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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don't own it. Don't pay for content that you can't own. 🏴☠️
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software? Even if I buy a game on disc I am fucked, cause most games need updates. I can only name GOG.
Given the recent controversy, it calls into question the definition of the word 'buy.'
GOG is the only one that I know of too.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it's by far the best out there for devs.
It's hard to find quality games in the sea of single dev weekend projects on itch io...
If you see potential in one and their game is open source then consider contributing in some way (not as in money but honest feedback helps).
Buy the disc, put it on a shelf and download a clean copy.
Steam, but you'll have to manually search around the forums to see which games does it and which doesn't. It's not exactly a well advertised feature, but integration of Steamworks copy protection is optional. Most of the games that are DRM-free on GOG are DRM-free on Steam too.
Humble (the company that sells Bundles) has some games listed as DRM free games in their store. Never bought individual games from them, but I have gotten DRM free games in their bundles.
Also, fuck GOG. They are owned by CD Project Red, the piece of shit lawyers who trademarked the term cyberpunk.
Pretty sure they bought the trademark from the company who owned it previous (for a 1980s era board game if I recall correctly). They bought it to prevent shitty 2077 clones with the same name from popping up. I haven't heard of them actively pursuing copyright infringement against others who use cyberpunk.
2077 and its spinoffs are literally set in the boardgame universe and an updated rulebook was released at the same time as the game.
2077 and Edgerunners are just stories set in the setting and universe from the boardgame. The Arasaka Tower Heist, Johnny Silverhand, Morgan Blackhand, all the corps, gangs, and cyberware are right from the boardgame. The story had heavy involvement from the creator of the board game as well. For fucks sake he does the voice of Maximum Mike on the in game radio.
Did people not realize that Cyberpunk 2077 is just another Witcher situation, but this time the original author wanted to stay a part of things?
Just because they are not openly pursuing enforcement does not mean that they will not. Just the audacity to trademark a generic term widely used in media discussion makes me think that they are being represented by scumbag lawyers.
The term has been trademarked since 1995 for different uses. This isn't anything new and there's no signs they intend to use it aggressively. https://trademarks.justia.com/856/81/cyberpunk-85681741.html
What are you even talking a out, there are plenty of games with cyberpunk in the tittle on steam.
And CD Project Red has the right to sue those publishers.
Of course, if they do and the other side chooses to fight, they will have to explain to a judge why the trademark was granted to them despite a mountain of prior art describing games as cyberpunk.
The fuck are you talking about wrt Cyberpunk? It was already the trademarked name of the boardgame that all this new shit draws from, the boardgame that coined the fucking term in the first place.
They purchased the trademark from the old role playing game and then expanded it, if I recall.
The RPG did not invent the term. It was riding the hype of cyberpunk literature. The first use of the term is from 1980 (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyberpunk). According to Wikipedia, the game did not come out until 1988 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game) ).
Muh witcher
Most games don't need updates
Have you played any new games recently?
Yes, most games are better with patches. Most games do not need patches. And most games come out just fine, the big AAAs that push consoles often have a patch that is worth caring about.
I played through the most recent yakuza game without a patch recently. Was great.
Real quick: how high are you?
How high doesnt matter, we need to know what they are high on
And where to get it
Whatever they're smoking, don't do it. You'll end up drooling gibberish with a blithe grin on like that. ↑
Ok, if you think most games don't need them, then I hope that you're enjoying bugs. 10/20 years ago games were unfinished, too - but you were able to download and SAVE an update. This is nearly impossible, now.
I literally gave you an example of a game I played recently, without patches and zero bugs. Please read the whole thing before leaving a comment.
The quality of comments on lemmy has really gone downhill the past few months, it's about reddit quality now and getting worse
"people disagree with me, it sure feels like reddit around here"
You ever think the place wasnt the common denominator?
What's that one quote? "If it smells like shit everywhere you go, check your shoe?"
Alternatively, "If you meet someone who's an asshole, you met an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, you're the asshole."
one of many
Correct, most indie and AA games ship complete
Not much of a gamer lately, huh?
Updates are always an option now, so games are no longer released in a very stable state. And by not very stable, I mean "crashes immediately with X company hardware", "frame rate drops to 1 frame/s in certain areas", or "quest line is bugged and incompletable"
Day one updates generally aren't optional... With a publisher who values polish like Nintendo? Generally they're playable, but a bit rough. On average, they're literally impossible to play through. It's a real problem in modern gaming
Ok, but that's Yakuza. Their team is great and cares a lot about quality. They're hardly a representative example, but...
I just scanned through their update log. A week after launch, they fixed a crash when you deleted a picture from the photo album. Another couple weeks later, they fixed one where the game would crash intermittently. A few weeks later, they fixed a bug where the game wouldn't boot if you unlocked all the achievements. And it keeps going, more than a year later they fixed a crash during a quest if you have an inconsistent frame rate
There's a lot more, but I just scanned through looking for crash fixes - there're also many issues with graphics that would make the game unplayable with certain setups
Also, I noticed the first patch is 1.02, making me believe the "unpatched" game actually included the day 1 patch
Maybe the release version worked for you, but it didn't work for everyone (or maybe your version included patches you're unaware of)
And again, this is an example of a highly polished game - most games are far, far worse
Old games had crasher bugs too, and even had new versions :o. 99% of games release in a state where 99% of people will never notice an issue.
Most games are not "far worse", you are looking at the high profile exceptions and extrapolating rather than looking at the actual real landscape of releases.
It's entirely possible that we play very different games, but I'm a gamer programmer, I read patch notes and listen to retrospectives recreationally
I never said games are far worse, I think that's true for AAA gaming (for different reasons), but modern indie games beat the crap out of the bargain bin games from a couple decades ago
My point is this - OTA updates change how software is developed. It used to cost a lot of money to fix if you release it with breaking bugs, and there were several system builds to test on.
Now? There's an infinite number of configurations you can support with one engine and minimal porting - hell, Nvidia regularly patches their drivers to support specific games better.
The cost of extensive qa has skyrocketed, and the consequences of bugs at launch has plummeted.
If that doesn't convince you, go pick 5 random games released this year on steam, and look at their update logs. All 5, maybe 4 if you're lucky , will have patches around release time for major issues.
It's not because they're lazy or bad devs, it's because QA could take months or years to tell you what user feedback would get you in 48 hours after launch
You can make a patch, does not mean you need a patch. The vast majority of games work absolutely fine at launch. I know you're a little obsessed with patch notes, but if you think that games having patches indicates that they needed patched then you're missing the point entirely.
I bought DRM-free TV episodes from Google Play (IIRC). Everything was great until codecs got updated a couple of years later and the videos were suddenly jerky to the point of unwatchability.
Even when I own it, there's no guarantee I get to keep it.
You can probably play it properly on a PC using something like VLC (A pretty powerful video player)
Or transcode it to support your current video player via handbrake
Uh, that's practically all software and games these days.
In this case Sony is taking away TV shows that people purchased. They can be purchased on physical media that will be playable as long as you have the disc. The DRM on DVD and Bluray discs can be easily removed to make backups that will play on anything forever.
As for games, everything on GOG is DRM free. They have downloads for the installers so you can keep a backup copy to install decades from now even if GOG is long gone by then.
Have fun managing tens of TB of backups. I have given up on that quite a while ago, DRM-free is just not a practical for the amount of digital content you collect over the years. It's a nice to have thing that comes in really handy sometimes (e.g. watching movies on unsupported device like VR headsets), but it's not a solution for digital ownership. In some ways it's actually worse, as you can't practically resell DRM-free copies, as you don't have a proof of ownership. You'll also miss out on updates for new technologies (codecs, OS versions, etc.).
This needs a legislative solution or some NFT-like thing that gives you a certificate like "You own this, feel free to pirate if we go out of business"(digital signed by company).