In light of recent events, it might be more important than ever to actually look at the engine that's used in a game before getting too hyped up...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slembckeJeez. This is the most Unity-in-202X thing I've heard yet. Remember when they bought that IronSource analytics company? (The one that had an uneasy past relationship with malware?) They released a bunch of financials at that time that made it pretty obvious that they made very little money from the game engine itself. It was all ads, services, and selling user data. This slots right in with that honestly...

Mmh... InstallCore, nice, hadn't heard of that, probably Windows only...

Not to forget Red Shell... wait, there's not even an article (any more?)! And only a single mention in a related topic? Now that's what I call spin doctoring... There was something, right? Red Shell? Unity's Spyware"ad tracking"? Big news just a couple years ago? I can't be the only one remembering that...
Welcome to 19820243

Quoting: PublicNuisanceI would love to say that this will push more developers to use FOSS engines but my faith in developers isn't that high.

It might nudge a couple indie devs in the right direction, although I too have lost confidence. For bigger studios though I somewhat doubt the developers are the ones calling the shots, as opposed to management.
And for the really tiny new ones, it probably depends on what the youtube algorithm of the day spits out for "beginner game engine tutorial"... which is probably a self-amplifying loop unless the fallout from this is really massive.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

QuoteXenonauts 2 is now in Early Access

[emphasis mine]

The first instalment (2014-ish) was quite the ride AFAIR.
I can't seem to find any mails or bookmarked links – maybe I do indeed have rage deleted any evidence, which would be quite exceptional – so this is all from memory a decade or so back, but I had paid for the game back when and they certainly screwed us over, with features missing, the promised Linux version turned out to be a Wine wrapper back when Wine was really hit-and-miss, and even at some point no longer access to download the game at all.
What I did find are two newsletter mails from GoG in June 2018, one where (to add insult to injury) they announce Xenonauts (part one) as a free giveaway for 48 hours, and another announcing Xenonauts 2 "coming this year". GoG may have their own issues, but somehow I doubt it's their fault that "this year 2018" translates to 2023...

A resounding "go stick it you-know-where" is all theyGoldhawk will get from me.


Edit:
Clarified "they" as "Goldhawk", to prevent any misconception that somehow I meant to accuse GoG of being at fault.
I also did find the receipt for the game, showing a purchase on Desura, rest in peace. That may actually be why there was no longer a way to download the game, so maybe it wasn't entirely Goldhawk's fault (although where there's a will, there's a way...)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyLiterally reshaped the world? What, it's flat now?

Probably just continental drift. It happens all the time, and people do call it a conspiracy theory ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: gbudnyWe also had Torcs

TORCS, of course! How on earth did I forget that – thanks for bringing back fond memories.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

I too use DDG, and I don't have a "smart" phone to begin with, but I admittedly do use Steam to play games that are not available in physical form, or digitally elsewhere, yet I balk every time I have to launch it.
And I do, did, and will reject every invitation to the Steam Survey I am presented with.
I wouldn't bet that there are many others out there that do the same, but you just lost your bet. Awaiting the money... ;)
But seriously, even if something looks like a "sure bet" it's not necessarily true.

Steam already has more than enough data about me than I'd like them to have, and IMO every new iteration of the client makes it even less appealing – the latest brilliant feature is to open a separate window with a prompt to inform me that I'm not signed into their chat system; well guess what, I'm not signed into their chat system for a reason, thank you very much, yet on each and every launch of the Steam client, that window pops up again and needs to be dismissed.
I somehow doubt that having more data would change its direction in the slightest.

And while none of that was specifically about Fedora and its flavour of "telemetry", it all applies just the same, as the comment about the Gnome devs perfectly illustrates. And Fedora the Linux distribution is so much more encompassing than just Gnome the desktop environment.
"Telemetry" certainly is not about aiding the users and improving their experience.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: gbudnyI remember that even in 2010, we didn't have commercial car simulations for Linux

Off the top of my head I can't speak to the "commercial" part of that statement with enough confidence to confirm or refute it; however, even long before 2010 we had Rigs of Rods (although I didn't look at the current site since it won't work at all without Javascript).

The latest version I have is from 2009; I kind of lost track of it around that time, mostly because even back then Sourceforge had already become a neglected garbage dump of a site (there seems to be a bit of a common pattern here... is accessible web design really that difficult?)

I was delighted to see that RoR still seems to be under active development, with regular as well as dev builds over on itch.io.

Turns out Liam even had an article a while ago that I must have missed somehow.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: Frawo

Quoting: InstallSteam is drm

This is simply not true, and I'm surprised that this superstition still persists. While Steam actually offers their DRM to publishers, I haven't heard of any game sold on Steam and GOG that got DRM on Steam (though there might be a few exceptions). If you don't believe me, try to launch the *.exe of Witcher or Cyberpunk on Steam without having the Steam client open. I suppose that 99% of what is DRM free on GOG has no DRM on Steam either.

Here is a list of DRM free games on Steam:
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Steam is DRM. You must use it to download the game. Steam limits when and how you can play any game.

Every time I have ever tried to play a Steam game offline, it tries to phone home, fails, sighs, and says basically "Fine, be that way. Play the game without calling Steam, see if I care!" and I do. I think there's a distinction between nagware and DRM.

In my experience, I usually get to the point where it tries to phone home and fails. And that's usually it then, No Steam, No Play.

There are exceptions of course, but that's what they are, exceptions.
Admittedly I haven't tested every one of "my" games, but the majority behaves that way. Now I may have been unlucky with my selection of games I "own" and the ones I tried, and my experience may just be an outlier, but that's how it presents itself to me.

Discussion of "licenses for software I paid for" aside, in my eyes "nagware" that prevents me from using "my" software counts as DRM. Softer than some others maybe, but shackles made of silk are still shackles.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: beko

Quoting: ValckThis is likely not about you setting cookies, but being an external site

I'm also that external site and I ain't setting no stinky cookie

But that's the point – you're linking to external media (yours or otherwise), and Liam tries to protect the privacy of his users (including you, of course ;) ) by requiring their consent so they can't be tracked automatically via referer or other means.
It doesn't matter whether your site does or doesn't set cookies, all are treated equally just in case. But Liam asks whether you want to include only this one media file in place on this one page on GoL, or "any and all and don't ask again in the future (for as long as the GoL cookie's lifetime)".

At least that's how I understand this "Accept/…/…" prompt, and I really appreciate not automatically being submitted to the usual external tracking and data collection via included media, regardless of whether any specific site would actually track or not.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: beko(What's with the Accept & Show? Ain't setting no freakin cookies)

This is likely not about you setting cookies, but being an external site and requiring the user's consent to load; "Accept & load ONLY THIS instance of an external site / Accept & load ALL instances of external sites during this session / Direct link to external site" ;)

Since I don't have an account on GoogleTube, let me use this opportunity to say 'thank you' for your excellent videos.

View this comment - View article - View full comments