Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiT1. Epic Store
Why do you get so crazy about it? It's basically a launcher that allows you to buy games. Nothing more, nothing less. Many publishers do have stores. Many of them have exclusives.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

Epic is paying other devs for exclusivity. That's a lot more outwardly aggressive than just making their own games exclusive. That'd be obnoxious enough on its own, but add onto that the fact that Epic has no plans to support Linux, and that means they're also effectively paying devs to not support Linux.

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A lot of people seem to be taking a fairly dismissive attitude toward Epic, but I hope Valve doesn't get complacent. Earlier this month the developer of Defender's Quest posted some rather worrying survey results of developer attitudes toward Steam (I recommend looking over all the graphs and tables, if not reading the whole thing -- there's a bit more to it than just the revenue split). Players may be disinclined to deal with yet another storefront/launcher, but if devs really are itching to jump ship things could get ugly (especially for us, as every Epic exclusive is now confirmed to preclude Linux support).

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Quoting: ssokolowSince nobody else seems to have mentioned it, this sort of thing is apparently against Kickstarter's terms of service.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter

That blog post does make it sound like they're legally obligated to provide refunds for anyone on linux or mac, but if you look at the relevant part of their actual TOS:

Quotethey offer to return any remaining funds to backers who have not received their reward (in proportion to the amounts pledged), or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form.

(emphasis mine) it seems to me that offering backers to pick a different platform would be considered "completing the project in some alternate form."

However, there are other requirements I don't think they've met:

Quote

• they post an update that explains what work has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents them from finishing the project as planned;


• they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;


• they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve used funds appropriately and made every reasonable effort to complete the project as promised;

Their "challenges of supporting middleware" explanation is meaninglessly vague, and they've given no assurance that this "middleware" issue wasn't due to a bad faith decision to use middleware that didn't support their promised platforms.

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Quoting: melkemindMaybe I'm just hoping for the best, but this seems like just an omission or maybe bad English. Why would they need to offer you the option to change your platform if the alternative option wasn't a refund? If there were no second option, the wording would be, "Mac and Linux users will receive the Windows version instead." I could be wrong, of course.

The other options besides Windows would be the various console versions.

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QuoteI also have a confession to make, I have still never played Psychonauts. Am I mad? Should I seriously set time aside to play it?

It's worth it for the milkman conspiracy alone.

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A Hat in Time is a very pleasant surprise. I'd mostly given up hope on that one.

Quoting: Naibooo nice!!!
My daughter is sort of getting to the end of Yooka-Laylee and while Psychonaught2 would be great, its delayed. A Hat in Time looks a perfect free-world platform game

Poi is lovely if you haven't already heard of it.

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Quoting: subI like that tweet

https://twitter.com/retroremakes/status/1070080659887144961

I don't understand what he's trying to get at. He just seems to be vaguely asserting that things are bad and need to change over and over again. What exactly does he think Valve is doing wrong? What is this "power difference" and "antagonism" he's referring to? What does he think Epic is going to do better?

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Quoting: 0aTTthe people who are complaining now don't want a trading card game, but something else. HalfLife³ for example.

This is a total straw man. Most of the negative reviews on Steam are by people who bought the game, presumably because they wanted it. Many of them even speak favorably of the gameplay, so this is just patently false.

Quoting: 0aTTpeople just want this cheap F2P garbage.

The main reason people are comparing this unfavorably to f2p garbage is because it has the same business model as said garbage, but without the thing that makes that business model even remotely tolerable: being free.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: elmapuli like the idea of the hypervisor, but i still think its an scam.

even if its not, sony will announce ps5 soon, microsoft may already be planing the next xbox and switch just launched, i'm afraid there is no rom for this thing, even if it have, it will not bring many new gamers to the table, we will have the ones who already play on ¹linux + the ²atari fans


¹(wich means we will not receive new games because the install base was not increassed and we will waste money on hardware wich have an cost per unit, instead of games)

²(there arent many anyway)

i think the Intellivision new console has an better proposal than this thing, at least its unique.

While the PS5 and so on will continue pushing their AAA graphical realism powerhouse approaches, Nintendo released their classic consoles which sold like mad - seems to me there's still a market for this sort of thing.

Nintendo's classic consoles were $60 - cheap novelties (not to mention manufactured scarcity, which drove collectors batty). This thing is priced like a full console. It may find a niche among hardcore collectors and tinkerers, but I don't see it making any impact on mainstream gaming without some knockout exclusives. Like, Nintendo quality exclusives. We'll see what, if anything, they have planned in that regard further down the line, but, frankly, I'm quite skeptical.

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Quoting: Hendricks266

Quoting: GuestThe interesting thing about Ion Maiden, is that while it uses Eduke32 as the basis, they intentionally made the texture format incompatible with the Eduke32 release. This is questionable due to the license, since it is derivative of GPL works, but the engine pieces that load textures is actually covered by their BUILD license. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think that the licenses are even compatible due to being linked.

When 3D Realms published the sources to Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior under the GNU GPLv2, they did so with a linking exception for the BUILD Engine. EDuke32 and Ion Maiden are in full compliance with these terms.

Quoting: GuestStill, I doubt they will officially ever make Ion Maiden supported in the stock Eduke32 release.

Quoting: GuestI hope you intend to allow for that version of the artwork to load in the Eduke32 public release once the final game is released. The ability to modify and change the games built on the BUILD engine were one of it's most successful assets.

Yes, we do plan to allow the user to drop a newer EDuke32 binary into the game and run with updated code. However, this will only be true with the release of the full version, not the preview campaign.

Quoting: GuestI attempted to get more information a while back on their Freenode IRC channel, and was met with outright hostility.

Quoting: GuestTo make things clear, after the last interaction on the IRC channel from the main developers, the experience was less than professional. I personally don't have any need or intention to rip art assets, however, I do want the ability to run newer eduke32 code. I will be watching this game closely and if the team does not act in good faith, I will release the information more publicly than in a comment section and with full source code changes. You can also scramble the header format and I have the ability to figure that out as well. We can play the cat and mouse game or be friendly and everyone wins.

I hope everyone in this thread recognizes the incredible amount of disrespect it takes to approach a developer with an ultimatum like this. Our interactions in the EDuke32 IRC channel were neither hostile nor unprofessional: https://pastebin.com/XRNJy1E9

mos6510, please quit misrepresenting our studio with malicious half-truths.

I don't think mos was coming from a position of disrespect so much as an honest misconception of the licensing, and a misunderstanding of your intentions. In the log you posted, you said "You can explore when the full game is out" once, and the rest of your conversation seems to be against modding -- presumably specifically in the context of the preview, but that didn't really seem explicitly clear to me, so to me it kinda reads as mixed messages.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're planning to support vanilla eduke32 in the final version. Thanks for the clarification.

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