I’m so absolutely sick of it.
Literally argued with a bunch of game-pass supporters on this very topic today, where we don’t own shit anymore and everything is rental only. Sick of people gobbling corporate cock.
deleted by creator
Hold up, what?
Steam doeen’t sell games to you, it gives you access to them in your account. Everyone hated them for it back when it first came out, twenty years ago, but it’s kind of forgotten by anyone who isn’t nestled deeply into the privacy/ownership/right to repair communities these days.
You can still lose access to your thousand game + account by simply updating your drivers regularly.
Steam is lying – you do own the games. The problem is that the courts are too corrupted by the copyright cartel to enforce the laws properly.
Just because they push that self-serving disinformation doesn’t mean we have to parrot it!
Oh you mean in the way the world should work. Sure, i’ll agree with that.
But that’s not how things actually are. Right now, you can completely lose access, and unless you’re a lucky millionaire with a passion for fighting unjust laws and the luck of the gods, you can’t do shit to bring that account back.
But that’s not how things actually are. Right now, you can completely lose access, and unless you’re a lucky millionaire with a passion for fighting unjust laws and the luck of the gods, you can’t do shit to bring that account back.
But even if you lose access to the Steam account, you still own your copy of the games. Valve doesn’t have the right to somehow force you to stop playing the games, assuming you still have your copy in your possession.
Remember, products (e.g. a copy of a game) and services (e.g. a Steam account itself) are two different things. I was never arguing that you owned a service, only that you own products.
Yeah. Steam can disable your account so you can not purchase new games, but you should still be able to download and play the games you already have.
A VAC ban doesn’t remove access to your steam account. Just to one game on your steam account.
Well, that and all the games that instban you from playing if you have a vac ban on record, first example being various squad servers, and the software behind that.
Being banned from accessing services isn’t the same as being prohibited from using your property. You are still perfectly legally entitled to play your game single-player (for example) no matter how many VAC bans you get.
Has nothing whatsoever to do with steam or valve…
Vac bans don’t ban your steam account, just prevents you from playing CS2/CSGO
Why are you surprised about this? You always get a license to play the game, you don’t own the rights to it, even if you get a physical copy.
That’s what the copyright cartel claims, but it’s a goddamn lie. Stop serving the enemy by parroting their lies.
It is not a lie, it is how copyright works.
If you are against it, then be against it. But do not claim they are lying.This is why things like CC-BY-SA, copyleft and other licenses exist.
No, copyleft licenses work differently. In particular, the thing that makes them valid (in contrast to EULAs, which are not) is that they actually offer consideration to the licensee.
Take the GPL v2 (which I mention because I’m most familiar with it) as an example:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
What it’s doing there is affirming the user’s ownership – not mere “licensure” – of his own copy. It’s pointing out, in contrast to the lie of EULAs, that the licensor doesn’t have any right to restrict the copy owner’s property rights. In other words, you don’t have to “accept the GPL” in order to use GPL software that somebody gives you; the license only kicks in if you want to do something with it that copyright law itself otherwise prohibits, namely, distributing copies or publishing modifications.
What EULA writers think they rely on – and what they’ve managed to bamboozle some, but not all, courts into accepting – is the notion that because computer programs require copying into RAM (if not also installation into a hard drive) to use, that that incidental act of copying somehow entitles publishers to impose additional restrictions in “consideration” for the mere use of the copy the user already bought. In reality, however, there’s an explicit carve-out in 17 U.S. Code § 117 (a) (1) that pulls the rug out of that argument and renders most shrinkwrap and clickwrap EULAs total bunk because the owner already has the right to use his property and there is therefore no consideration. (Admittedly, Steam might be an exception to this, since Valve could try to argue that keeping track of your games for you and making them available to re-download whenever you want is “valuable consideration” – but that’s the exception, not the rule.)
(Also note that there are other problems with the validity of EULAs, such as the fact that they’re contracts of adhesion, but I’m tired of writing so I’ll leave that for another time.)
TL;DR: Copyleft licenses are valid because they offer the copy owner privileges they didn’t already have: namely, permission to distribute copies under certain conditions. In contrast, EULAs are bunk because they attempt to restrict mere use of the thing the copy owner already owns while offering nothing in return.
You are wrong. If you buy a physical copy of a game, you cannot legally make further copies of that game. You can only sell the single copy you own, which is the licensed copy
You’re confusing copyright law with property law. Sure, you can’t make and sell copies (fun fact: you can make copies for certain other purposes, though), but that’s not a limitation on what you can do with your own copy, which is your property.
Ownership of the right to copy and ownership of the copy itself are entirely different things.
I’m not confusing copyright law and property law, but you are deliberately conflating them so you can say things like “That’s what the copyright cartel claims, but it’s a goddamn lie.” in response to someone saying that owning a copy of something does not give you the rights to that thing.
deleted by creator
A copy of a game, even a physical one, only licenses you to play it. And yes. That is a license.
No, that’s a property right.
Because what you’re claiming is that just because you own a copy of a game (a “LICENSE” to play it) you also own the rights to the IP?
Do you understand the difference?
Clearly, you’re the one failing to understand the difference!
Years ago I had been out of multiplayer gaming for a number of years and had really only had experiences with PC games, where multiplayer is/was just this standard thing. You already bought the game, playing multiplayer with other people is just a thing you can hop on and do whenever you want for free (provided there’s other people to play). I owned consoles, but never played multiplayer games on them, so never dealt with game passes or anything like that.
When my oldest son started getting into gaming, we wanted to play couch co-op on an Xbox game, but then ran into a problem with it requiring an Xbox game pass for a co-op mode (it had been couch co-op in previous games from the series; basically a horde mode where you go against bots, so no reason to go online). Requiring a game pass for that just seemed like a shit way to get more subscriptions.
When I complained about it on Reddit, people swarmed to tell me what a jackass I was and that of course you have to subscribe to play with game pass, like what kind of world was I living in where I expected free multiplayer gaming? Apparently I hadn’t realized what a golden age I had lived in when something like free multiplayer gaming was just a standard thing.
That’s been my experience as well, the dogpiling crap. I even had someone argue “How are businesses supposed to stay alive if they don’t charge monthly!” – and they couldn’t agree that the business could create new IP, or create new games, instead of sitting on the same game for 10+ years.
Apparently I hadn’t realized what a golden age I had lived in when something like free multiplayer gaming was just a standard thing
This was literally never a thing on consoles, so maybe that’s the issue?
Multiplayer gaming was and generally still is totally free on PC, but consoles don’t have the infrastructure to pull from and have charged since they launched the feature.
For couch co-op?
The issue there is that the game co-op always goes through their servers.
Games that don’t run their multiplayer that way don’t have this issue, but as multiplayer continues to transition to remote play rather than couch co-op it will likely continue to spread.
You said that (free co-op) was literally never a thing on consoles. It has been a thing since Pong.
I assumed that someone reading this conversation would apply context and thus understand what I was talking about.
I remember Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox’s online service not being charged…?
Xbox live was absolutely a paid service
At E3 2002 Microsoft unveiled its plans to establish an online gaming service for the Xbox called Xbox Live. The membership fee was set at $49.99 a year, which is what it still costs today. Microsoft was adamant about getting users online quickly and easily
Dreamcast doesn’t really count as it was more of just a modem, and PS2 initially had no online capabilities. I still get wistful over what Dreamcast could have been.
Nevertheless, due to lack of widespread broadband adoption at the time, the Dreamcast shipped with only a dial-up modem while a later-released broadband adapter was neither widely supported nor widely available. Downloadable content was available, though limited in size due to the narrowband connection and the size limitations of a memory card.[23] The PlayStation 2 did not initially ship with built-in networking capabilities
I don’t remember basic multiplayer access was paid service for Xbox, but that maybe me confusing things with Playstation 3’s PSN not requiring it. Also, doesn’t count? Really? So if it doesn’t agree with you, it doesn’t count?
Dreamcast had no servers to play from. It has an internal modem. So yes, that’s not what we’re talking about and doesn’t count
Do you understand the difference in that technology? Genuinely asking here - do you know what a modem is?
You mean there exist online game that doesn’t have any host at the end point? So games like Phatasy Star Online runs on magic? I’m genuinely asking here.
So if you connect with modem, it isn’t multiplayer? If you connect third-party servers, it isn’t multiplayer? Connection doesn’t care what hardware is present at end point - all it care is that it satisfies authentication then following byte stream is correctly formatted. The fact that it is console doesn’t magically make it require different kind of infrastructure from PC to begin with unless someone forces to.
So what is definition of console multiplayer for you anyway? It clearly seems to be not “A session of a game where multiple players are involved locally or via internet” based on what you are saying so far.
That’s kind of a bad comparison…you’re continually paying Adobe for (generally) one program that you’re going to use every day for years. It would actually make sense to just pay a lump sum upfront and then again maybe a few years later for a newer version.
With Gamepass, you’re paying for access to many games, each of which you’re going to play for a relatively short time before moving on to another game. If you spend a lot of time gaming and enjoy novelty, it makes a lot of sense.
No they’re the same. Just because you like one over the other doesn’t change that.
GP really isn’t that bad imo. There’s much better examples.
With GamePass, all the games are still available to buy, often both in the Xbox store and Steam. You also get a discount if you do want to buy it.
But with streaming services, it’s much worse since you can’t often buy the media. You’re forced to use their service every time you want to watch it.
That applies to all digital store fronts and isn’t specific to game pass.
No, this is mistaken. If a digital storefront sells their media in a DRM-free format, you receive the files in an unrestricted way, similar to if you bought a physical book, movie, or album.
Unrestricted is not to say given permission to copy and distribute as you’d like, but that’s the same as for physical media.
Okay sure, for DRM-free storefronts that’s true but I’m talking about arguing that Game Pass is somehow worse than say Steam when the reality is that you can lose all your content on both storefronts. Most aren’t DRM-free, which is the issue.
Steam’s DRM is optional for publishers at least, and many titles are DRM free. You also at least have access to the files so you can attempt to bypass it.
Fwiw I can see where you’re coming from, but I don’t really understand why/what for. Game Pass isn’t really comparable to Steam or a digital storefront anyway, which already makes the comparison kind of silly. That said, I recognize you were going off the other commenter’s framing in the argument there, so not faulting you for following along with it. I did just the same in my reply before giving it some more thought with this one.
Nevertheless, it is worse in terms of ownership, but that was never its selling point to begin with, so it’s silly to criticize it in that respect, much as it would be to criticize Netflix for not providing ownership of what it gives access to. Also regarding Steam DRM, xcjs covers that nicely in the other reply here.
You already don’t own anything since PC games went digital, I pay the equivalent of 5 USD for gamepass in Brazil, while new games are reaching 80 dollars in price, I will sooner pirate everything than pay that full price.
I’ve saved literally thousands of dollars with gamepass. I couldn’t care less it’s a rental and you can still purchase should you want to waste money.
It’s less about corporate cock goblin and more about being able to do basic math, identify value, and not spend literal thousands of dollars sticking it to the man.
If you don’t see value in ownership, then yeah, you “saved” money. But that’s on you.
You’re also missing the part where they’re undercharging for the service in order to increase adoption, after which they will turn up the costs. So enjoy it while you can.
Sooo currently they are saving money playing multiple games that they most likely won’t replay in the future anyway.
Why the hostility if it’s a good deal for them? Just to own a game on the tiniest chance you’ll play it later? Or just rent till you find a game you like and will play multiple times, buy to own it and also play multiple other games on the pass.
Sure. Until you can’t own games anymore because of everyone enabling these companies.
This sounds so slippery slope hypothetical, but this is exactly what Adobe did with Photoshop, Lightroom, and more, which shows that this is actually happening right now.
I don’t think Microsoft will do so, at least in the foreseeable future. One of their selling points to devs is that they’ll see their sales go up in addition to the GP revenue. There would be a lot of publishers who would pull out if they can’t sell their game and have it on GP.
They might do it for their own games, but even that could be a stretch. Starfield saw huge sales on both Xbox and PC in addition to those who are using GamePass.
Sure. Until everyone buying up the game results in $200 copies for a 5 hour game since there are no alternatives and everyone was enabling it by buying bad games.
Slippery slope is a fallacy for a reason. There is no evidence of rent only games comming anytime soon, it’s just doomsaying.
It isn’t doomsaying.
Yeah it is, you have no proof of the “rent only” future you are doomsaying about. Movies used to be mostly rented out, yet this hasn’t led to the “rent only” situation, quite the opposite.
If you don’t see value in ownership, then yeah, you “saved” money. But that’s on you.
There is little value in owning a game that you will never play again after the initial play-though, so if you get to play the game for less than it would have cost to buy, then yeah, money was “saved”. That’s why people are happy to pay for streaming services where they can watch content for significantly less money than if they went out and bought DVDs of all the movies/shows that they very likely will never watch again.
You’re also missing the part where they’re undercharging for the service in order to increase adoption, after which they will turn up the costs.
Do you really think people paying for Game Pass are unaware of the monthly cost?
Great, you can unsubscribe and just buy the games you want at that point.
Ohhhh scary imaginary future where valve, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, and the thousands of independent devs are forced to only stream in one platform 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Get real. Gaming is absurdly competitive with an absurdly low barrier to entry.
I remember a day when that list was 100x longer. Microsoft is currently in the process of trying to buy Nintendo, they’ve said so in court documents that have been uncovered.
So you’re just fine with corporate conglomeration where Microsoft turns into the publisher for all US games, kind of like Tencent in China…
Microsoft is not in the process of trying to buy Nintendo. Did they discuss it? Yes, obviously, any company would be idiotic to not at least discuss things like opportunities from purchasing competitors, but I read the emails, at no point did they even sound like it was something they were “trying” to do.
As a matter of fact, and this is just conjecture from me, but to me it read it like, somebody not in the gaming space emailed Phil about wouldn’t it be great to buy Nintendo and Phil’s response to me read like someone who got a suggestion from a boss that’s a dumb suggestion, they know it’s a dumb suggestion, but they need to be courteous in their response by entertaining the idea.
What day? Please can you give me a time frame where the were significantly more publishers?
Edit: turns out your memory is powered by a rose tint effect. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175328/video-game-software-publishing-businesses/#:~:text=The number of video game,video game software publishing businesses.
You…linked me some advertising site that uses a stock image in order to try to sell you access to their data? …How dense… you know what, nevermind. You totally win! You got me! LOLOL
I don’t know why you think that’s funny. Guy gives you data, you just laugh and present zero counter-information. The video game publishing world seems to be booming:
The number of video game software publishing businesses in the United States has been increasing in the last decade, peaking at 28,052 businesses in 2023 after a dip between 2017 and 2020. In 2022, there will be an estimated 25 thousand U.S. video game software publishing businesses.
I agree with you about game pass. Adobe is different though. With Game Pass you rent a whole library of software, and if you really just want to play one game you can outright buy it. With Adobe you are renting maybe a few apps, and if you only want one (like I do) you cannot pay outright for it.
Game Pass even gives you a discount if you pay for the title outright.
Fuck Adobe.
It’s always ethical to pirate from Adobe.
Or use Monkrus to get pre-cracked versions 😎
Monkrus does some good Adobe stuff, never had any problems with them
Tangentially related… I work IT in a CNC shop. Most engineering prints that we get to make parts to have various specs on them for materials and various finishes. Those specs used to be free years ago, but they’ve most all been replaced, but not really updated at all. Now everytime they have a revision change, we have to buy the new revision from SAE for like $70 a piece. As shitty as that already is, in recent years, they have DRM locked them to a single user. So while we have 50+ employees with multiple needing to reference these for quality inspection or processing, it’s against the ToS to share those specs. We are supposed to buy one for each user which is fucking bogus.
Fuck em. I screen snip each page and make a new PDF, or that one user prints it out and scans it in. The extra kicker is that while that’s not allowed, you can buy a paper copy that can be shared for the same cost, you just have to wait for it to be delivered.
Same with ISO docs. Imagine being required by law to follow specs you have to pay to know.
Imagine being required by law to follow specs you have to pay to know.
Relevant case law:
TL;DR: once “annotations” or “model codes” or whatever are incorporated into the actual law, they are no longer eligible for copyright.
That doesn’t stop organizations like SAE and ISO from trying to bully and trick you into agreeing to pay them for copies that you obtain directly from them instead of trudging down to the local law library and making copies yourself, however. (And it’s even worse when you want convenient electronic copies instead of paper, because then they try to apply EULA bullshit, which I’ve already debunked in another comment.) IMO it’s probably best to get the documents from some third-party source so you never get on the standards org’s radar for a shakedown to begin with.
I approve this in spirit, but is this safe from an audit?
All of the audits we have to do, yea. They just care that we making good parts, that our paperwork is filled out correctly, and processes are being followed. Technically, if we didn’t have any of the specs but still did the process correctly, they wouldn’t care.
deleted by creator
it doesn’t work on these documents, come on. the DRM they have on these is pretty solid.
deleted by creator
As someone that had to deal with adobe for 5 years for an 800 person studio. Fuck Adobe. For the rest of forever.
I signed up for creative cloud and accidentally signed for a year. They want 60$ to cancel the subscription. Suck my taint.
How is that even legal
Unlike most online services that essentially do not offer refunds (you just ride out the subscription), Adobe has created more of a carrier type plan, where there is a yearly contract so it accrues the same penalty like any phone plan.
So yeah, legal. Just the worst kind of legal. And that’s Adobe. Just the worst kind.
Was it recent (and can you get the credit card agency to revert it?)
3 months in - it’s Definitely my bad
Change your subscription to something else, this resets the counter. You can now cancel without fines.
Whaaaa that works?
I did it a few months back, and immediately cancelled the new plan with no fees, worked a treat. Also FYI the educational discount is pretty great, I set mine up with my daughters email address no issues, I’m not sure how much they check this as it’s not a school email address.
No it’s always been that way. They have adopted a similar subscription as phone carriers. If you cancel early, you face a penalty.
Most other subscriptions don’t actually let you cancel and receive a refund (you just ride out the sub). But, that’s Adobe. They’ll always find the worst, shittiest way to make it happen.
I mean it’s the same company that held the internet down with Flash, that at one point was the top source of nearly all malware through a browser.
Hahahaaha omg ! This is hilarious. Thanks bro
Are you still stuck with this? My brother did the same not long ago, but I found a way to cancel the subscription without having to pay anything!
Hey adobe, how about you stop contacting everyone in our organization using a single non-profit license of a single product and telling them we should all be on a single cloud account so we can pay several times more for the same thing just to get access to sharing services no one wants?
They emailed our entire organization saying their license were expiring which resulted in 100s of calls to our service desk. Fucking hate Adobe.
This a thousand times. Maybe literally. They just won’t stop harassing us.
If you think Adobe is bad just wait until you have to deal with Autodesk.
I managed to drag my audit out for months by just playing an absolute idiot and telling them all my licenses can be found by logging in at autodesk.com and then giving them excruciatingly detailed instructions on how to get to the administration page.
They’re both bad
Firefox is getting the ability to edit PDFs. Its not quite ready for prod so I use SumatraPDF
Foxit is great too
Ah yes true sysadmin energy in this post
A friend of mine is about to be interested in digital photography and is soon going to commit on a photo finishing suite. She already attended some courses and - of course - the mayority of those had users of and applications from Adobe, usually Lightroom and Co.
I know Adobe is scum (fuck Adobe), she knows Adobe is “bad”. I think I could steer her into free and/or open source or one-time-pay software but for this I have to have an alternative that is a viable substitute, especially to Lightroom.
As for alternatives I know of Darktable, Capture One, Affinity Photo and RawTherapee.
Any more recommendations? Or an opinion on these or other products?
Thanks for your help!
Darktable is the closest, but it’s still missing a ton of features that are basic in Lightroom.
Lightroom and Photoshop are unfortunately good products with shitty licensing.
Just curious, what are the biggest features that you feel Darktable lacks? I use it occasionally but haven’t noticed any huge gaps from LR.
Lots of the AI related stuff is a big draw for current Lightroom. There’s also a lack of Adobe colors, which aren’t a need unless you’re printing a lot
Full disclosure It’s been a bit since I’ve used it, but I may try to import the ~800gb photo library I have into it again and give it another shot
Version 4 has been a decent upgrade. I still have some gripes with the overall behavior and interface, but it’s very capable software.
With the exception of AI Denoise the AI stuff is of little interest to me. I got in on the Kickstarter for Abode and am hoping that will be a suitable paid alternative.
I use and love Affinity. Back on v1 I used RawTherapee to do the initial conversion, then AP for the “photoshop part”… but in v2 the raw conversion in AP is pretty good, so I just use that for my whole workflow.
Capture One fan here. Good software buy they are also pushing towards subscriptions although you still have the option to buy and get support for one year as well. Affinity Photo is similar to Photoshop and had a great price, but has less tutorials out there.
Yeah same. And capture one don’t work on Linux too.
I like Darkroom and use it exclusively. Cons are it’s slow as beans, even on my decent machine. Pros are it has a ton of features. Another con is no AI tools built in, and it has a steeper learning curve because it doesn’t have the automatic adjustment tools Lightroom does. You can get a better result but it takes work.
This is just one reason why 2013 was basically the worst year ever. I’ll never forgive or forget what Adobe had done that year. It’s just insane.
Ah yes, the beginning of the subscription apocalypse that masked a 50% increase to annual cost behind a “cheaper monthly charge”. While I miss my time as a photographer, I’ll never miss Adobe.
That was the reason I lost my interest in animation completely.
Have you had a look at the Affinity suite? It certainly can’t replace everything, but for many users like me it’s not really missing anything for a one time payment.
They have -30% sales sometimes. I actually bought the whole suite at 50% discount some years back, but I don’t think they’ve had another 50% discount for a long time now.
If you’re interested in any of the Affinity programs, keep an eye out for sales. I’m guessing the next one will be Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
Fuck Adobe.
If you’re some dude who edits photos for his kids or makes bday cards for their family, there’s literally a dozen or more free image editors that work just fine.
If you’re in the industry, then you’ll quickly see no client will accept or work with an affinity file. Or a gimp file. Or a photomater file.
Adobe is the de facto standard and their monopoly is only getting worse. It also doesn’t help that schools are basically shills for Adobe. So every kid comes out knowing Illustrator and Photoshop and nothing else.
Adobe’s monopoly extends far beyond “software.”
Our company is using nitro pro for editing PDF.
I hate that people try to edit PDFs.
There’s a hundred formats more suited to editing.
It’s very common in the medical and legal analyst fields. There’s a lot of scanned paper in those industries.
Scans are just rasterized images. There are many formats more suitable for scanning and then editing, and some of them are even embedded inside PDF.
Ugh. You just reminded me of the time I asked for a CSV file from a customer and got a .doc file.
Inside it was a screenshot of the CSV file opened in Excel.
I was just impressed that somebody could misuse so much software so badly.
I’ve still never recovered from the time I asked someone for a screenshot of an error they were getting and they literally printed their screen, circled the error, scanned it with our copier, then copied and pasted that into a Word document and attached that document to a reply email.
Accountant?
The number of times I’ve received a file that was or could have been a CSV extract is insane.
At least Excel has gotten pretty good at extracting text.
Still, not much worse than receiving an Excel file with an embedded PDF.
One of those businesses where the accountant, the IT manager, and the person who locks up in the evening are all the same person.
And the only qualification they have for any of these roles is that they’ve been there the longest.
deleted by creator
I worked with somebody that couldn’t grasp that Word was not an email program.
Every time she had to send an email she’d open Word, type it up, then File>Send by Email…
She also installed “Incredimail” every week and thought library was pronounced “lyeberry”
GIMP, Da Vinci Resolve, Blender
Inkscape, krita
Yeah these are way better than gimp
GIMP is painfully behind the times that I only use it out of sympathy for FOSS. I even prefer Photopea despite half the working area wasted on ads and browser UI.
Maybe that’ll change one day.
This makes me sad. I usually only use GIMP for programmer art. I didn’t realize it was falling behind 😞
If it works for you that’s great! it’s sadly just not the photoshop contender it used to be 😮💨
Paint.net I like still!
And if your like me and need Substance you can buy a perpetual licence on Steam
I’ve been able to steer 2 companies and my own business to adobe alternatives. Fuck, paying rent on software.
What software do you recommend?
Krita is a Foss alternative to photo shop.
I usually figure out what it is that my users are trying to accomplish, which is usually something absolutely insane to buy Photoshop for, like resizing or adding text to pictures, and steer them toward some basic app like Paint.NET.
