| ▲ | john_strinlai 3 hours ago |
| this was written (or 'output') by someone (or something) that clearly has not thought of the knock-on effects of those freedoms. they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again". by all means i 100% agree that an ostensibly single player game should not be locked behind a login or telemetry, and that platforms like steam should not be able to lock you out of playing games you paid for. but i dont think forcing the whole free software thing would work out how the author is imagining it. |
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| ▲ | b65e8bee43c2ed0 an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| >they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again". fyi, there are tens of torrent trackers with every game/movie/album/etc under the sun. had been for two decades. |
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| ▲ | john_strinlai 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | i was unaware torrenting copyrighted content was made legal, thanks for the update | | |
| ▲ | b65e8bee43c2ed0 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again". | | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | yes, i wrote that. right now that would be illegal to do in most jurisdictions. | | |
| ▲ | b65e8bee43c2ed0 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | despite that, people have been doing that for over two decades, but publishers continue to publish. | | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | right. that is because most people would rather buy the game than take the risk of downloading it illegally. if you remove the risk, the math changes. publishers also have legal recourse. remove that and the publisher's math changes. | | |
| ▲ | b65e8bee43c2ed0 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | people pay for convenience. when was the last time you heard about someone being prosecuted for pirating something? |
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| ▲ | singpolyma3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We have decades of real world experience which shows this is not true. People buy things they could otherwise get for free with a bit of work all the time. |
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| ▲ | john_strinlai 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | you aren't getting a company to build baldurs gate 3 and hope they recoup the costs from ko-fi donations. real world experience is that most companies do not offer their software for free, and open source developers either have to get sponsored or have to constantly solicit donations. donations do not typically cover multi-million dollar, multi-year development cycles. |
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| ▲ | luqtas 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| you don't need to liberate your project to GPL or whatever OSS to let users distribute them via torrent or at least being able to backup the DRM-free installer... i bet most if not all AAA games have their crack into the pirate land in less than a week after or even before release |
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| ▲ | F3nd0 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > […] in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again". This is exactly what has been happening for years, only illegally. If it became legal, I imagine far less people would end up buying the game, though probably still more than just one. But again, games are more than just software, so the four freedoms do not enable this. |
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| ▲ | figmert 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| As the article mentions, these arguments are basically all the arguments of the FSF, and everything Richard Stallman pushed for since the 80s. So yes, there has been plenty of thought, scrutiny, improvements, etc. 40 years of it in fact. |
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| ▲ | john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >So yes, there has been plenty of thought, scrutiny, improvements, etc. 40 years of it in fact. what percent of businesses follow the FSF freedoms and turn a profit? i would love it if i could get all my games for free, and legally give additional copies to all my students, family, and friends. but the developers pumping out those games probably want to see some sort of return more substantial than whatever trickles into their ko-fi account. they'll just stop developing games and go into CRM software or whatever. | | |
| ▲ | singpolyma3 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't see how "what percent" is the right metric. There are hundreds of such companies (I work for one) but it's a small percentage due to other factors (mainly it not being the default way most founders think about these things) | |
| ▲ | figmert 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really my point. My point is more that you suggested no one has thought about this, but yes, they have. To answer your question, there have been plenty of business who have created and published free software (albeit plenty have later closed them). Notable examples are Databricks, Hashicorp, Mongodb, RedHat. Sure they've built a moat on top of their free software, but they have (or had) free software regardless. | | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >My point is more that you suggested no one has thought about this, but yes, they have. i didnt say no one has thought about free software. i said that this specific llm that output this article did not think about how the freedoms would work in todays gaming industry. there are dozens of issues that immediately pop into my head, mostly specific to gaming, which are not mentioned or addressed at all. | | |
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