I was furious that I had to download steam and install steam to play new vegas on pc at launch (as well as the box I bought from gamestop not having a the game inside but rather just a pamphlet with a cd key) I was later infuriated by New Vegas at launch and the utterly broken state of the game with each week a new but preventing progress or outright crashing game.
But now days I’m reasonable happy with (Steam) it, it’s not a perfect a solution but at least tries to uphold the gamer/consumer experience, unlike shotboxes like origin or epic games which were nonstop ads and snooping through your files outside the directory.
Assuming approval is a strict requirement, a middle ground solution would be an open source, federatable, steam clone, operated locally. Have an approving committee to priorise approving games from local developers, and working on evaluating international games after all local games are dealt with.
That’s for sure similarly efficient to gaming industry distributors system, where you need companies with the right connections to launch games in big platforms, like sony’s, nintendo’s, or microsoft’s. Or event steam’s, to a minor extent. Which also veto games not aligned to their opaque terms and conditions.
Also, it would improve international competition, with the removal of the technology barrier of entry, distribution costs would lower, games would become cheaper, and the share retained by creators and developers would be increased.
Long live, a collaborative approach to technology! Long live smaller profit margins! Long live open source!
How do you even stop distribution of malware though? For a second or two I thought this would be a really cool idea to start working on; but assuming everyone can spin up their own instance there’s nothing that would stop someone with evil intentions to create a fake store that federates with all good storefronts.
I was thinking federation for the social aspect of it, not the distribution aspect of it.
Distribution would be “the usual”. Stores acquire software, and licenses, store and serve the data through a server. Client software solve installation and integration between games and social stuff, like friends, messages, networking and achievements.
I mean, it’s not a one person project, but if I were supreme leader of Vietnam and had the people and resources to be working on providing video game entertainment for the masses, that’s how I’d be thinking about it. Not that software skills and supreme leader skills have any overlap…
Didn’t you know? it’s good when US bans/sanctions foreign companies, when other countries does it, it’s AUTHORITARIAN. And companies in US are totally not in bed with the government.
Everyone else must run spyware “Made in the USA” or else you’re causing some irreparable harm of sorts.
Don’t some games in steam run Anticheat as rootkits? That’s totally okay, because it’s from the great USA.
(Apparently) Sony has been pulling this shit for years, so either no one noticed or there’s more to it. I wonder if perhaps any of these countries have laws restricting certain online services, which Sony doesn’t follow, and thus is not allowed (as opposed to simply choosing not to offer)?
Geoblocking shouldn’t be a thing, unless it’s for a good reason like sanctions. It’s called the Internet (International Network) for a reason. If Coca Cola can operate in nearly every country, why can’t Sony?
I’m pretty sure internet means internetwork, as in between networks. There’s also intranets, which are limited access web networks.
You are right that geoblocking really shouldn’t be a thing, it’s existence is thanks to varying laws and regulations, and most annoyingly, IP distribution contracts.
I’m pretty sure internet means internetwork, as in between networks.
Yes you’re right. I’m one of the operators of network AS559 and we have loads of interconnections to other networks, a supermajority of those is within our small nation. The international ones do make for a lot of traffic though :-)
I haven’t played any Sony game on steam, because I am waiting until I can build new PC, hopefully by the end of the year. I was planning to buy them, but not anymore. Instead I will get fit in the gym.
In case it’s not obvious to anyone reading, fitgirl is not a working out guru, and don’t Google her directly, her site has 50 bajillion copycats with malware. Go to your neighborhood’s friendly piracy community, and look for her in the guides.
The existing players in those countries can still play though, that was what I reviewed for and is why I reversed it. But if Sony wants to keep fucking around then we'll have to see
Existing players… So, fuck you I’ve got mine, is that it?
Also, why do you think they don’t want to make the game purchasable from these countries again now that PSN isn’t an issue anymore? And why are they taking Ghost of Tsushima off the store for the same countries? It’s clearly not because they’re just waiting to require PSN at a later date, right? Maybe they’re just waiting for the number of players to go down enough that they don’t fear the impact or for enough time to pass that they won’t lose money from people from these countries asking for a refund, right?
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