Humble Indie Bundle 9 released

Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by jeltz on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @10:33PM (#6371704)

Many of the indie games at Steam are DRM free. It is just hard to find that information.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by shmerl on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @11:09PM (#6371809)

Supporting Steam itself helps DRM proliferation, so I don't use it at all. Indies which are on Steam usually find ways to be distributed outside it in a DRM free fashion (Humble Store, Desura, directly from developers and etc). It's mostly big budget games with Linux versions which appear on Steam lately or plan to appear there that are a problem. Since they are not sold anywhere else.

For example while Metro Last Light is going to be ported to Linux, it will be tied to Steam for no apparent reason (it doesn't strictly depend on any Steam lock-in features). I.e. it's the common urge for DRM that drives this.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/09/10/metro-...

Why I mentioned GOG - it's the only major distributor now who can seriously compete with Steam. And they have a clear DRM free stance unlike the later.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by ekianjo on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @11:22PM (#6371856)

Yeah but GOG clearly said they do not want to support Linux distributions anyway, so I'm not sure what you are hoping for. I prefer supporting Steam which in turn helps more ports to Linux, rather than waiting for something that may never come from GOG.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by shmerl on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @11:37PM (#6371909)

I won't start using Steam while they drive DRM proliferation (i.e. being very conductive for DRM pushing publishers), it's a deal breaker for me at least.

As for GOG, they didn't say that they don't want to support Linux. They clearly said they want to, but the way they planned it for themselves makes it complex and takes long time to research/develop. While we can disagree with GOG's approach, it's up to them to decide how to enable it. So let's wait and see what they come up with next year.

Humble Bundle didn't reach the scope of GOG yet, plus they don't even have a strict DRM free approach unfortunately. On the other hand they work on real DRM free Linux ports and they always mark which games are DRMed and which are DRM free.

To grade the situation, I'd give Steam very bad, and HB - average mark (DRM wise).

GOG has more resources to be disruptive while being completely DRM free, and to take on Steam in a serious way.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by ekianjo on Thursday September 12, 2013 @01:38AM (#6372267)

> As for GOG, they didn't say that they don't want to support Linux. They clearly said they want to, but the way they planned it for themselves makes it complex and takes long time to research/develop. While we can disagree with GOG's approach, it's up to them to decide how to enable it. So let's wait and see what they come up with next year.

Seriously the position from GOG is plain BS. If they really wanted to support Linux, they could easily package most of their old games with Dosbox and 90% of them would run fine this way. This is the large majority of their current catalog. And I have a very hard time to believe it would be difficult to support a few key distributions. Or they could take the approach "we support only Ubuntu officially" just like Valve does, and let the Community support other distributions.

So, as much as I love what GOG does, their position regarding Linux was a great disappointment. Especially coming from a developer from Eastern Europe, where Linux is clearly stronger than in other PC markets around the world. I don't see CD project porting Witcher 2 to Linux either, and they haven't made any announcement in that direction for the upcoming Witcher 3 either.

Supporting "Non-DRM" software while running on a DRM friendly environment (Windows/Mac) is a very strange place to be, honestly. I expected way more from GOG.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by shmerl on Thursday September 12, 2013 @10:11AM (#6374067)

> they really wanted to support Linux, they could easily package most of their old games with Dosbox and 90% of them would run fine this way.

This was not about DosBox games which are already playable. It was about starting support for native Linux games which is not trivial. In general I agree with you that their approach of "all or nothing" in finding a way for long term support of native games is far from perfect, but what can you do - it's their business how to do it. They listened to feedback but didn't go the iterative way.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by ekianjo on Thursday September 12, 2013 @08:17PM (#6377833)

Well the longer they wait, the more the "all or nothing" strategy will never happen because their catalog is expanding. Basically they are simply refusing people who want to give them money. It's preposterous.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by barbs on Thursday September 12, 2013 @04:43AM (#6372866)

I totally agree. If HiB and Steam can do it, so can GoG.

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by e2e8 on Thursday September 12, 2013 @12:26AM (#6372053)

As far as I know all the Humble Bundles are completely DRM free excluding the couple big studio windows only bundles. Is that not correct?

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Re:Humble Indie Bundle 9 released by shmerl on Thursday September 12, 2013 @12:27AM (#6372059)

What about all these recent Origin/Steam only bundles? They seem to appear more and more often, and they don't look DRM free at all to me. You could note the absence of EFF in the charities there. I guess it's because EFF doesn't want to make it look like they endorse DRM.

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