve.

Steam supports beta branches, which are often used to keep around old versions before disruptive changes. That publisher should still take the responsibility and face demands for refunds though.
Think this option is on the developers though, right?

The game is developed by Russians, maybe they are being forced to add in a rootkit, which won't work on Linux and mac, so they're just ditching those platforms?
Nah, any government enforced rootkit will support Linux and Mac, unless it is target specific.
Basically all journalists, rich businessmen and activists use Mac.
Basically all valuable servers run Linux.
The low level Iphone jailbreak bugs mostly come from discovered government malware.
Against Linux source code poisoning is popular.
"Write your first rootkit" is a training exercise for mediocre kernel developers.
Just, because ransomware writers don't have standards and are willing to settle for Windows, because it has the less capable admins and has the security of an open door doesn't mean governments don't.
Edit:
In this rant I'm assuming they can get super user permissions from their users, but with the "anti-cheat" claim for a native game this could work.
We're talking gaming here, right? There isn't any government enforced rootkits here... unless you're buying games from CCP sponsored companies... of course they're target specific.
I don't know about journalists and rich businessmen using macs. I'm sure most activists do. The first two likely use a mix of Linux/mac/Windows. A lot of proper journalists are going to be stuck on MS or be more about openness of Linux. 'Creative' types are likely to be using Macs. Not game players though.
Ha, all 'useful' servers are running some form of *nix at this point, with few exceptions running Windows.
Ha, no clue where you're getting the iphone Jailbreaks from, they're just vulnerabilities in Apple's somewhat shitty software.
Source code poisoning... has happened like once or twice ever... at least that has been found/noticed. It is far from 'popular'.
Haha, I wonder where you find info on writing your own rootkit, there have literally only been a small few of those ever found in the wild.
There aren't even that many ransomware writers. There is literally a black market where people buy said things.

I actually work 'in the industry' to know most of these things, so there is that...
On the presence of governement enfroced rootkit.
I was reacting to your:
Quoting: slaapliedjeThe game is developed by Russians, maybe they are being forced to add in a rootkit
The only situation I could see nationality mattering was if the government was the one forcing.

I'm a student in the field and I told you only about things I had found on the net, so you're probably more right, but here's where my (mis)information came from.
At a certain point I picked up an interest in syscall interception for writing a patch to Darling.
I found that that had been made harder in a semi recent Linux release, because it was very suspicious behavior(I really hadn't thought of that, I felt so stupid).
I can't find the exact article anymore, but here's a tutorial: "how to write your own rootkit".

Qua source code poisoning:
This was my most recent source of takeover attempts(no this isn't only the xz attack) as far as I understand it, it's more common among front end stuff.
Here's a forum post of maintainers discussing some stories.
There was also a highly publicize one in the linux kernel where a check did UID =0 instead of UID == 0 and some javascript library that replaced the whole screen with some angry post.

On the Iphone jailbreak exploits.
Government involvement is only true for the most recent.
A.K.A I was wrong.
The KTRR bypass comes from the kaspery findings.

About the number of ransomware writers. I didn't know that, but yeah, the amount of bottlenecks in cyber crime is always surprisingly big. You would think that a profession under permanent attack would scale down to a point with very little bottle necks, but it's nearly as bad as with normal infrastructure. For ransomware it's tool building and for game piracy it's cracking, for media piracy it's key extraction.
As far I'm aware call center scamming is quite resilient.
Ha, my comment about Russia forcing a rootkit in there was very 'tongue in cheek'.

You can blame IBM for the rootkit stuff, according to this; https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/trace/kprobes.html :P

Atari acquires Intellivision brand and over 200 games
26 May 2024 at 2:58 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: pilk
Quoting: PenglingThey've released it as a mobile telephone app where you can link other mobile telephones to your mobile telephone to use as controllers, presumably so they can say that they delivered something.

I mean the Amico was very likely going to be made out of couple years old phone parts running off some special locked-down version of Android anyways.
While the Atari VCS 800 was delayed a year or so due to Covid hitting right as it was about to be made / shipped, at least it's a proper Linux install and not Android! It was a fully Linux OS on a game console before the Steam Deck, which I know was mostly due to them being cheap asses, but the new CEO has been getting some decent support out of it!