this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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The number of people who don't realize that half the time Valve has done anything pro-consumer is because they were forced to do so to comply with laws is too damn high. They're definitely not doing most of it out of the kindness of their hearts.
What's your take on what valve has done for linux gaming and how much off it is open source?
That's purely profit driven. The biggest difference to other corporations is that they're privately owned, meaning they can pursue long-term strategies instead of short-term ones. Publicly traded companies have to pursue short term strategies because otherwise investors get itchy and want to sell. Doing something that costs money and will yield results in ten years is a big no-no for publicly traded companies.
Everyone and their mother who makes any computer has to pay money to Microsoft because they put Windows on it. There are only a few outliers, most notably Apple and a few vendors who put Linux or no OS in there.
Valve doesn't pay them shit, meaning they can sell the device cheaper, thus getting more customers. That's the immediate gain. When you provide a gaming OS that you want to offer to others, you're also the one getting paid for providing support. That's the long term profit.
And through it all, as a nice bonus, they stopped being reliant on a single vendor and gained unbelievably great PR from a group of gamers.
True, forgot about that. Anyway, if you want a truly pro-consumer gaming, go to GOG. Not because the company is the best in the world, but because you buy the game, get the game files and you can do whatever with them (not in the legal sense, but who cares).
A number of games on GOG have DRM now. They've also said they'd work on Linux support and that they'd open source Galaxy, but never did.
Nobody is clean.
Not single-player ones. Online multi-player itself is kind of a DRM and there really is no way to make it otherwise. Not for a company of GOG size, anyway. And I'd argue that even if Steam made some forced open-server requirement, they would be abandoned fairly quickly.
As I said, not because the company is the best, but because you have access to the game files and can do whatever. I'm under no illusion that they are perfect, but IMO the no-DRM-installers are the single most consumer-friendly move any game store has done. And no one forces them to.
Incorrect.
They've had DRM in single player games on GOG. Hitman was a DRM game on GOG. Cyberpunk had a lot of DRM-lilocked items in game. They retroactively updated Witcher 3 with the same DRM crap.
So long as the game is DRM free, which it isn't always on GOG anymore, yes.
Although that doesn't absolve them of lying about their intent to support Linux or their promise to open source their Galaxy client.