That’s not certain and them getting absolute power also isn’t.

So to me it sounds a bit like the arguments that they like to use. Like:

if we accept immigrants, they will slowly replace us and destroy the country

Technically maybe that could happen, but there are many other things that could also happen and that you are failing to consider.

I will be crushed when this happens along with millions of others, like you, who thought this could never happen again.

Be careful of the slippery slope fallacy.

I bought The Orange Box, so I had the same problem. All physical copies of games are like this now and Valve is the reason. That killed the used games market on PC. You used to be able to sell your game after you got bored of it, but not anymore.

GOG’s client is proprietary just like Steam and Epic, which is bad, but the difference is that their client is optional. You can get offline installers of games directly from the website, because games there are DRM-free. So that makes GOG better than those platforms. There is also a Free Software alternative client developed by the community - Heroic Games Launcher. It works with Epic Games Store as well.

Another store is itch.io, which sells DRM-free games and their optional client is Free Software. But this store only has indie games.

It’s not easy to have freedom when you are a gamer. Steam and Epic Games Store are both proprietary (but for Epic you can use Heroic Games Launcher) and so are most games. There aren’t that many libre games and maybe around 10 of them are good. I hope that will change in the future.

I don’t think it’s silly at all to demand that users should have rights and that they should be able to control their computers. Valve makes proprietary software, which takes away user’s freedom, so it is unethical. They could make money in an ethical way if they only wanted. SteamOS is proprietary software too.

I don’t know much about VR, but if Valve makes a headset that doesn’t require proprietary software, that will be great. It should then be used as an example that other companies could follow. But it can’t be used as an excuse for them abusing users in other ways.

Also someone need to be paid to develop open source software. This being the beginning of the topic and all. I’m happy for that to be Valve at the moment as they have shown the industry how to be better.

Certainly, but Valve’s business is mostly focused on proprietary software and DRM. When they do make Free Software, it seems to be for the purpose of attracting people to their proprietary platform.

I don’t doubt that Steam is convenient. I was just saying that we should buy DRM-free games when possible and support alternatives that don’t force us to use proprietary software. More freedom is better and if we don’t try to change something, we will be stuck like this forever and it might even get worse.

I say this as someone who daily drives a PinePhone

Same as me then, nice!

Proton is the directX to Vulkan translator

But WINE does exactly that, it translates different Windows APIs. I’ve been using it to play games (including Steam games) way before Proton was released. It has existed for 30 years now. Proton came 25 years later and according to Wikipedia:

Proton is developed by Valve in cooperation with developers from CodeWeavers.[2] It is a collection of software and libraries combined with a patched version of Wine to improve performance and compatibility with Windows games. Proton is designed for integration into the Steam client as “Steam Play”.[3] It is officially distributed through the client, although third party forks can be manually installed.

You can see for yourself that it uses WINE and other software that WINE also uses, like DXVK: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

Not to mention that Valve managed to solve the problems around anti-cheats and all of this works with minimal tweaking.

If this is truly their achievement, then it is impressive.

Nice of them, to make a revolution and then just let the people actually have it, don’t you think?

If there is a revolution, then it seems that it’s mostly an achievement of WINE, DXVK and other developers. It is great that Valve contributes to Free Software, though. But that doesn’t change they fact that they also make proprietary software, which is unethical and they are doing it to attract people to their proprietary platform. WINE is licensed under a Copyleft LGPL license, so it’s also possible that Valve had no other choice in this case. Since last I checked even SteamOS was proprietary, there are good reasons to doubt their intentions.

Also DRMs are already not the shittiest malware big companies trying to install on your machine, it would be anti-cheat. Why noone talks obout them? There are methods to detect cheaters without installing a rootkit spyware on all the end-users PCs.

I talk about it, but most people don’t care about stuff like that at all.

Lol. Sorry, but the games and DRM are not why. The most important reason to it is that we’re losing proprietary software’s technologies. Technologies that might help advace our modern day of living. Also because what they’re restricting is basically a knoledge, and knowledge shoud be free, not because your poor ass can’t own their games.

My argument was that people deserve to be able to control their computers and to do that, they need to be able to control the software. Your reason is very important too. You can watch Richard Stallman’s talk for more: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

And Proton is the example that Valve contributes to FOSS community, unlike literally every other major game company, even CDPR.

That is true.

Thats not even all of it to why i stand on my point, Steam prices are also the most humane, especially if we mention all this bunch of sales steam is famous for. They were there from the beginning, even though they could’ve done something similar to PSN in terms of pricing policy, given that steam was and still kinda is de-facto monopoly, since other game stores on pc have only the fractions of steam’s profits at the most.

What you are saying is true, but before Steam became popular, it was possible to buy used games on physical media for cheap. Now even physical copies of PC games have Valve’s DRM, so I blame Valve for destroying the used games market on PC (on consoles it still exists).

Yes. And as you can see it has 14k reviews on steam while factorio has 141k reviews.

Yes, but what is this supposed to prove? That proprietary software is more popular? Usually it is. There are many different reasons for that, but one of them is that there is simply more of it.

It’s also a game, so there is no productivity gain or loss associated with it. There is no on call IT support, but you also don’t need any and if something breaks, you lose nothing except the ability to play THIS game for a short while. It’s not a… webserver you run your online shop through where every hour of downtime costs you X hundreds of euros or dollars.

It’s similar to selling a desktop app or a mobile app. I can’t find the source code of AnkiMobile right now, but I’m pretty sure it’s Free Software. If you want an example of a commercial app that people might use to do work, there is Ardour.

That is interesting! I had no idea, since it’s packaged in Debian, so I was able to easily install it for free, without even knowing there is a paid version.

People can get proprietary software for free too, if they don’t mind pirating it. It might be illegal and the risk of getting malware increases, but many people do it anyway. Sometimes it’s even better than the original, because the pirated version won’t have DRM.

So in practice nobody has to pay for any software, any movie, etc. People just choose to do it. In case of Free Software getting it for free is just easier and safer. In theory this might mean that there is less incentive to pay for it, but some projects that I’ve seen seem to be successful. Maybe people don’t know they can get it for free, or it’s too much effort, or they are simply fine with paying.

But did they ask him how to patch KDE2 under FreeBSD? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-does-one-patch-kde2-under-freebsd

Valve didn’t invent Proton. As far as I understand, it’s just a fork of WINE. I think the only difference is that it contains fixes for Steam versions of games. For non Steam games everyone uses WINE. I’m sure Proton is convenient for Steam users, though.

Not actually owning games sucks, but find me a digital marketplace that doesn’t say that you’re only “renting” them or some other bullshit.

Since GOG and itch.io give you DRM-free offline installers of games, I believe that you do own the games that you buy there. I haven’t read their ToS, though. It is possible that they say the same thing.

Steam doesn’t call it renting, rather, I quote, “As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware”, where the subscriber is the word to call any user that has a steam account, nothing less nothing more: “You become a subscriber of Steam (“Subscriber”) by completing the registration of a Steam user account.” https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#1

Thanks for finding the exact quote. They didn’t use that word, but to me it sounds like renting. You have access to software as long as you are a subscriber. But I probably wouldn’t mind this if their games didn’t have DRM. Then, if at some point you stopped being a subscriber, you would still be able to play your games (at least the ones you’ve downloaded). Another interesting thing is that they can ban you for selling your Steam account. But before Steam became popular, it was usually possible to sell used games.

Also, torrents do exist, and guess what, they’re DRM free, just as you like it, I assume. That’s actually exactly why they should exist, imo: to preserve things.

The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it’s very difficult even for experts (Denuvo). If those games were Free Software, any programmer could remove DRM from them and distribute such modified copy. That’s exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don’t have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn’t solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.

It’s not Free Software, because it doesn’t give you the 4 essential freedoms.

Free Software can be legally distributed (it’s one of the 4 essential freedoms that it gives you). It doesn’t matter if it’s commercial or not, someone can always give you a copy.

There is a game called Mindustry, which is a libre game that is sold one Steam and it seems to be doing fine. This is just one example of a commercial Free Software project.

Paying for open source software sounds good on paper, but if it is required, the software will never accumulate the users to make the development have any meaning.

Based on what you said, I’m not sure what you mean by “open source”, but Free Software gives you the right to distribute the program (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms). So anyone who owns a copy can legally share it with you. There are commercial Free Software projects. The game Mindustry is one example.

Grayjay is proprietary software. The license doesn’t allow you to for example edit its source code: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE

So it’s denying you at least one of the 4 essential freedoms.

I have started by at least supporting game developers on Steam.

Steam puts DRM in games and requires proprietary software (the Steam client), so you should consider not buying there at all. GOG’s client is also proprietary, but its optional and there is a free alternative called Heroic Games Launcher. Itch.io has a libre client (also optional). As far as I know games on those two platforms are DRM-free.

Grayjay is proprietary. Its license doesn’t allow you for example to modify the source code, which is one of the 4 essential freedoms. Programs that don’t give you all of those freedoms are not Free Software.

https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE

This is not for everyone, but I like when they post their crypto wallet address, because then I can send them money anonymously (especially if it’s Monero), it can be a one time donation and I don’t have to create an account on some website.

Absolutely proprietary.