Any update on Steam?

[Extreme Coder]

Hi,
Some months ago, Michael said that Valve was porting the Source engine into Linux.

Is there any update on that?

[Dragonlord]

So far I heard nothing about it. Looks to me currently more like hype than something substantial but you never now. That said... Source on Linux would be good but Steam on Linux... that would be tragic.

[Extreme Coder]

So far I heard nothing about it. Looks to me currently more like hype than something substantial but you never now. That said... Source on Linux would be good but Steam on Linux... that would be tragic.
tragic? why is that?

[me262]

I'm guessing two possibilities to Dragonlord's hesitation.

1: This would bring DRM to the Linux platform. This is essentially the almost opposite ideology of the community, that it should be with no strings attached.
2: The same reason publishers say "use WINE" would stand for steam. No need to develop a native application when they can just develop the game for Steam.

Not to say that Steam wouldn't be a bad thing for the Linux gaming scene.

[Svartalf]

tragic? why is that?

The current anti-DRM stance. Of which, I agree with- but it's a problem of us tilting at too many things at once, in my opinion.

Which do you want?

Games on Linux?
No DRM whatsoever?

Choose one or the other, but you can't have both right at this time- it's just not going to happen. Moreover, if you have the first, you can be in a position to get them to wise up about the other, but you're not going to get the other from the second position unless all the Windows, MacOS, and Console sales all dry up as a result of DRM being in the mix.

[Svartalf]

1: This would bring DRM to the Linux platform. This is essentially the almost opposite ideology of the community, that it should be with no strings attached.


This is the likely position, really, because...


2: The same reason publishers say "use WINE" would stand for steam. No need to develop a native application when they can just develop the game for Steam.


Steam is a content delivery and DRM platform- nothing else. If you make Steam for Linux, you need to have winelib or pure native titles to run under it. Steam won't make WINE like translation layers for you.

[xav1r]

The current anti-DRM stance. Of which, I agree with- but it's a problem of us tilting at too many things at once, in my opinion.

Which do you want?

Games on Linux?
No DRM whatsoever?

Choose one or the other, but you can't have both right at this time- it's just not going to happen. Moreover, if you have the first, you can be in a position to get them to wise up about the other, but you're not going to get the other from the second position unless all the Windows, MacOS, and Console sales all dry up as a result of DRM being in the mix.

If i may disagree, I think you can have both. Or at least a different kind of DRM. One that isnt really DRM. Im working on such a workaround. :D

[grantek]

Steam is a content delivery and DRM platform- nothing else.
Exactly - it's an application, and although I have issues with DRM in general, calling home with a CD key is a pretty non-intrusive way of doing it if you must.

I think it'd be a huge benefit to see non-Windows platforms represented in Valve's software/hardware surveys though, where Wine has traditionally masked them :)

[panda84]

tragic? why is that?

Forgetting the DRM for a moment i should say that on my system it uses *tons* of RAM and that it has caused me several headaches:
- back when I got a 56KB connection I spent more than 2 hours to get my original Half Life 2 copy to install;
- it crashes and burns from time to time (well, roughly 20% of the times);
- another time I wanted to start HL2 after more than a year I didn't played it Steam gave me a weird error that prevented the game to update. And if you don't update you can't play. I had to search the forums, delete some configuration files, reboot, dance, swim, pray, start steam, update, start half life, wait 3 minutes and then I can finally play.

Pleasing experience all in all... :mad:

So I personally rate Steam as one of the best crapware™ ever shipped by a software house (just after Windows ME and before the Norton Antivirus "make my Athlon XP behave like a 386" version).

[Extreme Coder]

Still, you have to admit that Steam on Linux would mean a lot of games for Linux, which we really need ATM ;) And it would convince other publishers to make Linux games..

[Svartalf]

- back when I got a 56KB connection I spent more than 2 hours to get my original Half Life 2 copy to install;


This is problem one with Steam, or any other online delivery system.

The stuff only really works when you've got something resembling broadband- and ISDN/IDSL doesn't count... Dialup breaks a lot of things upon the wheel because most developers when they do network-centric stuff don't take into account evil latencies and other similar problems when you talk dialup or slow always-on connections.


- another time I wanted to start HL2 after more than a year I didn't played it Steam gave me a weird error that prevented the game to update. And if you don't update you can't play. I had to search the forums, delete some configuration files, reboot, dance, swim, pray, start steam, update, start half life, wait 3 minutes and then I can finally play.


Most of this was because of a bug combined with your being on dialup. The problem would probably have taken seconds on a high-speed link. Note, this is not excusing it or me not agreeing with you that it was a seriously crappy experience- Valve ought to do better than they did there with it. One should ALWAYS test something like this with dialup and find problems like the ones you encountered.


So I personally rate Steam as one of the best crapware™ ever shipped by a software house (just after Windows ME and before the Norton Antivirus "make my Athlon XP behave like a 386" version).

Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET. ;)

[deanjo]

Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET. ;)

Sorry but MS BOB is the worst crapware™ ever.

[Svartalf]

Sorry but MS BOB is the worst crapware™ ever.

Heh... I might buy that line of thought... :D

[Dragonlord]

tragic? why is that?
As mentioned DRM and other things... I'll elaborate.

Choose one or the other, but you can't have both right at this time- it's just not going to happen. Moreover, if you have the first, you can be in a position to get them to wise up about the other, but you're not going to get the other from the second position unless all the Windows, MacOS, and Console sales all dry up as a result of DRM being in the mix.
It's true that both at the same time is a problem but there is one problem with your solution. Once they have Linux with DRM do you really think they step down and weaken or even remove the DRM over time? Sorry, I'm a realist in this situation and I predict that if this happens DRM will be thightened more and more until the Linux people like the Windows ones stop buying and pirating like it happens right now on Windows. If let DRM into the system it's like a cancer... you are never ever going to evict it from the system anymore. Money rules... and kills :O

If i may disagree, I think you can have both. Or at least a different kind of DRM. One that isnt really DRM. Im working on such a workaround.
Mind elaborating? I spend quite some time thinking about this DRM mess on Linux while working on my game engine especially since some potential users stated concerns in this direction. Now over the course of all my thinkings and mind-testing I came to the conclusion that ( for SP only ) there exists no DRM system that is not crackable but still annoys ( or let's say criminalize ) the legit customer. If somebody comes up with a solution that works, be my guest, but so far I'm positive it's not possible.

Pleasing experience all in all...
Double this. I can confirm these troubles with flat rate and broadband so it is NOT a dial up only problem but a general one. That said steam is annoying to work with. I've been involved in a beta ( and had some chats with devs since I'm in the same boat ) and the system had been rather hostile to a solid beta testing and bug hunting. This started with update dramas and ended up with random crashes which could not been reproduced since steam simply fucked something up somewhere in the pipeline. Support they said from the side of Valve is good but the delivery platform is shit. Anyways... I had also to deal with the Source SDK once for making some modding tool ( god knows why I had been so stupid to EVER ACCEPTED THIS TASK!!! ) and steam had been the biggest rock on the road. Not only did it notoriously break my SDK installation it also randomly rejected to run it at all ( crowning the madness with a crash right after complaining ). Yeah... < sarcasm >the experiences with steam are really very pleasant < / sarcasm > <.=.<

[Dragonlord]

Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET. ;)
Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Of course this one is the king of crapiness. Against this Steam is a saint :D

[xav1r]

Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.

Can you elaborate why? I would like have precise arguments when im critizing vista. :) But, seriously, why, i've heard that the 64bit flavor of vista is actually very good.

[RealNC]

My take on Vista is that it does not offer anything that XP couldn't. The only reason for it to exist is that MS needs to sell a new major product every few years.

[panda84]

Most of this was because of a bug combined with your being on dialup. The problem would probably have taken seconds on a high-speed link. Note, this is not excusing it or me not agreeing with you that it was a seriously crappy experience- Valve ought to do better than they did there with it. One should ALWAYS test something like this with dialup and find problems like the ones you encountered.

Well, I already switched to ADSL back when I reinstalled HL2 for the second time. It worked for some time, then I abandoned it for a year or so, and then tried to run it again.

The result was "This game is currently unavailable" (http://supportwiki.steampowered.com/wiki/Steam_Error:_This_game_is_currently_unavailable). For a moment I thought it was a bad joke but it wasn't! :D



Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET. ;)

Didn't ever used it, that's why it's not on my list. :D:D:D

[Dragonlord]

Besides the fact that Vista kills any sane application ( especially games ) it is the most cumbersome to use OS in existence. And then all this stupid security systems pretending to protect the user but in fact they hinder you all the time doing daily work but when a malicious soft comes around it happely grants full system access without a second though ( reminds me on DRM on games: hinders legal customers and pirates still can do how they please ). Then there is this OpenGL hating. Granted it got "relieved" a bit but still M$ tries to screw over OGL on Vista. Then the Areo shitness. I showed various people the out-of-the-box Vista desktop with all the shit blinking left and right leaving you fucking guessing what happens next if you click anywhere and an out-of-the-box Kubunutu. Guess what they considered "user friendly"... a hint... it has not been Vista.

So all in all it's a major league failure. I have Vista on my laptop besides Gentoo since I have to test my apps with Vista too not only XP ( and belief me... I don't like this ). It's one hell of a cancer on your system.

[Svartalf]

Can you elaborate why? I would like have precise arguments when im critizing vista. :) But, seriously, why, i've heard that the 64bit flavor of vista is actually very good.

Vista doesn't bring anything to the table that XP doesn't already bring, save DRM, and it's twice as bloated as XP.

Furthermore, the device layer "redesign" causes no end to misery and is part of the source of the 40% overall degredation in performance. Moreover, you NEED 4Gb of RAM to bring it to the same levels of performance XP obtained with 2Gb- and Linux does with 1Gb.

It's not secure like they claim it is.
It's not stable like they claim it is.
It requires a top-end gamer-class machine to be usable at normal levels.

[Svartalf]

So all in all it's a major league failure. I have Vista on my laptop besides Gentoo since I have to test my apps with Vista too not only XP ( and belief me... I don't like this ). It's one hell of a cancer on your system.

Heh... I just simply popped open the DVD drive with a paper clip and it never saw Vista booted by myself...ever. My friends keep having to re-install and they keep grousing to themselves about why this and why that- XP didn't do this to them and they don't want to hear my, "I blame it on Bill" remark... ;)

[Svartalf]

It's true that both at the same time is a problem but there is one problem with your solution. Once they have Linux with DRM do you really think they step down and weaken or even remove the DRM over time? Sorry, I'm a realist in this situation and I predict that if this happens DRM will be thightened more and more until the Linux people like the Windows ones stop buying and pirating like it happens right now on Windows. If let DRM into the system it's like a cancer... you are never ever going to evict it from the system anymore. Money rules... and kills :O


Then the tragedy has already occurred.

iD does it.
Epic does it.
S2 does it.
Hothead does it.

All studios in question have provided DRMed content for Linux and NOBODY caught that it was there- which it is. If you use your line of thinking, it's already too late and you'll never be rid of it. Which is bogus. In years past on the old, old IBM PC, and on things like the Apple 400/800 or the Commodore 64, they had proto-DRM on those platforms as well. That and the e-book crowd's finding out that if it's not actually like a paper book, people don't want it- DRM prevents it, so there's few takers. Franklin, in fact, was driven out of the PDA market as a result of THEIR DRM crap. It comes and goes over time. Right now, it's the big rage because of a BUNCH of snake oil salespeople have them all convinced that piracy is lost revenue (which can't be really proven except at the extreme end of it...) and all the media people think they must control ALL aspects of everything people do with their stuff because "being the gatekeeper is the source of the revenue..." which is how it used to be with things. Eventually, people will be fed up with it like they were with the old prior attempts of doing it and like it was in the past, it'll fade away, with them hoping that people won't remember that they tried to treat their potential customers like thieves.

[Thetargos]

My take on Steam:

Don't know if it is still being worked on or not, of if even Valve ever got to work on it or not. Beyond that, my opinion of the thing is that it is useful as a delivery system and launching platform. Other than that all the calling home business and requiring users to be on-line in the first place is what I dislike the most about it. The way I see it, commercial software is entitled to assure that their copies are legal and try to prevent illegally obtained copies from working. However that entitlement doesn't give the producers/publishers/developers of that software the liberty of hindering people's rights or entitlement for using other software, which would seem like it is the whole deal with modern day DRM. If Steam is only the gate-keeper (doing the validation [locally preferably]) so people can run those titles which are protected with such measure (acting as a launching platform), I don't see any major wrong-doing in that. However the potential it has of doing stuff (bad stuff) behind your back when you're not looking is (in my opinion) what has most people angry about it (and the fact that it also has proven to be not all that reliable). The way I see Steam is similar to what GameSpy used to be years ago: A middle ware, that would organize and categorize your installed, allows you to search servers for on-line games (mostly the purpose of GS back then) and launch the games connecting to the specified servers. Additionally Steam can also act as a delivery system so that On-Line content can be directly obtained from a "central location", installed and then launched (and if protected, validated). Steam seems to already do all these things, however for some reason it doesn't seem to be all that reliable when doing them, is crash prone and above all, it's gained peoples suspicions about it and it doing things behind their backs.


My take on this crapware side-talk:

While I do agree that Steam seems to be one such product, it has proven that at least there is a market for on-line delivery systems and that they can not only be profitable, but also massive. However, its implementation is what has gained it its crapware status. On the other hand, we have much more intrusive, offensive and harmful crapware that is said (and some people believe it) to be necessary. The first that comes to mind is Norton, which not only has been the hegemonic resource hog, but also which fails at doing what it is supposed to do. Then would be the lamest excuse of an OS ever conceived: Windows Millennium Edition, which failed critically at being anything like WinNT and Win9x and it only succeeded at being the fastest booting (to a crash) OS, not to mention its mental instability and identity crisis. Then I'd have to count MSO as crapware as well, even though it kind of works. If anything it succeeded at subjugating the world to Microsoft's feet by making the world slave of their single file formats, from a single software vendor (even though many resisted and insisted on using RTF for years, in the end it proved to be futile). It also became an attack vector and has been riddled with endless issues over the years (heck, there has been bugs since version 8 still found in version 12!)... And then, we have Vista... Windows Millennium Reloaded Edition. Though intrinsically much better than ME at the core, there are just too many things that went wrong with the OS that Microsoft should have really held off until it was really ready. One year and a Service Pack later, it is barely usable on fairly decent hardware, not to mention it IS still very annoying... Simple tasks suddenly became herculean and cumbersome, and what used to take a few seconds on XP now can amount for several minutes. Security became annoying, almost an undesirable thing to have, and still on 32-bits, the system is restricted on 3Gb for user-space apps and 1Gb for system resources split of RAM. I'd thought that by this time and age, Microsoft would have made their consumer OS (at the very least, their Ultimate edition) PAE compatible. I guess that's a privilege reserved for their server editions only (which I know for a fact that DO support PAE).

There's much more crapware out there like Outlook Express (which still holds a special place in my heart... for hating it), responsible for more malware distribution/installation that any other program in the history of computing, or AOL and MSN IM clients, which have also done their part.

[xav1r]

Then the tragedy has already occurred.

iD does it.
Epic does it.
S2 does it.
Hothead does it.

All studios in question have provided DRMed content for Linux and NOBODY caught that it was there- which it is. If you use your line of thinking, it's already too late and you'll never be rid of it. Which is bogus. In years past on the old, old IBM PC, and on things like the Apple 400/800 or the Commodore 64, they had proto-DRM on those platforms as well. That and the e-book crowd's finding out that if it's not actually like a paper book, people don't want it- DRM prevents it, so there's few takers. Franklin, in fact, was driven out of the PDA market as a result of THEIR DRM crap. It comes and goes over time. Right now, it's the big rage because of a BUNCH of snake oil salespeople have them all convinced that piracy is lost revenue (which can't be really proven except at the extreme end of it...) and all the media people think they must control ALL aspects of everything people do with their stuff because "being the gatekeeper is the source of the revenue..." which is how it used to be with things. Eventually, people will be fed up with it like they were with the old prior attempts of doing it and like it was in the past, it'll fade away, with them hoping that people won't remember that they tried to treat their potential customers like thieves.


What kind of DRM is present in the id and epic games that run on linux? Do they have CD checks and/or a safedisc sort of driver? I dont know, i dont play their recent games.

[Svartalf]

What kind of DRM is present in the id and epic games that run on linux? Do they have CD checks and/or a safedisc sort of driver? I dont know, i dont play their recent games.

DRM comes in many forms. In this case, they've got CD-key authentication checks from what I understand... Legit in most people's eyes- but they're still DRM. It's "little" DRM. Much like the largely non-obtrusive stuff you find in Penny Arcade Adventures or Savage 2. It's still there, most people don't notice it all the same.

[remm]

So I personally rate Steam as one of the best crapware™ ever shipped by a software house (just after Windows ME and before the Norton Antivirus "make my Athlon XP behave like a 386" version).

Well, it did improve, and I think it's very fine when you consider the sort of really scary DRM that sometimes comes with games on DVDs. Personally, I am willing to use some proprietary end user apps, it's the kernel stuff that I am squarely against (as they cn compromise secuity, stability, and support in future Linux versions with no hope of fixing it).

[Dragonlord]

Then the tragedy has already occurred.

iD does it.
Epic does it.
S2 does it.
Hothead does it.

All studios in question have provided DRMed content for Linux and NOBODY caught that it was there- which it is. If you use your line of thinking, it's already too late and you'll never be rid of it. Which is bogus. In years past on the old, old IBM PC, and on things like the Apple 400/800 or the Commodore 64, they had proto-DRM on those platforms as well. That and the e-book crowd's finding out that if it's not actually like a paper book, people don't want it- DRM prevents it, so there's few takers. Franklin, in fact, was driven out of the PDA market as a result of THEIR DRM crap. It comes and goes over time. Right now, it's the big rage because of a BUNCH of snake oil salespeople have them all convinced that piracy is lost revenue (which can't be really proven except at the extreme end of it...) and all the media people think they must control ALL aspects of everything people do with their stuff because "being the gatekeeper is the source of the revenue..." which is how it used to be with things. Eventually, people will be fed up with it like they were with the old prior attempts of doing it and like it was in the past, it'll fade away, with them hoping that people won't remember that they tried to treat their potential customers like thieves.

You've got a point there. I do though usually not use this kind of games on my machine. The latest one I bought did not have any DRM attached... which is ( besides others ) WHY I bought it... you see... no DRM = more money :D

[Svartalf]

You've got a point there. I do though usually not use this kind of games on my machine. The latest one I bought did not have any DRM attached... which is ( besides others ) WHY I bought it... you see... no DRM = more money :D

Heh... You're preaching to the choir here. I would rather do without DRM if you want my take on things. Unfortunately, there's those that have the "cool" stuff we want and they're not clued-in on the whole "DRM is a bad idea" thing yet. You want those titles...you get DRM right now. Besides, DRM is more of a cyclical fad. Before it was Macrovision type controls, etc. on the stuff. Now it's crypto and other garbage. Pretty much all of the stuff's worthless without something like a Wibu key or similar dongle. Anything else is highly obnoxious and even too many keys are obnoxious. Make it too obnoxious and people will just not buy. Look at the push-back on Spore to see what I'm getting at. :D

Honestly, if I could get leads on a bunch of good A/AAA content indie titles and then get them to work with us on simultaneous release (no matter who publishes the Windows version...) for Linux, I would help those studios get it out there.

[me262]

DRM comes in many forms. In this case, they've got CD-key authentication checks from what I understand... Legit in most people's eyes- but they're still DRM. It's "little" DRM. Much like the largely non-obtrusive stuff you find in Penny Arcade Adventures or Savage 2. It's still there, most people don't notice it all the same.
That explains why I can run UT2k4 without it's CD...
I still think we need to push some kind of physical CD check. Be it in the kernel, reporting what type of media it is, or an application that verifies the disc information and/or layout.

[Dragonlord]

No sense. Anything can be hacked. The main problem with DRM is ( not only in the Linux world... in Windows it's too just not so openly spoken about ) that just have to alter code at the right place to nullify the checks. The most classic example are the above mentioned CD checks. The old trick is to NOP out the check in the EXE and you are done. Another old trick in the hat which devers seem to never learn are serials. It just takes one guy to disassemble the verify code and woopie we have another key-gen which renders your serial check code futile. Granted todays DRMs are more sophisticated but the problem is the same. In the worst case you memory hack the bitch ( most prominent example the CS:S memory hack shown on myg0t once upon time ). The only thing that can help is calling home and obtaining a key or other verification. But again there we have problems since it relies on secrecy. As we know from cryptography security based on secrecy of the algorithm is worth nothing. The old coder wisdom for MMOs applies here too: the client machine has to be considered completely unreliable and compromiseable. So anything arriving at your end coming from a client is possibly fudged. And once somebody finds out how to verifiably fudge data to fake being a legit copy you lost another DRM round. The end result is that simply all and every DRM out there can be cracked so why wasting money on it in the first place.

[Thetargos]

No sense. Anything can be hacked. The main problem with DRM is ( not only in the Linux world... in Windows it's too just not so openly spoken about ) that just have to alter code at the right place to nullify the checks. The most classic example are the above mentioned CD checks. The old trick is to NOP out the check in the EXE and you are done. Another old trick in the hat which devers seem to never learn are serials. It just takes one guy to disassemble the verify code and woopie we have another key-gen which renders your serial check code futile. Granted todays DRMs are more sophisticated but the problem is the same. In the worst case you memory hack the bitch ( most prominent example the CS:S memory hack shown on myg0t once upon time ). The only thing that can help is calling home and obtaining a key or other verification. But again there we have problems since it relies on secrecy. As we know from cryptography security based on secrecy of the algorithm is worth nothing. The old coder wisdom for MMOs applies here too: the client machine has to be considered completely unreliable and compromiseable. So anything arriving at your end coming from a client is possibly fudged. And once somebody finds out how to verifiably fudge data to fake being a legit copy you lost another DRM round. The end result is that simply all and every DRM out there can be cracked so why wasting money on it in the first place.

Nicely worded there, Dragon.

They do not waste any money, they pass those costs to the consumers who are the ones paying for those failed technologies in the end, and being treated as criminals, while pirates go rampant. But let us not derail this thread into those darkened corners of the informatic world (yet again). I think pretty much we all agree on the idea that DRM is bad, and the fact that there are people who want it all for free (and do so) is equally bad. If we really want to stop this piracy spree in Linux, I do believe that (much easier said than done) the Linux gaming community should come together and promote buying legally obtained copies of those games we currently have available to really support the efforts from them who actually work on the stuff and bring us more games. The problem at its root is an educational problem... And a sociological one too (as more Windows power-hacker users are drawn to Linux, who not necessarily use it for the freedom (liberty) it represents, but rather because they can have a whole load of stuff for free (gratis). We are seeing a LOT of Windows pirates turn to Linux, but still pirate those few commercial goods we have available (talk about shooting oneself on the foot, or spitting to the sky). Linux (and Open Source in general), most of us know is not about getting things at no cost or charge, but about the liberty of use and code reuse and openness. Many seem to confuse these two similar, yet fundamentally different concepts about Open Source in general and Linux in particular.

[Chris]

Well, it did improve, and I think it's very fine when you consider the sort of really scary DRM that sometimes comes with games on DVDs.
I still find it odd that Steam requires a bittorrent client running in the background to run any games you've gotten from the "service" (yes, Steam uses bittorrent to handle transfers). Why can't you just run the apps normally without Steam, allowing for more available resources, better performance, and a more pleasing game experience?

..oh, right..

[panda84]

Well, it did improve [cut]

Except for the 56KB problem the issues that I listed were all recent: I installed HL2 just two months ago.

[divideoverflow]

My two cents:

This whole discussion over copy protection is all well and good, but developers are jumping ship to consoles due to rampant software piracy. This problem does not concern just Linux, but Windows and MacOS as well. Software copy protection is here to stay, and it has been for more than twenty years.

As for Steam, I love it. I really don't like the idea of my money going into a system that could disappear at any time, but it brings to commercial gaming something that open source has had for years. . repositories. I don't have to worry about hunting for a Half Life 2 ISO because my DVD is lost or destroyed. Although I cant recall having any problems I imagine that it could go down at times, and the software could be better, but the benefits Steam provides are excellent. Not to mention Valve's hosting is typically pretty damn fast, too. I've seen sustained speeds of 1 megabyte per second. Which brings me to my next point. .

Lastly. . ISDN? Dial-up? Are you kidding? I guess if you live in rural Kentucky or Tennessee, perhaps your broadband options may be limited. Even if limited some exotic connections can still be had in rural areas. A brother in law I have in Kentucky subscribes to a WiFi ISP. The company mounts a high gain directional antenna on a subscriber's property, and aims it at a service tower. This gets around signal propagation issues caused by the high 2.4ghz frequency, and it works pretty well. As long as the antennas have direct line of sight, the signal can go for miles.

For the majority of of the world population however, Cable/DSL/Fiber broadband has been a fixture of Internet access for up to a decade. Cable modems were deployed in my area in 1998. My only use for a dialup modem these days is for Caller ID.

[panda84]

Lastly. . ISDN? Dial-up? Are you kidding? I guess if you live in rural Kentucky or Tennessee, perhaps your broadband options may be limited. Even if limited some exotic connections can still be had in rural areas. A brother in law I have in Kentucky subscribes to a WiFi ISP. The company mounts a high gain directional antenna on a subscriber's property, and aims it at a service tower. This gets around signal propagation issues caused by the high 2.4ghz frequency, and it works pretty well. As long as the antennas have direct line of sight, the signal can go for miles.

For the majority of of the world population however, Cable/DSL/Fiber broadband has been a fixture of Internet access for up to a decade. Cable modems were deployed in my area in 1998. My only use for a dialup modem these days is for Caller ID.

:D:D:D:D:D

Well, in Italy the situation is quite different!

ADSL started to appear roughly in 2000, but it wasn't for everyone.

I remember it costing ~30€ a month (more or less 45 USD) 3-4 years ago for a 640Kbit down / 256 Kbit up.

Still nowadays it costs no less than 20€ (30 USD) for a 2Mbit-7Mbit down / 320 Kbit up.

In 2007 only 14% of the population had access to broadband at home, and still nowadays there's no broadband access everywhere. At just 2km away from my home there's no ADSL at all!! And it's a really big and populated area!

So keep in mind that the world is not just USA. ;-)

P.S.: In Italy and maybe (not sure) in the whole Europe we barely know what "cable TV" is...

[Chris]

This whole discussion over copy protection is all well and good, but developers are jumping ship to consoles due to rampant software piracy. This problem does not concern just Linux, but Windows and MacOS as well. Software copy protection is here to stay, and it has been for more than twenty years.
So just lay down and accept it? Sorry, but if I buy I game, I expect to be able to play it for as long as I have it, not at the whim of some company who may or may not think I'm a criminal, or at the whim of some server's up-time (this carries over to normal online games with company-controlled servers as well.. much prefer single player games, or at least the ability to host your own server).

As for Steam, I love it. I really don't like the idea of my money going into a system that could disappear at any time, but it brings to commercial gaming something that open source has had for years. . repositories. I don't have to worry about hunting for a Half Life 2 ISO because my DVD is lost or destroyed.
Steam is a great idea, botched up horribly. If it didn't require itself to be running to play any of its games (could you imagine having to have portage running and active to play a game on Gentoo?), and didn't assume guilt-over-innocense, my problems with it would be vastly diminished.

Lastly. . ISDN? Dial-up? Are you kidding? I guess if you live in rural Kentucky or Tennessee, perhaps your broadband options may be limited. Even if limited some exotic connections can still be had in rural areas. A brother in law I have in Kentucky subscribes to a WiFi ISP. The company mounts a high gain directional antenna on a subscriber's property, and aims it at a service tower. This gets around signal propagation issues caused by the high 2.4ghz frequency, and it works pretty well. As long as the antennas have direct line of sight, the signal can go for miles.
As mentioned, not everywhere in the world is so "connected". I didn't get away from 33.6kbps dial-up (on crappy phone-lines that liked dropping calls) until after 2001 when I moved. Even if we could, we simply didn't have the money to afford the cost of broadband. And personally, I'd love to live in an area with few residents (an thus having lower chances of "high-speed" connections). I'd still like some connection, but it doesn't need to be OMGFAST Cable/FiOS.

[Methylene]

Still, you have to admit that Steam on Linux would mean a lot of games for Linux, which we really need ATM ;) And it would convince other publishers to make Linux games..

Why would Steam on Linux mean lots of games? The whole DRM argument... Well I think some software is just fine closed source, I think some games are worth paying for... It is only their right to protect investors.

At any rate... People don't target Linux systems for a reason... Most gamers think windows is it for gaming. That may be a vast over-generalization... But look at the n00bs you find in games these days... Look at PotC Online... I mean srsly it's a bunch of n00bs shellin out thousands of dollars their parents give them for games and hardware.

I'm glad id releases their titles for open gl and maintains linux binaries... But I hear even they have been growing lax on it.

I think we could turn the ball here in a little bit. Make windows unnecessary as a host system through wine and some serious advancements in virtualization, and make a gamer's distro that is all sparkly and makes them think their 5k machine was worth it. Then let OpenGL NOT bomb ... hopefully, and team up with AMD in efforts to really push the limits of their hardware. I mean seriously... 3 extremely hacked g280s is what it takes to beat a single 4870x2? Mind you those hax could be duplicated on the amd side when the Stream SDK stuff gets up to speed... What would happen then? Obliteration.

Enter the game engine that is practically run completely on gfx hardware. 2.4 Tflops for 500 bucks... Man I wish I had more monies... ah well I have a 3870...

[me262]

No sense. Anything can be hacked. The main problem with DRM is ( not only in the Linux world... in Windows it's too just not so openly spoken about ) that just have to alter code at the right place to nullify the checks. The most classic example are the above mentioned CD checks. The old trick is to NOP out the check in the EXE and you are done. Another old trick in the hat which devers seem to never learn are serials. It just takes one guy to disassemble the verify code and woopie we have another key-gen which renders your serial check code futile. Granted todays DRMs are more sophisticated but the problem is the same. In the worst case you memory hack the bitch ( most prominent example the CS:S memory hack shown on myg0t once upon time ). The only thing that can help is calling home and obtaining a key or other verification. But again there we have problems since it relies on secrecy. As we know from cryptography security based on secrecy of the algorithm is worth nothing. The old coder wisdom for MMOs applies here too: the client machine has to be considered completely unreliable and compromiseable. So anything arriving at your end coming from a client is possibly fudged. And once somebody finds out how to verifiably fudge data to fake being a legit copy you lost another DRM round. The end result is that simply all and every DRM out there can be cracked so why wasting money on it in the first place.
First off, my apologies for not replying to this sooner. I haven't been at the forums in a few days.

Second, a point of DRM is to prevent everyone and their grandmother from copying the game and spreading it around (just ask Svartalf about that ratio). The torrent sites aren't the only place to get copies of the recent games, they're just the most popular. This way, a game with DRM limits it's cracking to the underground crackers. Downloading doesn't gurantee a 1:1 copy either, it just gives you the game data with the crack on it.

Third, doesn't Apple use some form of code obfuscation? I wonder what we can to do implement that...

I still like the disc-type kernel extension. it's a simple enough check for games to implement, and during the install it's a simple enough check to see if the kernel is configured with it.

[Dragonlord]

Downloading gives you a 1:1 copy of the game relevant data. CD-Check type DRM adds special sectors to CDs or append to game data but it does not alter the game data ( as else the game would not work anymore ). CD-Check removers simply disable the checks altogether so the CD-Check related data is of no interest. No 1:1 copy required there since you need only a game data 1:1 copy... and that is easy doable with anything... even cdrecord <.=.< .

About code obfuscation... Sooner or later a CMP has to be done and a JE or company. No matter how much you obfuscate the actual checking at one point you have to test for truth... and this is where crackers apply the crowbar. The chain always breaks at the weakest link, that's the prime attack pattern. If you can't de-obfuscate the code... bypass it directly. And if this doesn't work there is for sure another weak link somewhere down the line. For the records I know no game out there ( of high enough interest by gamers that is ) that has not been cracked on eway or the other.

What goes for the kernel: no. You can compile a kernel to not tell about it's configuration. This is a reasonable solution for some people. So if a kernel does not tell it's secrets... how know it has not been tampered with? And even if the kernel can tell you in all times how can you be sure somebody did not tamper with the kernel code in question changing the code yet make it tell the outside world it's in unmodified form? This is one of the major reasons I did not include any kind of DRM into my game engine since no matter how good you are people can possible imposter a service along the chain faking output to look valid. And a "tainted" kernel using a binary blob is not much better ( besides we have there the same problem as with CD-Checks... only worse since once cracked ALL games are cracked not just one ).

[dashcloud]

I still find it odd that Steam requires a bittorrent client running in the background to run any games you've gotten from the "service" (yes, Steam uses bittorrent to handle transfers). Why can't you just run the apps normally without Steam, allowing for more available resources, better performance, and a more pleasing game experience?

..oh, right..


Well, there are some games you could run without Steam, but unless you like actual old-school games, you're not going to be playing them. I'm pretty sure any of the games that use DOSBOX to run could be played without Steam.

[divideoverflow]

So just lay down and accept it? Sorry, but if I buy I game, I expect to be able to play it for as long as I have it, not at the whim of some company who may or may not think I'm a criminal, or at the whim of some server's up-time (this carries over to normal online games with company-controlled servers as well.. much prefer single player games, or at least the ability to host your own server).I never said to accept it, or to lie down. I hate it just as much as you do, but like I said. . it's been here for decades, isn't going away, and even with copy protection new games are shifting to consoles where using even legitimately copied games is more of a hassle.


Steam is a great idea, botched up horribly. If it didn't require itself to be running to play any of its games (could you imagine having to have portage running and active to play a game on Gentoo?), and didn't assume guilt-over-innocense, my problems with it would be vastly diminished.I can't agree with it being botched horribly as I have had almost no issues with it. I've actually had more issues with Source games themselves than Steam. As for Steam running in the background, I am not aware of it doing much else but sitting there. I know that Bram Cohen joined Valve, and I did find a reference to Steam using something similar to Bittorrent for voice chat and downloads, but I have not seen any instance where I have suffered from bandwidth saturation from Steam. When poking around though, I did find that there are some hidden P2P settings in Steam. a screenshot of which is here:

http://aiusepsi.co.uk/steamp2p.png

I also do not like how tightly the games are controlled, and I do see references to other people not being able to play because of Steam not being able to connect. I wasn't aware of it because I've never encountered the problem. . and you're right, thats complete bull.


As mentioned, not everywhere in the world is so "connected". I didn't get away from 33.6kbps dial-up (on crappy phone-lines that liked dropping calls) until after 2001 when I moved. Even if we could, we simply didn't have the money to afford the cost of broadband. And personally, I'd love to live in an area with few residents (an thus having lower chances of "high-speed" connections). I'd still like some connection, but it doesn't need to be OMGFAST Cable/FiOS. I personally would love to move to Alaska with all the snow and mountains. . or to the Midwest, where there are no trees or buildings blocking your view of the horizon. The biggest stopper for me however would be broadband. I think that is true of everyone here. There is nothing that can easily be done about this however, and it does not affect the vast majority of the world population. Besides, most of the games that are on Steam have had disc distribution.

[Extreme Coder]

Well, there are some games you could run without Steam, but unless you like actual old-school games, you're not going to be playing them. I'm pretty sure any of the games that use DOSBOX to run could be played without Steam.
Not sure what you mean...

[Chris]

I never said to accept it, or to lie down. I hate it just as much as you do, but like I said. . it's been here for decades, isn't going away, and even with copy protection new games are shifting to consoles where using even legitimately copied games is more of a hassle.
Copy protection/access prevention may have been around for decades, but nothing like we have now. If you were to go back 10 or 15 years and dumped something like Steam on people, you'd probably get a riot on your hands. Needing a CD key or checking the manual for a specific word is a far cry from having to validate with the company at every launch of the app, requiring buggy and insecure device drivers, or having otherwise unneeded background apps running (I remember when Win95 came out.. I still liked playing games in DOS mode so I didn't have Windows in the background sucking up resources; I only ran games in Windows when I didn't want to reboot or when it required Windows).

I can't agree with it being botched horribly as I have had almost no issues with it.
Botched in concept. As a central game distribution/patching/etc program, it's fine. But as a vehicle for draconian DRM schemes, unnecessary requirements, etc, it fails pretty hard.

I personally would love to move to Alaska with all the snow and mountains. . or to the Midwest, where there are no trees or buildings blocking your view of the horizon. The biggest stopper for me however would be broadband.
The only way to really get broadband is by being in a populated area, and if that happens, it kinda defeats the purpose of going there as a somewhat secluded getaway.

[Dragonlord]

@divideoverflow: I assume you never had to "work" with steam or source in any way. The problems are numerous ranging from steam killing entire games by doing incorrect updates, not being able to redownload games since steam is "stuck" somewhere thinking it's installed but then again not and fuck shit, over SDK dying all the time killing your projects too over to rallying your CPU up to 100% for not fucking sane reason.

As mentioned, good idea, horrible execution.

[divideoverflow]

Copy protection/access prevention may have been around for decades, but nothing like we have now. If you were to go back 10 or 15 years and dumped something like Steam on people, you'd probably get a riot on your hands.
As for dumping Steam on people 10 to 15 years ago, don't forget that Internet access was not nearly as common back then either, and neither was piracy. Most piracy took place between people that knew each other, and P2P networks were a gleam in Shawn Fanning's eye. You can't deny that the threshold for preventing piracy is much higher than it was 10 or 15 years ago. You go back that far, and aside from large companies or schools, everyone was on dial-up. Games on CD were becoming common in those days, but burners were not. If you did have a burner and you were willing to pay for the expensive CD-Rs of the time, and you were lucky enough to find a fast FTP or website, had a ISP that looked the other way on their alt.binaries newsgroups, or knew of an IRC chatroom with Fserves hosted on connections that could supply 48Kbps to your modem, and whatever piracy source you found actually had what you were looking for, then you could download a CD in a bit more than a day. Thats a lot of Ifs though, isn't it? More commonly you searched all of these resouces, and there was no telling how long it would take for you to find what you were looking for, if you ever found it at all. Then when you did find it, unless the file was hosted on a web server or newsgroup, you had to deal with queue times or getting lucky enough to get a slot on an FTP server. Once you got past all of that, you'd be lucky to max out your download bandwidth. Typically this was not the case, and you might see the file anywhere from 2 days to a week from when you started downloading, especially if the game was multidisc. These days, you hit up a torrent site, open a gnutella or ed2k client, and you can have your goods in a matter of hours with a decent broadband connection.

Even with all of that being said, let me reiterate and clarify that I do not like the use of copy protection or DRM, I simply understand it and why companies use it. I also do not see it going away unless nearly everyone is upset with it. I have not reached that point with Steam. I would however be upset if Valve went under, and nothing was done to allow legitimate customer to continue using what they purchased. Although the MSN Music store comes to mind, when I purchase games through Steam, I do so having already made a personal judgement call about whether Valve or Steam will go under without a way for me to continue using my software. I also judge whether or not I will even want to play the games I purchase 10 years down the road, at a time when I see it much more likely for Valve to go out of business (not for any particular reason, rather just that any company can go out of business, given enough time).

Needing a CD key or checking the manual for a specific word is a far cry from having to validate with the company at every launch of the app, requiring buggy and insecure device drivers, or having otherwise unneeded background apps running (I remember when Win95 came out.. I still liked playing games in DOS mode so I didn't have Windows in the background sucking up resources; I only ran games in Windows when I didn't want to reboot or when it required Windows).
Personally I find manual word checks more of a pain than having the game authenticate over the Internet automatically. Concerning buggy or insecure device drivers, can you give an instance where Steam required anything like that? We're not talking about StarForce, after all.


Botched in concept. As a central game distribution/patching/etc program, it's fine. But as a vehicle for draconian DRM schemes, unnecessary requirements, etc, it fails pretty hard.I am curious; what do you do about it? Do you just not purchase games from Valve? Perhaps you try to convince Valve of these points you are making to me in the hopes that they will remove their draconian copy protection and authentication? Call me a pessimist, but I don't see it happening unless Steam gets much worse than it currently is, and people prefer to avoid purchasing Half-Life 3 just to avoid Steam.


The only way to really get broadband is by being in a populated area, and if that happens, it kinda defeats the purpose of going there as a somewhat secluded getaway.
Like I said. . .

I think that is true of everyone here. There is nothing that can easily be done about this however, and it does not affect the vast majority of the world population. Besides, most of the games that are on Steam have had disc distribution.

While I do not like the negative aspects of Steam, I have not encountered any of the problems you have. That is all I am really saying. I'm not here to argue over something so insignificant, I just wanted to throw out my two cents.

[divideoverflow]

@divideoverflow: I assume you never had to "work" with steam or source in any way. The problems are numerous ranging from steam killing entire games by doing incorrect updates, not being able to redownload games since steam is "stuck" somewhere thinking it's installed but then again not and fuck shit, over SDK dying all the time killing your projects too over to rallying your CPU up to 100% for not fucking sane reason.

As mentioned, good idea, horrible execution.

You are correct. Last time I went near code or a compiler in any serious manner was about 10 years ago. Then again, I've read complaints about many SDKs. . and even entire languages and IDEs. I'd have to have personal experience developing for Steam and Valve to agree or disagree with you. /shrug

[me262]

Hahah. Wow. Checking for a word on a page... I remember those days. Protection was cracked on those too. I had Atari ST disks like that.

I do think SOME kind of DRM should be implemented. For the other reasons stated before. Take it from everyone to a select group that does it anyway. The problem is that a viable implementation doesn't exist. I don't know how effective LGP's will be, and Steam as someone said before is just a good idea with bad execution. I haven't had the joy of a bad install or an update screwing up *knock knock* (although I have had problems with execution in Cedega).

Dragonlord: What gaming user would run their Linux Gaming Rig hiding the config, it's mainly used for servers, right? Unless Ubuntu (for reference) does this by default.
I do see both sides of this actually, I just wonder about the types of people that would do this. Think of the target audience, they'll either be on low-latency (for the hardcore tweakers) or default rigs.
Do you have any ideas on implementation? (If one had to do it...)

Can't a binary be compiled with PIC? That should increase the security somewhat. Wait... that's memory management...

Gentoo compares it's downloaded files against multiple hashes, any chance we could to that?

* emul-linux-x86-soundlibs-20080418.tar.bz2 RMD160 SHA1 SHA256 size ;-) ... [ ok ]
* checking ebuild checksums ;-) ... [ ok ]
* checking auxfile checksums ;-) ... [ ok ]
* checking miscfile checksums ;-) ... [ ok ]
* checking emul-linux-x86-soundlibs-20080418.tar.bz2 ;-) ... [ ok ]

[Dragonlord]

What gaming user would run their Linux Gaming Rig hiding the config, it's mainly used for servers, right? Unless Ubuntu (for reference) does this by default.
One answer: Ubunutu. Another answer: People hate tainted kernels ( at least those with a sense of pride). The kernel is not meant to be tainted and DRM would be a total taint since if it's source compilable for the user it's open doors for automated hacks. But even a loadable module can be hacked. Make your own DRM module which just does yes-its-ok all the time and load this instead of the real DRM module. Again this can be automated. And you can not force people to compile it into the kernel. Heck even if you could force them they would just have to download a crooked DRM module and inject it in the kernel ( again doable in an automatic way ). The tech savvy level of the user is not important. It's like with CD cracks. Majority of users of those cracks have no idea how this DRM form works nor how to bypass it. They just execute an binary doing all the work for them and tadam! DRM be gone.

Do you have any ideas on implementation? (If one had to do it...)
Of what now? The DRM module itself of a crack attempt of it?

Can't a binary be compiled with PIC? That should increase the security somewhat. Wait... that's memory management...
PIC ( aka Position Independent Code ) simply juggles the functions around in code segment to avoid function hijacking. This would make a crack attempt more difficult since you can not hardcode the code offset. That said you can scan the file for the function pattern and then you know where to inject. The WindowsXP Anti-Register crack for example used this method. It scaned login.exe for a pattern and could always find the right location to nop out on various versions of login.exe . So that's not impossible and would be done since it's a crack-once-crack-all situation.

Gentoo compares it's downloaded files against multiple hashes, any chance we could to that?
Two solutions to this. Either tamper with the source files and use ebuild to recreated a valid manifest or make a local overlay and copy the ebuild over doing the same as before ( just that this time it is not going to be overwritten the next time you sync ).

[Chris]

As for dumping Steam on people 10 to 15 years ago, don't forget that Internet access was not nearly as common back then either
Knew I should've put a disclaimer about that. :P Even going on using the best method of contact for verification of the time, just the concept of what it does is the the problem. Back in those days, when we got games we (including my family, who aren't the most technically minded people around) were pretty annoyed with having to have the CD in the drive to play some games (and some of those the games even had valid reasons for that, such as streaming videos off the CD that weren't installed on the HD because of limitted space). Now such a thing is common place and general people think nothing of it.

Most piracy took place between people that knew each other, and P2P networks were a gleam in Shawn Fanning's eye.
A good bit of piracy back in those days was of bootlegged copies (physical copies made by someone en masse, and *sold*, with a sizeable discount). Something much worse, IMO, than most sharing going on today. People actually made money from those copies, whereas with today's piracy "problem", not that many people actually gain from distributing it.

Even with all of that being said, let me reiterate and clarify that I do not like the use of copy protection or DRM, I simply understand it and why companies use it.
I can understand why, as well. I have no problem with companies trying to protect their assetts, but when it's protection to the degree that is done today (assumed guilt, constant reverification, requiring unneeded insecure software, etc), when we don't even know what kind of losses are being caused by all this sharing (if any!).. there's a problem.

I would however be upset if Valve went under, and nothing was done to allow legitimate customer to continue using what they purchased.
Wouldn't it be better to actively prevent such a thing from happening, instead of waiting for it to? No company lasts forever. The question is when, not if. The longer you wait, the less likely something can be done about it.

And it wouldn't even take Valve going out of bussiness. It would just take Steam becoming more of a money sink than a money source, so they shut down the servers.

I also judge whether or not I will even want to play the games I purchase 10 years down the road, at a time when I see it much more likely for Valve to go out of business (not for any particular reason, rather just that any company can go out of business, given enough time).
I still enjoy playing games made 20 years ago. Sometimes I'll just get nastolgic and throw on a quick game of something I haven't played in forever, just to remember what it's like. I just like to make sure I can keep doing that.

Concerning buggy or insecure device drivers, can you give an instance where Steam required anything like that? We're not talking about StarForce, after all.
It's not just Steam. It's the whole mind set that these kinds of things are okay. Trying to find a word is a bit different than having to hack a device driver, or getting a pre-hacked executable from an unknown source. Steam itself isn't the only problem, it's just becoming (already is?) a large part of it.

I am curious; what do you do about it? Do you just not purchase games from Valve? Perhaps you try to convince Valve of these points you are making to me in the hopes that they will remove their draconian copy protection and authentication?
I don't buy any games from Valve. My system has never known Steam, and never will. And me saying this to Valve will likely accomplish nothing, since other, much more prominant, people have been complaining about these things for a long time.

But even if Valve themselves did stop, other companies that distribute through Steam would continue, and Steam would be made to work with it. Again, completely remove the need for server checks when starting a(ny) game, and remove the need to be running to start a(ny) game, then we'll talk about how good Steam could be.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't see it happening unless Steam gets much worse than it currently is, and people prefer to avoid purchasing Half-Life 3 just to avoid Steam.
That's the problem. Put a frog in boiling water, and it'll jump out. Put a frog in cool water and slowly turn up the heat, and it'll cook to death. Unless Valve makes a slip up and introduces some form of DRM that's too much for people at the time, they won't avoid Steam as the DRM problem gets worse.