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Latest Comments by ShabbyX
Google announce ‘Stadia’, their new cloud gaming service built on Linux and Vulkan
20 March 2019 at 2:14 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: fabertaweIt's only DRM if it's the only way to play the game. As someone pointed out earlier, going to the cinema isn't DRM, you can buy the DVD if you want to "own" it. Same thing exactly.

It will be the only way to play games through Stadia, i.e. they aren't offering downloads. So it is DRMed.

Like I said, please think about what _you_ would have done if you were the lead of Stadia. Being large-distributed-data-center-based, how could you ensure that games that are built for that scale could run on a PC? Besides, you are not buying games individually to play on Stadia (if you did, yes your concern would be totally valid). If you pay a 10$ subscription fee, you can't expect to be able to download and play every game Stadia offers outside of it as if you owned all of them.

If 15 years ago they described Netflix, there would have probably been similar reactions: "Can't own the movie anymore. I can only watch on Netflix. That's bad". But here we are, and I don't care at all if I don't have the DVD to something I once watched on Netflix and moved on.

I have a library of ~200 games on steam, and honestly I have rarely ever went back to any of them after one playthrough. I think this is less of a DRM issue and more of a paradigm shift from people buying games individually to subscription-based play-whatever-you-want-without-having-to-buy-it-first-and-return-if-shitty. I don't think Google is actively trying to implement DRM in Stadia. As I see firsthand at Google, we are all trying to build amazing stuff, and have little time for bullshit like that.

Google announce ‘Stadia’, their new cloud gaming service built on Linux and Vulkan
20 March 2019 at 4:42 am UTC Likes: 2

What's with all the DRM talk? You're not "buying" games with Stadia for DRM to apply. DRM is only meaningful (and bullshit) when you buy something, because DRM restricts what you can do with it.

With Stadia, you are paying for play time. If you go to the cinema, you don't think about DRM because you are not buying the movie, just watching it. Same with Netflix. If you ever played games at a game café, it was a similar situation to Stadia; you paid to play games the café owned, not you, and DRM didn't apply.

If you are not convinced, try to think what you could have done differently as an anti-DRM person if you were the lead of Stadia.

Google announce ‘Stadia’, their new cloud gaming service built on Linux and Vulkan
19 March 2019 at 9:36 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Xaero_VincentNice! So with "primarily", at least some games might be using something like Wine though? If so that would be good news, because then Google might be able to put their weight and push BattlEye and Easy Anti Cheat to behave with Wine if or when popular battle royale games hit the service.

I honestly don't know if there would be any game that's emulated.

But what's the point of anticheat on a game running on a controlled server?

Google announce ‘Stadia’, their new cloud gaming service built on Linux and Vulkan
19 March 2019 at 9:12 pm UTC Likes: 17

Disclaimer: I work at Google (though not on Stadia), previously Eidos Montreal (Shadow of the Tomb Raider).

Games running on Stadia are primarily native. Yeap, engines you never dreamed would support Linux, now do thanks to Google.

As Stadia has its own SDK, porting from Stadia to Desktop means adding SDL support and supporting the desktop swapchains. Personally, I think the biggest hurdle with desktop support would be testing and bug fixing, as with Stadia the game is really just tested on AMD. That said, as a desktop Linux gamer myself, I'm certainly hoping this would help get us more AAA games. :) If nothing, all the open source work means better mesa, faster kernel, more advanced profilers etc which are all good for our cause.

Regarding Google and data, believe me, Google is the farthest from evil.

John Romero has announced a free unofficial spiritual successor to The Ultimate DOOM's 4th episode
10 December 2018 at 6:07 pm UTC

QuoteSIGIL™ is the spiritual successor to the fourth episode of DOOM®, and picks up where the original left off.

Does that mean DOOM had a story? :D

Valve have adjusted their revenue share for bigger titles on Steam
2 December 2018 at 2:02 am UTC

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro
Quoting: Termy
Quoting: MayeulCWhat would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

now that is one of the best ideas i've heard in a while to boost Linux-acceptance among the devs...too bad valve is not looking into this comments xD

Super good idea. It could also be platform-specific incentives as opposed to the whole cake, ie. they take their 25% cut for Windows sales but only 15% or less for Linux. Something like that might actually tip the balance and would cover the port costs presumably.

Nope, that would not achieve anything. Linux sales are low, so getting slightly more from it is not that big an incentive. But saying something like "if you support Linux, we get 1% less from your windows sales", that's suddenly huge.

Linux market share on Steam now at a 16 month high after a rounding error was fixed
5 October 2018 at 9:49 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: ShabbyXDidn't they reveal that os share is calculated automatically and is independent of the surveys?
Maybe, but not that I remember hearing. Source?

I can't seem to find the gol article quoting someone about this. @liam, do you remember this?

Linux market share on Steam now at a 16 month high after a rounding error was fixed
4 October 2018 at 2:57 pm UTC

Didn't they reveal that os share is calculated automatically and is independent of the surveys? Can we please stop complaining about survey frequency when it comes to market share?

Valve have released some interesting statistics about controller use
27 September 2018 at 4:32 am UTC

You should all know that the ps4 controller is amazing. The trigger and bumpers are nice and soft, and the dpad is actually usable (unlike both xb360 and xb1 controllers). The dpad is in fact a great way to play many platformers because you actually know which direction you are pressing. With dead cells for example, down jump is hard to get right with stick, but trivial with dpad.

The steam controller is honestly not great to handle. I love it for dual stick shooters like neon chrome as I can use both pads and not deal with stick and buttons which are far from reach. I love the second input at the end of the triggers too, which comes in very handy for rocket league boosts.

But generally speaking, I tend to go to my ps4 controller instead of the steam one, you should try it too!

Valve have been fined 147 thousand euros in France
18 September 2018 at 9:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

Let's all buy one new game from steam tonight as a fu to this.

Compared to most other companies, Valve is being the nicest.