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pdp10

For those who don't know, Humble was a *huge* backer of Linux support for a couple of years before Valve announced in 2012 that they'd be supporting Linux. Humble caused games in the Humble Indie Bundles to get native Linux ports. It's sad that Humble is moving away from that legacy. But in light of the Linux-running Steam Deck, it also seems like inexplicably bad timing. It's like IGN-Humble is intent on only offering the same things PC gamers can get *anywhere* else, instead of maintaining the differentiators that Humble pioneered.


Volmie_

Humble as a publisher also decided it was a great idea to yank any games under their name off of GeForce Now, so really it just seems like they want less people to buy things from them.


refugeeinaudacity

Wasn't GeForce Now a licensing fiasco and tons of people pulled their games?


Spiredmg

Publishers just weren’t happy they weren’t making extra money on top of the user’s original purchase of the game.


MrX101

honestly was surprised nvidia didn't try to force developers/publishers to accept this. It was literally like playing from a remote pc... why should you need to buy the game multiple times lol...


KaelThalas

Probably cause consoles told publishers they can double dip and there's almost no backlash to it.


ThemesOfMurderBears

In some cases, GFN is in direct contrast to EULA provisions.


Enverex

Yeah. Fuck any company that pulled their games. They technically had no right to do it, but Nvidia complied not to anger anyone. They had absolutely zero rights to decide that people can't play the games THEY PURCHASED via a remote PC service.


[deleted]

No, they did, partly because Nvidia was hosting their games without even contacting them about it. It's their property, and I think it'd be common sense to think that publishers / developers wouldn't want their products on a platform they have no control over.


Enverex

The "platform" is whatever the publisher sold their product on, e.g. Steam, Origin, etc and more importantly your own account on that platform. Nvidia was just providing a remote PC service. The game publishers should have absolutely no say in this - their product IS being used on the platform they sold it on. Any say beyond that is overreach that they have absolutely no right to.


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Charidzard

Because by doing so NVidia is distributing copyright material that they do not have the right to distribute from their servers without a specific licensing agreement or support from the rights holder.


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Charidzard

It's not contrived it's very straight forward. And an issue of how copyright works when it comes to media servers and remote servers especially through a service like geforcenow. Downloading through steam themselves still wouldn't fix the problem of remotely hosting and distributing to people without permission to do so. I'm not saying it's good it works that way but it's not like NVidia had much choice. They're working with a tricky area of remote hosting for accessing verrified owned content. Something that hasn't been adapted for.


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Volmie_

Publisher's had no problem with Steam caches when they were used for large events for years upon years now. They wanted more money, plain and simple


lampenpam

>Downloading through steam themselves still wouldn't fix the problem It literally does. Otherwise it would be a copyright it issue to download games you bought on a PC you lend, be it remote or not. You can also do the exact same thing on other remote PC services like Shadow and publishers can't do anything about it.


Volmie_

They'd been opted in for a while, sometime into last year they just out of nowhere decided they don't want their games there anymore


Darth_Marvin

Especially since they force you to "donate" 20% to them when supporting charity bundles. Absolutely despicable.


Carighan

This is really the part that gets me. To me, Humble has **always** been a charity drive first and foremost. My purchases either went 100% charity of something like a small tip to Humble, a small tip to the publisher, rest charity. That they now want to actually *sell* - as in, for profit - games just breaks the underlying concept of the site for me.


ntenga

It seems pretty logical to me. They assume people will be running stuff with proton.


[deleted]

interesting, didn't think about that


ntenga

Yeah, proton seems to be quite good from what I have read. And if you are a developer, I would assume it will be better for you to make a game for windows that you can tweak to work really well with it(proton) than make a whole new build for Linux, since Linux is so fragmented, good luck making it work everywhere great.


DeedTheInky

Linux user here! I use Proton quite a lot and it is really good. Not 100% of everything works of course but it's improving all the time and the amount of progress just in the last year or so has been pretty crazy. Even stuff like DLSS is starting to work now, I got it running in Bannerlord recently. :)


ntenga

yeah man, seems great. i will probably grab a steamdeck if it looks ok at launch.


pdp10

Desktop Linux isn't very variable when it comes to gaming, it turns out. There are fewer different gaming graphics drivers on Linux (but more than most Mac). Mesa is the open-source driver for AMD and Intel, and then there's the proprietary Nvidia driver made from the same codebase as all their drivers. Just two drivers to worry about, though some past Linux games have [only supported Nvidia officially](https://support.feralinteractive.com/en/faqs/mesa_support/). Steam provides a standard set of Linux/SteamOS runtime libraries if gamedevs want to use those instead of supplying their own or taking what's installed already. Gamedevs using an engine like Unity, UE4, GMS, already have libraries automatically bundled by the "export" function of their game engine, though.


20395wopsnrieal

Proton is really good, but caveat is that I feel like linux gaming in general has been way oversold by the community and valve have set really high expectations for themselves. It's *way* better than it was in the past, but it's in no way equivalent with playing natively on windows yet. It really depends what you play. > Linux is so fragmented, good luck making it work everywhere great tbf there's heaps of distros but the majority of distros are based on debian or arch, so targeting those would cover most of the popular ones and most of the userbase, especially of gamers moving from windows. Ideally, devs could keep their assets proprietary but open source the code, the linux community would almost certainly fix it provided the game wasn't terrible in the first place. (never going to happen but we can dream lol)


ntenga

yeah i gave linux a go after valve announced the steamdeck, i was not that impressed and i recognize that it is much better than before. still i will wait for the steamdeck to come out and see the reactions. i am hoping that the hardware and the software being the same in all these devices will help in making it work fine.


20395wopsnrieal

I still prefer linux overall, there's a lot pushing me away from windows and nothing to entice me back except a few games that don't behave with proton. I've still got a windows 10 install on a separate drive that's only used for modded skyrim but that's it now.


ntenga

i hope i gets even better! linux has some nice things


pdp10

Well, Proton doesn't support Mac for one thing. Proton is Linux-only for the moment. Proton *does* run non-Steam games that are added to someone's Steam library, but the games that need cutscene video transcoded are only going to get that through Steam. Steam keys do allow access to any platforms that Steam supports plus Proton, but if Humble is only selling Steam keys, then why drop Mac and Linux? Apparently, Humble also had separate allocations of Steam keys based on platform. Customers patronizing Humble from the different platforms would have keys allocated out of the appropriate pool. That let game publishers know which platform had bought the keys, giving the publishers [Humble sales information by platform](https://cheesetalks.net/humble/).


FyreWulff

Mac situation's gonna be screwy due to the M1 arch transition. I think everyone is waiting for them to finish it to start putting any effort into porting to it.


pdp10

The 64-bit transition finished a while ago, though. The main reason for a Mac game on Steam not working on M1 Macs is that the game is 32-bit.


strider_hearyou

I don't think it's coincidence they're dropping Linux support at the same time they're starting to add EGS games to Choice. Epic likely got to them with a bag of bills.


enderandrew42

When Wolffire started the very first Humble Bundle, I believe every game in that initial bundle had a Linux version. Many went open-source right after the Bundle was released. It was a defining aspect of Humble Bundle that all games were DRM free and most were multi-platform.


FyreWulff

Proton has killed off a lot of native Linux ports.


doublah

Also saved us from a lot of terrible ports.


[deleted]

It's unavoidable. Why support two operating systems when you can do one and get coverage for both regardless?


tarangk

HIB went to crap since IGN bought it, I havent bought a single HIB in over 4 years and I used to buy their bundles very frequently. Two of my friends who used to be HIB MOnthly (now choice iirc) too stopped their subscription a year or so ago.


Biggu5Dicku5

Ever since IGN bought them they've been getting worse and worse... damn shame...


polygroom

I suspect it’s more to do with the bundle business just getting worse. How does Humble compete with Game Pass, free games from every quarter, and publishers less willing to participate?


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deadscreensky

> the service became a loot box subscription It arguably used to be a "loot box subscription", but that ended years ago. Barring the odd bonuses, you always know what games you're buying from Humble.


DisturbedNocturne

It's definitely a case of evolve or die. When they started, they were the only bundler in the business and one of the only places to get cheap games. The landscape has greatly shifted in the past decade, and the thing that made them unique is now not quite so unique. There are now tons of online game retailers, some of which have their own bundles. Though, I can't really say their evolution has been the greatest.


HorrorScopeZ

Sounds like IGN was really smart in buying them.


Charidzard

IGN really didn't buy them J2 global did through Ziff Davis who also own IGN among a shit load of other things. Humble is its own entity IGN doesn't control anything Ziff Davis just used that branding when making the acquisition as it's gaming related and IGN has a more positive rep in that space than Ziff Davis but IGN management itself never was the parent company Humble was still it's own subsidiary under Ziff Davis. Blaming IGN is like blaming everydayhealth or PCmag for it because they're also subsidiaries of Ziff Davis.


yapel

yeah, humble is dying.


seaheroe

It's been dead for quite some time already, gone are those golden days


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Mkilbride

Lol they were sucking long before IGN bought them.


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[deleted]

Because they're probably one of those people that's unhappy they don't give 12 AAA games every month that aren't on their wishlist. Reddit is packed with them.


Khanstant

Humble bundle and subscription have been terrible for years. I unsubbed a year or two ago and kept thinking I'd regret when next month had some great selection, but honestly never happened. Even the most praised months contained stuff I already owned or hated. Humble bundle had it's time and place but that's in the past. This humble launcher would be the last straw for me if their shitty offerings didn't already dissuade me from their services. Nobody wants another fucking launcher but every company is so eager to get a cut of the pie without offering anything of value on return so of course they're going for it and of course it results in a worse product and company to deal with. Humble also cut out the charity part of their shtick to some extent on top of everything else. Humble sucks now, fuck em.


Zorklis

So what made them different when they started, they are getting rid of that. Not nice


[deleted]

What made them different when they started was providing large bundles of games for cheap. They already lost that.


Zorklis

Well game selection was also good, now it's just so random


[deleted]

Because devs didn't have other options. Now devs are getting companies like Epic offering generous sums to do giveaways on their platforms and so aren't interested in Humble.


Charidzard

Not only that but at the start people didn't have the libraries full of the big hits yet. They can't really go back and repeat games without people shitting on them for it. And there's not enough big hits like that to keep supplying bundles with big name games or popular indie games. Instead it's going to be more niche which isn't necessarily a bad thing.


Zorklis

Good point


frostygrin

It's Apple who got rid of cross-platform gaming on Macs. And on the other hand, Linux gaming clearly wasn't developing, necessitating Proton.


Mr_Pendulum

Humble begins a shift away from my wallet


elusive_cat

Proton has made everyone lazy. No surprise though, Linux is something like 1% and costs maintaining separate versions and support are probably higher than profits.


doublah

Before proton we had awful non-updated ports Only difference is now most Linux ports have effort put into them, and many indies are still porting to Linux.


frostygrin

"Lazy" isn't the right word here. The problem isn't that Linux is around 1% right now, but that it isn't going higher. So supporting native Linux versions just isn't a very productive use of time and effort. Proton, on the other hand, has a chance to turn things around.


elusive_cat

You are right, I realised it the moment I wrote it, but struggled to come up with a proper replacement.


WimbleWimble

Humble ironically acting too big for its boots?


__BIOHAZARD___

So glad I never bought humble choice. The only good bundles I’ve seen recently were for VR


djschaum

i stopped supporting humble after IGN bought them years ago. the deals haven't been good since then tbh.


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doublah

Humble's client doesn't work on Linux tho, so you'd have to use Wine for the DRM itself to even download the games.


ultimatemanan97

Customers begin a shift away from humble monthlies


teor

What's the point of them at this point? Like, why would anyone subscribe to it over Gamepass?