Stallman: Valve's Linux games "unethical" but might boost OS usage

[Leeky]

Never afraid to speak his mind, GNU founder and PC-rights campaigner Richard Stallman has called Valve's decision to sell DRM-laden games on Linux "unethical." Steam recently announced that it would port its client and popular titles to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, with Left 4 Dead 2 for Linux well underway -- a move that has been positively received by many in the Linux community, which has been largely ignored by major commercial software developers.

Although some folks see this as a turning point towards making Linux more popular, Stallman believes closed source games are "unethical because they deny freedom to its users." He added, "any GNU/Linux distro that comes with software to offer these games will teach users that the point is not freedom. Nonfree software in GNU/Linux distros already works against the goal of freedom. Adding these games to a distro would augment that effect."

However, Stallman does concede that efforts by the likes of Valve could possibly boost adoption rates of Linux. "It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm."

It's important however to note that the problem isn't necessarily the cost. Even if Valve provided free games to those on Linux, it's unlikely the game developer would release the full source code for everything, so it works against the "freedom" of Linux in Stallman's eyes.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/49595-stallman-valves-linux-games-unethical-but-might-boost-os-usage.html

 

[oldikes]

call unethical all you want, but it doesnt change the fact that valve is keeping PC gaming alive.

 

[Guest]

I can see this point perfectly I would like to know valves response

 

[Per Hansson]

All this talk about "non-free" is just crazy
Which developer would release a top of the line game (meaning a game that took 3 > 5 years to make with over a hundred developers) for free?
And with the source at that?

With a mindset like that it's not very strange that Linux on the desktop is still to this day a minority even compared to Apple...

If just all these open source developers would get together instead of having 2000 ways of doing the same thing we might actually one day see some progress for Linux on the desktop, but I'm not holding my breath!

 

[Leeky]

If just all these open source developers would get together instead of having 2000 ways of doing the same thing we might actually one day see some progress for Linux on the desktop, but I'm not holding my breath!

Pretty much sums it up, and I'm very pro Linux.

 

[ramonsterns]

All this talk about "non-free" is just crazy
Which developer would release a top of the line game (meaning a game that took 3 > 5 years to make with over a hundred developers) for free?

Maybe he means, DRM-free.

Either way, Steam does more good than bad, so it's a necessary evil until someone decides to make a Steam-like game manager without DRM, which is about as likely to happen as Activision going bankrupt.

 

[Sniped_Ash]

If he wants all software to be free, how are developers supposed to make money?

 

[Alpha Gamer]

Saying that selling a closed source game denies the freedom of the user is pushing it. I mean, if you don't feel comfortable with the idea of playing such a game in Linux, you just don't buy it. It's not like the games will be forced upon people. Like any kind of business transaction, you only take part in it if you want to be there.

 

[Guest]

I can think of 3 ways that a company can make money with open source
1: advertising: you can include advertising in the game and make it part of the game play for video games, for other applications it can be a banner or other form.
2: donations:
3: kick starter: which is my personal favorite ask for the money before you even make it why not there are many people who are gaining there standing in the programming world by doing this but not taking advantage of the open source opportunity.with this opportunity you can relax and let your users find and fix problems.

 

[Guest]

3: kick starter: which is my personal favorite ask for the money before you even make it, there are many people who are gaining there standing in the programming world by doing this but not taking advantage of the open source opportunity.with this opportunity you can relax and let your users find and fix problems.

 

[gwailo247]

If just all these open source developers would get together instead of having 2000 ways of doing the same thing we might actually one day see some progress for Linux on the desktop, but I'm not holding my breath!

Yeah, I really never got that. There are so many brilliant programmers out there, and so many cool distros of Linux, you'd figure they could hold some kind of summit and decide on making a super accessible version of Linux.

 

[Guest]

I can think of 3 ways that a company can make money with open source
1: advertising: you can include advertising in the game and make it part of the game play for video games, for other applications it can be a banner or other form.
2: donations:
3: kick starter: which is my personal favorite ask for the money before you even make it why not there are many people who are gaining there standing in the programming world by doing this but not taking advantage of the open source opportunity.with this opportunity you can relax and let your users find and fix problems.

you are either very stupid or have no notion of the costs to create modern big budget video games, I'll bet it's both.

 

[trparky]

If he wants all software to be free, how are developers supposed to make money?

I've always wondered about that myself.

Now, I'm all for free software but let's think realistically here. Fuel for your car costs money, food costs money, a house costs money, living costs money. See where I'm going with this? How is a programmer that makes his software free and gives the source freely away supposed to make a living? I don't understand how.

Many of these games take years to develop and along with that thousands upon thousands of man hours to write the code, debug the code, draw the artwork, refine the artwork, market the game, etc. All of which costs money, a lot of money. I see no serious game studio putting out a massive game for free, it's just not going to happen. A little game, sure, but not some massive game like Battlefield, Diablo 3, or Starcraft 2.

Truly free software is an honorable idea and goal to obtain but realistically speaking, it's never going to happen in a society in which people need to be paid real world money to be able to survive in it. Now, if we all lived in a nice and perfect society in which everyone worked for the betterment of society (like Star Trek) truly free software will work. But not now.

 

[Julio Franco]

From Stallman's post

Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users.

All I can say: ... what???

 

[Guest]

It's either freedom or the death of GNU/Linux. Let's face it, most desktop users are gamers-some casual and some hardcore, so, providing native support for many popular titles on Linux is a must for its survival.

Because, it's not that unethical. You can't just give everybody your source code-there's a lot of competition in this industry and if everyone just starts doing that then the number of developers willing to work on video games might just diminish by a lot.

 

[Darth Shiv]

All this talk about "non-free" is just crazy
Which developer would release a top of the line game (meaning a game that took 3 > 5 years to make with over a hundred developers) for free?
And with the source at that?

With a mindset like that it's not very strange that Linux on the desktop is still to this day a minority even compared to Apple...

Yes exactly. It's not the first time Stallman has added little value to the debate. Companies can't do what they do without big budgets and the revenue that comes from their development. They aren't just going to give it away because some open source zealot thinks that is the way the world should work.

If Stallman can get the Valve dev team to work for free (let alone the EA umbrella etc etc), then good luck to him but I doubt we'll ever see it happen. People who care about the Linux making a real difference are just going to have to ignore his rants and get on with doing something productive.

 

[Slytek]

HAHA WOW is your name Gabe?

 

[Zeromus]

Yeah it is pretty crazy for propriety games to have their full source code available. It's a tremendous liability. Hacking, cheating, unlicensed branches, and illegal distribution are just a few things large game companies want to avoid to protect profits. I can understand Valve for doing this since they've probably already reach their goal gamer-penetration and want to expand to new platforms without a real liability that would otherwise effect them any earlier beyond the release of these ports.

 

[Guest]

Even popular Linux distros aren't completely GNU, so why blaberring about closed source games? See this list to check whether your favorite distro is GNU or not :
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

See even Ubuntu isn't listed there. I can't call forcing people to install what and what freedom!

 

[ShadowDeath]

I just want to say one thing... LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX... it's not GNU/Linux. Linus made it not Stallman otherwise it'd be called GNU/Richard_Stallman_OS. I'm getting pretty sick of him having to shove "GNU" in front of Linux every time he says it. All he did was create the GNU. >.>

Ok, I feel better now.

 

[Guest]

to all you blinding asnwering without learning, find out more about free software. Quick google&wikipedia will be enough. Stallman is not saying software should be free as in without cost, but free as in respecting people's freedoms. stupid douches. There's lots of commercial games that are free.

 

[psycros]

Every time Stallman opens his ***** yap he makes Linux less appealing to the masses.

 

[ReederOnTheRun]

Sooo valve decides to expand its services to the linux community even though its just a tiny fraction of the os market, and because of this linux users start bashing them for not giving them the games and their source code for free too? Sounds fair.

 

[Gambit]

Judging the ethics of others when you don't share their need to earn a living is unethical.

 

[nickblame]

Gabe is right. Games need to land on Linux. I don't get the part about only open source on Linux since it also takes that freedom away from users.