Some fun news here. ZOOM Platform, a games store that offers DRM-free games both new and old (as well as helping update some older games) now offers a special tool for Linux gamers to run Windows games with Proton.
My concern with this and other platforms like gog is that I can be fairly confident valve isn’t going under anytime soon, and that they have no interest in taking games away from people
I don’t have nearly that same faith in a project that’s only just started and doesn’t have the amount of money behind it valve does
Sure, once you own these games you own them but that means having to store every single game I’ve bought somewhere incase they go under and it all vanishes
So we’re just basically considering statistically which is more plausible? A HDD failing versus a corporation being greedy? I think both are bad and unreliable. A company guaranteeing a “purchase” in perpetuity (not subscription) and having the standard be offline installers (for your own backup) is the best bet. Everything else is just dictating the best way to stub your toe.
So far I’ve had one hard drive fail and lose a bunch of my work from long ago (before I knew to use git), have physically lost memory sticks to similar effect
On the other hand I’ve still got everything in my Dropbox that I worked on as a child, everything on my old web server was still there until I pulled it down and cancelled it, all the contacts on my phone I have ever made, and I’ve never lost a steam game
I get not wanting to put your faith in big companies and I don’t like the idea but so far they’ve proven far more reliable than I am in looking after my stuff
(I also tend not to keep anything sensitive in there and open source all my code nowadays anyway so leaks and ai training don’t bother me that much)
The common thing between this and GOG is that they apparently offer DRM free games so if you’ve got the game backed up, you’ll never lose access to it. If Steam suddenly disappeared, we’d all be fucked.
Oh and I mean since we’re talking DRM free games, they’ll get uploaded to torrent sites anyway. Don’t even need to keep them backed up yourself.
IANAL but is that really true? You don’t “Buy” anything on steam, you’re licensing a subscription to use the software under their terms. Downloading a torrent wouldn’t be covered by that. Purchasing a game though and having the same data backed up on a device is covered (identical to a torrent download), at least I thought that was the legal case for rom’s and such even being able to exist in the first place.
I think torrenting someone else’s copy of a game is still illegal regardless of if you own a copy yourself
I’m talking purely ethically, I don’t consider it to be any different where I paid for the game originally if I can no longer access it via that platform
Pretty sure roms are only legal if you rip them yourself from your own console.
I don’t think it’s legal for people to distribute them but torrenting makes that an unwinnable game of wack a mole to shut down so they don’t bother usually
My concern with this and other platforms like gog is that I can be fairly confident valve isn’t going under anytime soon, and that they have no interest in taking games away from people
I don’t have nearly that same faith in a project that’s only just started and doesn’t have the amount of money behind it valve does
Sure, once you own these games you own them but that means having to store every single game I’ve bought somewhere incase they go under and it all vanishes
Some 50 dollar for a hdd.
What about when that HDD gets lost or dies, then I need a backup.
Without an automated system will be unreliable and a pain in the ass to maintain
If it’s automated and not just a hard drive I shove games on every now and then it requires a machine to run it and constant electricity
So we’re just basically considering statistically which is more plausible? A HDD failing versus a corporation being greedy? I think both are bad and unreliable. A company guaranteeing a “purchase” in perpetuity (not subscription) and having the standard be offline installers (for your own backup) is the best bet. Everything else is just dictating the best way to stub your toe.
So far I’ve had one hard drive fail and lose a bunch of my work from long ago (before I knew to use git), have physically lost memory sticks to similar effect
On the other hand I’ve still got everything in my Dropbox that I worked on as a child, everything on my old web server was still there until I pulled it down and cancelled it, all the contacts on my phone I have ever made, and I’ve never lost a steam game
I get not wanting to put your faith in big companies and I don’t like the idea but so far they’ve proven far more reliable than I am in looking after my stuff
(I also tend not to keep anything sensitive in there and open source all my code nowadays anyway so leaks and ai training don’t bother me that much)
The common thing between this and GOG is that they apparently offer DRM free games so if you’ve got the game backed up, you’ll never lose access to it. If Steam suddenly disappeared, we’d all be fucked.
Oh and I mean since we’re talking DRM free games, they’ll get uploaded to torrent sites anyway. Don’t even need to keep them backed up yourself.
At which point what’s the point of even buying it if you’re going to torrent it later on anyway though
Would have just the same claim to ethically pirate it if I were to buy it there as if I bought it on steam
IANAL but is that really true? You don’t “Buy” anything on steam, you’re licensing a subscription to use the software under their terms. Downloading a torrent wouldn’t be covered by that. Purchasing a game though and having the same data backed up on a device is covered (identical to a torrent download), at least I thought that was the legal case for rom’s and such even being able to exist in the first place.
I think torrenting someone else’s copy of a game is still illegal regardless of if you own a copy yourself
I’m talking purely ethically, I don’t consider it to be any different where I paid for the game originally if I can no longer access it via that platform
Pretty sure roms are only legal if you rip them yourself from your own console.
I don’t think it’s legal for people to distribute them but torrenting makes that an unwinnable game of wack a mole to shut down so they don’t bother usually