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Any plans to get the game on Steam ?


ObaniGarage

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I thought it was already on Steam for many years? This would be nice to get even more players on board... as much as I don't personally like Steam and its strictly controlled and proprietary design, which as has been mentioned doesn't bode well with our GPL licensed code either.

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I am aware of the complexity of an endeavor like a Steam debut for a project of this kind, but still - I've been thinking about it for years and I can't get the idea out of my head. I firmly believe being available on Steam would benefit this game greatly. I'm sure Devs do not need any more confirmation of how great it is... but some fans do! Jokes and egoistic remarks aside - Steam is a powerful platform and I don't think, despite all the hassle, in the end it would be anything near net loss.
Growth of community (with potentially gwowth of numbers of active fan content creators), more exposure for active devs that might be interested in future game-making career plans...

Not being there almost makes me upset. I'm sure it would end up in like top#5 best reviewed fan games. 

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TDM is very present on the net, with 100% positive reviews, even in reviews on Russian and Japanese pages.
In Steam it has not succeeded, despite more than 20,000 upvotes from the community, but I think that a FOSS game does not fit the philosophy of Steam.
If it were up to the community, it would be there since long time ago, but apparently the admins don't think the same.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi there,

 

I read a few of the things you said here and I have a few points to say :

1. Steam and FOSS don't seem to be so incompatible. A few FOSS games already are on Steam, like Battle for Wesnoth, Teeworlds or Warfork. These are not just "free" games, these are free and open-source games, and have always been. There's even the most popular teeworlds's client as another Steam game, which is also FOSS.

The only thing that matters and that might cause problems with licensing are if you want to use the Steam API to port achievements, steam id stuff and such into the game, which won't be an issue I guess for the game.

 

2. Steam is evil, I get it. But I don't get why Microsoft Store and Epic games wouldn't be as evil, if not worse. But I get it if you're against using Steam for political reasons. Although, I wish you do not mix your political views with some elitism about knowing a cool secret game nobody knows.

 

3. I know I can add custom exec files to my steam library, I already do. I didn't mean to go on Steam for my own practical use. Steam has a promotional effect and makes it easier to get people involved in playing your game, when it's a "one click" action in a client rather than going on a shady website (people are scared of anything on the net nowadays).

 

4. There's no question of quality over quantity. The game is the game, the community is the community. What I want for this game is for it to be played. I get it that some of you probably want to stay in their closed community they've known for years, but I think the purpose of a game is to be played, and I wish you would promote it on the places where you get the most exposure. Most people use Steam because it's the simplest platform and that with the most available games. People looking for new games to play use Steam more than any other platform. EGS is mostly used for the free games and microsoft store doesn't exist.

Steam also has an advantage of having a pretty simple procedure to add your game on it, although it costs some money (which I'm ready to participate in paying if you guys are up for it).

 

5. Steam doesn't mean exclusivity, and you already have a launcher doing the work pretty well.

 

 

 

I answered in a kind of messy way to a lot of things I saw in the conversation, so sorry if some of you feel target for no reason, I was just answering to a patchwork of your replies (and I didn't read all of them :x)

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15 minutes ago, ObaniGarage said:

1. Steam and FOSS don't seem to be so incompatible. A few FOSS games already are on Steam, like Battle for Wesnoth, Teeworlds or Warfork. These are not just "free" games, these are free and open-source games, and have always been. There's even the most popular teeworlds's client as another Steam game, which is also FOSS.

The only thing that matters and that might cause problems with licensing are if you want to use the Steam API to port achievements, steam id stuff and such into the game, which won't be an issue I guess for the game.

This unfortunately misses the point a bit. The problem is not the open source license, per se, the problem is that Valve requires (or at least required?) a legal party or entity that is responsible for the app/game. So if any legal challenges about TDM (e.g. assets that we did not actually have permission to include) reach the Steam platform, Valve can offload them to the legal entity. But TDM doesn't have a natural legal entity, and so far no individual has stepped forward to take on that role. Nor would I advise anyone to, because it is potentially tricky and not without risk.

I imagine this is going to be similar for any other store, as well. And that's why there has not been any progress in getting TDM on Steam or any other store, and I don't think that's likely to change.

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12 hours ago, cabalistic said:

This unfortunately misses the point a bit. The problem is not the open source license, per se, the problem is that Valve requires (or at least required?) a legal party or entity that is responsible for the app/game. So if any legal challenges about TDM (e.g. assets that we did not actually have permission to include) reach the Steam platform, Valve can offload them to the legal entity. But TDM doesn't have a natural legal entity, and so far no individual has stepped forward to take on that role. Nor would I advise anyone to, because it is potentially tricky and not without risk.

I imagine this is going to be similar for any other store, as well. And that's why there has not been any progress in getting TDM on Steam or any other store, and I don't think that's likely to change.

That's what I don't get

Can anyone fork TDM (code and assets) and release it in Steam on their behalf?

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On 8/16/2021 at 12:11 PM, duzenko said:

Can anyone fork TDM (code and assets) and release it in Steam on their behalf?

Looks legal to me. But you wouldn't even need to fork...

You just need to claim responsibility for potential copyright issues.

Obviously, nobody living in any western country (like me) would ever do that - except when he is either filthy rich or a lawyer specialized in copyright law...
It is too risky for the generic dude living in a free democratic country where a single copyright law suit can ruin your life - even if you win in the end.

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On 8/16/2021 at 11:11 AM, duzenko said:

Can anyone fork TDM (code and assets) and release it in Steam on their behalf?

Yes they can, but it doesn't solve the problem. The restriction isn't with our license¹, it's with the Steam legal requirements. The person who publishes the forked TDM on Steam would need to sign a legally-binding contract that says "I, <name> residing at <address>, am the legal entity responsible for the content of this game, and Valve or a third party can sue me if they suspect that the game contains some misused asset". Nobody in their right mind would sign such a contract to cover a project which they just forked, without first having their lawyers go through every single asset and line of source code to make sure it was 100% legit.

¹ Actually I don't know if there are problems with our license as well. It wouldn't surprise me if Steam simply won't allow any game with a "non-commercial only" CC license, since Steam is a commercial platform and the precise legal extent of such restrictions is unclear.

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3 hours ago, Abusimplea said:

Obviously, nobody living in any western country (like me) would ever do that - except when he is either filthy rich or a lawyer specialized in copyright law...

It is too risky for the generic dude living in a free democratic country where a single copyright law suit can ruin your life - even if you win in the end.

Any Taliban members here? 🤪

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Mid12.jpg

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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The other day I found this in Lemmy, a complete list of free games, but there TDM is in the list of rejected games  (?)

List of free games https://libregamewiki.org/List_of_games

List of rejected games https://libregamewiki.org/Libregamewiki:Rejected_games_list#T

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20 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

The other day I found this in Lemmy, a complete list of free games, but there TDM is in the list of rejected games  (?)

List of free games https://libregamewiki.org/List_of_games

List of rejected games https://libregamewiki.org/Libregamewiki:Rejected_games_list#T

It's because before 2013 you had to own Doom 3 to play TDM. So if you weren't willing to pirate or to buy Doom 3, you couldn't play TDM. InB4 TDM became standalone.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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That doesn't seem to be the reason given:

Quote

The Dark Mod - Media is non-commercial (under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0). The engine is free though (modified Doom 3) [93] (2013-10-19)

"Non-commercial only" restrictions are generally considered non-free by the open source community, which unfortunately excludes TDM from collections which require a full free-software license.

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4 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

I think that the FOSS community is sometimes quite Taliban regarding certain definitions.
In Lemmy there are some like 'Everything that is not FOSS is crap'

Yeah I don't go that far, as much as I don't like proprietary either. AAA stuff I typically hate, I'm into some indie games which are closer to home.

But the #1 OS for both servers and desktop is Linux. And no, the fact that most people still fall back to Windows out of habit doesn't change that 😄

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Btw in case anyone offers to publish TDM on some store, does anyone manage the "team@thedarkmod.com" email?

I mean like, reading mail regularly, checking legit email that went to spam etc.?

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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1 hour ago, Zerg Rush said:

I think that the FOSS community is sometimes quite Taliban regarding certain definitions.

I agree in some cases — I certainly don't side with RMS and his belief that closed-source software is immoral and should be banned by law.

However there are good reasons why NC-only licenses aren't considered free:

  1. One of the principles of free software (and free content licenses more generally) is that it is not restricted based on fields of endeavour. A copyleft free software license such as the GPL says "This software is available for anyone to use for any purpose, provided they keep the same license and don't make modified versions closed source.". It doesn't stop you from using it do certain things like genetic modification or hosting pro-abortion websites; it doesn't restrict usage by particular groups ("No Jews are allowed to use Linux"); and it doesn't restrict you from using it just because you are Microsoft or some other commercial company. The idea is that it must be free for everyone, not just free for people the authors like.
  2. "Non-commercial usage" is actually surprisingly difficult to define precisely, and therefore leads to potential legal minefields that might restrict usage far more than intended. Clearly you can't sell something if it's NC-only, but what happens if you post it on a blog which is supported by adverts? Some lawyers would argue that this is commercial usage. Can a computer magazine which is sold for profit include NC-only content on their cover disc? They're not selling the software but it is still being used in a commercial context: to make a magazine more attractive to customers.

For these reasons, licenses such as the GPL are incompatible with NC-only restrictions, and distributions like Debian consider such restrictions incompatible with their own free software guidelines.

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Right, OpenSource has a jungle of diferent licenses and not all of them really free. Anyway the claims that proprietary soft is rubbish is a fallacy. FOSS can contain all kinds of adware, malware or viruses as well as any other software. Some people often confuse the purpose of OpenSource, which is the possibility for developers to share, improve the code or use parts of it to use it in their own products, but all this for a normal user is irrelevant
Complex products sometimes have millions of lines of code, with many references to external functions that should still be checked. This requires a team of developers to do it properly, but a user, even if they have certain notions, can by far limit themselves to changing some scripts to improve the product or remove some bugs.
Normal users don't even bother to read the TOS and PP of this.
Besides, a product is only as good as the community that supports it and the dedication of the developers. At least I do not have confidence in FOSS that is 5 or more years without update.

Also proprietary soft can have a good quality (often better) and a TOS and PP even better than some FOSS, depending the license it has (all of the Google, Fakebook and Amazon tracking APIs are FOSS)

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On 8/18/2021 at 1:02 PM, SeriousToni said:

Что ты говоришь?! 😜

There are countries with draconic copyright enforcement - and there are the countries which host the pirate torrent servers with the longest uptime...

It is all about legal risk. If you are immune to persecution by the copyright mafia, the problem preventing TDM from being on Steam doesn't exist for you.

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Steam probably just wouldn't accept a submission from a legal entity that's in a country without copyright enforcement. If the copyright claimants can't get at the "owner" of the game, then they'd just go for Steam itself?

An alternative would be to designate someone in a Western country who lives a life secluded from society and with no valuable possessions, i.e. in a makeshift hut in the forest. But then courts might see through that and instead look for people who have demonstrable ties to the project, i.e. members of the development team living within their jurisdiction. Or Steam just rejects the submission for the same reason as above.

Online stores aren't exactly a hospitable environment for a free open source project with 15 years worth of contributions.

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Like I said I don't even use Steam, have an account but haven't even logged in for over an year I think. To me this would have been good solely as a way to get it to more people and further increase our player base. It sucks if this isn't possible, though I wonder if there are any alternatives to Steam which are more friendly to FOSS content. I don't remember if other open-source projects like Xonotic or 0ad are on Steam too, I believe at least Red Eclipse is... we could consider asking their teams how they did it if that helps.

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