Game key cards are just digital games with added plastic. Sure you can resell/lend them but that is as far as any benefit goes.

In 10 years from now if you pop one of these in your console for some nostalgia you’ll be met with shut down download servers and disappointment.

Yeah now how will we give all the AI crawlers exemptions from uploading their ID and proving they are of age?

Poor guy, maybe he should get AI therapy.

Why would he fight this law?

If SKG get what they want I’ll be even better off when buying games on sale 8 years after release.

Imagine it’s already unsupported and thus:

• Time-limited FOMO events are disabled or left in a predictable cycle
• Can decide to play with friends instead of forced to play with cheaters the publishers can’t seem to keep out of official servers
• Related to previous point but toxic players usually follow the bigger player bases to have more harassment targets and you can ban them yourself if it’s private server or p2p
• Offline play and LAN: play with your travel companions on handheld devices without internet or during outages
• Cash shop shutdown if one existed

Games are ironically going to get better, like a fine wine, as they age and lose support. The alternative is that publishers make them as good at release so people don’t wait until end of life too buy it.

Downer take: I don’t know if this has been addressed by SKG but my biggest fear related to this is that publishers will push controversial updates that fundamentally change the game like EoC in RuneScape or disable core features before shutdown. That way they can say they left it on the newest patch. The game works, but nobody who enjoyed it before is going to want to play it. Even in this scenario the added regulation is a net positive though.

They can’t replace him with a suit. There should be a shaman council that speaks with his spirit to make further decisions for Valve after his passing or retirement (they can just speak directly in this case).

I mean the only good alternative to Steam is GOG but there you’re not dealing with DRM.

Yeah, well familiar with wine going back over 10 years of using Linux as primary OS with the occasional foray into getting my games running on Linux. Most of this time I have just kept a copy of Windows available for games though since it’s been way too much hassle getting things to run until the last couple of years.

For the games that natively run on Linux I don’t see any difference in how they’re preserved. Haven’t encountered anything that doesn’t run on modern systems.

With that said they could get an easy win by making a Linux version of Galaxy and borrowing Proton to run non-Linux titles.

Then reading the manual on the bus home or in the backseat of the car. 😊

I still go to the local GameStop sometimes and pick up a used Switch title I’d like to keep and play again in the future before they all dry up. Sadly they come with no manual.

I’m afraid I’m fooling myself though and that one day when I dig out the Switch after not using it for a couple of years it will be a swollen mess of a fire hazard (with mega stick drift) and all those physical copies will be worthless without cartridge-dumping hardware and emulators.

This is fair but I’m also worried about introducing a new dependency for a game that normally does not rely on Steam.

GOG is legit though. You can archive those offline installers and they’ll work forever (barring future OS incompatibilities etc). For the titles that support it I use the Linux installers otherwise I just run Galaxy through Steam for the time being since it reduces the amount of wineprefixes I have to configure with Steam.

Yeah, it’s been at least five years since I tried Lutris last time. It’s probably matured alongside Proton. Honestly I started moving all my non-Linux games over to Linux after getting a Steam deck and seeing how well the games worked without tinkering.

I don’t mind leaving my Steam games in Steam but I would like to run some of my Windows titles e.g. GOG titles, Guild Wars without relying on the Steam network being up. Is Heroic the way to go?

Yeah that’s kind of huge tbh. I honestly hadn’t read that much about Proton. Like that fact that it’s open source.

Just remember all the discussions from the early days of Steam on Linux where some were miffed about running non-free software. I then figured that it was a necessary evil to have games work with less hassle. The games themselves are largely closed source as well, so it’s kind of moot that Steam is also.

There is a valid argument against the DRM being that your ancient air-gapped system should be able to run the game still but can’t run the DRM due to the requirements changing after the point of purchase. Perhaps there is a discussion to be had about whether DRM should be removed once you change the system requirements drastically, but this feels like a rare circumstance.

The simple solution is to get DRM-free copies from GOG where possible. Archive the installers if you’re worried about future compatibility. That way you can have a nostalgic Windows 98 machine or whatever that only plays games and won’t bug you with random unprovoked changes and updates from day to day.

Heck I just run GOG Galaxy in Proton to not have to patch everything manually.

Oof, Windows 11 is really needy as far as an OS goes. I forget that the machine is supposed to serve me, not demand things me from the all the time.

The grass really is greener in the Linux world. Hope more people get to experience that soon.

This is me every flight. Got a Switch with lots of stuff, ebooks, music and whatnot. Always end up playing Slay the Spire on my phone.

/e/OS looks interesting too and can be delivered from Fairphone with it pre-installed. I’m kinda lost since there are so many privacy-focused OSes based on AOSP. They could probably achieve more by merging some projects, but I imagine there are different philosophies separating them like in most OSS.

In any case, lots of great info here. Cheers again for the insight.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I appreciate all the practical info. So you tried Calyx, Copperhead etc. too?

The biggest thing turning me off most of these security-oriented roms is having to buy a Pixel. I kind of don’t want to go from one American big tech phone to another.