They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....
one day the search bar showed back up even though I’ve told it many times to not have it.
This sort of behavior (and other nastier things, such as introducing advertising for Microsoft services) is why I don’t trust Windows Updates and am increasingly distrustful of Windows being a satisfactory operating system.
Also I’d like it to be less bloated. Sure, fancy bells and whistles are nice to look at, but if I could make things look like Win98 again I totally would. I don’t actually need things like transparency or 3D rotation/resizing effects.
And what exactly is that NFT, as distinct from the media it’s linked to, useful for? Aside from simply saying that it is unique and one can have ownership of it.
Any such verification depends on some other party to verify it. If the game requires online services, then the verification is dependent on the online services; the verification can’t stand alone. But we already have existing systems for that without the need for NFTs.
On the other hand, if the game is a standalone game that doesn’t require connecting to online services, then if the game can be made to run on one computer it can be made to run on another computer. No matter how you choose to assign ownership, you can’t get around this. Videogames are fundamentally data, and data can be copied.
Besides…inventing a new NFT-based DRM? No matter how you do it, it’s not going to be as convenient as simply not having DRM. A DRM-free game is one that anyone can just pick up and it’ll work, too. You’re proposing a “solution” that doesn’t offer anything new, while opening up other cans of worms along the way.
Also, we already have peer to peer game trades/sales anyway, and we’ve had these, long before NFTs were a thing.
Y’know I think another possible analogy here might be the difference between a videogame and a tabletop game. Especially if we compare RPGs specifically.
It’s one thing to play a computer RPG. It’s another thing to play with a human GM who can reshape the story as needed and who can interact with the player in an open-ended manner.
Remember, the only reason we can still watch the highly influential 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu today is because some people didn’t destroy all their copies despite a court saying they had to.
I’ve noticed that there’s generally good coverage of big-name games, and while that’s cool and all, there are still a ton of lesser-known games trapped exclusively on platforms like Steam. Anyone know what sites are more likely to have them?
Most people have extremely weird ideas of what’s considered piracy and what isn’t. Downloading a video game rom is piracy, but if you pay money to some Chinese retailer for an SD card containing the roms, that’s somehow not piracy. Exploiting the free trial on a streaming site by using prepaid visa cards is somehow not...
Do they still do takedowns for videos based on that content IDing if the video isn’t even monetized in the first place?
Like, I know youtubers who try to make money hate this, but what about youtubers who aren’t in it for the money but just want to throw content on the platform? Can stuff like AMVs actually stay up?
Because, frankly, I’ve found that it’s been pretty easy to dodge YouTube ads, by means of uBlock Origin.
What with all the stories about the companies taking pretty hefty cuts for things, I’m gonna bet that the “supposedly” is doing some heavy lifting there, heh.
I got out of video game piracy for a while, but I’m coming back. One thing I have been absolutely SHOCKED by is how finding PC game torrents is actually kind of difficult from my normal sources. Now it’d be one thing if I just wasn’t seeing games, but for some reason Playstation and Switch have far more uploaders and...
In addition to installing and launching the games, there are cloud saves, achievements, time tracking, leaderboards for achievements (which integrates Steam achievements for anyone who’s linked their Steam profile), overlay, some multiplayer stuff, and more. In this respect it has social features and game management features similar to what Steam has.
GOG Galaxy is also meant to be a universal launcher so you can use “integrations” to have Galaxy launch other games through their respective clients and even have it close the client afterwards. You can also add your own independently-installed games, as long as they show up in a database of games that they use (I dunno where it’s from but these days it has pretty much everything I’ve looked for, aside from romhacks, but for that matter, I’m pretty sure you could make it launch any executable with any label and Galaxy wouldn’t question you). That said, I’m used to just launching things from game executables directly so I don’t use it for this anyway lol.
Also Galaxy offers more flexibility with managing game installs than the Steam client does. For one, you can set the install directory to anywhere, rather than being locked in Steam\steamapps\common\gamename. And pretty importantly IMO, there’s an easily accessible (though non-default, which is fine IMO) option to tell the game to not update, and the Galaxy client won’t try to force you to update (unlike the Steam client). (EDIT: there’s also a universal default for whether to auto-update games, in addition to per-game settings.) On top of this Galaxy also has more UI options than Steam does, e.g. having a List View option (which Steam unceremoniously junked several years ago in favor of their current mess).
I’m actually about to check out its ability to download standalone installers. I started a couple very big game downloads last night on my browser and they failed so I’m gonna see if the client can do better with stuff like resuming downloads.
Update: It looks like it’s handling the offline installers in game-by-game batches. I told it to download the offline installer for a game that if I used browser I’d have to download two files; it shows as just one item and one download in the client, and I verified that it actually does give me both files.
I thought the file splits are based on size? But maybe I’m wrong. The larger games I have also tend to be Windows-only anyway so maybe I just don’t know this stuff.
Oh, I see. That’s quite interesting. And I noticed that the Mac version is only split into 4 parts, with one clocking in at 11.6 GB (though others are capped at 4 GB).
I am trying to finally move from entirely depending on Google Photos to a proper backup strategy. I have my photos and videos downloaded from Google which are a mess right now but as long they’re with me I am fine, at least for now....
The fact that you have some sort of plan for managing your photos is one step ahead of me. I have no plans and my photos are a very messy collection.
I would caution against using a flash drive (a.k.a. pen drive) for any permanent storage. I’ve had multiple flash drives fail on me. Usually it’s this super cheap kind that gets distributed as branded swag, but I’ve had some others fail too.
I feel like the Steam Deck is the best proof of Gabe Newell's quote that "piracy is a service issue."
They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....
18+ Onlyfans and Piracy
I’m curious to know how Onlyfans has managed to thrive in the era of online free content and piracy....
Amazon and Tolkein Estate force author to destroy all copies of his work. Only pirated copies will survive. (variety.com)
Sites more likely to have obscure games
I’ve noticed that there’s generally good coverage of big-name games, and while that’s cool and all, there are still a ton of lesser-known games trapped exclusively on platforms like Steam. Anyone know what sites are more likely to have them?
It's funny how google pretends the music on YouTube isn't straight up piracy and everyone just goes along with it
Most people have extremely weird ideas of what’s considered piracy and what isn’t. Downloading a video game rom is piracy, but if you pay money to some Chinese retailer for an SD card containing the roms, that’s somehow not piracy. Exploiting the free trial on a streaming site by using prepaid visa cards is somehow not...
What happened to the PC games (or what happened to consoles)?
I got out of video game piracy for a while, but I’m coming back. One thing I have been absolutely SHOCKED by is how finding PC game torrents is actually kind of difficult from my normal sources. Now it’d be one thing if I just wasn’t seeing games, but for some reason Playstation and Switch have far more uploaders and...
How do you manage your photos and videos?
I am trying to finally move from entirely depending on Google Photos to a proper backup strategy. I have my photos and videos downloaded from Google which are a mess right now but as long they’re with me I am fine, at least for now....
Arrrrrrrrrr (lemmy.world)