Space trading and combat game: Endless Sky

[onpon4]

Steam does some kind of authorization checks to restrict your ability to do certain things. I'm sorry if I'm being vague, but the exact workings behind Steam's digital restrictions are not usually discussed. The most thorough explanation I could find for how Steam's digital restriction mechanisms work is, "You are required to use Steam to launch your games and Steam is responsible for making sure you are authorised to play the game." Exactly what Steam does to this end might even be a secret, for all I know.

These features depend on Steam being defective by design. So any libre client that can replace the proprietary Steam client completely would undermine them. Valve isn't going to do this, not only because they want those digital restriction features, but also because it would anger proprietary game developers wishing to take advantage of these features.

I don't know why you think it makes a difference if Valve undermines the digital restrictions with an API instead of a client, or alternatively, why you think an API which is incapable of installing a large number of games would be something Valve would bother with.

[Andrettin]

Steam does some kind of authorization checks to restrict your ability to do certain things. I'm sorry if I'm being vague, but the exact workings behind Steam's digital restrictions are not usually discussed. The most thorough explanation I could find for how Steam's digital restriction mechanisms work is, "You are required to use Steam to launch your games and Steam is responsible for making sure you are authorised to play the game." Exactly what Steam does to this end might even be a secret, for all I know.

Many Steam games don't require the Steam client to be launched. Wyrmsun is one example. It may be similar for Endless Sky, I'll have to check. Games may require you to be logged on Steam, but that's up to the developer and not necessarily so for a Steam game.

I don't know why you think it makes a difference if Valve undermines the digital restrictions with an API instead of a client, or alternatively, why you think an API which is incapable of installing a large number of games would be something Valve would bother with.

It seems to me that you are confusing the Steam client with the Steam API? There is already a Steam API, which can be integrated into games to make use of Steam features (like achievements). Since the API is not libre, its code cannot be integrated in a GPLed Steam game. If the API were open-sourced, then we could possibly add achievements and the like to open-source Steam games.

[onpon4]

So, all you're talking about is making features of the proprietary Steam client available to libre games?

Well, first of all, it's perfectly possible to add an exception to the GNU GPL for this. There's no legal need for a libre shim between the two. I don't even think such a libre shim would make a legal difference.

But more importantly, why do you want otherwise libre games to start using the Steam API? Libre shim API or not, the result is the same: whatever features you're using depend on an external proprietary program, and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. So how is this dependency any better than depending on any other proprietary program for the same purpose?

[Akien]

But more importantly, why do you want otherwise libre games to start using the Steam API? Libre shim API or not, the result is the same: whatever features you're using depend on an external proprietary program, and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. So how is this dependency any better than depending on any other proprietary program for the same purpose?

Because you are not _allowed_ to. Yeah, you can add an exception to the GNU GPL, but how do you do that in a 10+ year old project where the copyright is shared between hundreds of contributors like Wyrmsun? The discussion is not whether Steam is a good platform or not, and whether it's defective by design to be proprietary. Clearly here Andrettin thinks that stuff like Steam achievements would be a nice addition for his game on Steam (and only on Steam, and their addition would not impact the worth of the libre game, it would just be an added value for (paid) Steam users). I tend to agree with him. I don't see why you are so opposed to the idea.

And yes, the "Steam API" library that lets developers use Steam features like achivements or the Steam workshop is proprietary, so it can't be linked with the GPL unless you're the full copyright owner and can add a GPL exception, which is not the case here. So if Steam would start e.g. to dual-license this library (proprietary for proprietary or MIT games, GPL for GPL games), it would let developers like Andrettin benefit from those features and I don't think it would go against Steam's strategy either, they wouldn't have much to lose by doing so (especially now that Desura is dead, so the risk of having competitors reimplement their GPLed library in a libre platform is quite low).

[Andrettin]

Because you are not _allowed_ to. Yeah, you can add an exception to the GNU GPL, but how do you do that in a 10+ year old project where the copyright is shared between hundreds of contributors like Wyrmsun? The discussion is not whether Steam is a good platform or not, and whether it's defective by design to be proprietary. Clearly here Andrettin thinks that stuff like Steam achievements would be a nice addition for his game on Steam (and only on Steam, and their addition would not impact the worth of the libre game, it would just be an added value for (paid) Steam users). I tend to agree with him. I don't see why you are so opposed to the idea.

Indeed.

And yes, the "Steam API" library that lets developers use Steam features like achivements or the Steam workshop is proprietary, so it can't be linked with the GPL unless you're the full copyright owner and can add a GPL exception, which is not the case here. So if Steam would start e.g. to dual-license this library (proprietary for proprietary or MIT games, GPL for GPL games), it would let developers like Andrettin benefit from those features and I don't think it would go against Steam's strategy either, they wouldn't have much to lose by doing so (especially now that Desura is dead, so the risk of having competitors reimplement their GPLed library in a libre platform is quite low).

Yes, I don't think it would be against Steam's business strategy, either. The code of their API in itself is probably not that valuable from a business perspective; their brand recognition being far more important.

I think there would still be the question of whether the API being open-sourced would be enough (as it would depend on how the relationship with the client is done), but it certainly would be a huge stride forwards for open-source games on Steam if they made the API open-source. By the way, in the particular case of the Steam workshop it is possible to integrate it without using the Steam API, although sadly without it mods have to be exported to the Steam workshop using a special tool provided by Steam.

[Akien]

Congrats on the Steam release: http://store.steampowered.com/app/404410/

I've played dozens of hours on a self-compiled version, so I guess I'll let the Steam version run some hours in background before I write a review

Like it or not, Steam seems to have brought a huge visibility boost to Endless Sky.

I've been "watching" the GitHub repo (i.e. getting email notifications for each issue) since zahni first announced it here 7 months. Here are some numbers:
* Since April 15th, I've been notified about 187 issues (which accounts to a lot more emails but they are sorted by topic in my webmail, and I don't want to count each one of them :P)
* Since the Steam release (10 days ago) I've been notified about 72 new issues (+ some answers on previously-existing issues), i.e. there had been 115 notifications before the Steam release
* So before the Steam release, there were ~0.58 new issues per day, while since the Steam release there have been 7,2 new issues per day
* So if we extrapolate the number of players from the number of new issues (which is not the best approach as the increase in new issues could also be that the game is simply more buggy, though I don't think it is ), that's 12 times more players in 10 days. Now I suspect that there are even more new players but most Steam users are not necessarily familiar with free software and/or reporting bugs on GitHub.

That's it for some not-so-meaningful numbers that mostly show in the end that Endless Sky seems to be doing pretty well


It even gets me wondering if I should "unwatch" the repo as I'm starting to get too many notifications for a project I don't really contribute to :P

[Imerion]

I've played this a bit and really like it. Very polished and well made! Also nice to see so many new updates with content and other fun stuff. Just wanted to say that.