While Valve shouldn't have done this, Yuzu (and emulation) is completely legal. Nintendo cant do anything unless they want to go hard against emulation itself which brings us to the same are APIs copyrightable debate.
Edit: I guess I didn't realize Portal was on Switch.
Valve is not selling a walled garden product and if you are expecting them to administer the steam deck like one you will be disappointed. If that's not for you then you should not go into business with Valve - it would be painful for both parties.
Despite the video being retracted the desired effect has been achieved. The flurry of news has more lay people thinking about the Steam Deck in the same class as the Switch, even if their intent is not to emulate.
Things MAY work out to the benefit of regular users ( though often they work out to the benefit of those with best lawyers ). All I am saying is, if push comes to shove, as much as I would like to believe Gabe will actually fight this should Nintendo go after them somehow ( and I will actually spend money on Steam to fund it if needed ), it would have been so much better if it stayed a hobbyist thing.
Edit: And for the record. I love my Deck. I love that in the sea of closed off crap, Steam made it all this magic come together.
Emulating the Switch specifically is maybe a niche thing because the emulators are relatively new, the system is still sold and you can easily buy the games.
<<Emulation hasn't been a niche thing since the 90s, emulating older systems has always been wildly popular.
Compared to today it was popular amongst some enthusiasts, who already self-selected from perceived social outcasts. Gaming has only recently become more mainstream, socially acceptable AND ridiculously profitable.
The target is that much bigger. I stand by my 'it used to be a niche', because even being interested in computers was not a mainstream interest.
[1]https://www.gameskinny.com/ggtms/10-best-video-game-commerci...
edit:
Seems I was off with a billion number, but it is still nowhere near 2017's 100b global video game industry estimate.
And this is because Steam's model is broadly superior, for the simple fact that respects both creators and users autonomy more.
Nintendo can catch up to the times or Nintendo can get it's lunch eaten. But that's on them.
This is where I think the disconnect lies. You think it is about competition and business model. You think the best product wins. You think that just because Steam's product is better, it automatically follows that they would not be subject to whims and vagaries of the court systems ( yes, systems ). Creators and users are not meaningless, but serve as mere pawns to be traded between warring corporate entities. As users, best we can hope for is that current retarded copyrights are not enforced harder than they are already.
Nintendo's financial status is public knowledge as they are a public company. Steam's profit and warchest is unknown, but estimated below Nintendo. In short, if both sides dig in, it could be a while.
I am fine with Nintendo going down as a result of that potential fight, but are you ok with it being a pyrrhic victory, where US legal copyright landscape changes further to the user's detriment?
Do you care about that?
Definitely a maybe. But I suppose I see game creators putting up a better fight than, e.g. the Tumblr adult material community, who more or less rolled over, no pun intended.
Edit: for accuracy, it's "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" to a copyrighted work.
Examples:
* Dead Cells has Steam DRM: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dead_Cells
* Hollow Knight does not (will run without Steam if you copy just the game files): https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Hollow_Knight
I was vaguely surprised because I figured that obra dinn being a small single player indie title would not have any drm. and I don't think it does. I think just linking it to the steam dll(for steam integration) makes the check occur. I suspect the solution is a bogus steam dll. but did not find one in the couple of minutes I was looking.
Note that you can copy a game to a friends computer then authorize them to play it, so good for valve, but I did not want to set my mother up with a steam account. so did not use this feature.
Another example is original sound tracks sell as game dlcs. They are simply downloaded into game directory, nothing is protected.
This is entirely up to developer to decide how they use Steam.
PS: I am game developer.
If a game developer chooses to implement Steam DRM, Valve will enforce it.
I call that "enforcement", and most significant games on Steam use it.
The alternative, that Steam DRM is used but doesn't actually do the thing that DRM is supposed to do, ie prevent copying, is nonsensical, and thus can't be what OP meant.
Therefore, we are forced to assume that they meant that "non-enforcement" means that Steam the platform doesn't require DRM for your game to be on it, which is true, it doesn't. That's the only reasonable interpretation.
>> Can you play the same game on two devices from the same steam account without hiding offline?
> Steam doesn't enforce DRM. You can usually go to the game files and just click the launcher from the file manager and the game will run without steam getting involved.
Giving this answer to that question indicates that OP really did mean that you can simply bypass Steam's DRM enforcement (e.g. of playing a game on only one device at a time) by clicking on the launcher directly.
It's not "nonsensical", it's just wrong.
Very not sure about that, though.
Personally I'd be happy to pay money and get access to the game ROMs to run on an emulator because I find it more convenient to play them in an emulator than to switch a bunch of cables to put the switch on my monitor.
You actually don't, and I have to give credit to nintendo for this one, there are only a few ways you can get banned (the main one being installing pirated games, the switch has telemetry that sends back data about the signatures of the games you have installed) but just running simple homebrew isn't one of them, you can load up custom firmware and run a game dumper without getting banned just fine. You can even play online with it active (I have done it).
The bigger problem is that only very old models of the console can be hacked without having to solder a modchip so this is completely inaccessible to most switch owners.
If getting switch ROMs were as easy as buying any other game on Steam, most people would probably pay, the same way most people already pay instead of pirating PC games.
how many rootkit-level DRMs does Steam need to distribute before we can throw that comment of Gabe's out the window? They own the PC market, they have just about mastered software distribution, and everyone seems fairly happy with the service provided, yet piracy still exists and most everyone on the Steam marketplace go out of their way to implement various methods of software DRM to prevent it.
What kind of fantasy service provided is he imagining that would put a stop to software piracy?
Safe to say that the comment was plain wrong at this point, no?
It is easy, affordable, and acceptable to me. I think the user experience can improve a lot. At this moment however, it is my preferred method of buying games.
The service problem is the problem for me. A Prime example being that I "pirate" movies available to me as a Amazon subscriber because of the VPN policy.
Piracy often wins in cases when it provides a vastly superior experience than official channels themselves. A LOT of today's AAA titles end up giving a massively better experience in Pirate releases than in official ones - Assassin's Creed and Far Cry series, Bethesda's Doom and Wolfenstein series, the Mass Effect series, Rockstar's GTA series,... the list goes on and on - plainly because the official releases are so insufferably bloated and ridden with consumer-hostile designs. Piracy is indeed a service problem. Ensure your services are good and people won't turn to Pirate releases anymore.
Dumping the game so you can use it on an emulator isn't as easy but removing the DRM from a Steam title isn't necessarily easy either (especially if it's a new release).
Buying a ROM would mean buying a ROM. As in, you get the .ROM.
Steam DRM by the way is trivial to bypass. From Steamworks documentation:
> The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.
Of course some games have third party DRM, and in the store it will tell you that before you buy it.
But the problem is not the DRM here. Your average gamer wouldn't care about a non invasive as long as they could get the same or better experience than they can now using a pirated ROM.
While emulation CAN give a better experience it can also give a worse experience. Not every Switch title is playable, many have glitches etc.
Have people already forgotten what Gabe himself said all those years ago? Piracy is a service problem, Nintendo does not provide any way to obtain these games legally for emulation (and often does not provide any way at all of accessing their games from previous platforms), so of course people pirate them. I thankfully still have a fully working launch year Switch so I can do whatever I want but it's not particularly convenient and most people don't have this privilege at all.
Torrenting also isn't illegal by itself or a direct link to pirating, it is just a very common way of sharing pirated data.
Emulating also isn't illegal by itself of a direct link to pirating, it is just a very common way of playing pirated games.
Just as you can go to to arch linux' web page and download through their recommended method (torrent), you can go play old PS1 games on the PSClassic (based on the PCSX emulator), or play GB/GBC games on your 3DS Virtual Console (in house nintendo-made emulator afaik, correct me if I'm wrong).
I was making fun of that comment to point out the same is true of emulation. However I obviously misinterpreted the initial comment since you're clearly aware emulation itself is legal. Sorry.
2. This way you can buy physical copies of games, keeping full control and the ability to resell them, while also carrying your current game library on an SD card.
Edit: I forgot modding! That's a huge use of emulation.
For instance, I run qemu all the time to emulate various android devices.
I suspect that you're thinking specifically of game emulation though.
Running software on an emulated device is fine legally as long as it doesn't violate copyright law.
For instance, you can legally backup software that you own in the US [1] - that extends to games as well - and because emulators themselves are legal (although you may also need to backup the device's BIOS), you can have a completely legitimate archive of copyrighted games to run via an emulator.
That said, it's unlikely that most people archive software themselves, and it is not legal to distribute backups in the US, even if both parties have legitimately acquired copies of the source material.
Do you (or anyone) know if caselaw on this point and which USC this position relies on, thanks.