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Poll: Should Xonotic be published on Steam?
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Yes, that's an excellent idea!
41.03%
16 41.03%
Meh. I don't care either way.
17.95%
7 17.95%
No, that's a terrible idea!
41.03%
16 41.03%
Total 39 vote(s) 100%
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[SUGGESTION] Distribution through Steam

#51
You're right - they seem to be dead.
(07-18-2010, 10:59 AM)Flying Steel Wrote: How could anyone with ADHD tell its a high damage weapon if it wasn't a gigantic metal cock fucking the map whenever a player gets within 3 meters of a wall?

[Image: di-712770583645.png]
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#52
Distributing through Steam

Costs Nothing
http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/index.php

Source Code Distribution
http://i.imgur.com/i86re.png or note a download location somewhere in the game. So long as the source is available, it is legal AFAIK.
EDIT: If GPLv3, distribution in binary format with source available elsewhere is allowed: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html...OnInternet

Non-Exclusive
Question 8 of http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php#Business

DRM-Free
I thought that I read that DRM was not required...still looking for the info though.
NOTE: for .NET games (I know this one isn't) DRM isn't even available, Question 6 http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/F...#Technical
EDIT: If DRM is required (still unsure about that atm), the GPL allows for DRM, but does not protect circumventing it. This issue, I think, is similar to what is discussed under the Possible Show Stopper section.

Cost to Consumers
Can be $0. There are many Free to Play games available in the store as examples; TF2 is a well known one.

Possible Show Stopper
Here the GPL FAQ is basically saying that the binary Xonotic with the inclusion of the Steam SDK would be a non-free program. However, if the code #defines a steam build versus a non-steam build, then the non-free sdk/library is not required and is therefore Xonotic itself would still be free. I am not a lawyer, but that is my reasoning on the issue. The Steamworks people will probably have more to say about GPL code, but this should definitely be mentioned.


If you have more questions/concerns, answers are available at http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/index.php

All we need now is to Get Started!
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#53
We will have to have someone from the Xonotic team call Valve. Somebody from the community mailed them, got no response, so they called them and got told that they needed to discuss that with a person in charge of the project. Here's a post from divVerent saying that he doesn't mind having the game on Steam as long as it's free and undoubtedly GPL-compliant.

But if Steam make our devs jump through hoops to get there, don't expect this to happen soon.

I suggest you guys wait until 1.0 before discussing too much about Steam. The game might change a lot until this milestone is reached, and I don't think the masses appreciate this.
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#54
There are pre-released games available on steam as well: http://store.steampowered.com/news/7880/ Not to say that's a reason to do it, but just to say that it wouldn't be the first pre-1.0 game. Also, from reading the Steamworks FAQ, they consider incomplete games so long as the game is at a playable stage.
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#55
Sure, but it will be a while until 1.0 comes out, and it might be radically different.
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#56
Wait for 1.0 before putting the game on there. We'll get a much better reaction from the community.
ECKZBAWKZ HUGE LIST OF ACHIEVEMENTS GOES HERE....


Oh wait.
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#57
I too have always said to wait for version 1 before doing any major releases on sites/apps like Steam.
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#58
First off, thanks for your efforts of finding all this useful info controlled_chaos!

Really there are two legal concerns that I can think of right now, which are sort of correlated.

1) DRM must be open too

You did point out that DRM can be combined with GPL - however the way I read it is that the DRM software itself needs to be under the GPL license as well. This pretty much defeats the point in DRM, and I'm pretty sure Steam isn't going to open source their DRM.

I could very well be wrong on this, but I'd say that we'd actually want the game to be published with DRM on Steam. Getting more information on this is required, possibly by contacting Valve.

2) Integration with Steam must be GPLv2

Essentially any code that we write to integrate with the Steam SDK must be open source, specifically licensed under the GPLv2. This code will end up in the binary distributed by Steam and therefore falls under the obligation for us to distribute source (not from Steam, but in git for example).

I do not know about the rules behind using their SDK, but quite often this is an issue.

The questions that arise here are:
- Do we need code that integrates with Steam in our binaries?
- If so, can that code be licensed under the GPLv2?
Before posting a reply, please read about the bikeshed.
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#59
merlijn I completely agree that answers are needed for those questions. This is why I think Valve should be contacted soon if not now. Xonotic is at a playable stage currently, which is pretty much all Valve requires for consideration; and therefore if the stipulation of likely change in gameplay is noted, Valve could at least asses the game and give feed back regarding said questions. If Valve were to return answers in Xonotic's favor, then Xonotic 1.0 could debut on Steam (as well as elsewhere) rather than having a Steam build after the 1.0 release.

Also, since GPLv2 is used, the source would probably need to be distributed through the Tools section of the players Steam Library rather than just noting where to find the source online.
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#60
I'd love for 1.0 to be distributed on Steam, but how far away is the 1.0 release? If it's a year or so away, then it would probably be jumping the gun to work anything out with Valve works right now.
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#61
I'd honestly say "far, far away..."
[Image: 561.png]
"One should strive to achieve; not sit in bitter regret."
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#62
one other thing is that getting game on steam may not be easy because they reject inferior stuff(even though there sell lots of crappy games), so even if 1.0 would be finished they could still reject it anyway.
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#63
I doubt they'd see Xonotic 1.0 as inferior! I mean even 0.6 is pretty good... Imagine how awesome v1.0 will be!
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#64
I lack imagination right now, I didn't mean that xonotic is inferior but I think that they would reject it because of graphics, bugs, lack of polish, whatever. As I mentioned, games get rejected from steam.
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#65
(06-09-2012, 09:28 PM)frostwyrm333 Wrote: I lack imagination right now, I didn't mean that xonotic is inferior but I think that they would reject it because of graphics, bugs, lack of polish, whatever. As I mentioned, games get rejected from steam.

I don't really understand where you are coming from. Xonotic has less bugs and more polish than most games from major game studios these days. And the graphics are far from bad.

The only reasons I could see it being rejected from steam would be because it won't make Valve works any money, and because of some conflict with Illfonic's best interests(even though their game tanked).
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#66
(06-08-2012, 12:58 PM)merlijn Wrote: First off, thanks for your efforts of finding all this useful info controlled_chaos!

Really there are two legal concerns that I can think of right now, which are sort of correlated.

1) DRM must be open too

2) Integration with Steam must be GPLv2

When putting a game on steam you don't have to use their drm - there are lots of (indie and old) games that only use steam as content distribution and launcher without any integration. Many of the old games on steam even use DosBox which is GPL - e.g. Dark Forces uses dosbox and Quake 1 didn't have any integration and checks for at least a couple of years (haven't checked recently) and I could easily use DarkPlaces for Q1 through Steam (to have playtime counted) by just replacing the executable.
My contributions to Xonotic: talking in the forum, talking some more, talking a bit in the irc, talking in the forum again, XSkie
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#67
I'm not sure the dosbox thing is very clear... See this post on slashdot and the VOGONS forum thread it links to http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?si...d=20153983

From my understanding, they link the original dosbox binaries to a proprietary dll using a proprietary wrapper, and that might be a GPL violation.
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#68
But the point is (as some ppl said in that linked thread) - you can replace that dosbox exec with a normal one and it still works - meaning - it's not tied to the drm or steam this way. You could download the game through steam and run it from the exec without having steam running. And it's not only dosbox. Windoze GlQuake exe also could be launched without steam running, you could even copy the game dir to a different machine that didn't have steam installed and it would still run == effectively drm-free.

Just use this approach for Xonotic and it's GPL-ok, just like on Desura.
My contributions to Xonotic: talking in the forum, talking some more, talking a bit in the irc, talking in the forum again, XSkie
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#69
They distribute dosbox to be used with a proprietary wrapper and dlls, some people seem to think this might be a problem. I honestly don't know. I'm just saying it's not 100% clear.
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#70
<facepalm> but I'm not talking about dosbox(!)

I'm talking about game executables that don't have any ties to steam, giving glquake.exe (a win32 executable) as an example (dosbox was used as another example). And I'm saying all this just to state that there apparently nobody is forced to use steams drm on their game - the game authors have a choice.

Maybe I'll try to find some other steam games that don't have steam ties today to hopefully steer this away from dosbox :-P.
My contributions to Xonotic: talking in the forum, talking some more, talking a bit in the irc, talking in the forum again, XSkie
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#71
Oh, sorry. Welp. It's pretty useless to speculate anyway, it's all up to Valve's legal department.
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#72
Some other games that I found are not tied to Steams DRM: Cthulhu Saves the World, Inside a Star-filled Sky, Noitu Love 2... Something more interesting is that games (even those that use the drm) are allowed to supply other executables which are not tied to the drm - Terraria has a dedicated server exe distributed with it, Dungeons of Dredmor on the other hand has Linux executables supplied with the game (despite Linux being unsupported by Steam currently).

But yeah - I agree, we can discuss till the day we die, and nothing will come out of it until the Xonotic team will talk to Valve ;-).
My contributions to Xonotic: talking in the forum, talking some more, talking a bit in the irc, talking in the forum again, XSkie
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#73
some new development: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/
(for lazy ones: devs post their projects and users vote on what they want to be released on steam, releasing August)

We probably have enough click-drones to at least try.
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#74
Of course, there are no technical and legal details. We'll have to wait for its launch before we know if FLOSS games stand a chance to enter this.
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#75
Well I gonna write a mail to Gabe Newell and ask him about his thoughts around Free Software games and distributing them trough Steam.
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