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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#331

Post by neogodless »

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…

Someone better educated than me can probably help me out here, but I think you're either misunderstanding what some things are, or mixing up your terminology.

Proton is the emulation layer created by Valve.

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics API.

Your point might still stand, but it's worth debating. Without Proton, gaming on Linux is limited to native Linux games. With it, the story changes. Someone who likes PC gaming might be willing to turn Linux into their daily driver, game on Linux (with a mix of Proton and Vulkan), and now the market starts to support developers making more native Linux games, where they otherwise might not.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#332

Post by dec0dedab0de »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #319
busterarm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with…

> The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. This may be true for a class of cheats, but it isn't broadly true. That means these category of cheats can only enhance what is already visible. In FPS games, being able to see players position through walls is a super valuable cheat _and_ requires access to the underlying game engine (to extract player location).

Every time I hear about the seeing through walls hacks, I wonder why the developer just doesn't send the other users locations unless it should be visible.

Maybe because doing the math to figure out if it should be visible is handled completely on the frontend to keep latency low?

This is the equivalent of a bank API giving you everyone's information, and the frontend SPA filtering it to only the logged in user.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#333

Post by hi_im_miles »

dagw wrote: post #56
Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

If I played competitive video games seriously I would absolutely want them to take cheating seriously and take any necessary measure to stop it. At the same time I think they should also make the most serious kernel/driver level anti-cheat software optional. If you don't to want to install it you can still play the game, just not on any of the 'pro' servers. Think of it a bit like doping tests in sports. As long as y…

As someone who does play competitive video games seriously, rather than having anti-cheat, I would prefer to play on servers/ladders where the players are vetted and where getting caught cheating has meaningful social implications. Open-for-all servers with accounts that are trivial to make is the problem to me.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#334

Post by [deleted] »

sleepycatgirl wrote: post #234
INTPenis wrote: post #20

Claiming will be the year of the Linux desktop has become a running joke among me and my friends. So I wouldn't make such bold claims. But other than that I am completely on board with what the author is saying. I come from the same background. Until just a couple years ago I had a Windows PC solely for gaming. Now I can't remember when I last booted Windows on it. Another weird side effect of this gaming revolution…

For me every year is year of the Linux desktop. How much progress it has made, is astonishing Also regarding Wayland, yeah, same. Then again, Wayland is pretty young, so I would say, give it 2-3 more years? Until then, X11. And there is many cute WMs on X11, but not wayland, soooo... I am stuck myself in X11 :D Alongside that, there is Pipewire. Yeah, right... Its quite impressive. It also fixed all my.. quirks/issue…

[deleted]

Re: Thank You, Valve

#335

Post by bee_rider »

cinntaile wrote: post #69
unityByFreedom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well seeing as there is little to no consensus on whether certain tech companies have a monopoly or not... I'd say it's a hard line to draw.

I think this is just because we misuse the word monopoly.

Monopolies in tech are pretty rare I think, especially things like online services -- it is pretty hard to completely dominate a market when there are other big tech companies out there and they all dabble in everything. However, tech companies engage in anti-competitive behavior all the time. Unfortunately people want to say "monopoly" when they see anti-competitive behavior, because it sounds cooler. This is quite unfortunate because it leads to the whole "technically not a monopoly" debate, which really misses the point.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#336

Post by MisterTea »

Rooster61 wrote: post #28

I dig most of this article, and I do applaud the work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem, but I draw a line at supporting kernel level anti-cheat drivers. That trend in gaming bothers me to no end, and I refuse to knowingly install a game that features one. The presence of 15 year old script kiddies using aimbots does NOT IN ANY WAY justify having kernel level control over my machine, Linux or otherwise. V…

Agreed. I don't play these kinds of games so I don't care. However, I do play some more casual games and I would immensely care if an anti-cheat kernel driver were necessary for A. Steam to run or B. Any game to run. At that point steam is dead to me as I don't need steam.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#337

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

deadbunny wrote: post #264
dncornholio wrote: post #86

Thanks Valve, indeed. But no, 2022 will also not be the year of the Linux desktop. I compare Wine with ductape. It works but don't ask how. It's fine for casual gamers, but these are few. The year of the Linux desktop will only come when all the developers treat Linux as a native compilation target. When Linux has all the drivers. As long as games get "emulated" on Windows in Linux, people will always choose Windows.

And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target? I'd argue that Wine/Proton are a bridge to that. If you can make every game available on Linux via wine/proton then you would have to assume that every one of the Windows holdouts (Ok, most. Some people always find excuses) will swap to Linux as their primary machine, you can then, with reasonable confidence say "Linux has X marke…

> And how do you get to a big enough market share to become a default compilation target?

The problem isn't even market share, it's that Linux Desktop doesn't constitute a targetable platform because it is so fragmented and unstable. This is why Steam has to pack in its own runtime libraries just so native Linux games have some kind of known base system.

> Ok, most. Some people always find excuses

Excuses? Like there's some kind of moral imperative to use Linux? People have reasons they prefer to use other environments. I've used Linux Desktops on and off for 20 years and I've watched statements like this consistently turn away interested users through this kind of dismissive bullshit.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#338

Post by appleiigs »

1_player wrote: post #36
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" I didn't say that I'm not happy for what Valve is doing, but I don't trust any billion dollar tech megacorp like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Valve, etc. to have the best interest of the consumer in mind, regardless of how fun their IP is for my entertainment. Pro-consumer actions on their end are alwa…

> corporations are not our friends While true, good luck living your life without dealing with a corporation. In fact, you're a dollar sign for your next door shop as well.

Exactly, mom & pop shop doing it for the money too. Mom & Pop good at making pies, you’re good at fixing cars. Instead of bartering, you exchange cash. Mom & Pop happy their car is fixed, you get pies in return. Everyone is happy, every one benefits, despite money exchanged. No one sceptical that mom & pop doing it for cash.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#339

Post by hi_im_miles »

foxfluff wrote: post #272
dijit wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment deserves a much more detailed response than I'm able to give at the moment, but I can give some very brief thoughts: Let me say that I have been working in AAA online game development for more than 7 years now; I have worked on games that had 10's of millions of players, and these were full fat $60 AAA games. Cheating was the second[0] biggest issue of our games, it sucked the entire enjoyment out- getti…

I've had good experience in games with human moderation and recorded demos that you can play back to catch and report cheaters. After building some reputation and trust in the community, you'd be permitted to join a server with fewer random new users and practically no cheaters (and usually far more skilled players). No need for intrusive anti-cheat solutions (that IME just gave legit users trouble and still failed t…

> Of course, I don't expect AAAs to offer an experience like this, because human moderation doesn't scale cheaply to 10s of millions of players.. race to the bottom I think it does scale, but it requires users being able to host their own servers for your game. It doesn't scale in a way that maximizes control for the IP holder, however.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#340

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

raxxorrax wrote: post #95
tapoxi wrote: post #30

Is it too little, too late? Microsoft now owns a lot of the biggest game franchises through the Activision and Bethesda acquisitions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat.

Possible. Although a lot of gaming companies that got bought never did amount to much after the acquisition. If Microsoft locks down their environment, I believe they are in danger of losing their dominance on PC. I have yet to meet a developer that likes UWP and I believe it is dead by now. There is WinUI 3, but I fail to see how they learned from their mistakes. They believe they can work it out with rebranding, bu…

> If Microsoft locks down their environment, I believe they are in danger of losing their dominance on PC.

I don't think Microsoft cares about dominating the PC anymore. Their continued efforts to make Windows user-hostile suggest to me that they don't want PCs to even exist. They want everyone using a locked-down walled-garden tablet OS and paying for cloud services.

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