Quoting: kalin

Quoting: ShabbyX

QuoteVK_EXT_primitives_generated_query

Should be useful for the Zink driver that does OpenGL over Vulkan. Developed by Collabora, Arm, NVIDIA and Google.

Don't get too excited about this. Zink has always used pipeline statistics query to implement this query, which is supported on desktop GPUs. While Zink _could_ switch to this extension, there is little gain to be had (other than some rasterizer-discard optimizations on AMD perhaps). Still, PGQ is a rarely used query to begin with.

The extension is a necessity for ANGLE however because mobile vendors don't support pipeline statistics queries.

Source: I'm the author of the extension.

In that case, can you bring some light on dx12 direct storage. We will have such a thing on Vulkan

Obviously I can't talk about anything that's not yet public.

For direct storage, there was an issue opened in the Vulkan-Docs github repo. I believe the working group responded. Besides, I don't work with or for windows and dx anyway, so I wouldn't know.

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QuoteVK_EXT_primitives_generated_query

Should be useful for the Zink driver that does OpenGL over Vulkan. Developed by Collabora, Arm, NVIDIA and Google.

Don't get too excited about this. Zink has always used pipeline statistics query to implement this query, which is supported on desktop GPUs. While Zink _could_ switch to this extension, there is little gain to be had (other than some rasterizer-discard optimizations on AMD perhaps). Still, PGQ is a rarely used query to begin with.

The extension is a necessity for ANGLE however because mobile vendors don't support pipeline statistics queries.

Source: I'm the author of the extension.

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, no it doesn't. The distinction between "verified", "playable", and "unsupported" doesn't actually have anything to do with crashes. Something can be "unsupported" even though it plays smoothly and fairly satisfyingly with never a crash--if there's a cutscene that doesn't play, it's "unsupported". And technically, a game can be "Verified" even if it crashes quite a bit--as long as every single bit of the game plays correctly, and it works well with the screen size and the Deck controls. So no, that heuristic wouldn't tell a thing about the categories as Valve draws them.

Yes, but! The crashes are part of the heuristic, but not all of if. If you paid attention, I also mentioned the amount of time users play. Obviously they can't exactly infer the class the game belongs to, but as an *indication* that valve should look into it, I think that's pretty sufficient (i.e. no need for the users to spell it out)

The point is that crashes are not actually part of the heuristic at all, as Valve have currently designed it; nowhere in the criteria for the categories does it actually say anything about how stable a game is. These are the current four criteria a game must pass in order to marked Verified, as listed here:

Quote

• Input: The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed.


• Display: The game should support the default resolution of Steam Deck (1280x800 or 1280x720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.


• Seamlessness: The title shouldn’t display any compatibility warnings, and if there’s a launcher it should be navigable with a controller.


• System Support: If running through Proton, the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-cheat support.

I'm not saying that's how it should be, just how it currently is. The problem is that they've designed this very objective, engineering-friendly system ("does game tick boxes? It's Verified!") without considering the emotional axis of playing games and losing an hour of progress to a crash and a save bug. I don't think you're wrong to assume that Verified should mean something like "plays basically flawlessly, or at least no more than the random crashes you'd get playing it on Windows", and I bet a lot of people are thinking along those lines as well, so I'm glad to see it looks like Valve are polling people's responses and possibly shifting to incorporate some more subjective criteria rather than purely objective ones. (Like, if the one movie that doesn't play in an otherwise flawless game isn't actually that important to the story, maybe it should be moved from Unsupported to at least Playable, that sort of thing.)

Let me clarify by saying there are two things being discussed here:

- A feedback system where valve double checks that their expectation matches the reality (what this article is about): yes that's fantastic, no arguments there.
- A proposed feedback system in an earlier comment where players *proactively* suggest a rating for a game that doesn't already have one. Follow up comment suggested the data could be used by Valve to know which game to verify next.

My reponses have all been about the latter suggestion. I maintain that Valve doesn't need you to guide them towards what game is working well or is popular etc so they would prioritize verifying it, because that information is easily inferable from the aggregate data they collect about how much time people spend on each game. For example:

- Distibution of time spent on Deck matches other platforms: game probably runs just fine
- Said distribution is skewed towards less time played: game probably has issues
- No one played more than 2 minuted on Deck: game is borked
- Distribution of time spent per session skewed towards less time + higher crash reports: drum roll ... the game has stability issues
- etc

Know what I'm saying?

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Quoting: PhiladelphusJust tried Warpinator for the first time yesterday for my use case of, every so many weeks, getting the photos I've taken off my phone and onto my computer, and it worked great. (Much better than connecting via cable, which always seems to randomly unmount if I so much as bump my phone once it's connected.) Thanks for making me aware of it!

Does your cable not get plugged in all the way? You might have gunk in the usb port (of the phone). I used a tooth pick sliced in half to be super thin, then scraped all the gunk out.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo just Verified? Might be good if they could figure something to ask about the other categories including Unsupported and Unknown.

The point isn't to crowdsource but to verify what's done.

Well, perhaps not Unknown then, although I think there's some grey area to "Crowdsourcing"--if they have a pool of "Unknowns" that people say are pretty playable, they wouldn't want to just trust that and designate, but it would be a good way to have an idea what games are good candidates to look at next, both because they have a good chance of going into at least "Playable" and because they know Deck users are playing them.

But both "Playable" and "Unsupported" are also the results of Valve doing an evaluation, and they could also be mistaken (or change), so would also be worth verifying.

They don't really need you to tell them the game is playable or verified. They know when and where and how long you play a game, they know when the game crashes etc:

- If you play a game for many hours without a crash on a steam deck: it's an indication of "verified"
- If you play a game for many hours with some crashes on a steam deck: it's an indication of "playable"
- If the gam crashes within minutes, or if rarely anyone plays it on deck for long: it's an indication of "unsupported"

Of course that's just heuristics, but it exactly serves the purpose you are talking about it.

Well, no it doesn't. The distinction between "verified", "playable", and "unsupported" doesn't actually have anything to do with crashes. Something can be "unsupported" even though it plays smoothly and fairly satisfyingly with never a crash--if there's a cutscene that doesn't play, it's "unsupported". And technically, a game can be "Verified" even if it crashes quite a bit--as long as every single bit of the game plays correctly, and it works well with the screen size and the Deck controls. So no, that heuristic wouldn't tell a thing about the categories as Valve draws them.

Yes, but! The crashes are part of the heuristic, but not all of if. If you paid attention, I also mentioned the amount of time users play. Obviously they can't exactly infer the class the game belongs to, but as an *indication* that valve should look into it, I think that's pretty sufficient (i.e. no need for the users to spell it out)

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo just Verified? Might be good if they could figure something to ask about the other categories including Unsupported and Unknown.

The point isn't to crowdsource but to verify what's done.

Well, perhaps not Unknown then, although I think there's some grey area to "Crowdsourcing"--if they have a pool of "Unknowns" that people say are pretty playable, they wouldn't want to just trust that and designate, but it would be a good way to have an idea what games are good candidates to look at next, both because they have a good chance of going into at least "Playable" and because they know Deck users are playing them.

But both "Playable" and "Unsupported" are also the results of Valve doing an evaluation, and they could also be mistaken (or change), so would also be worth verifying.

They don't really need you to tell them the game is playable or verified. They know when and where and how long you play a game, they know when the game crashes etc:

- If you play a game for many hours without a crash on a steam deck: it's an indication of "verified"
- If you play a game for many hours with some crashes on a steam deck: it's an indication of "playable"
- If the gam crashes within minutes, or if rarely anyone plays it on deck for long: it's an indication of "unsupported"

Of course that's just heuristics, but it exactly serves the purpose you are talking about it.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualWith any luck, this will solve most of the visual novels I play not being able to be fullscreened.

KDE has lots of options to force windows to what you want.

If only they had the option to force windows to use the Linux kernel instead of NT...

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Quoting: Marlocki tgink the last point ShabbyX was trying to make is that those 90% that pirated the game wouldn't necessarily have bought the game instead...

it's one thing to get it for free, another to have to pay for it (and yet another to have to pay a lot, like for AAA games, and for gamers in poorer regions) if you're not that strongly interested

there are gamers who pirate a game to test it, then end up buying it later, or the sequels, etc... I'm not claiming to know if that's proportionally big or small, just that it exists and that we don't know how it affects the "with vs. without DRM" scenarios for a single game

there are also clever f...cks like Blizzard (I have to curse them given the current news), who used CD-key and CD-detection DRM on games like Starcraft, then years later released an official patch removing the DRM features from it (~ 1 decade after the initial sales, iirc?)

mother of all conjectures: would PC gaming even have become such a big thing in so many countries if there was no way to pirate software back when it started?! or would it have been just prohibitively expensive for too long?

ps: from personal experience, demos and a couple pirated games got me into it, now I have several hundred games just on steam, all legally purchased

pps: migrating to linux got me into not risking shady software sources on my PC, and that got me out of viruses and into steam for games

Yes. More formally:

* A people buy the game regardless
* B people buy only if they can't pirate
* C people only play if they can pirate
* D people *can't* buy the game due to price or embargo, so can only play if they can pirate (I was one of those when I was small)
* E people buy the game after trying the demo (that they may have to pirate)
* F people buy the game on recommendation of a pirate
* G people become gamers due to piracy (e.g. myself) and then buy other games years later when they grow up

I'm gonna go ahead and claim that the effect of DRM on the above variables has not seen enough research, so everyone is just speculating about whether it helps, doesn't do anything, or it's harmful (to devs' income, no debate here on its harm to users)

---

And on your conjecture, I think we can all agree that windows and ms office would definitely not have been ubiquitous if it weren't for piracy. As for gaming itself, I know I wouldn't have been a gamer if it weren't for piracy, and I'm sure that applies to many others. Can't really say if gaming wouldn't have thrived without it though, it clearly thrives on consoles without piracy.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

I'm certainly speculating, but if you want a biased source:

90% of visual novel players don't buy the game (the game was bought 50,000 times, but the patch was downloaded 500,000 times)

Most visual novels today are released without DRM. I can think of only one visual novel localizer today that releases the game encumbered with DRM. MangaGamer previously used Soft-Denchi for its DL releases about a decade ago, but didn't include it in physical releases. Their audience helped change their mind, and many other localization companies also followed suit and now only release DRM-Free editions. Even in Japan, most physical releases are unencumbered by DRM today, with some exceptions.

Johren, on the other hand, also localizes games into English but only releases them with always-online DRM for which you only get 3 activations, after which they tell you to purchase another license. They haven't released any numbers, and I doubt they will, but they're a much larger company than most localizers as a DMM operation. Many people openly express distaste for Johren for how badly they feel they're treated as a customer, however. Limited activation, always-online DRM is something that will incense most-everyone, I suppose.

These sources are clearly biased, but do with this information what you will. I think the only thing you can conclude is that it depends on the game. I've always thought the games that don't end up having their DRM circumvented are games that few people are interested in playing.

For what it's worth, visual novels are mostly released on Windows, but there are some console and mobile releases, so PC sales make up most of the overall sales.

So 50k people bought the game and 450k pirated. Your example shows that piracy exists, ok.

But there is no data about what those numbers could have been with DRM; 100k sales and fewer pirates? 50k sales and fewer pirates? 40k sales and whatever pirates? Or did I misunderstand your comment?

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

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