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I think in the context of why he said this was something like an interviewer asking “what would have to happen for cloud gaming to take off and see bigger numbers”
There is enough to get mad about to waste time getting mad at imaginary things.
So, saying people should “get used to cloud gaming and subscription only” in the future gets a free pass, even if the people that said it are the one trying to create cloud gaming and suscription only games?
Who said that?
Be specific, include the word “only” as you quoted, and very important: Don’t lie.
I think a lot of clickbaitiness comes from asking a radical question and then running around with the answer. I think take 2 was asked if gta 6 would come to GamePass and they said no it won’t, which somehow became a big news lol
you’re acting like ubisoft doesn’t actively try to incentive this and push subscription services with overpriced game “editions”
Shareholders need to get comfortable not buying a new yacht
No worries, at no point in recent years have I been feeling I “owned” a ubisoft game. Not even played them. I’m that committed to follow thge instructions of some dipshit.
Word. I stopped after the second game wouldn’t play because their shit drm/servers… Luckily lesson 2 was a gift.
“Shareholders need to get comfortable not owning their yacht”
The very rich already don’t own most of their things. Banks or the companies they work for/with do
The truly rich people own the banks. Its their world, we just rent some space in it.
Ubisoft will look up and shout “save us!”
And we will whisper
Why’d you post a picture of my parents arguing about me under the word no?
Ali I see is a “pretty butterfly”
Hate to say it but I think you have schizophrenia
Pretty sure it’s a hip bone X-ray of someone without a spine
What are you talking about? Those are two rabbits sharing a cup of tea.
Wrong. It’s Turian bone structure.
Clearly two bears high fiving
Two skulls kissing
Two bears high fiving.
I think you’re right but you missed the Pawn piece stuck up their ass.
I for one appreciate that ubisoft chose the top down view of poop as their logo. it’s the perfect symbol for everything they represent and they’re incredibly brave for wearing it proudly on their chest.
I thought it was symbolizing them circling the drain, at least when it comes to quality…
Not that I don’t otherwise agree, but if you think that’s what poop is supposed to look like, you should probably consult a gastroenterologist or a proctologist 🤔
He means like the stylized anime or emoji one ya dullard. 💩
Question, is buying games on Steam “owning”?
Not unless it’s DRM-free. You don’t own games that have DRM. You just have a license to use them, which can be revoked at any time.
So in other words, no, since it’s impossible for a Steam game to be DRM-free. Some have less DRM than others, but unless they let you download an installer that you can use without connecting to their servers then there’s still DRM.
It’s definitely possible for Steam games to be DRM-free, especially older ones. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
For those games, you can literally just make a copy of the game directory after downloading it, and back it up somewhere. Just run the game EXE (or equivalent on Linux) to run it, even on a system that doesn’t have Steam installed. Everything you need is in there. That’s all Steam is doing when you ‘install’ a game - downloading its files and extracting them. It also installs any required runtimes like MSVC or .NET, but you can do that yourself too.
Of course, the best idea is still to buy games on GOG instead.
Buy games on GoG when you can
You still don’t own them. Read their ToS.
They don’t have to provide a way to install the games in perpetuity, but I’m pretty sure the ToS don’t provide a way for them to stop you from keeping or running a DRM free copy you’ve downloaded.
So sure, the ToS says you don’t own the game, but unlike ubisoft that puts that non-ownership into practice, GOG goes out of their way to make that legal non-ownership utterly meaningless. If you have a copy of the game, then you have a copy of the game.
Back them up on a hard drive and their ToS doesn’t mean squat anymore. I guess that takes a little more effort and investment but if you want to own the game without DRM that will do it.
ToS doesn’t mean squat here if the law says otherwise. It’s insane to me that US has this the reverse.
It’s not just the US. You don’t buy games from GOG, only licences which they can revoke at any time. This is not illegal.
Which doesn’t matter, because you can download the DRM-free game and back it up.
Yeah, on GoG itself, it’s licenses, there you are right.
I prefer to buy from Steam because they allow me to play my games easily and invest time and money in Linux which results in more freedom for all gamers. I’ve been very disappointed with GoG’s record on Linux.
No. Do you prefer subscription services?
No, it’s not. If Valve goes belly up you can kiss your games and the infrastructure they need goodbye. Also you don’t get to resell games you already own or give them away and selling accounts is against ToS. If you die your games are gone, you can’t give your account away legally.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not trying to be a smart ass, I just keep seeing things like this for Ubisoft and other companies and people just crap on them, but then Steam is almost never criticised for the same issue (or I am not seeing those memes). I guess Valve makes enough other things right so people are more happy to overlook this?
Valve has stated that if their store was ever to be discontinued they would remove all DRM they have in place to allow for the games to be played without it. This was a long long time ago though.
Yeah, promises change over time. Hope they can keep their promise on that but not sure how that would even be feasible with a catalogue that large.
I fear for valve when Gaben dies. I hope he picks someone good.
And it is only really a promise they can keep for their own games. Like I said in another comment, lots of game studios already ship their games without DRM.
If Valve goes under, the games that are gonna be a problem are the ones from the likes of Ubisoft and EA.
They wouldn’t lift a finger to make sure people who bought their games on steam could keep playing them if steam disappeared
In fact they’ve been taking their games back even while steam is still around. Lots of people own unplayable games on steam because the publisher screwed the servers or something.
Steam gets a pass because their business practices are consumer friendly.
Eh, their business practices regarding selling games are fairly consumer friendly, but overall they have quite a few issues themselves that aren’t great. I wouldn’t hold them up as a great company but rather a better company than the competition, which is a fairly low bar.
Steam is not a publicly traded company, so they don’t pull this kind of skullduggery in service of the shareholders.
They’re a company full of people who, gasp, like video games: unlike the average navel gazing, brainless, Harvard Business School CEO.
Given their track record they’ve been more consistently “pro gamer” than other companies and are given a lot of leeway for that.
But you can, write your ID and Password on a paper under your keyboard and “forget” it before death.
It’s possible, sure, but if pressed Valve will ban the account.
Just don’t let them be pressed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Depends on the game.
There’s a surprisingly large amount of games on steam that are DRM free, meaning once downloaded, running the game doesn’t actually require steam.
I imagine it would be for older games though?
Any dev can decide to just not code their game in a way that requires steam. Valve doesn’t modify whatever the studio decides to ship in any way that would change that.
Wait… Half Life 2 is the game that forced me to install steam, create an account and wasn’t playable without it is “now” in this list and is DRM free?
Removed back in 2004, seems like.
Is there an easy way to check which games in my library are DRM free?
Not currently in a place where I can check, but I believe pcgamingwiki.com has this info.
Edit: it does indeed. Lists available platforms and whether or not they have DRM, and/or what kind.
Spread that site around, cause I only came across it fairly recently and it has never showed up in web searches for me without me specifically looking for the site.
But then, how do you keep the game for later, like reinstalling it on a system that does not run steam, that won’t work right?
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V
It’s just a folder. You keep the folder.
When you want to run it, you go to the folder and double-click the .exe of the game.
If you want, you can drop a shortcut to that exe somewhere convenient.
“Installing” is just putting files in a folder somewhere, and maybe adding a shortcut to the start menu so the user can find and run whatever got installed. There’s nothing special about it.
Unless the .exe needs some other program to be installed, or some files that need to be available somewhere else (which these DRM free games don’t), you can just move the folder the game is in wherever you like, another PC even, and it’ll still run just fine.
This. I used to have a bunch of the games backed up on a hard drive because copying the files over & patching was faster than redownloading it.
Pirate magic, me boy!
They should all be like this.
That is the main selling point of GOG
May be an unpopular opinion but I don’t care what happens to my games when I die because I will be dead. If I want to pass something on to any kids I have it will be memories.
Sadly no, your Steam account can be closed at any time and you have no recourse to access your purchased content if that happens. Likewise, Steam can suspend service and you lose access to your content as well.
But that’s not just a Steam thing, it’s digital media as a whole. Even a physical disc is not ownership, it’s just a license to access the content it contains.
You can run them only a limited time without Valve giving their ok. I do say “no”.
Gamers are comfortable with that already. It’s the default.
They could have got away still if they actually make good games
Making good games is probably not as easy as it seems though.
you seem to be 300x more knowledgeable than the suits that run these companies
So is spending hard earned salary on a Ubisoft game
Yup. Millions subscribe to MMOs and Game Pass. Live service games like Genshin Impact and Fate/Grand Order are incredibly popular. There are also games with crazy intrusive DRM like kernel level spyware and always online DRM that are still installed by millions. How can you look at these stats and not think people are fine with paying for temporary games? If the game is good enough, players don’t care. Ubisoft’s problem is their games aren’t good enough.
I call this “The curse of Might and Magic”. This franchise was established by Jon Van Caneghem who founded New World Computing. The company later got into financial trouble and was absorbed by 3DO. Over time (mainly due to the commercial failure of its console, which came after the acquisition of the M&M property), 3DO started slipping into the hole. It dissolved, and in its fire sale, Ubi purchased the rights to Might and Magic. The rest, as they say, is history…
man, do I miss might and magic. I think imma play through Xeen again soon.
World of Xeen? Such a fun concept, combining the two games. I’ve been trying to run the mod that lets you play 6, 7 and 8 within the same game, but my current PC can’t handle it.
hold the phone, i need that in my life!
At least we have that fanmade expansion for Heroes 3.
So, it’s the Hope Diamond of Computer Game IPs?
They better sell that IP to The Smithsonian.
BTW what do we have to pay an entry fee to The Smithsonian, and The British Museum is free to anyone that can make it there? Seems like something our taxes should be taking care of…
Unless they changed something in the last year or so, all the Smithsonian buildings in DC have free admission.
Oh good! I just remember the last time I was in DC, I had to pay admission. That was in the mid '90s so, I’m guessing they managed to fix that later.
Generally The Smithsonian locations are free to enter. Some parts cost extra like the butterfly room at the natural History one.
A quick Google says the only one that does cost anything is the Cooper Hewitt in New York.
Ok. I haven’t been in ages. I just remembered having to pay admission for something.
Shareholders need to get confortable not owning the value of their share.
Seriously, it in the name: they hold shares not their value.They should also get comfortable paying taxes when the of their shares increases. (If only that were true…)
Pretty sure their recent stock drop has more to do with them releasing a bad game based on a dying IP than on what an exec said months ago.
The announcement of the game left an extremely bad impression too, because the game was $60 or $70 but didn’t include all the content, there were three other tiers or “editions” you could buy, the last option being the $8 subscription service that had a shiny blue border around it and included all the content.
Isn’t Ubisoft infamously known for this subscription model on all of their products?
I thought Ubisoft was known for their shitty launchers.
Why not both?
The greed goes deep. It’s funny that micro transactions hardly ever were micro. If it’s was a few cents for a pure cosmetic item I might even do that from time to time, but take the discord cosmetics 50ct I might buy sth blinky, but they want 5-10€ for that shit
you mean to tell me you don’t want to spend $12.99 to be patrick star in discord?? whats wrong with you man
It’s crazy
Wow, I had no idea they pulled that bullshit too. Fuck that.
I wouldn’t know it’s a bad game since I won’t buy it because of what an exec said months ago.
Given how often we see games selling extremely well even after the companies behind them do awful stuff you’re in a very small minority.
Cool? Who else do you kick for doing the right thing?
I may be. I don’t care though. Every shit move they make will make more people like me and eventually the message will be heard. When their stock tanks like this, there will be changes.
Investors: You didn’t do it sneaky enough! Shhhh
CEO’s need to get comfortable not owning anything anymore
CEOs need to get comfortable with not existing.
CEO at my job can’t even do the most menial in the warehouse. Companies will be fine without their posh little darlings
Yarr harr fiddle dee dee
Being a pirate is alright with me!
Ubisoft stopped priacy by making games so bland their not worth the effort to download.
