Cloud Gaming Service OnLive Unofficially On Linux 206
An anonymous reader writes "Through some clever patching, OnLive community members have found a way to run OnLive on Linux using Wine. While the fix isn't perfect, this is a giant leap for Linux users wanting to play the latest games without the need for Windows. Linux users can now play several high quality games like the new Deus Ex with very few performance issues and on lower end hardware."
Re:DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a game... it's not like operating systems or office apps where vendor lock-in and lack of freedom to modify the code is actually a problem.
Tell that to someone who dedicated spare time over 18 months to creating a new aircraft in MS Flight Sim only to have the franchise killed off for the promise of some X-box Windows live experience that may never come to fruition.
Open source matters for everything including gaming.
For those unfamiliar with the service . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
. . . imagine if the Ubisoft always-on DRM were an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, Onlive is even worse than that would be.
The game doesn't even run remotely. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America.
Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 30mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who developed Onlive seem very, very confused (at best).
Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with Onlive it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.
Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and Onlive has never done anything to explain how they intend to solve them. Instead, they've done everything they can to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that Onlive would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly)..
BTW, you pay a monthly fee for the service and then you STILL have to "buy" the games (which of course become useless if your subscription lapses, giving them another leash to choke you with). I'm not kidding.
Onlive appears designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly what you'd expect from any DRM system.