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Stop Killing Games

jxself.org

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Re: Stop Killing Games

#181

Post by ben-schaaf »

john_strinlai wrote: post #133
singpolyma3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have decades of real world experience which shows this is not true. People buy things they could otherwise get for free with a bit of work all the time.

you aren't getting a company to build baldurs gate 3 and hope they recoup the costs from ko-fi donations. real world experience is that most companies do not offer their software for free, and open source developers either have to get sponsored or have to constantly solicit donations. donations do not typically cover multi-million dollar, multi-year development cycles.

BG3 is actually a perfect counterexample here. It doesn't have DRM, doesn't require an online account to play and uses direct connections for multiplayer. Nothing needs to be done to preserve it.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#182

Post by BlitzGeology91 »

F3nd0 wrote: post #23
nerdjon wrote: post #8

This is basically advocating for open source games which is a completely different story than what stop killing games is trying to do. There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them. I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say: > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. A…

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > > Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between soft…

> The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between software and art. This means that only the software part of each game would need to be distributable, not the entire game.

Personally, I’m a big fan of this idea. I really like the way that games like Doom do things: the engine itself is FOSS, but in order to play Doom, you need DOOM.WAD which is proprietary and must be purchased. DOOM.WAD doesn’t contain any code (it only contains graphics, sounds, level geometry, etc.) so you don’t have to run any unfree software in order to play Doom.

However, there are some people in the free software movement that disagree with me. The Free Software Foundation maintains a wiki called the Free Software Directory. Here’s a quote from the Free Software Directory’s rules for what can and cannot be included in the Free Software Directory [1]:

> Edge Cases

> This is not static information. Policies about adding non-free code obviously don't change, however the way projects are licensed or the way they interact each other is definitely subject to change.

> […]

> • If software is freely licensed but is bundled with artwork that is not, do we consider the program to be free? From RMS "Images and sounds need to be free if they are essential parts of the software. But if they are just decoration, and easily replaced, then they do not have to be free." Sound and artwork fall into the category of essential for interactive games. Logos on otherwise utilitarian projects do not.

That being said, that same set of rules also says [2]:

> Free programs

> Software needs to meet the free software definition to be listed at the Free Software Directory as well as follow these guidelines and requirements for entries.

> […]

> • The software program itself should not package any program-data, art assets loaded by the program, or software which is under a nonfree license. If art or data is available for the game under a nonfree license but not packaged directly with it, that is a different matter and one we should be more flexible about.

Those two quotes seem like they were written by two different people who have opposite opinions on this topic, but IDK.

Anyway, my point is: I really like it when games do that, but it seems that at least some people in the free software movement disagree.

[1]: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Requi...>

[2]: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Requi...>

Re: Stop Killing Games

#183

Post by Telaneo »

usef- wrote: post #178
Telaneo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have there been commercially successful free software games? Going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... , yes, although probably not to any helpful extent (and some of those are FOSS now, but weren't when released). 2048 had in-game ads that you could buy your way out of. You couldn't just install the ad-free version, because iOS is locked down. You could on Android, but not everyone i…

Oh yes, I know open source games existed, but did any raise enough to pay wages of a team? ps. I personally played Threes first, which 2048 copied without the style and made free. I admit I was slightly disappointed for the original devs that the copy became significantly more well known. It wouldn't be my first example of the benefits of open source.

Full team, no. Probably not even just the one guy who made 2048, unless maybe you count minimum wage. It's hard to know what he earned of ads and such, but I can't imagine it being anything massive.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#184

Post by JacobKfromIRC »

F3nd0 wrote: post #23
nerdjon wrote: post #8

This is basically advocating for open source games which is a completely different story than what stop killing games is trying to do. There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them. I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say: > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. A…

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > > Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between soft…

There's also the free culture movement, which generally believes all creative works should be free, not just software.

There are many people who would advocate for free software and not free culture, but jxself has also written in support of free culture: https://jxself.org/drm_and_free_culture.shtml

That post is from 15 years ago, so of course he could have changed his views since then (but I don't see any evidence of that in this case).

Re: Stop Killing Games

#185

Post by duped »

dijit wrote: post #179
duped wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious - what third party closed source dependencies are they using? Like what is their purpose?

Audio subsystems (wwise, fmod). Physics subsystems (havok, ISI). Procedural systems (Gaea, Houdini) Vegetation (Speedtree) VFX subsystems (Nvidia Gameworks) First party SDKs (Sony Playstation, Microsoft NDK, Horizon/Quest). Pathfinding (Kytheria, Mercuna) Cutscenes/Videos (Bink) UI (Rive, Neosis) Networking (Photon, Coherence) Theres… thousands more, if you’d like me to continue.

On the web backend?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#186

Post by duped »

TylerE wrote: post #175
duped wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious - what third party closed source dependencies are they using? Like what is their purpose?

A very large percentage of multiplayer games keep the backend in an MS SQL or Oracle cluster.

Sure but you don't link in Oracle/MS's database cluster orchestrators to your server, right?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#187

Post by sapphicsnail »

john_strinlai wrote: post #132
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again". fyi, there are tens of torrent trackers with every game/movie/album/etc under the sun. had been for two decades.

i was unaware torrenting copyrighted content was made legal, thanks for the update

I think their point was that lots of media is easily piratable but still makes money and companies continue to produce more of it.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#188

Post by dangus »

MYEUHD wrote: post #144
dangus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is largely how open source game engines like OpenMW or OpenTTD work: the game engine is reverse engineered, and the art is something the end user provides by downloading/owning a legitimate retail copy. And that’s really great, but this model is ultimately not realistic for most game developers. It’s not like productivity software where the code of the product isn’t the majority of the value being delivered. Git…

Games will get pirated regardless whether they're on GOG or not. > This model works for games on GOG because they tend to be priced so low that most users are okay with paying for convenience. Many of the games in that catalog are essentially back catalog that have been paid off for years and whose sales are quite insignificant to the publisher. This is not always the case. For example this game will be available on…

I think you are at least partially reinforcing my point here. Two of your three examples had a delayed release on GOG, and that's pretty telling especially considering one of those two was developed and published by GOG's former parent company.

Two of the three examples are solidly in the realm of indie titles.

Yes, there are big release games on the platform. I see, for example, that Silent Hill f is on GOG.

I will generally agree that piracy eventually happens, but a lot of DRM has made piracy impractical for critical early weeks of a game's release.

I think different video game publishers have different opinions on the matter and both sides have a lot of validity. I also think that different types of games have different rates of piracy, as it can be a crime of convenience or not.

If your game's demographics skews more educated, affluent, and/or older, I would imagine that piracy rates will be lower. Perhaps your game is more popular in some countries over others that have different laws and/or cultural norms surrounding piracy.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#189

Post by phendrenad2 »

Proprietary software itself is regressive.

We need to get to a place where all consumer-focused apps and games include full source code, including any server necessary to play multiplayer or store cloud files.

In this I see Stop Killing Games as a half-measure that the industry supports to avoid us waking up and realizing what we should have.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#190

Post by phendrenad2 »

krupan wrote: post #47

The discussion here is amazing! Takes me right back to the early days of Linux and discovering Free Software. How will developers eat?? Who would write software for free?? These people clearly didn't think this through!! Amazing to hear it all again, lol! Let's think about it. Free software just applies to the source code. Artwork, logos, even trademarked names are not Free. Support, services, and documentation can a…

> Who would write software for free??

We make software a public good and fund it at the government level.

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