7 ms·

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 patc

by 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
I run Linux and LineageOS because I care about controlling my computers and data. But I don't care about games. They're games. They're not important. They're not art worth preserving. It's just a little entertainment. A risk of "losing" a game that I would probably not play again anyway is a perfectly reasonable trade-off for a hassle free gaming experience.
- suby 7y ago
  I'm sure a lot of people feel the same as you, but I very much disagree. If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc. I don't see how one can claim those mediums are art but games are somehow not.
  - ativzzz 7y ago
    > If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc They're not, unless you're willing to pay extra for them to be. Netflix is not preservable, DVDs are. Spotify is not preservable, CDs/MP3s are. Most of the stuff we watch/listen to is on non-preservable media, and for the most part, we don't care. If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games?
    - suby 7y ago
      My worry is that some games will be distributed exclusively through these streaming services and people will be unable to even obtain a local copy. There's certainly incentive for publishers to do so since it'd eliminate piracy, and perhaps Google will give exclusivity deals to various titles. Due to this I'm actually kind of hoping for this service to fail to catch on.
    - xg15 7y ago
      You're aware that DVDs are older than Netflix and MP3s are older than Spotify? They absolutely used to be preservable until an enormous technological effort was made to make them non-preservable. The amount of people curating their CD (or later MP3) collections showed they cared very much. > If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games? Because it's not clear at all that this option would still exist. From a publisher's perspective, it's vastly preferable to just sell access to your game and keep the actual binary under wraps. So if there is a way how they could realistically do that, I don't think there will be much motivation to also offer the game as standalone software. Or, to be more precise, you'll able to "buy" the game alright, but what you're buying is just access to the game on a streaming service, not an actual copy.

by Crinus 7y ago

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

I run Linux and LineageOS because I care about controlling my computers and data. But I don't care about games. They're games. They're not important. They're not art worth preserving. It's just a little entertainment. A risk of "losing" a game that I would probably not play again anyway is a perfectly reasonable trade-off for a hassle free gaming experience.

suby 7y ago
I'm sure a lot of people feel the same as you, but I very much disagree. If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc. I don't see how one can claim those mediums are art but games are somehow not.
- ativzzz 7y ago
  > If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc They're not, unless you're willing to pay extra for them to be. Netflix is not preservable, DVDs are. Spotify is not preservable, CDs/MP3s are. Most of the stuff we watch/listen to is on non-preservable media, and for the most part, we don't care. If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games?
  - suby 7y ago
    My worry is that some games will be distributed exclusively through these streaming services and people will be unable to even obtain a local copy. There's certainly incentive for publishers to do so since it'd eliminate piracy, and perhaps Google will give exclusivity deals to various titles. Due to this I'm actually kind of hoping for this service to fail to catch on.
  - xg15 7y ago
    You're aware that DVDs are older than Netflix and MP3s are older than Spotify? They absolutely used to be preservable until an enormous technological effort was made to make them non-preservable. The amount of people curating their CD (or later MP3) collections showed they cared very much. > If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games? Because it's not clear at all that this option would still exist. From a publisher's perspective, it's vastly preferable to just sell access to your game and keep the actual binary under wraps. So if there is a way how they could realistically do that, I don't think there will be much motivation to also offer the game as standalone software. Or, to be more precise, you'll able to "buy" the game alright, but what you're buying is just access to the game on a streaming service, not an actual copy.