MudMan

I’m not sure about the digital-only stuff, but the OP is specifically talking about yt-dlp as an alternative to ripping the BRs, and I have to agree that ripping the disks will be easier and yields better results.

Hardware availability is the trickiest part, especially for UHD, but if you have a drive that will deal with the disks you have I certainly wouldn’t bother with the stream rip.

But hey, as a fallback, it’s good to have the option.

In fairness, the headlines written around this were generally atrocious, save a few (shout out to IGN and the original reporter, which may or may not have been techradar). Sure, in most of those you could read a more complete quote inside, but… staying at the headline isn’t just a gamer thing. Clickbait is dangerous for a reason.

And also in fairness, the point he’s making is still not great. I mean, he’s the guy in charge of their subscription service, so I wouldn’t expect him to be too negative on the idea, but he’s still saying that it’s a future that will come. Not that all models will coexist, but that a Netflix future for gaming is coming.

But yeah, gamers can be hostile without justification and often default to treating every relationship with the people making the games as an antagonistic or competitive one, which is a bummer. In that context, letting this guy talk was clearly a mistake.

Oh, it makes sense. I think there’s a place for subscription services, absolutely.

I don’t think a transition to subscription as the default model for gaming makes sense, though. Which was the point of the question and the implicit goal in the answer. And even if it did make practical sense (if people “got used to it”) it’d be bad for the art form and the industry on the aggregate.

Alright, I was only gently pointing it out because what he actually said is still a pretty bad take, but at this point it’s just annoying.

No, he didn’t say that.

He said that gaming subscriptions won’t take off UNTIL gamers get used to not owning their games. Wihch… yeah, it checks out.

The all-subscription future already sucks, can we at least limit our outrage to the actual problem? I swear, I have no idea why gaming industry people ever talk to anybody. Nothing good ever comes of it.

So far I don’t know of any services that will just hand you a digital file of a movie outside of physical media.

I say that’s a damn fine business opportunity, because I’d be all over it, but hey.

This basically, which at that point rolls all the way back around to piracy, so hey, if you find an easier way to access a comparable file maybe it’s all shades of grey anyway.

If they have access to remove the media from your library on their end, then it’s a license and not a purchase.

That doesn’t mean they don’t owe you access to it, though. The fact that there isn’t a word for “I’ve acquired perpetual access even if I can’t back up the file itself” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the right to continue to access the media. Or to demand that right to be upheld in court, for that matter.

I mean, you can “buy” stuff in Amazon Prime Video off service. Unlike Netflix or other platforms, they will let you “buy or rent” streaming movies, which is the same as finding the movie on the Amazon storefront and buying the digital copy instead of a physical copy.

Now, does that mean they won’t yank it? Not really. A digital license is a license, not a purchase. Is the word “buy” or “own” inaccurate? I’m hoping not, because like the Sony thing showed, platforms are desperate to not have the courts improvise what rights they owe the buyers on digital purchases.

I’m still buying my movies in 4K BluRay, though. And working on ripping all of them for streaming at home, now that I finally have the space.

Well, I am now baffled about two pieces of content, so… that worked?

Look, I don’t mind the link being up here. It’s fine.

But if I had stumbled upon it I’d very much have noted somewhere that
a) you could play DOS games on the Deck since day one.
b) there are many ways to run DOSbox on Deck, including through Retroarch and emudeck
c) there are plenty of ways to buy and play DOS games legitimately that way, especially by purchasing GOG builds that come with the original DOS files as a bonus, and
d) that if the entire point of a product is to streamline the look and feel of the process to match Steam Big Picture/SteamOS but it requires a bunch of command line stuff in desktop mode maybe it’s not ready for prime time, or at least not as much as EmuDeck is. But also,
e) there are probably much easier ways to get a third party browser to boot up on SteamOS and go to this place than doing all that, right?

I don’t understand how this piece came together, why it’s framed the way it is or what it’s even trying to say. I do understand posting it, although maybe not for any of those reasons you list. I don’t think I’m being elitist here, there are much, much easier ways to point people to ways of playing DOS games on the Deck that require less fiddling than this and the innovative bits aren’t the ones being mentioned in the article, which just adds to the confusion.

On the other subject you bring up… I genuinely think that just engaging with this space in the way that makes more sense to you works better to generate new engagement than trying to game the system to promote people not going on Reddit. But then, I was never on Reddit in the first place and I do enjoy the 90s forum board feel of this iteration of it, so who knows.

This entire article is utterly baffling if you know anything at all about what they’re talking about. What the absolute hell did I just read?

And you know what? It makes sense. A big part of making a moment of a media launch is to get like-minded people talking about it. It’s harder now that media is largely on-demand, so it’s great to have a place to go for the discussion afterwards.

Which is why staggered, inconsistent launches make no damn sense in the 21st century. When pirates can deliver a way to join that hype moment and you can’t, for the content you’re creating on the service your followers are already paying for you have entirely missed the point.

Hah. Not even. Between Youtube and Mastodon it was doing the job just fine.

Not like I don’t see all those posts anyway, this place isn’t THAT big yet.

Eh… what the hell is that link? The recommended videos on that place are WILD.

I had heard some rumblings about Rossmann being on some weird alt-right focused service, but I had honestly forgotten and I wasn’t expecting to get a faceful of it by accident. Yikes.

Pricing doesn’t hurt.

But yeah, people will pay for convenience. Nobody wants to dig around for pirated links if a simpler option is available.

But yeah, I hear you on international licensing. I try to keep up with Star Trek content and man, I don’t know how you can bungle up a licensig deal that much.

The latest bit of genius includes Amazon Prime listing three seasons of Lower Decks, but the third season consisting on a page that tells you they don’t have that season available, despite having had it before.

There is a fourth season. It’s not available anywhere.

I gave up and pirated it, knowing it will eventually show up in a service I do own. It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.

Yes, I’ve tried Krita. Krita is great. Go Krita. Krita is a painting program, though, not a full Photoshop replacement.

As, you know, we said in the post right above this one.

I’ve tried Krita, but it’s primarily a painting tool, not really a Photoshop alternative for other tasks. It’s very solid for what it’s meant to do, though.

Yeah, it’s just that specific hole in the landscape where GIMP has become the default and nobody else is doing better despite being the part of the ecosystem that Adobe holds with the tightest grip. It’s extremely annoying.

See, it’s annoying because I do care. Like I said, I think OS is important. The culture around it determines how projects grow and are handled, and that’s a much bigger problem than “disagreeing with a dev”.

Regardless, the idea of forking forever based on petty disagreements and cultural drama is very much part of the problem, not a solution and an unsustainable pattern. It’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that because the code is accessible there is no room for feedback or criticism. The free hand of the market will not fix all problems, whether it’s with code or the economy.

No, it is not. You say that but there is zero evidence that “people” are leaving commercial software for open source software based on concerns about transparency and control. Those are positives in most people’s minds, sure, but the open source software that dominates against commercial alternatives is the one that leads on features and usability. Sometimes solely on price and free access. Those factors are at best a tertiary priority, and sometimes not even that.

That’s what I’m saying here. The online circle that considers that transparency and control are the primary reason to choose software at the expense of feature limitations or poor UX is a very small niche disproportionately focused on those issues. And performatively so, at least in highly visible places like social media and dedicated influencers.

I think open source is great. It’s important. And yes, once monetization encroaches into the feature set (see Chrome attempting to DRM the Internet) it’s crucial to have an open source alternative to bypass the loss of functionality. But the market doesn’t move to alternatives based on their open source nature, they choose the most convenient software available to do the thing they need to do. Sometimes that software is commercial, sometimes it’s free but closed source, sometimes it’s open source. That’s fine. It’s not gonna change and it doesn’t have to.

That is important because sometimes open source devs forget about that and don’t focus enough on the things that matter to consumers. And sometimes the open source community, such as it is, will excuse this or even take pride on working around it on the basis of that performative sense of belonging and righteousness. I think that’s a risk for everybody, which is the part that annoys me about it.

Yep. You either get the features but not the depth in mobile apps or the depth but not the features on GIMP.

It genuinely sucks. Because it’s not that the technology is proprietary at Adobe and can’t be replicated. Like I said, Blender holds up to the best of commercial software and it’s just as free. It’s that the GIMP guys haven’t quite found their way to that qualitative jump Blender took.