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> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decid

by Crinus 7y ago

> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) or deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) while developers will have moved on and/or closed and wont give a second thought about. In the meanwhile, while Stadia exists, any games will be filled with anti-consumer garbage that you wont be able to do anything about - not even the files that make up the game are under your control. I'm 100% hoping this will fail, not because it isn't a technically cool product nor because i cannot imagine the potential it has - i want it to fail exactly because i can imagine all the negative potential it has. I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device, i want to fully control everything in it and i do not want any commercial scheme that erodes the marketplace which allows me to have that freedom.

kingbirdy 7y ago
Stadia doesn't prevent you from owning your own hardware, nor will it. It's just another option for people who can't afford to own hardware.
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  Imagine if we had this conversation 10 years ago: - I don't like streaming services, because content can disappear/the quality is lower/... - Streaming doesn't prevent you from owning your own DVDs/BDs, nor will it And now in 2019, there are so many films and tv shows only released through streaming services, and never sold on disks.
  - kingbirdy 7y ago
    Those are products that only exist on streaming platforms, though - as far as I know, Netflix hasn't negotiated any deals to have movies go from cinemas to Netflix and not get a physical release at all. Even some of Netflix's properties have physical releases, such as Stranger Things. So there's still just as much or more physical media available as there would be without streaming platforms.
  - CivilianZero 7y ago
    This is patently false. Most "streaming only" tv shows do get dvd/blue-ray releases. But this is a bad-faith argument anyway, imagine all the times this has been said about new formats of any kind. Streaming is an option and does not prevent people from owning things and it isn't hurting you so maybe just let the people who want to stream things...stream them?
  - rchaud 7y ago
    The films and shows that are "streaming-only" in 2019 are the equivalent of "straight-to-DVD" in the 00s. Besides marquee projects like House of Cards, Fleabag etc, the vast majority of original programming on these networks are badly made formulaic pap with actors no-one's ever heard of. Were it not for the recommendation algorithm (and the removal of the user reviews), I doubt anybody would bother watching them.
developerdylan 7y ago
You're making a lot of assumptions with a clear bias there. Just because you don't want this model for games, doesn't mean nobody does. I tried Stadia with Assassin's Creed in the Alpha and it was a wonderfully low bar to entry. I was able to play the new Assassin's Creed on my Macbook. There's a lot of value to that.
- Crinus 7y ago
  Yes, i am biased against losing control over my computer and the games and software i can run on it and mess around with (be it modding, programing, custom patches or whatever). And i do see it through the potential of things going bad because if things go perfect then everything is fine. I focus on the bad side because i do not want the bad things to happen and i see the bad things way worse than the good things.
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > Yes, i am biased against losing control over my computer and the games and software i can run on it and mess around with I share your sentiments, but this battle was already lost a decade ago when Steam won - Apple is just twisting the dagger with it's App Store and their unceasing march to turn OS X into an appliance (limiting 'root', and with catalina, what you can put in '/')
    - Crinus 7y ago
      While i'm not a fan of Steam, with it you can still keep the files around and some games are DRM free or rely on a DLL that you can easily replace. See Scott Ross' recent video about Trackmania 2 Nation for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulp99wSUNgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulp99wSUNgk But personally i prefer GOG where i have hundreds of games (though it isn't the only store i use - any that give me DRM-free games, like Humble Store or GamersGate - is fine) and i keep my own offline copies (including games from stores that have long gone - another reason i dislike DRM schemes and prefer to have control over my files).
  - blfr 7y ago
Ninn 7y ago
>I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device It's almost like you fully ignored the previous comments.. A lot of people may want to do exactly that, and are less bothered by other aspects, which you may appreciate and prioritise?
- deleted 7y ago
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Jyaif 7y ago
> i can imagine all the negative potential it has But you fail to imagine all the positive potential. Terabyte-sized games with 0 download time, more interactions between players, better graphics, no more cheating, no more piracy (which leads to more games or bigger games), and better utilized HW (which is good for your wallet and the environment), and obviously you can play wherever you want. Streaming games is the future, deal with it.
- Crinus 7y ago
  I do not fail to imagine the positive potential, i just consider it totally insignificant to the negative potential it has. None of those you mentioned is worth giving up control over the games you are paying for and your computing environment.
- bathtub365 7y ago
  Is download time a significant factor for people with the types of connections that will have a good experience on Stadia? It’s my understanding that downloading a large game in a timely fashion and streaming it are both bandwidth-intensive. As for “terabyte-sized games” are there any of those on the market, or even on the horizon? At some point it’s either outside of the budget of most games to produce that many assets, or the 1080p/upscaled to 4K experiences that Stadia provides won’t make use of extremely high resolution textures.
  - Macha 7y ago
    We're not at terabyte yet, but 80-100gb is becoming increasingly common. Even the crash remakes are coming in at 30gb, and that wasn't that High budget a title.
    - shard972 7y ago
      So after playing crash for an hour Ive already streamed the entire game's worth of bandwidth. I assume people who buy the crash trilogy would play on average longer than an hour so I don't see the upside in efficiency.
    - 7y ago
skybrian 7y ago
Okay but why? When you walk out of a movie theater you don't have anything. Was it still a good movie? Maybe longevity is overrated? If you play a game for a month or two and enjoyed it, it's worth the price. Rental services make this explicit.
- bathtub365 7y ago
  When buying a game on Stadia is the same price as buying it on other platforms but with the downside of a total loss of control or ability to play offline it becomes less attractive.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    "Same price" if you already have a solid computer with a multi-hundred-dollar GPU.
    - Lio 7y ago
      How does Stadia compared with a used PS4 and second hand copy of a game that you can trade in again afterwards? Also how does it compared price wise to a brand new but leased console? It’s going to have to be pretty cheap to be competitive I think.
      - paulmd 7y ago
        I'll go a step farther, it only makes sense as part of a "PS Now" like service, where you pay a monthly fee and you get access to a catalog of games. Nobody is paying for locked-in games that only run on Stadia given Google's track record of goldfish-like attentions span on these projects. If you are just renting hardware then you need to run a local Steam cache (this exists), and allow players to use their existing game catalog. This is basically the "GeForce Now" model. And yes, you may note that I am referencing other game streaming services. Google is late to this party, and they have nothing unique to offer, nor a particularly compelling business model, nor the trust of their userbase. Stadia is DOA. If Google wants it to be not-DOA with their current business model, nothing short of a guarantee that if they fold within the next 10 years then they will issue a full and unconditional refund is going to do it. Nobody is going to pay full price for locked-in games on a platform with a track record like Google's.
jcranberry 7y ago
Movies still come out on disc even though netflix and streaming services in general have been very successful. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the same with games.
- xemdetia 7y ago
  Movies are an easy example: Do you want to watch the original ending of Return of the Jedi, the special edition ending, the revised ending post-prequels, the 4:3 edition or the widescreen edition? There are plenty of reasons to want to keep a copy of the version of the experience you enjoyed and want to experience again.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    In that example, I'd wager most people wouldn't care which version it is.
- deleted 7y ago
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- skohan 7y ago
  Game developers would have more to gain from a streaming-only model: 1. It's expensive to develop for multiple platforms. If you can get people to buy into streaming, you theoretically have only one hardware target. 2. Streaming is more effective at enforcing DRM for games. You can make a recording of a movie you're playing on Netflix, but games would require remote execution which can't be copied.
  - dorgo 7y ago
    >but games would require remote execution which can't be copied. Next HN headline: Machine Learning algorithm reverse engineers a Stadia game.
    - jcranberry 7y ago
      I think there has been some reverse engineering of simple game engines through ML already actually.
mrlala 7y ago
>when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) What service has Google shut down that you paid for? >deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) When has Google randomly deactivated your account without compensation for something that you paid for? You are making some gigantic leaps of internet logic here to be honest.. no one is going to deny they have an interesting record on projects, but I find it astounding you are comparing 100% freely created google products to a service which you are paying for. >I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device, i want to fully control everything in it and i do not want any commercial scheme that erodes the marketplace which allows me to have that freedom. I sure hope you don't use Steam!
- guitarbill 7y ago
  Chromecast Audio, Nexus, Nest? Even the Pixel, their "flagship" phone, has only gotten 3 years of updates, ending this year [0]. That, and just look at the YouTube debacle and how they treat creators. Fool me once... [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/rip-og-pixel-google-ends-support-after-just-three-years/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/rip-og-pixel-google-...
  - mrlala 7y ago
    Nothing you listed there means you can't still use it, so your argument is wrong.
- smileybarry 7y ago
  > What service has Google shut down that you paid for? Google Play Music will soon get replaced by the arguably worse YouTube Music, so that. I paid for GPM for years and when the YT Music switch happened and they announced my uploads and library won't get migrated for a while (with uploads maybe not at all), I left for Spotify. Not to mention how much worse YT Music is compared to GP Music. > I sure hope you don't use Steam! Steam has existed for the past 17 years, and Gabe Newell has gone on record saying that if Steam ever shut down they would look into unlocking all protected games. Even if that turns out to be impossible I still trust Valve in their industry way more than I trust Google in an industry they just entered. Nowadays a great deal of Steam games don't even use Steam's DRM features and will run happily without Steam, or with a stub "steam_api.dll". Steam doesn't take away any control over its games from me. You can mod any part of your game and still run it. Hell, you can turn off updates for any game and still run it via Steam (not breaking DRM if it uses it).
Bartweiss 7y ago
I suppose the importance of "lost when the project closes" depends on the lifespan of the project. Every Flash/Shockwave browser game is becoming increasingly hard to play. Games for ancient Windows versions can be devilishly hard to get running, and games for PowerPC Macs are all but impossible. Emulation is flaky and incomplete for console games of all kinds. When it comes to something like a music library, "buy don't rent" makes a lot of sense to me, but the lifespan of software and particularly games tends to be finite even when you do own them. Now, I totally grant that Stadia will probably have 10% the lifespan of Flash or PowerPC architecture. But lots of people avoided a string of ephemeral music-streaming services and finally bought in with Spotify or Google Play Music. Lots of people avoided ebooks, but are finally starting to come around. So even if Stadia looks too short-lived, the second or third big game-streaming service might convince people it'll last as long as any other software does. (Along with picking up all the users who are only interested in one or two AAA titles to begin with.) I share the rest of your concerns though, so that sort of worries me more. Streaming games may be what finally enables the death of free/independent modding, DRM-cracking, tracker disabling, and offline play after years of battles with publishers trying to push them directly.
- Crinus 7y ago
  There are people who try to archive Flash and Shockwave games and if anything, this is a good example of trying to fix something after the bad situation has already happened: the best time was when things were new. But better now than never. PowerPC and 86k macs can be run under emulation so not everything is lost. Similar for games for DOS and ancient Windows versions, though from my personal experience 99.9% of old games will work on Windows 10 with some tweaks and/or wrappers (like dgVoodoo2, dxwnd, otvdm, etc and of course user made patches). It is extremely rare that i find an old game i cannot get to run.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    Yes, this is all true. I didn't mean to imply those things can't be salvaged, or that I think the lifespan of frameworks and hardware justifies switching to a system of "you lose all your games forever as soon as we aren't profitable". Outside of Flash games with no remaining hosts and console games with no known cartridges, there isn't much which is 100% lost. And the best works in an environment are most likely to endure, so most notable games are at least playable for somebody. Rather, my concern is that lots of people already view games as having a "lifespan", and if they trust a streaming service to endure for a decade that might be accepted as "how long games last anyway".
BinaryIdiot 7y ago
> How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") But you don't actually know that. You're paying for a license for the game and even though they're likely covered in the event of a shutdown, it's unlikely they could do it without giving back _something_. With their Project Stream beta they gave everyone a free copy of the game directly from the developer. This assumption just doesn't make sense to me, especially for such a larger company. > when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) Does it happen all the time? Granted they shut down _free_ things quite a lot but things you pay for? It's significantly rarer and even in those cases they give you a large amount of time before it gets shut down. > I'm 100% hoping this will fail, not because it isn't a technically cool product nor because i cannot imagine the potential it has - i want it to fail exactly because i can imagine all the negative potential it has. Do you want PS Now to fail? xCloud? I really don't understand the polarization here. It seems like so many _want_ it to fail because of _theoretical_ issues. It's so bizarre. Why not, you know, just let it compete on its own merits? > I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device, i want to fully control everything in it and i do not want any commercial scheme that erodes the marketplace which allows me to have that freedom. You already do not have this freedom. Even with physical games if you let the device connect it can be changed or prevented from working entirely. I get that you _want_ this but considering you already don't have it, I don't understand why this would be taken out only on Stadia.
- aylmao 7y ago
  > You're paying for a license for the game and even though they're likely covered in the event of a shutdown, it's unlikely they could do it without giving back _something_. You're banking on their goodwill here, not any actual obligation they might have. > Even with physical games if you let the device connect it can be changed or prevented from working entirely. I get that you _want_ this but considering you already don't have it, I don't understand why this would be taken out only on Stadia. Is this so? There's a huge aftermarket of games for a reason. People buy old consoles, from NES to XBox 360s, all the time. A lot of people prefer physical media for this reason too. Even for heavily DRM-d content, it's just a matter of technical skill and people with the will to crack a game to catch up to the techniques used to keep it locked. With streaming there wouldn't be anything to crack. You simply don't have the game, period.
larnmar 7y ago
Doesn’t sound that bad. Most of the games I’ve ever bought, I theoretically could but practically couldn’t play right now if I felt like it — I might still have the disc/cartridge somewhere but the old console won’t plug into a new TV or else I’d need to find some ancient computer hardware.
krick 7y ago
I'll suggest a longer term vision: no individual consumer will be able to afford any hardware needed to use anything more than a thin client. Games of the future will require more powerful hardware than what you are using now, but even your typical gaming computer of today will be not affordable in the future, simply because it won't be produced for mass market anymore. In effect, all your computations will be run on the platforms owned by someone else. And may be it even will be considered by society and the government to be an obviously sensible safety measure: the same way citizens shouldn't be able to possess nuclear weapons, they shouldn't be able to produce dangerously powerful software on their own, without government monitoring and approval. Wow, fuck, I seriously scared myself just now.
- shard972 7y ago
  How about this. The greatest video games can already be made with the technology we have today.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Seeing how, imho, the best games of all time were all made in the 1990s, I don't think gaming is all that reliant on powerful hardware.
  - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
    Agree with your point but I'd say 1980s!
    - jayparth 7y ago
      Agree with your point but I'd say {decades in which you were a child}!
      - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
        Childhood nostalgia absolutely plays a role, but in my experience game developers tended to trade quality for graphics as the years advanced. In the 1980s games like Ultima 4 couldn't use graphics as a crutch and thus had to make the games really engrossing. My other grips is the ever-decreasing difficulty of the games. Back in the 1980s most games were difficult (if not very difficult/nearly impossible) to finish. You could play a game back then for months or years and never finish it. There was no internet to search for the answers to problems or riddles you couldn't solve. Games were not designed to be easily completed by virtually anyone who played. I can't remember how many hours I spent playing Zork before I was able to solve all the puzzles and beat that game (let alone Zork II and Zork III).
jillesvangurp 7y ago
I pay for Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I have no illusions about content being there long term. Something similar for games is missing though arguably it is content that you consume and then discard. Maybe, consider that it's not about you but about everyone else. I don't have a water cooled led blinking monstrosity hiding under my desk pretending it's a industrial vacuum cleaner. So, any game I play, I'm dealing with lousy framerates, and endless tweaking, etc. I never really invested in owning consoles. And I stopped buying games years ago. But I'd probably play Red Redemption and similar games out of curiosity if only I had something to play it on at a reasonable price. In other words, Stadia potentially solves a problem for casual gamers like me already used to subscribing to content that might like to try out a few high end games but are not willing to spend gazillions on the latest gear. Of course Google's execution here is worth criticizing. It looks like they got a giant meh from the gaming industry and are showing off another empty room problem. They need a catalogue and a marketing story around it. Neither is something Google has ever done well. They just don't do the content game very well. Youtube premium/red/or whatever it is called is pretty much dead in the water for the same reason. It's the same failed strategy: build it and they will come.
- Crinus 7y ago
  The problem is that it is about "me" (and others who think like me) because what everyone else does also affects what i get to experience myself thanks to market forces. In other words, if everyone goes Stadia (or a Stadia-lookalike) then the market (both for software but also - and most importantly - for hardware) will vanish. At best it will only be available for very high prices, just for the rich few, but i'm not rich so that wouldn't mean anything to me.
  - washadjeffmad 7y ago
    Don't get region blindness, here. Also, never forget the power of open source and self hosting. If a model like Stadia works for other, there's no reason not to put it work for yourself. I can already stream my Windows gaming container on my KVM Linux host with VFIO to my smartphone with BT connected controller. I could also do the same with just a RasPi running the SteamLink service. This isn't new or novel (I remember Stadia's concept being done multiple times before), but it is possible. The only real danger to this is proprietary platform dependence. More people being able to game when and where they want isn't bad, but we can't rely on Valve forever to make sure there's not another GFWL-type uprising.

by Crinus 7y ago

kingbirdy 7y ago

Stadia doesn't prevent you from owning your own hardware, nor will it. It's just another option for people who can't afford to own hardware.

smnrchrds 7y ago
Imagine if we had this conversation 10 years ago: - I don't like streaming services, because content can disappear/the quality is lower/... - Streaming doesn't prevent you from owning your own DVDs/BDs, nor will it And now in 2019, there are so many films and tv shows only released through streaming services, and never sold on disks.
- kingbirdy 7y ago
  Those are products that only exist on streaming platforms, though - as far as I know, Netflix hasn't negotiated any deals to have movies go from cinemas to Netflix and not get a physical release at all. Even some of Netflix's properties have physical releases, such as Stranger Things. So there's still just as much or more physical media available as there would be without streaming platforms.
- CivilianZero 7y ago
  This is patently false. Most "streaming only" tv shows do get dvd/blue-ray releases. But this is a bad-faith argument anyway, imagine all the times this has been said about new formats of any kind. Streaming is an option and does not prevent people from owning things and it isn't hurting you so maybe just let the people who want to stream things...stream them?
- rchaud 7y ago
  The films and shows that are "streaming-only" in 2019 are the equivalent of "straight-to-DVD" in the 00s. Besides marquee projects like House of Cards, Fleabag etc, the vast majority of original programming on these networks are badly made formulaic pap with actors no-one's ever heard of. Were it not for the recommendation algorithm (and the removal of the user reviews), I doubt anybody would bother watching them.

developerdylan 7y ago

You're making a lot of assumptions with a clear bias there. Just because you don't want this model for games, doesn't mean nobody does. I tried Stadia with Assassin's Creed in the Alpha and it was a wonderfully low bar to entry. I was able to play the new Assassin's Creed on my Macbook. There's a lot of value to that.

Crinus 7y ago
Yes, i am biased against losing control over my computer and the games and software i can run on it and mess around with (be it modding, programing, custom patches or whatever). And i do see it through the potential of things going bad because if things go perfect then everything is fine. I focus on the bad side because i do not want the bad things to happen and i see the bad things way worse than the good things.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > Yes, i am biased against losing control over my computer and the games and software i can run on it and mess around with I share your sentiments, but this battle was already lost a decade ago when Steam won - Apple is just twisting the dagger with it's App Store and their unceasing march to turn OS X into an appliance (limiting 'root', and with catalina, what you can put in '/')
  - Crinus 7y ago
    While i'm not a fan of Steam, with it you can still keep the files around and some games are DRM free or rely on a DLL that you can easily replace. See Scott Ross' recent video about Trackmania 2 Nation for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulp99wSUNgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulp99wSUNgk But personally i prefer GOG where i have hundreds of games (though it isn't the only store i use - any that give me DRM-free games, like Humble Store or GamersGate - is fine) and i keep my own offline copies (including games from stores that have long gone - another reason i dislike DRM schemes and prefer to have control over my files).
- blfr 7y ago

Ninn 7y ago

>I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device It's almost like you fully ignored the previous comments.. A lot of people may want to do exactly that, and are less bothered by other aspects, which you may appreciate and prioritise?

deleted 7y ago
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Jyaif 7y ago

> i can imagine all the negative potential it has But you fail to imagine all the positive potential. Terabyte-sized games with 0 download time, more interactions between players, better graphics, no more cheating, no more piracy (which leads to more games or bigger games), and better utilized HW (which is good for your wallet and the environment), and obviously you can play wherever you want. Streaming games is the future, deal with it.

Crinus 7y ago
I do not fail to imagine the positive potential, i just consider it totally insignificant to the negative potential it has. None of those you mentioned is worth giving up control over the games you are paying for and your computing environment.
bathtub365 7y ago
Is download time a significant factor for people with the types of connections that will have a good experience on Stadia? It’s my understanding that downloading a large game in a timely fashion and streaming it are both bandwidth-intensive. As for “terabyte-sized games” are there any of those on the market, or even on the horizon? At some point it’s either outside of the budget of most games to produce that many assets, or the 1080p/upscaled to 4K experiences that Stadia provides won’t make use of extremely high resolution textures.
- Macha 7y ago
  We're not at terabyte yet, but 80-100gb is becoming increasingly common. Even the crash remakes are coming in at 30gb, and that wasn't that High budget a title.
  - shard972 7y ago
    So after playing crash for an hour Ive already streamed the entire game's worth of bandwidth. I assume people who buy the crash trilogy would play on average longer than an hour so I don't see the upside in efficiency.
  - 7y ago

skybrian 7y ago

Okay but why? When you walk out of a movie theater you don't have anything. Was it still a good movie? Maybe longevity is overrated? If you play a game for a month or two and enjoyed it, it's worth the price. Rental services make this explicit.

bathtub365 7y ago
When buying a game on Stadia is the same price as buying it on other platforms but with the downside of a total loss of control or ability to play offline it becomes less attractive.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  "Same price" if you already have a solid computer with a multi-hundred-dollar GPU.
  - Lio 7y ago
    How does Stadia compared with a used PS4 and second hand copy of a game that you can trade in again afterwards? Also how does it compared price wise to a brand new but leased console? It’s going to have to be pretty cheap to be competitive I think.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      I'll go a step farther, it only makes sense as part of a "PS Now" like service, where you pay a monthly fee and you get access to a catalog of games. Nobody is paying for locked-in games that only run on Stadia given Google's track record of goldfish-like attentions span on these projects. If you are just renting hardware then you need to run a local Steam cache (this exists), and allow players to use their existing game catalog. This is basically the "GeForce Now" model. And yes, you may note that I am referencing other game streaming services. Google is late to this party, and they have nothing unique to offer, nor a particularly compelling business model, nor the trust of their userbase. Stadia is DOA. If Google wants it to be not-DOA with their current business model, nothing short of a guarantee that if they fold within the next 10 years then they will issue a full and unconditional refund is going to do it. Nobody is going to pay full price for locked-in games on a platform with a track record like Google's.

jcranberry 7y ago

Movies still come out on disc even though netflix and streaming services in general have been very successful. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the same with games.

xemdetia 7y ago
Movies are an easy example: Do you want to watch the original ending of Return of the Jedi, the special edition ending, the revised ending post-prequels, the 4:3 edition or the widescreen edition? There are plenty of reasons to want to keep a copy of the version of the experience you enjoyed and want to experience again.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  In that example, I'd wager most people wouldn't care which version it is.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
skohan 7y ago
Game developers would have more to gain from a streaming-only model: 1. It's expensive to develop for multiple platforms. If you can get people to buy into streaming, you theoretically have only one hardware target. 2. Streaming is more effective at enforcing DRM for games. You can make a recording of a movie you're playing on Netflix, but games would require remote execution which can't be copied.
- dorgo 7y ago
  >but games would require remote execution which can't be copied. Next HN headline: Machine Learning algorithm reverse engineers a Stadia game.
  - jcranberry 7y ago
    I think there has been some reverse engineering of simple game engines through ML already actually.

mrlala 7y ago

>when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) What service has Google shut down that you paid for? >deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) When has Google randomly deactivated your account without compensation for something that you paid for? You are making some gigantic leaps of internet logic here to be honest.. no one is going to deny they have an interesting record on projects, but I find it astounding you are comparing 100% freely created google products to a service which you are paying for. >I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device, i want to fully control everything in it and i do not want any commercial scheme that erodes the marketplace which allows me to have that freedom. I sure hope you don't use Steam!

guitarbill 7y ago
Chromecast Audio, Nexus, Nest? Even the Pixel, their "flagship" phone, has only gotten 3 years of updates, ending this year [0]. That, and just look at the YouTube debacle and how they treat creators. Fool me once... [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/rip-og-pixel-google-ends-support-after-just-three-years/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/rip-og-pixel-google-...
- mrlala 7y ago
  Nothing you listed there means you can't still use it, so your argument is wrong.
smileybarry 7y ago
> What service has Google shut down that you paid for? Google Play Music will soon get replaced by the arguably worse YouTube Music, so that. I paid for GPM for years and when the YT Music switch happened and they announced my uploads and library won't get migrated for a while (with uploads maybe not at all), I left for Spotify. Not to mention how much worse YT Music is compared to GP Music. > I sure hope you don't use Steam! Steam has existed for the past 17 years, and Gabe Newell has gone on record saying that if Steam ever shut down they would look into unlocking all protected games. Even if that turns out to be impossible I still trust Valve in their industry way more than I trust Google in an industry they just entered. Nowadays a great deal of Steam games don't even use Steam's DRM features and will run happily without Steam, or with a stub "steam_api.dll". Steam doesn't take away any control over its games from me. You can mod any part of your game and still run it. Hell, you can turn off updates for any game and still run it via Steam (not breaking DRM if it uses it).

Bartweiss 7y ago

I suppose the importance of "lost when the project closes" depends on the lifespan of the project. Every Flash/Shockwave browser game is becoming increasingly hard to play. Games for ancient Windows versions can be devilishly hard to get running, and games for PowerPC Macs are all but impossible. Emulation is flaky and incomplete for console games of all kinds. When it comes to something like a music library, "buy don't rent" makes a lot of sense to me, but the lifespan of software and particularly games tends to be finite even when you do own them. Now, I totally grant that Stadia will probably have 10% the lifespan of Flash or PowerPC architecture. But lots of people avoided a string of ephemeral music-streaming services and finally bought in with Spotify or Google Play Music. Lots of people avoided ebooks, but are finally starting to come around. So even if Stadia looks too short-lived, the second or third big game-streaming service might convince people it'll last as long as any other software does. (Along with picking up all the users who are only interested in one or two AAA titles to begin with.) I share the rest of your concerns though, so that sort of worries me more. Streaming games may be what finally enables the death of free/independent modding, DRM-cracking, tracker disabling, and offline play after years of battles with publishers trying to push them directly.

Crinus 7y ago
There are people who try to archive Flash and Shockwave games and if anything, this is a good example of trying to fix something after the bad situation has already happened: the best time was when things were new. But better now than never. PowerPC and 86k macs can be run under emulation so not everything is lost. Similar for games for DOS and ancient Windows versions, though from my personal experience 99.9% of old games will work on Windows 10 with some tweaks and/or wrappers (like dgVoodoo2, dxwnd, otvdm, etc and of course user made patches). It is extremely rare that i find an old game i cannot get to run.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  Yes, this is all true. I didn't mean to imply those things can't be salvaged, or that I think the lifespan of frameworks and hardware justifies switching to a system of "you lose all your games forever as soon as we aren't profitable". Outside of Flash games with no remaining hosts and console games with no known cartridges, there isn't much which is 100% lost. And the best works in an environment are most likely to endure, so most notable games are at least playable for somebody. Rather, my concern is that lots of people already view games as having a "lifespan", and if they trust a streaming service to endure for a decade that might be accepted as "how long games last anyway".

BinaryIdiot 7y ago

> How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") But you don't actually know that. You're paying for a license for the game and even though they're likely covered in the event of a shutdown, it's unlikely they could do it without giving back _something_. With their Project Stream beta they gave everyone a free copy of the game directly from the developer. This assumption just doesn't make sense to me, especially for such a larger company. > when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) Does it happen all the time? Granted they shut down _free_ things quite a lot but things you pay for? It's significantly rarer and even in those cases they give you a large amount of time before it gets shut down. > I'm 100% hoping this will fail, not because it isn't a technically cool product nor because i cannot imagine the potential it has - i want it to fail exactly because i can imagine all the negative potential it has. Do you want PS Now to fail? xCloud? I really don't understand the polarization here. It seems like so many _want_ it to fail because of _theoretical_ issues. It's so bizarre. Why not, you know, just let it compete on its own merits? > I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device, i want to fully control everything in it and i do not want any commercial scheme that erodes the marketplace which allows me to have that freedom. You already do not have this freedom. Even with physical games if you let the device connect it can be changed or prevented from working entirely. I get that you _want_ this but considering you already don't have it, I don't understand why this would be taken out only on Stadia.

aylmao 7y ago
> You're paying for a license for the game and even though they're likely covered in the event of a shutdown, it's unlikely they could do it without giving back _something_. You're banking on their goodwill here, not any actual obligation they might have. > Even with physical games if you let the device connect it can be changed or prevented from working entirely. I get that you _want_ this but considering you already don't have it, I don't understand why this would be taken out only on Stadia. Is this so? There's a huge aftermarket of games for a reason. People buy old consoles, from NES to XBox 360s, all the time. A lot of people prefer physical media for this reason too. Even for heavily DRM-d content, it's just a matter of technical skill and people with the will to crack a game to catch up to the techniques used to keep it locked. With streaming there wouldn't be anything to crack. You simply don't have the game, period.

larnmar 7y ago

Doesn’t sound that bad. Most of the games I’ve ever bought, I theoretically could but practically couldn’t play right now if I felt like it — I might still have the disc/cartridge somewhere but the old console won’t plug into a new TV or else I’d need to find some ancient computer hardware.

krick 7y ago

I'll suggest a longer term vision: no individual consumer will be able to afford any hardware needed to use anything more than a thin client. Games of the future will require more powerful hardware than what you are using now, but even your typical gaming computer of today will be not affordable in the future, simply because it won't be produced for mass market anymore. In effect, all your computations will be run on the platforms owned by someone else. And may be it even will be considered by society and the government to be an obviously sensible safety measure: the same way citizens shouldn't be able to possess nuclear weapons, they shouldn't be able to produce dangerously powerful software on their own, without government monitoring and approval. Wow, fuck, I seriously scared myself just now.

shard972 7y ago
How about this. The greatest video games can already be made with the technology we have today.
Kaiyou 7y ago
Seeing how, imho, the best games of all time were all made in the 1990s, I don't think gaming is all that reliant on powerful hardware.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Agree with your point but I'd say 1980s!
  - jayparth 7y ago
    Agree with your point but I'd say {decades in which you were a child}!
    - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
      Childhood nostalgia absolutely plays a role, but in my experience game developers tended to trade quality for graphics as the years advanced. In the 1980s games like Ultima 4 couldn't use graphics as a crutch and thus had to make the games really engrossing. My other grips is the ever-decreasing difficulty of the games. Back in the 1980s most games were difficult (if not very difficult/nearly impossible) to finish. You could play a game back then for months or years and never finish it. There was no internet to search for the answers to problems or riddles you couldn't solve. Games were not designed to be easily completed by virtually anyone who played. I can't remember how many hours I spent playing Zork before I was able to solve all the puzzles and beat that game (let alone Zork II and Zork III).

jillesvangurp 7y ago

I pay for Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I have no illusions about content being there long term. Something similar for games is missing though arguably it is content that you consume and then discard. Maybe, consider that it's not about you but about everyone else. I don't have a water cooled led blinking monstrosity hiding under my desk pretending it's a industrial vacuum cleaner. So, any game I play, I'm dealing with lousy framerates, and endless tweaking, etc. I never really invested in owning consoles. And I stopped buying games years ago. But I'd probably play Red Redemption and similar games out of curiosity if only I had something to play it on at a reasonable price. In other words, Stadia potentially solves a problem for casual gamers like me already used to subscribing to content that might like to try out a few high end games but are not willing to spend gazillions on the latest gear. Of course Google's execution here is worth criticizing. It looks like they got a giant meh from the gaming industry and are showing off another empty room problem. They need a catalogue and a marketing story around it. Neither is something Google has ever done well. They just don't do the content game very well. Youtube premium/red/or whatever it is called is pretty much dead in the water for the same reason. It's the same failed strategy: build it and they will come.

Crinus 7y ago
The problem is that it is about "me" (and others who think like me) because what everyone else does also affects what i get to experience myself thanks to market forces. In other words, if everyone goes Stadia (or a Stadia-lookalike) then the market (both for software but also - and most importantly - for hardware) will vanish. At best it will only be available for very high prices, just for the rich few, but i'm not rich so that wouldn't mean anything to me.
- washadjeffmad 7y ago
  Don't get region blindness, here. Also, never forget the power of open source and self hosting. If a model like Stadia works for other, there's no reason not to put it work for yourself. I can already stream my Windows gaming container on my KVM Linux host with VFIO to my smartphone with BT connected controller. I could also do the same with just a RasPi running the SteamLink service. This isn't new or novel (I remember Stadia's concept being done multiple times before), but it is possible. The only real danger to this is proprietary platform dependence. More people being able to game when and where they want isn't bad, but we can't rely on Valve forever to make sure there's not another GFWL-type uprising.