Yeah, it seems to be a misunderstanding. They are using cloud tools to generate and update the base operating system.

“Better” is always relative. Personally I generally prefer not to use software that comes bundled with the hardware, that way I avoid any vendor lock in. The hardware vendor should not be in a position of deciding what I should or shouldn’t be able to do with their hardware, and software should be open to the customer, so that it does exactly what they want, not more or less.

Sure.

Valve can do a lot more, but what is more concerning to me is if they are actively consumer unfriendly. There is a difference between passively allowing bad stuff to happen, and actively doing bad stuff.

Which is what I said: “On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client.” With third-party client I meant a client like Heroic.

Depends on the game developers, if they offer/upload a Linux/Mac version. On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client. Idk about Mac. Third party clients can also integrate Wine for Windows games.

Well I can only speak for myself, but I prefer games stores in that order:

1. GOG, because DRM free and they don’t enforce game updates.
2. Steam, because they are well integrated into the SteamDeck, they push Linux gaming, and Gabe seems to be an alright guy.
3. Itch.io, because lots of indy games
4. Epic Game store, good: free games, bad: Epic and Tim Sweeney.

There are business decisions with all of them that I dislike.

For the top dog PC game store, Valve could behave much much worse. Epic is still in the customer and game developer acquisition phase (and still behave like a d*ck with their exclusive deals), if the ever manage to push Valve aside, I believe they will be much worse.

I feel the same, when the game is not available on GOG.

The underdog is often the one that is most pro-consumer, since that is in their business interest. As soon as the take the lead, the doors to enshittyfication open, because business shifts from getting new customers to not letting them leave. (Of course there are exceptions, but this is the case broadly)

Is it me, or does the person in front in the picture gives off Aloy vibes?

The best “server-side” anti cheat mechanisms online is streaming the game, and I am sure that eventually some talented developers are able to even write some aim bot (or more) for that.

Competitive games need a fully controlled environment. Doing it online with random unknown people should not be taken as serious as they currently do.

Alot about video games is not standardized. To be competitive all players should have the same hardware, internet connection, etc. So that it is actually individual skill that is measured, not just the size of players wallet.

But even then, developing skill takes alot of practice and time, which also, in our current system, can be converted into money. There just is no fair competition here anyway. Still many people believe in meritocracies…

The problem is EAs business model for this game. It is free to pay, so EA need to extract money otherwise. They introduce some gamified resource collection and crafting with exponentially rising costs, etc. And hope that gamers circumvent that by buying stuff with real money. Now players don’t all want or can’t do that, and look for alternative solutions.

So EAs business model drives people to cheat. To cheat them primarily and other players secondarily.

And because of their business model, they cannot solve the cheating between players by giving them dedicated servers or just let them P2P match, because they would loose control over them and their ability to extract more money.

Sure, Steam seems fairly okay, especially their Linux support, but I still mostly prefer GOG, wherever possible, because it offers more control to their customer over the product they bought.

It helps that Valve is not publicly traded, but I fear that if the current owner (Gabe Newell) dies, there might be a shift in business practices.

Enshittification can still happen in privately traded/owned companies, it generally happens slower and in case there are other reason for the owner(s) to maximize short term profits (e.g. business built on VC money), it can happen faster.

I am thinking of OpenMW for instance. Through reverse engineering, they where able to create an open source engine that runs the game with modern features. You still have to own those games in order to play the original levels/content.

Sure for games, which are game mechanic driven there is difficulty in separating if from the content, but in many content heavy games, it is more about the world, explorations, the story, characters etc, than the just the runtime, rendering, physics etc.

In many games the big chunks of the engine is sort of source available already, because they are written in a scripting or managed language (.Net or Java).

Making the stuff that isn’t written in such a language available to the player as well, would be great. Because that would lessen the reverse engineering burden of modders. And the next step would be to open source parts of it.

The reasons for this are the same for many commercial products to use open source lower levels of their software stack and open source their common code as well. Improving your own product by cooperating with others would be great in gaming as well.

Sure, depends on the engine, but very often there is a “scripting” part, be it quests, dialog, etc. and the where those scripting functions/library and language is implemented. The first are part of content, while the latter is part of the engine.

Also games have data tables, where the individual value for each record are part of content and the implementation of what each attribute does is implemented in the engine or some specific scripting.

Engines tent to have a clear split, because different kind of developers have different processes, and engines are often reused for multiple games.

IMO, that means that the whole game would be sources available (for the end user), while the central engine is open source.

This is just somewhat of a wishful thinking, not a requirement or whatever.

And sure, game devs releasing an engine/game as open source after they are done with it, would be great too. But I like to dream big ;)

I think for many content heavy games, an open source engine and copyrighted content could work financially. Someone would still have to buy the game, but the game mechanics and platform support can be enhanced and engine bugs fixed by the community.

I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.

I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.

For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.

The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.

If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.

For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.

Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.

Tim Sweeny when he notices that enshittification in games doesn’t seem to work very well anymore: industry is going through a “generational change”.

I am sort of in the same boat, because the game gradually unlocks improved recipes, I end up rebuilding and rebuilding the factory over and over.

Going vertically doesn’t really help, you have to re-plan and rebuild the layout every time some new technology unlocks. And (re)building in first person perspective, is rather fiddly. I doesn’t help when better tools are only available in later tiers, when I get fed up rebuilding the factory over and over before I even reach it.

I am fine with iterating over designs, but I get fed up when I cannot create a modular design, change it once and update all instances of that design in on go. Instead I have to manually rebuild everything.

ShapeZ 2 also has a similar problem, but they at least offer copy&paste early in game.

For Satisfactory I am waiting for mods to hopefully make factory building less cumbersome.

I would prefer if Satisfactory would focus more on designing new factory modules and optimizing, scaling up existing ones. So a first milestone would be, create 30 iron plates per minute, next 30 iron plates/min and 30 iron rods/minute, then both of those and copper wires 30/minute. The maybe 120 plates, 30 rods and 30 wires, and so on and so forth. That way the player doesn’t remove their factories, just and new ones or optimize/scale up existing ones. Together with a way to create, modify and instantiate blueprints, organized in a library, the boring and fiddly/gridy stuff of (re)building the factory is lessened. Also avoiding copy and pasting factories, by creating sub-designs and instantiating them would be great.

BTW, thank you for this discussion!

The crux of the matter for me is the question wherever “the selection process” alone is enough to create art or not, and depending on my mood I fall to one side or another on that question. Not specifically if it is under copyright or not, because that sort of follows from that.

Artists often use randomness in various parts of their creation process, what is really required is the human element. Is a picture of a cloud, that speaks to the photographer in some way art or just a picture of a random cloud?

I guess this has to be decided on a case by case basis, therefore I cannot completely exclude it.

Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.

A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell or otherwise distribute copies, adapt the work, and publicly display your work.

https://www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/

So if someone intentionally reproduces a picture, they violate copyright, IIUC.

In the case of minecraft, I think a case can be made, where the “picture” is the minecraft world, and the creativity is the selection process by the artist. The artist chooses their angle, position, lighting, etc, in this case they choose properties of the world, maybe by visiting thousands of them, using seed search machines, or other reverse engineering tools etc.

I all depends on if the artist can raise their work above just the random noise they get as an input in a creative way. I am not saying that all minecraft worlds (or save games for that matter) are subject to copyright, but since we are dealing with blurry lines of copyright, it is possible.

IANAL, but I think if I would look into case law, I would find examples for both options, in some cases the “selection process” was enough to demonstrate creativity, and in other cases it wasn’t.

You are correct it isn’t about the numbers, it is about the artistic and creative product that is copyrightable, which, in case of digital art, is represented as numbers, and distribution of those might be punished by law.

I am just saying that digital art can be more that just still or moving pictures and sound. It can be a world space the artist prepared for you where you can move around.

About the section on the law, I would read it just as stating what is covered under copyright, and not what isn’t. I also just mentioned what original work is, not describing derived work.

Nature is often random and unpredictable, but the process of selecting a interesting POV and taking a picture of it is still copyrightable.

I wouldn’t be so sure that if you discover a seed, that can be transformed using minecraft into a world with very interesting and specific properties, could not be under copyright protection.

In fact movies, pictures and books are specific numbers on a digital storage medium as well, that are transformed using a codec. That isn’t something that can be easily replicated without that codec.

I am not a copyright lawyer, but I think there are precedences where just the selection process from a stream of (semi-) random number, pictures, sound or events alone can produce copyrightable products.

I meant minecraft world file which stores the chunks the player explored and potentially modified. And I said “could” not “must”, it depends on if hits a certain creative threshold.

If the player decides to teleport around while creating a dickbud or whatever by just the explored chunks, that could meet it.

If someone selectivly openes quests to use the open quest markers on a map in an RPG to create a dickbud, that cloud meet it as well.

The save game could tell your individual story through the game, that cloud meet the threshold as well.

Also, because the unmodified minecraft world is randomly generated, it would not be under anyones copyright.

With AI, there could also be made an argument that the selection process might make it copyrightable. Like if you take a picture of a interesting looking cloud. The clouds might be semi-random, but you selecting a specific one reaches the threshold.

Well, I think both are human creation, you are using the machine and the game to create something new. In that sense, a save game file could also be under the players copyright. Lets say a Minecraft world for instance.

When the current copyright comes from books, wouldn’t plugins or transient changes/cheats be like taking side notes with a pencil on their individual copy?

Are side notes and annotations copyright infringements?

I would love to see them argue that taking snarky side notes, which change the tone of their words, is copyright infringement.

I am not sure how much credit I want to give Larian here yet, because the editor for DOS2, under their IP, also had a somewhat locked down editor.

I really hope that it wasn’t just an accident on their side, but malicious compliance on how they ‘locked down’ their editor, and they will offer similar open mod tool in their future games.

We might see if they continue to release patches for the mod tools, while not patching that ‘mod’.

“Jailbroken” is a bit of an exaggeration. It is just a mod for the editor.

They didn’t put any technical hurdles in place to break out of in order to remove the restrictions. They used .NET which is easy to decompile and patch, as seen with all the unity mods out there. They could have used obfuscation, which would hinder the effort a bit, but didn’t.

“Jailbroken” is also the wrong word, their is no jail, when we already have full permissions to change whatever file we want.

The achievement enabling is part of the script extender

Personally, New Atlantis deserves a side-quest where you either start a revolt together with the people from the the well to take on the bourgeoisie government (which might end up creating a fascist state), or change the system electorally, establish unions, social security and public healthcare, with its own risks. Or even play the part of a populist, or help one to take over the government. The “liberal utopia” in New Atlantis is just not a stable system, there would be too much disgruntled people. Being part of change here, would be very interesting.

But that would take too much courage from Bethesda. No, I have to support my parents there, because the government doesn’t care for their people.

I do hope so. However that also means that the base game needs to have a good base experience for people like to get back into it.

Personally I really like Starfield for what it is. I think it is a unique mix of RPG and space sim. I am not a big fan of pure sandbox games, and other space sims with quests often felt doing impersonal jobs. In Starfield you meet people and learn their individual story and can help them, etc. Which is just not something I have seen before in a space game. (Mass Effect is maybe the closest, but that isn’t really a open world space sim game)

Of course the game could be better. One of their error was relying on procedural content generation, which is often bleak, uninteresting and unexpiring. Also the main city, New Atlantis, is just too clean, too huge and very bland. It doesn’t look like it was build for people. It got a very MMO feeling to it. It looks like megalomaniacs build it, but that isn’t really addressed in game. Other cities/locations are better. But the political of societal critique, which is normal for the Sci-Fi genre, is missing or not apparent enough. The devs where IMO not bold enough there, to make a clear statement.

So IMO there is a lot to do for modders, we will see if enough of them are interested in fixing that game.

Yes, but not with an unmodified toolkit, which opens levels as read-only, and disallows creating new levels. But there is a patch for the toolkit on nexusmods which unlocks the toolkit and makes the map editor and other stuff available. If you know what you are doing, you should be able to edit the main campaign or make your own.

I played around with it a bit, and all I can say, its complicated.

AAAA games are clearly inferior to AAAAXY games.

“Corporatism vs Capitalism” was invented by capitalists to create a strawman that they can blame instead of blaming capitalism for everything wrong with captitalism.

The rest of the world uses Corporatism for something else entirely, what you might mean is corpocracy or corporate capitalism, which are just manifestations of capitalism.

Nothing about mod support or releasing the toolkit, like they did in DA:O.

Sure, it is largely the fanbase, however I also think that the game industry seems to sometimes do somewhat of a “woke-washing”, meaning opically supporting the LGBTQIA movement because of financial, shitstorm-prevention or other reasons than just wanting to create more diverse and inclusive games.

For instance I like Hogwarts Legacy, but it also takes place in the Victorian era, and it seems to project the modern tolerant society ideals onto the wizarding world of that time.

Depicting the society as inclusive and diverse is somewhat history revisionist. If you play as a non-binary or trans person at that time, then you should have to deal with prejudice and marginalization, otherwise it is just “woke-wash” the history.

So, IMO there are some cases, especially in historic (fantasy) games, where injecting modern ideals and standards might not fit or needs to be better addressed, than just let it be cosmetic.

They shouldn’t do a halfhearted job.

Hmm… Gordon Freemann having no lines was much more jarring that the silent protagonist in the Portal series.

Gordon is supposedly a brilliant scientist, but gets ordered around by NPCs that do nothing.

Portal protagonist has likely brain damage from being in stasis for a while, so I can assume they are just mute.

So it really depends on the game, setting and story, if a silent protagonist works or not. But having some character with emotions and agency would be good anyway, without requiring them to speak.

Link to the mod: https://gitlab.com/falloutfans/fallouty

Its a bit old, but the last reports for DA:O on wine look good: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=33926

I don’t know why you are so aggressive.

You made a good point, this is actually DLC, I just forgot about it.

I bought BG3 when it was in EA, so I got this DLC automatically, so I never really thought about it recently, I don’t even remember seeing it on any shop front.

But now that you mentioned it, I think I thought that they should probably release it for free for everyone at that time. Just like CDPR released some cosmetic ‘DLC’ for free after launch.

If I had to buy it, I probably wouldn’t.

AFAIK, modding is the main reason for Skyrims long term success. Sure, it did its part in inspiring people initially, but what keeps at least me coming back is my interest in trying new mods.

But it also didn’t start there with Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas use a very moddable predecessor of the Skyrim engine, and thus build the community up for Skyrim and later games.

Modability of KC:D was rather limited, so there isn’t a community around as big as the Skyrim one. That means with Skyrim, you get what you can mod into it, while with Kingdom Come, you mostly just get what you buy.

So I don’t expect it to be the next Skyrim, but never the less I am interested in it.

I don’t remember that. AFAIK Larian has not made, and will not make any DLC for BG3.

What do you mean?

Time and your personal experience might be a factor.

Often the first book I read from an author, leaves a very positive and fresh impression, but after I read a couple more of the same author, I learn their structure and writing style, and it becomes just more of the same, and I have trouble getting into those books.

It is similar in other mediums as well, maybe to a lesser degree. TV series and video games have multiple writers to keep things fresh, but at some point it becomes just more of the same.

You can still try to replay/rewatch/reread the great ones, but then you know what to expect. This might not be the case with new media of the same authors.

Also time directly might also effect it, I have trouble really getting into any game now, because I have other stuff to do, and getting back into it afterwards (especially with video games) is more difficult.