Re: How would packaging Steam-proton games be received?

[Josh Marshall <joshua.r.marshall.1991@gmail.com>]

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An expanded user-base brings with it an expanded developer-base.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 3:50 PM Ryan Prior <ryanprior@hey.com> wrote:

> I don't know in depth how Proton works internally, but I think it includes
> non free DLLs, including DRM support, to improve compatibility with Windows
> games. If my understanding is correct, shipping Proton and games that
> depend on it as part of Guix would be a tacit endorsement of proprietary
> software that exercises unjust control over users. The GNU project, as a
> matter of policy, does not recommend non free software components, or free
> components like DRM that are exclusively useful for restraining user
> freedoms, so that may be a dead end.
>
> I like your energy in this thread though and agree that it would be great
> if we could help gamers break out of the ugly Steam ecosystem. Itch is an
> independent game distributor and they also publish all their client code as
> free software: https://github.com/itchio
>
> Bringing Itch to Guix might be an interesting project, if we could find a
> way to modify the client so that it does not recommend any games that are
> not free software. There's a healthy and growing list of such games here:
> https://itch.io/games/tag-open-source
>
> We might have to build our own game discovery portal to replace the
> upstream itch.io storefront, but that would be a really nice thing to
> have in general.
>
> Itch has its own tools for game developers to build their game and ship
> updates to their users. For example, they designed their own protocol for
> shipping new game builds using minimal resources:
> https://github.com/itchio/wharf
>
> It would be beneficial if Guix could learn some of Itch's tricks, to
> support fast moving projects that want to ship frequent updates to users.
>

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