4 ms·

While there's a special hatred for modern Google in my heart and I think they're the least deserving to be pioneers for cloud gaming, I have to say I really jus

by hbn 5y ago

While there's a special hatred for modern Google in my heart and I think they're the least deserving to be pioneers for cloud gaming, I have to say I really just hate cloud gaming in general. It's truly the most offensive possible form of anti-consumer DRM imaginable. I'm not even THAT big of a "gimme my DRM-free games" type guy. I buy most games on Steam, because at least if Steam disappears someday, I can find ways to pirate all those games I bought and continue to play them. Consoles are a bit trickier -- I personally buy physical copies if I can (although that increasingly means less and less, with all the patches and DLC that every game receives after launch, meaning you almost never actually own a physical copy of the complete game. And they even removed all the fun instruction manuals!) But at least every console gets hacked eventually and you'll probably have a way to potentially run pirated software on them in the future. But with cloud gaming, good bloody luck trying to play the games you shelled out $100 for (modern Canadian pricing) in the future. Not to mention I'm sure we'll find situations in the future where games are patched to remove something that became offensive in the past month, like the big exodus of episodes from streaming services during the BLM protests in 2020. At least the services where you're just streaming from a generic gaming PC to run your Steam games on can make a bit of an argument for itself that you can download the games to your own computer if you want, and that's just another option for playing them. But who knows how long that'll stay that way. It's quite obviously in the corporate interest to make sure no one ever has access to the game's code on their local machine, and they only ever beam frames to your screen, since that would well and truly stop piracy for good.

Spivak 5y ago
I actually don't think steaming games are that offensive because it at least matches the ownership model. You have huge binary blobs that you're actively prevented from modifying and dependent on cloud services that will be shut down eventually, specific locked-down consoles that will be discontinued, proprietary GPUs and drivers, and specific platforms that will be obsolete. You can frame it the opposite way too: "Bro, some billion dollar corporation actually convinced you that it was cool to pay thousands of dollars and spend your own time 'building' a PC and make it part of your identity just to give them free computing and play games you don't even own?" I don't think "cloud gaming is bad because piracy is good" is really a sustainable model. Without an "above board" push that requires that game licenses come with source and permission to modify so that players can actually maintain them after the original company abandons them they're always going to have a finite lifetime. Thanks to copyright "ownership" of games has always been a implementation detail defined more by limitations of technology at the time to enforce the copyright than something fundamental. So I get the frustration that game streaming is "making things worse" but it's always been this bad for 99% of people, you're just finally getting hit with something you don't have a workaround for.
- saurik 5y ago
  Yeah: it also seems to solve the issue of "people insist on the company stopping people from cheating by using modified clients with extra functionality" without turning the world into a DRM-ridden mess, with everyone's computers running random "anti-cheat" agents or slowly moving software into containers. The reality is that a lot of these games are designed more like shared arenas--such as a bowling alley or a skating rink--that you rent to play your game but explicitly don't own or even "tournaments" run by people who (in turn) rented the arena and have hired referees to police the game and make everything "fair", as you are on someone else's property or at someone else's event and so obviously wouldn't have carte blanche rights to modify the arena or control the rules... and so, as you say, game streaming is in some sense more intuitive / correct as it forms a consistent mental model of what is going on with ownership. As much as I would generally prefer to model many of these games like buying a board game--which you then own and can then play as you like with your friends, even if you disagree with the rules as described in the manual or even add/remove/change pieces--that just isn't the experience that these game companies are trying to build with their online matchmaking and the such.
trasz 5y ago
Pioneers? It's been done long before Google come in, by several companies, from playkey.net to nVidia.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
It also doesn't help that average internet speeds in Canada are still too slow for cloud gaming. So you wind up paying for some of the most expensive internet in the world, plus full price games. No thanks. I'll buy a cheaper internet package and use the savings to buy my own hardware
closetohome 5y ago
I'm not sure I follow the distinction between Steam going away (and having to pirate your games) and Stadia going away (and having to pirate your games).

by hbn 5y ago

Spivak 5y ago

I actually don't think steaming games are that offensive because it at least matches the ownership model. You have huge binary blobs that you're actively prevented from modifying and dependent on cloud services that will be shut down eventually, specific locked-down consoles that will be discontinued, proprietary GPUs and drivers, and specific platforms that will be obsolete. You can frame it the opposite way too: "Bro, some billion dollar corporation actually convinced you that it was cool to pay thousands of dollars and spend your own time 'building' a PC and make it part of your identity just to give them free computing and play games you don't even own?" I don't think "cloud gaming is bad because piracy is good" is really a sustainable model. Without an "above board" push that requires that game licenses come with source and permission to modify so that players can actually maintain them after the original company abandons them they're always going to have a finite lifetime. Thanks to copyright "ownership" of games has always been a implementation detail defined more by limitations of technology at the time to enforce the copyright than something fundamental. So I get the frustration that game streaming is "making things worse" but it's always been this bad for 99% of people, you're just finally getting hit with something you don't have a workaround for.

saurik 5y ago
Yeah: it also seems to solve the issue of "people insist on the company stopping people from cheating by using modified clients with extra functionality" without turning the world into a DRM-ridden mess, with everyone's computers running random "anti-cheat" agents or slowly moving software into containers. The reality is that a lot of these games are designed more like shared arenas--such as a bowling alley or a skating rink--that you rent to play your game but explicitly don't own or even "tournaments" run by people who (in turn) rented the arena and have hired referees to police the game and make everything "fair", as you are on someone else's property or at someone else's event and so obviously wouldn't have carte blanche rights to modify the arena or control the rules... and so, as you say, game streaming is in some sense more intuitive / correct as it forms a consistent mental model of what is going on with ownership. As much as I would generally prefer to model many of these games like buying a board game--which you then own and can then play as you like with your friends, even if you disagree with the rules as described in the manual or even add/remove/change pieces--that just isn't the experience that these game companies are trying to build with their online matchmaking and the such.

trasz 5y ago

Pioneers? It's been done long before Google come in, by several companies, from playkey.net to nVidia.

bluefirebrand 5y ago

It also doesn't help that average internet speeds in Canada are still too slow for cloud gaming. So you wind up paying for some of the most expensive internet in the world, plus full price games. No thanks. I'll buy a cheaper internet package and use the savings to buy my own hardware

closetohome 5y ago

I'm not sure I follow the distinction between Steam going away (and having to pirate your games) and Stadia going away (and having to pirate your games).