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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#401

Post by yucky »

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…

>Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts

Something tells me Kroger doesn't sell me food out of the goodness of their hearts either, and I'm ok with that too.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#402

Post by mrkramer »

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…

Valve depends on indie devs and atm Valve's Steam is by far the best platform to release, distribute and manage your indie game.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#403

Post by tapoxi »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #133
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.

If you think Microsoft buying a bunch of studios will lock in gaming forever then you know nothing about the gaming or software industry.

If we're strictly comparing Linux and Windows, Linux would have issues with most software (where it only runs in Proton) and the developer of some of the biggest games in the industry (Warcraft, Overwatch, Age of Empires, Wolfenstein, Flight Simulator, Call of Duty, Doom, Halo, Minecraft, Forza etc) is actively hostile or tying their games to Windows/Xbox platform specific features, I think it is a cause for concern.

The other players survive because Nintendo and Sony pour a lot of money into exclusives and have an extensive back catalog, but Valve isn't making exclusive games for Linux.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#404

Post by dijit »

Rooster61 wrote: post #399
dijit wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ll sign an NDA I can show you TC anticheat and EasyAnticheat. Tencent anticheat has a hard baked logger that prints out every network call it makes, which believe it or not was intended to create trust. You can see in the disassembled code that it can’t make outbound calls without that function that prints the payload. We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.…

> This thread has me depressed. Certainly was not my aim, and I sympathize. I've said many times I'd never move into game dev because of the workload and sheer work-to-flame ratio, and this thread isn't an exception. Likewise, thank you for providing some light from within the industry, it is appreciated. I'd sign that NDA in a heartbeat if it didn't anonymize me, but I don't want my name floating around in databases…

Usually it's studio; but it's a bit give and take in that regard.

Some studios might have some bean counter at the publisher asking about things they think are good ("You gotta have anti-cheat/DRM!")

Other studios might be coerced to "if you're going to use anti-cheat, why not use this one we have a good deal with".

But ultimately it has been a studio decision.

I'm even swapping my current anti-cheat due to this kind of Sinophobia.

Ironically, we had to specifically ask Tencent for their anti-cheat (because it was the best available..) but.. people thought it was spyware[0]. To the point that you literally see nothing else about my game it seems.

Double ironically: we still had cheaters on the platform[1]... it will probably be worse with EAC (as it was in the division days[2], some people even blamed the state of cheating on "not enough anti-cheat"[3])

But, to answer your question: in my experience it's the studio's choice, but some people in the publishing chain might try to coerce a decision.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/BloodHunt/comments/pkpr1t/so_whats_...

[1]: https://futuregaming.io/gaming-news/bloodhunt-cheating-probl...

[2]: https://kotaku.com/race-to-clear-the-division-2s-new-raid-ma...

[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/4k17n8/confess...

Re: Thank You, Valve

#405

Post by dijit »

okamiueru wrote: post #253
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…

Was there an attempt at detecting cheaters by modeling human reaction times and otherwise inputs, and thus detecting non-human like inputs?

Yes.

Here's a good perspective on the situation by someone who was cheating: https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/4k17n8/confess...

Re: Thank You, Valve

#406

Post by pdimitar »

dijit wrote: post #373
pdimitar wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it make more sense for business-related products to do this, since the odds of being on a computer that has actual useful information to steal would be much, much higher? Not necessarily. That gaming machine has good odds of being in a local network with other, more important and interesting machines. It can also scan local Wi-Fi area and scoop up even more information that can be used later. Thought these…

If you’ll sign an NDA I can show you TC anticheat and EasyAnticheat. Tencent anticheat has a hard baked logger that prints out every network call it makes, which believe it or not was intended to create trust. You can see in the disassembled code that it can’t make outbound calls without that function that prints the payload. We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.…

> If you’ll sign an NDA I can show you TC anticheat and EasyAnticheat.

And immediately land in a list of potential suspects the moment those cheats are broken by somebody else but not me? No, thanks. :( We live in a world where such an intellectual curiosity flags you as a criminal so I am never going to risk it.

If you want to demonstrate good will then maybe posting these files somewhere and making a "Show HN" thread is going to work better in showing the world that you're normal hardworking people?

> We can’t be open because it’s too risky. We can’t be closed because people think we’re scum.

I understand your position and I am not blaming you. But you are not the executive team of the company and you don't know their intentions and strategic plans.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#407

Post by bool3max »

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.

Absolutely not true, as much as you'd want it to be.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#408

Post by majewsky »

emersion wrote: post #24

To add on this: Valve works with upstream developers on upstream code, so their work benefits the whole FOSS ecosystem. They are funding a lot of kernel, Mesa, Wayland, Wine and KDE developers. (Disclaimer: I'm a Valve contractor.)

Here's hoping that Valve's next round of investments in the stack puts some focus on the needs of streamers, on the basis that getting streamers into the SteamOS/Linux tech stack may introduce the topic to a wider audience.

At this point, streaming to Twitch from my Sway desktop is working really well (thanks for that @emersion!), with the one frustrating exception of not being able to screen-capture individual windows.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#409

Post by Jensson »

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.

But that is very different, every company owned by shareholders starts behaving in exactly the same predictable manner. However as long as the founders controls everything the company behaves as the founder wishes, it could be good or even worse than what you'd get with shareholders. On average it is probably the same but for an individual company it still matters a lot.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#410

Post by sillysaurusx »

oblio wrote: post #123
sillysaurusx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1v1 sf mid scrub The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you. It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could…

I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this: > your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is almost categorically false. I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity. The…

100% agreed, and I’ve said as much in the past. I winced to forget to qualify my statement with “but this part is nuts.” Thanks for calling that out.
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