Curmudgeon Gamer
03 August 2007
Stay out of the virtual rare book room. Buy DOOM on CD.
So now id Software has their games on Valve's virtual rare book roomSteam service. Yuck.
The prices of individual games are pretty bad. I'd rather track down a physical CD that I can keep forever and, where applicable, use one of the enhanced clients made from the GPLed source code. The big package of all of id Software's games is a deal, however, if you're cozy with Steam's tentacles.
Which brings me to my big concern: no more GPLed id Software games. Now that DOOM 3 is on Steam and theoretically available for sale forever, perpetually priced at $20, we probably won't see any source release as we've seen for everything since DOOM.
My naive understanding of Steam is that the General Cache Files (GCFs) encapsulate game data and present an extra layer between the user and the data. So Steam users might have to do some extra work to use a GPLed client with the data they've bought through Steam. Moreover, it's possible that id Software has now, or will someday, make it impossible for GPLed clients to play against the client distributed through Steam. I'm still unclear on how mods like Counter-strike and Red Orchestra work through Steam, but I'm guessing that they are close enough to commercial to get special status. (How do lesser mods integrate with Steam?)
Oh well. It was a nice run. Thanks for the games, John Carmack and id Software. Hope this venture works out for you.
Update: From Dustin over at LinuxGames:
Update 2: Be sure to check out Ryan's comments here and here which suggest I'm even more wrong.
The prices of individual games are pretty bad. I'd rather track down a physical CD that I can keep forever and, where applicable, use one of the enhanced clients made from the GPLed source code. The big package of all of id Software's games is a deal, however, if you're cozy with Steam's tentacles.
Which brings me to my big concern: no more GPLed id Software games. Now that DOOM 3 is on Steam and theoretically available for sale forever, perpetually priced at $20, we probably won't see any source release as we've seen for everything since DOOM.
My naive understanding of Steam is that the General Cache Files (GCFs) encapsulate game data and present an extra layer between the user and the data. So Steam users might have to do some extra work to use a GPLed client with the data they've bought through Steam. Moreover, it's possible that id Software has now, or will someday, make it impossible for GPLed clients to play against the client distributed through Steam. I'm still unclear on how mods like Counter-strike and Red Orchestra work through Steam, but I'm guessing that they are close enough to commercial to get special status. (How do lesser mods integrate with Steam?)
Oh well. It was a nice run. Thanks for the games, John Carmack and id Software. Hope this venture works out for you.
Update: From Dustin over at LinuxGames:
Someone beat me to the question about Linux and open source gaming! Carmack is proud of the code he's released, and he will open source the DOOM III engine in the future, and years and years from now, id Tech 5. He also says that knowledge informs their decisions while developing new engine technology. This response got the biggest applause of the session so far, which kind of (pleasantly!) surprised me. :]There you go, Carmack's on record and I'm on track to be wrong. I hope he follows through.
Update 2: Be sure to check out Ryan's comments here and here which suggest I'm even more wrong.
Labels: gnu, id, online distribution, quake, steam
--jvm at 20:47
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