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Paying for free software
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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This is all true, but it's interesting how people often forget another simple option: the software is commercial - it is simply sold on some website/store. Just like you can buy the game Mindustry on Steam, but it is Libre Software and even though you can get the build for free on GitHub and its itch.io page, people still pay for the Steam version. I wonder why people forget about this option, since it's probably the simplest one.
Of course, Steam is a proprietary, unethical platform, so I'm just using it as an example - I'm not saying we should sell there.
Tbf, of all unfair platforms, steam is one of the fairest. Humane at least.
Is it? On GOG you can download games without installing their proprietary client (there is also a libre alternative called Heroic Games Launcher, but that's made by the community). Itch has a libre client and it's also optional. Both those platforms don't put DRM in games, unlike Steam.
Steam has forced updates. This means that game developers can push an update that for example deletes content from your game and as far as I know, you can't really refuse it.
On a page of every game that is sold on Steam, you will see text that says "Buy". But I'm pretty sure their ToS says that you are only renting games from them. So they are misleading their users.
That's why I said "one of the fairest" and not "the fairest one". There's a whole lot of what steam does and other companies won't ever do, for instance, Proton. I am forever thankful for it especially, since it motivated me to give linux the second chance. Not to say, that this particular technology turned the whole OS table around.
Steam is not perfect by any means, but people behind it offering quite a fair deal both for the devs and especially for customers. There's basically no alternatives, bc steam has so much more to it than just storing your game library and being a game vendor.
Not actually owning games sucks, but find me a digital marketplace that doesn't say that you're only "renting" them or some other bullshit. Steam doesn't call it renting, rather, I quote, "As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware", where the subscriber is the word to call any user that has a steam account, nothing less nothing more: "You become a subscriber of Steam ("Subscriber") by completing the registration of a Steam user account." https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#1
Basically, this wording is a backdoor for them, in case their servers will be shut down and they won't be physically able to provide any game files. Yes, it opens some ways to exploit this, but unlike some other companies like Ubisoft, Valve never seem to use it this way. Also, torrents do exist, and guess what, they're DRM free, just as you like it, I assume. That's actually exactly why they should exist, imo: to preserve things.
Valve didn't invent Proton. As far as I understand, it's just a fork of WINE. I think the only difference is that it contains fixes for Steam versions of games. For non Steam games everyone uses WINE. I'm sure Proton is convenient for Steam users, though.
Since GOG and itch.io give you DRM-free offline installers of games, I believe that you do own the games that you buy there. I haven't read their ToS, though. It is possible that they say the same thing.
Thanks for finding the exact quote. They didn't use that word, but to me it sounds like renting. You have access to software as long as you are a subscriber. But I probably wouldn't mind this if their games didn't have DRM. Then, if at some point you stopped being a subscriber, you would still be able to play your games (at least the ones you've downloaded). Another interesting thing is that they can ban you for selling your Steam account. But before Steam became popular, it was usually possible to sell used games.
The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it's very difficult even for experts (Denuvo). If those games were Free Software, any programmer could remove DRM from them and distribute such modified copy. That's exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don't have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn't solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.
Oh no, Proton is not just "WINE with extra steps", Proton is the directX to Vulkan translator, and unlike previous attempts, its so good that some games perform better than on Windows. Not to mention that Valve managed to solve the problems around anti-cheats and all of this works with minimal tweaking. If it were as simple as you say, somebody should've already done their own proton before Valve, also, in this case there were no community forks of it, that allows to use its power without the need to launch Steam (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom). And yea, Proton is FOSS. Nice of them, to make a revolution and then just let the people actually have it, don't you think? If, for example, Take Two were like this, most of modern games could've had beautiful procedural character animations powered by Euphoria engine.
DRM is unethical indeed, yet, to use them or not is the choice of the dev. Ban modern DRMs today and what you'll achieve is that companies will try to squirm around and use something even more dirty. Also DRMs are already not the shittiest malware big companies trying to install on your machine, it would be anti-cheat. Why noone talks obout them? There are methods to detect cheaters without installing a rootkit spyware on all the end-users PCs.
Lol. Sorry, but the games and DRM are not why. The most important reason to it is that we're losing proprietary software's technologies. Technologies that might help advace our modern day of living. Also because what they're restricting is basically a knoledge, and knowledge shoud be free, not because your poor ass can't own their games.
And Proton is the example that Valve contributes to FOSS community, unlike literally every other major game company, even CDPR.
Thats not even all of it to why i stand on my point, Steam prices are also the most humane, especially if we mention all this bunch of sales steam is famous for. They were there from the beginning, even though they could've done something similar to PSN in terms of pricing policy, given that steam was and still kinda is de-facto monopoly, since other game stores on pc have only the fractions of steam's profits at the most.
But WINE does exactly that, it translates different Windows APIs. I've been using it to play games (including Steam games) way before Proton was released. It has existed for 30 years now. Proton came 25 years later and according to Wikipedia:
You can see for yourself that it uses WINE and other software that WINE also uses, like DXVK: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
If this is truly their achievement, then it is impressive.
If there is a revolution, then it seems that it's mostly an achievement of WINE, DXVK and other developers. It is great that Valve contributes to Free Software, though. But that doesn't change they fact that they also make proprietary software, which is unethical and they are doing it to attract people to their proprietary platform. WINE is licensed under a Copyleft LGPL license, so it's also possible that Valve had no other choice in this case. Since last I checked even SteamOS was proprietary, there are good reasons to doubt their intentions.
I talk about it, but most people don't care about stuff like that at all.
My argument was that people deserve to be able to control their computers and to do that, they need to be able to control the software. Your reason is very important too. You can watch Richard Stallman's talk for more: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM
That is true.
What you are saying is true, but before Steam became popular, it was possible to buy used games on physical media for cheap. Now even physical copies of PC games have Valve's DRM, so I blame Valve for destroying the used games market on PC (on consoles it still exists).
Maybe you're right and I'm romanticizing the evil there. I will remain thankful to Valve tho. I never managed to view proprietary saftware as something particularily evil, tbh, but rather as an annoying obstacle we should eventually overcome.
It's not easy to have freedom when you are a gamer. Steam and Epic Games Store are both proprietary (but for Epic you can use Heroic Games Launcher) and so are most games. There aren't that many libre games and maybe around 10 of them are good. I hope that will change in the future.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Ag1AKIl_2GM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Ironically, Steam is one of the platforms with the most free games, but yes, I hate it with all my heart, since many years ago I bought the game Portal on CD, to realize that it required a Steam account to be able to play it. Furthermore, the same thing happens with the other games they provide, adding that they require downloading the client, which is loaded along with the game, unnecessarily spending resources, apart from the fact that it is slow as hell to open. With GOG more of the same, apart from the fact that it bores you with spam emails, the worst EPIC, which also requires complete personal data for registration. I miss the old days, when you went to the store, bought the game CD and in peace.
I bought The Orange Box, so I had the same problem. All physical copies of games are like this now and Valve is the reason. That killed the used games market on PC. You used to be able to sell your game after you got bored of it, but not anymore.
GOG's client is proprietary just like Steam and Epic, which is bad, but the difference is that their client is optional. You can get offline installers of games directly from the website, because games there are DRM-free. So that makes GOG better than those platforms. There is also a Free Software alternative client developed by the community - Heroic Games Launcher. It works with Epic Games Store as well.
Another store is itch.io, which sells DRM-free games and their optional client is Free Software. But this store only has indie games.
The best example that comes to mind is Ardour, a FOSS digital audio workstation that charges for binaries. Their FAQ says
It’s a bit mixed in with the “pay for support” model, since you’re basically on your own if you build it yourself. Which probably makes support a lot easier, since there are fewer supported configurations. This seems like a pretty workable model for something as complex as Ardour, but idk how well it would work for simpler projects.
think it also helps that Ardor is used directly by individual users, and its proprietary competitors are often quite expensive. If you’re making something that already has a lot of “free as in beer” competition, this may be harder to pull off.
That is interesting! I had no idea, since it's packaged in Debian, so I was able to easily install it for free, without even knowing there is a paid version.
thanks. I forgot about that. But I'd like to add, that this models kind of feels like "donations with extra steps" to me. i.e. you can get it for free, but you choose to pay the developer even though you have to.
People can get proprietary software for free too, if they don't mind pirating it. It might be illegal and the risk of getting malware increases, but many people do it anyway. Sometimes it's even better than the original, because the pirated version won't have DRM.
So in practice nobody has to pay for any software, any movie, etc. People just choose to do it. In case of Free Software getting it for free is just easier and safer. In theory this might mean that there is less incentive to pay for it, but some projects that I've seen seem to be successful. Maybe people don't know they can get it for free, or it's too much effort, or they are simply fine with paying.