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from the getting-their-ooblets-into-an-uproar dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671
Epic vows to support 'Ooblets' studio following exclusivity harassment
Indie studio Glumberland, developer of cute and quirky life simulator Ooblets, announced its decision to sign a PC exclusivity deal with Epic Games last week. It essentially secured the company's future, but it has has also become the target of widespread harassment as a result of locking its PC title to the Epic Games Store.
Glumberland's original announcement of the exclusive was light-hearted, saying "this is all low-stakes video game stuff we're dealing with here" and that it was "[n]othing to get worked up about." The exclusivity deal will bring some much-needed cash to the project, as the developers explained on Twitter: "I know this is a hot-button issue for some folks but getting some funding is going to make a huge difference for Ooblets."
A certain section of the gaming community reacted to the announcement with unbridled fury, however, unleashing a wave of harassment onto the studio's two developers. The extreme reaction included someone faking a screenshot purporting to show developer Ben Wasser, who is Jewish, saying "gamers would be better off in gas chambers."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Acabatag on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:41PM (2 children)
So do you vow fealty to Steam, or are you just a nameless peasant?
I'm asking seriously, as somebody who when I shop for physical games in stores, always looks to make sure it doesn't say 'Requires Steam.' My choices are often highly limited, which is a problem. I would similarly be pretty hostile if I couldn't watch movies or TV shows that weren't behind a Disney authentication wall.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:06PM
Steam has quite a few advantages if you want to play using a controller connected to a raspberry pi hooked up to the TV in the living room while your big tower is in the office. Or your kid wants to use a tablet/phone to play resource-intensive games.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by boltronics on Sunday August 11 2019, @08:53AM
I usually won't purchase a PC game at retail if it doesn't say it connects to Steam, mainly because of Proton. Perhaps you're somebody who uses Microsoft Windows, but I'm primarily a GNU/Linux user and in general much prefer free software options.
This might seem contradictory, but I do play non-free games since I play games a lot [systemsaviour.com] - although I admit not as much as I have in the past, and I've been playing console games more than PC games as of late. In any case, that's pretty much the only concession I ever make for proprietary software on my computer. Having said that, I don't trust them at all and lock them down hard with tools like firejail. This is much nicer than needing to switch the entire operating system with a proprietary one just to play some games! Most of the time I'm just not that desperate.
As you are likely aware, very few games are released for GNU/Linux at retail. There is the occasion exception like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, but those are few and far between. Thanks to being an Epic Store exclusive, Borderlands 3 won't have GNU/Linux support since Epic doesn't support my OS - hence I won't be purchasing it.
But if Borderlands 3 didn't have GNU/Linux support but did support Steam, and I was actually interested in the game, I might still consider picking it up since there would be a very good chance the game would run just fine under Proton. I have made such compromises on a number of occasions in the past.
Ideally I would purchase everything from GOG so as to avoid any DRM, and indeed I used to many years ago, but GOG refuses to add support for GNU/Linux to their launcher. It was "coming soon" quite some years back, and still shows no signs of having ever been a priority for them. At this point it's clear that they just don't care to make any effort. Contrast this with Valve who have shown an enormous amount of support for GNU/Linux. I do not think there's any chance we would have the amazing free software drivers from AMD that we now enjoy if it weren't for Valve. I have also observed that gamepads seem to have a much higher chance of working with Steam and Proton than when running a game under vanilla Wine - possibly due to Steam acting as a sort of middleware for the gamepad communication. Proton means that 100% of the games in my Steam library have a chance of running, even if they are Windows games that were included in a recent Humble Bundle. In fact, I'm actually downloading Kingdom Come: Deliverance as I type this.
Many of the old retail games I have on my shelf do not support any launcher, and instead use custom copy protection mechanisms. For instance, I purchased a copy of Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim back in the day that was ported by Linux Game Publishing and included some custom DRM solution that involved activating the game. (For some reason the GNU/Linux build of the game was never released on Steam). What do you think the chances are that that game can still be played? I would have been better off just getting the Windows build on Steam since that would be more likely to be playable today thanks to Proton. It would also have been easier to find in stores at the time, and a lot cheaper to boot.
Other games on my shelf require the CD to be in the drive. I don't have an optical drive on my new laptop, so I can only play such games after ripping the DVDs and using a program like CDemu (which requires compiling a kernel module and user-land tools). I think it's wonderful that tools like CDemu exist and my hat goes off to the developers, but this approach requires that many games take up gigabytes of additional space on my hard drive for the DVD image, unless I resort to hunting down cracks for my legitimately purchased collection. I also need to keep around an old laptop I rescued from the trash many years ago that has a DVD drive, Windows XP and Alcohol 52% (the later I found a full version of on the cover of an old PC magazine), all just so I can actually rip the DVDs into a format that has sufficient information to satisfy the copy protection.
And then there is the issue that many new computers don't have optical drives. I have a slow Internet connection, so if a retail game connects to Steam but I have an optical drive, I can often save some time and install from DVDs. However I can also just download the game over my Internet connection for machines without a DVD drive. I've never seen a DRM-free retail game that provides a GOG key, so with that in mind, Steam is easily the most convenient option here. Uplay, Origin, Microsoft Store, etc. certainly don't support GNU/Linux.
If I purchased a game at retail that connects to Uplay or Origin, I'd have to attempt to play the game under Wine. I do have custom scripts to build me the latest Wine version, but the Wine developers say that each app should be in its own clean wineprefix so issues running one piece of software does not affect the other. That means if you have 10 games from Uplay, you need 10 Uplay installations. You probably can't have two open at a time due to DRM restrictions. Hence, if you want to update all your Uplay games you'll need to open each prefix one at a time, log in, perform updates, close Uplay and wait for the app to terminate, change the WINEPREFIX directory to the next Uplay installation and repeat the process. I did this kind of thing for years back before Steam supported GNU/Linux. It will eventually drive you crazy.
Or, I could just stick to playing games on Steam and not have to deal with any of this madness. And keep in mind, just because a game makes use of the Steam launcher, it does not necessarily mean the game requires Steam to be running. Some "Steam" games don't require Steam to play, but simply use it as a convenient launcher/updater/store front. Unfortunately it's generally not clear which games fall into this category up front.
It's not quite the same. Regarding the Steam Vs EGS situation, one is making games compatible with all major platforms. The other is restricting games to specific platforms (and countries even) and then making those games exclusive. In this scenario, I'd rather the later didn't even exist.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!