They are trying to kill the idea of local apps and exe's, aka they can finally turn "files" into property by using active directory and NTFS for the entire internet.
You all seem clueless as to the last 20 years of software theft in the game industry.
Everyone 20 year ago on slashdot was worried about software and hardware drm, windows 10 is the first version of windows where they are trying to turn the PC into a mobile locked down platform because of the success of walled gardens like steam, world of warcraft, and the appstores like apple/google play.
The level of stupid on hacker news is disturbing, we used to get complete PC games in the 90's and early 2000's before the public fell for mmo scam of the late 90's which put PC gaming on the path of massive game theft.
Valve is basically a criminal game stealing empire by infecting games with client-server code. The whole industry wants to take us to mainframe dumb client computing.
> Valve is basically a criminal game stealing empire by infecting games with client-server code.
Uhh.. Valve release all their game server binaries for anyone to run, and sometimes even the source code (Half-Life, Half-Life 2). If you're going to rag on any games company, it shouldn't be them.
> Valve did so because they had steam money to rely on, they were boiling the frog slowly.
Citation needed. Valve have been very good to the TF2/Dota 2 communities. Again, you _can_ run the servers for these products. Worst comes to worst, if Valve turns evil, then pirating the software is easy.
There's good points to be had that Overwatch is terrible for not releasing the server, but Valve are not.
You don't seem to understand VALVE is an outlier because they have so much power, for the rest of the AAA game industry, dedicated servers largely have been under attack. Because client-server and drm ridden software allows them to put in game stores. They don't want people to have dedicated servers if it interferes with their microtransaction business model. AKA in game stores means further eroding software ownership.
You don't grasp the reason quake champions is a server locked game is because of gamers buying client-server coded software.
You're a corporate fanboy. You don't grasp the reason Doom 2016 and no level editor is specifically because of the last 15 years of the war on PC game ownerhsip that began with mmo's in the late 90's.
That all those "MMO/freetoplay" games on steam would have been boxed products with lan/server exe's in a former era, of the public had not taken them up to begin with, valve would have never come up with STEAM. Steam was a direct reaction to ultima online.
Valves long term plan was to remove ownership from his customers, and valve no longer needs to produce games because their long term agenda was making money, they want to be the middleman that skims money from every game sold.
Valve did so because they had steam money to rely on, they were boiling the frog slowly.
Notice what they did to TF2 and now the are making artifact (totally microtransaction based game).
Notice how all that money from Dota 2 and TF2 were the end game, you don't get that STEAM malware client, was for valve to ultimately to get to in game stores. Valve was very careful in how they manipulated you into not owning your ow games so they could shove in game stores and mtx into them.
For other games like battlefield or modern warfare, and even overwatch... the problem remains that they can shut down the game remotely, aka Overwatch is not coded in an honest way where you own the game outright, you can't use its multiplayer as a stand alone app, aka you're using stolen software that is coded in a criminally screwed up way so that Activision maintains control.
The whole goal for the game industry was in game stores and mtx in every game and to do that they need to undermine game ownership.
Fortnite, Dota 2, and league of legends would have been fully boxed product games with LAN multiplayer/dedicated servers in a past era, aka for most AAA games we no longer get server exe's and get matchamking.
Quake champions is literally a stolen quake game where you don't get to own it, quake fans wanted a quake they owned and controlled like the first 4 quakes, with QeRadiant, dedicated servers, etc.
Quake champions can only exist in a world where companies have won and games are being coded in criminally underhanded ways to deny local application game files.
Over the last 10 years and 1000+ of hours of gaming, I've literally never used a single "feature" or had a single positive interaction with steam other than downloading the games (for which a zipped installer would have worked just fine), yet I had many cases where I couldn't play because steam forced update but couldn't download it due to slow connection/really wanted to go online on the plane because offline mode used to be buggy/had the update install and completely break steam/couldn't login/connect to valve servers, etc.
They were fixing these but new stuff always comes up (and is 0% justified), and some stuff is by "design" e.g. "offline" mode still installs steam updates. At this point I have steam completely firewalled out and I turn that off only when I want to get a specific game or a DLC.
Steam is malware (so are Win10 ads, forced updates, etc.)
Unrelated to the "walled-garden" debate Valve has invested heavily into their Linux game compatibility tools and invested in the upstream projects that make them happen. That allows people who game on PC to break out of the pending Windows walled garden dystopia that the original commenter fears.
The polemic style writing is really off-putting, but I wholeheartedly agree with this.
I know Microsoft keeps trying and failing, but I think they will eventually succeed with a separate version of Windows that is clearly a separate "walled garden" product, that is far more secure, far better performance, only supports UWP apps, and is uncoupled from being in the backwards-compatibility hell that the "main" Windows variant is.
Such a product "powered by Microsoft Office" would be an incredibly compelling Chromebook competitor. As to whether or not it will support ARM, support AD, or even be open source, only time will tell. I could definitely see something like Windows X or a rebuilt Windows S (locked into S) being a glimpse into this future.
Marketing it would be an incredibly tiny needle to thread-- promoting the OS can run Microsoft Office while immediately changing the message when they ask about every old no-source-available compiled-for-Windows-98 app.
It feels like the people who can switch easily probably jumped to Chromebooks already.
You can make great points without saying everyone else on the site is "levels of stupid". That's unnecessary, unhelpful, and just escalates the debate immediately. OP is the one who brought an incensed and polemical tone to this thread - asking everyone else to only react to the substance just gives them a free pass on what is innately anti-social behavior that detracts from a civil discussion.
No, I know. I get the ideological desire for the point you make. But I find some levels of rancor endearing, genuine and humanizing especially when the points seem to merit it.
Some of it is also the OP seems to have a history of just going around making incendiary posts and insulting the intelligence of anyone they disagree with. It's endearing the first time - when you've got a pattern of it, and often don't actually bother to reply or discuss with anyone, you're just a flame-bait.
In what way is World of Warcraft a "walled garden"? It's a single game. If anything, it's one of the most extensible online games made by a major studio. Do you just mean "walled garden" as "not FOSS"?
It's a game as a service, sure, but that doesn't make it a scam. That's like saying that renting an apartment is a scam because you don't own it. You can question if it's a good financial decision, but that doesn't make it not a fair exchange of money for a product.
I was with you until MMO Scam. The people behind Mazewar, Ultima Online, MUDs, etc. were not trying to scam you out of money and ownership. They were innovating heavily on what games could look like in a networked platform. It was revolutionary at the time.
Not everyone in the industry is on one side here, and if you want to fight this war efficiently and intelligently, you need to know precisely who your enemies are.
Also with such highly populated games they have to do a TON of ongoing work to support the infrastructure to the point that they would lose money on customers in a matter of months if they didn't charge subscription fees.
There is still CD Project Red which seems to be the last bastion of DRM free games. I hope Activision (aka Tencent) will never buy them out. China is a cancer also in gaming industry.
Everyone 20 year ago on slashdot was worried about software and hardware drm, windows 10 is the first version of windows where they are trying to turn the PC into a mobile locked down platform because of the success of walled gardens like steam, world of warcraft, and the appstores like apple/google play.
The level of stupid on hacker news is disturbing, we used to get complete PC games in the 90's and early 2000's before the public fell for mmo scam of the late 90's which put PC gaming on the path of massive game theft.
Valve is basically a criminal game stealing empire by infecting games with client-server code. The whole industry wants to take us to mainframe dumb client computing.
https://tifca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_V...