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The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive's footsteps
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Or, you could say Valve took the work of thousand of open-source dev and saw an opportunity to turn it into profit. I'm not saying they didn't contribute, but the only reason is because they saw a opportunity to make money, they don't care about Linux.What profit? I can guarantee that Valve has spent far more in hiring hundreds of highly skilled full time contractors for 5+ years than they've made from the 3% of Steam's users on Linux. Obviously it's a long term strategy for them to eventually make money but we've only gained from their investment.
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They absolutely do care about linux... sure, they are profit motivated. But they saw microsoft building their own store, and they saw a future where MS builds a gated garden, and linux was a way for them to preserve their existence.Newell talked openly about this entire topic at [LinuxCon](https://youtu.be/yeCuasjxsWk) years ago. It’s been 12 years and they’ve been true to their word. The amount they’ve contributed upstream is insane, and the money they’ve provided to Linux-ecosystem contractors is also insane. They’re profit motivated, 100%, but at least they’ve done so while being a good citizen in the FOSS movement (bar the Steam Client itself). SUSE, Canonical etc are all for-profit orgs that help push FOSS forward. Profitability and Free and Open Source Software aren’t mutually exclusive.
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What profit? I can guarantee that Valve has spent far more in hiring hundreds of highly skilled full time contractors for 5+ years than they've made from the 3% of Steam's users on Linux. Obviously it's a long term strategy for them to eventually make money but we've only gained from their investment.
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Theres a reason steam is king... noone else bother putting games on linux, so valve brought linux to the games.Linux isn't the thing that's driving Steam's profits, tho.
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I do too, but Humble Bundle got bought by Ziff Davis/IGN. They laid off the **_all_** Humble staff in 2024. They also limited the amount that can go to charity and allocated more of those funds go directly to them.HB was good when you could set the entirety of your purchase to go to developers. Now they greedily force you to divert a minimum to themselves
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Stating facts is not defending. The fact is, if valve didn't invest into the linux ecosystem, gamers would be force to suck MS's dick. Which is far arguable amoung the worst corporation in world. I dont think there has been any cases where valve resorted to anti-competition practices. Yes, their fees are high. But thats the cost to be publish on their store. They know you aint going anywhere else because they dominate the market. And they didnt get there by manhandling the competition, just the first to provide a product people want, and did it so long that they became ubiquitous. So how about you get off your ass and make a storefront to compete with them?There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence. I'll admit I didn't read into it though, at most watched a (seemingly pro-Epic) video on it. None of the devs I follow ever complained, but I also can't think of any offering lower prices on other stores (besides Steam key vendors)
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Yeah, I don't really understand that either. What's wrong Heroic? It's not quite Steam, but pretty good. And no DRM is definitely a plus.> What’s wrong Heroic? Not officially supported. Using the GUI with a controller is wonky.
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I can't understand the amount of energy people spend defending Valve. I get it, you like video games (so do I) and steam is a convenient platform for transactions. But, in the end it's just another dirty capitalist business that only cares about one thing: MAKING MONEY. They literally invented gambling for kids, got watch the coffeezila video about it and they take 30% of any game sold while having sub 300 employees. It's pretty much the most profitable business per employee in the US. They do not care about video games, about linux, about the fact that their home country is turning into a fascist state, and most of all, they don't give a fuck about all the gamers that keeps posting about how great they are. They would change they business model to sell bbq sauce tomorrow if the believe they could make more money out of it. And each time someone points that out, even here, it gets downvoted lol.> I can’t understand the amount of energy people spend defending Valve. Valve uses my money to make the Linux FOSS stack better for everyone, including me. GOG doesn't. Buying on Steam instead of GOG serves my personal interests.
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There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence. I'll admit I didn't read into it though, at most watched a (seemingly pro-Epic) video on it. None of the devs I follow ever complained, but I also can't think of any offering lower prices on other stores (besides Steam key vendors)> There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence. They're doing a shitty job at enforcement if your claim is true.
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What profit? I can guarantee that Valve has spent far more in hiring hundreds of highly skilled full time contractors for 5+ years than they've made from the 3% of Steam's users on Linux. Obviously it's a long term strategy for them to eventually make money but we've only gained from their investment.
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Woo! I hope GOG has a bright future! I recently started buying games on GOG and have been playing them via Heroic Launcher on Linux which has worked well! Very happy to *actually* own the games I'm purchasing!
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> What’s wrong Heroic? Not officially supported. Using the GUI with a controller is wonky.Big Picture mode in Steam is wonky as fuck for me
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There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence. I'll admit I didn't read into it though, at most watched a (seemingly pro-Epic) video on it. None of the devs I follow ever complained, but I also can't think of any offering lower prices on other stores (besides Steam key vendors)> with emails from employees to devs as evidence *One* email from 10+ years ago, and from it's wording the author likely misspoke
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GOG needs to fix their client first and port it on Linux. Yes, Heroic is a thing but we do need better handheld compatibility anyway and Linux users, I think, are more likely to be invested in GOG mission.The best thing about GOG is the ability to never use a client or launcher at all. The ability to just download the installers from the website and store them locally means that your GOG games will outlast the following: GOG as a company enshittifies, GOG as a company dies, your account gets banned from GOG, you lose access to your GOG account, your favorite game gets a game-ruining update from its developer, some song license expires and devs are forced to patch or pull the game...
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You don't legally own the games you purchase, just have the ability to use it(within legal terms and conditions) without the store.You don't legally own any software you purchase (bar true FOSS), even if that software is stored on a disc or cartridge. It's a meaningless distinction to make.
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Would be nice if a company would try to actually compete instead of "attacking" each other for market share.GOG isn't "attacking" steam for market share though? It has a legitimate niche in the market: being a storefront that bans all DRM and also doesn't require a launcher/account to buy and install games. GOG's main competitor is piracy (because DRM free means trivial to pirate), so its main features to compete with that are ease of use, trustworthy installers, and consistent + easy access to game patches that pirates don't often keep up with.
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It makes sense because GOG was never going to drive year over year growth for the publicly traded CDPR. Operating as a private company, it doesn't need to provide shareholder value and can be sustainable by simply "being profitable" forever, like Steam. Publicly traded CDPR holding GOG was a ticking time bomb but for once it seems to have been defused.
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Steam's DRM will still lock you out if you're logged out (not in "offline mode" that can only be entered by logging in online and *then* toggling it). Some games on Steam are truly drm-free and navigating to the executable will start the game without even running Steam at all. Note that native Steam *shortcuts* will never work without being logged into Steam (in normal or offline mode), because they're steam:\\\\ protocol links. To play DRM-free Steam games steamless you need to navigate to the actual file or make an OS shortcut to the executable.
