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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#411

Post by oehpr »

dijit wrote: post #361
oehpr wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would submit that this is more an issue of trust than it is an issue of forcing client machines into compliance. Because of the industries persistent belief that anti-cheat is somehow an effective strategy, let alone a morally acceptable one, has meant that development of systems that develop player trust in others has totally atrophied. This patterns of thinking "Well I'll just download a binary onto my clients ma…

Sure. But people want to run games on general purpose machines. I’m not saying it’s impossible to cheat on consoles but it wasn’t a problem for us (lag switching aside; which was actually easy to detect). Things like stadia help the platform more than consumers think; but people resoundedly rejected Stadia for a myriad of reasons. I think everyone here paints a rosy picture of what content moderation is, and maybe we…

I'm not saying "You just need more humans to review and kick cheaters".

I'm saying that players often have the barest bones of ways, if they have anything at all, to say who they would and who they would not like to play with.

Players refunding over cheating are also refunding because, when they discover cheating, they can do absolutely nothing about it. If they're lucky, they might get to scream into the void and hope a moderator listens. Some brand new player on a $3 key just waltzed into the pool of players and everyone has to trust them as equally as everyone else. This is not how trust works.

But then how should one do it? I don't know! Precious little work has been done here. And why? Because it's been wasted on pretending that one can trust the clients machine if we just download enough malware to it.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#412

Post by wolrah »

nerdponx wrote: post #369
webkike wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t exactly consider valve a billion dollar mega corp. For one, they aren’t public and therefore aren’t beholden to the whims of share holders.

They are still beholden to the whims of those who stand to benefit the most from the company making a profit, even if they aren't "shareholders" as such.

Yes, but they are not subject to the whims of short-term "investors" who only care about maximizing the next quarter or financial year's numbers.

That's the biggest problem in modern public corporations, a significant number of shareholders have no long term interest and will happily hurt the company to sell out with a higher number.

I hold no delusions that Valve is doing things for my benefit, but they have managed to position themselves in a place where their interests and the interests of PC gamers mostly align.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#413

Post by erwincoumans »

account42 wrote: post #275
erwincoumans wrote: post #14

And damn Valve for not supporting a 64 bit Linux Steam client. Having to mess with installing 32bit OpenGL drivers just for Valve, sometimes messing up the installation left a bad taste. At least give users the option to pick either 32bit or 64bit client. I'm sure many would happily drop 32bit games support for that. And people who want 32bit games pick the 32bit client. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-lin…

> I'm sure many would happily drop 32bit games support for that. Really? There are still many x86-only games on Steam, tons of which probably won't ever be updated. And if Valve does not make that clear on the Store pages then they will receive part of the blame and support burden. I think what is more likely to happen is for Steam to come with it's own 32-bit dependencies that marshal to the 64-bit system GL/Vulkan/…

Yes really, I have no interest in playing 32bit games on Linux, and Valve could make it blatantly obvious that a 64bit client cannot play 32bit games. So if Valve is really concerned, just make the 32bit client download primary and have the 64bit download behind some EULA that explains that it only supports 64bit games.

In fact, I'm mostly on MacOS M1, and there is only a 64bit client on that. Sure, the game collection is small, but I'm fine with that.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#414

Post by stubish »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #232
unityByFreedom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Profit is fine, monopolies are not. It's not a hard line to draw.

OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer. Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good…

> I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on.

I'm starting to use GOG Galaxy for this reason, as it happily integrates with many of the services. I got shifted from my 'if it ain't on Steam, it doesn't exist' mindset by Epic giveaways (resulting in a single actual well discounted sale!) and later Gamepass. I'd still prefer a single service with everything for the right price though, but that will never happen while multiple groups are trying to deliver it.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#415

Post by [deleted] »

yccs27 wrote: post #202
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need thousands of dollars of hardware. You need one (1) Raspberry Pi 4, plus an HDMI capture card and a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as fake mouse/keyboard. You can totally do that for $50. (Probably less if you use an Arduino clone instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero.) Heuristic software works against the most common cheats. Standard anti-piracy tricks work against the most common cheats. Kernel-level anticheat is…

The big issue is not the existence of cheating, but the scale of the problem. A software hack is infinitely scalable, a hardware setup is not. Some cheat dev only needs to develop that "high-end software cheat" once and can sell it millions of times around the world, with super easy distribution over the internet. A setup with hardware video capture costs $50-$200 for every single user for hardware alone, and needs a…

[deleted]

Re: Thank You, Valve

#416

Post by SixDouble5321 »

ribit wrote: post #313

I vehemently disagree with sentiment expressed in the article. Sure, on the surface the work done Valve does significantly improve the state of Linux gaming. But this is not Linux gaming. This is Windows gaming under Linux. We need to think about the long-term effects, about maintaining a healthy ecosystem. I cannot imagine how delegating Linux and Vulkan to be a long-term emulator of DX12 and Win is supposed to be h…

We need boots on the ground. We need people installing Linux rather than making excuses about why they can't.

Obviously what you describe is a problem. If Valve is going to spend the money getting games working on Linux no one, trying to make money, would port their game. It will hurt. It will hurt groups that specialize in porting Linux games.

Without the installs, whatever we do today is unsustainable.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#417

Post by tomc1985 »

qboltz wrote: post #238
tomc1985 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. The worst thing gaming has ever done was think it was anything like professional sports. I think that I'm in favor of cheating in games just because it rankles people who take gaming way too seriously.

I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then. From my perspective, the only thing that makes it serious is the amount of money and advertising involved. Sure the technological barrier is important, but I fail to see how they're categorically different depending on what they require of the participants. I don't have an issue saying they both should not…

> I'd be interested to hear your opinion defending professional sports taking itself as seriously as it does then.

Also stupid. Athlete worship is as bad or worse than celebrity worship. The obsession with and tribalism from professional sports has creates some of the most obnoxious bores in the world. All for a bunch of people kicking or throwing a ball around.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#418

Post by antifa »

foxyv wrote: post #257
gbersac wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% true. I don't pirate game because it's easier to just click buy on steam.

Not to mention 99% of the cracked games out there come with fun little friends that will encrypt your hard drive for you and charge you a nominal fee.

I've gotten a virus only twice in my life. Both times, it was an ad on the cyanide and happiness website. The worst thing that's ever happened to me from pirating games is the keygen having loud unexpected music.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#419

Post by robertlagrant »

nerdponx wrote: post #370
danuker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects. The largest platform has the most to gain, when it makes use of social interaction.

Consider also that Steam is the only place to go for Valve games like CS:GO and Dota 2.

This is still nothing to do with a company not treating you as a friend. You're not their friend; they aren't yours, and that's normal.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#420

Post by ranguna »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #8
raxxorrax wrote: post #2

Indeed. Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. But they offered a decent service and proved that piracy is a service problem. What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Not many people use it yet, but Windows does look less and less like a dependable long term solution, especially with Microsofts other ambitions in that industry.

>What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, but Proton and the Steam Deck are their future insurance policy against Microsoft coming after their profits in the future. The writing was on the wall, they saw how much money Epic was giving to…

They could've choose to go proprietary with all their software, locked down proton, locked down their OS, locked down their hardware, locked down everything.

But instead, proton is open source, their OS is based on one of the most open distros out there and they published a tear down guide (not the best guide, mind you, but it's trillions of year ahead any competition on their space).

So yeah, they are doing it for the money, but they are one of the very few companies that understands that money come from users, and they seem to be doing very good for users.

So don't kid yourself, it's not only for the money.

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