Introduce him to game development with Godot engine. I don’t know any specific tutorials, but you should be able to find something on YouTube.

You can also introduce him to the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

People deserve to be able to control their own devices, but you are saying that we should be happy if they can get only some control? Having to run even one program that you can’t control is bad. So I see no reason why I should be happy with that. I see no reason why we should lower our standards and let somebody get away with doing unethical things to us. We can do much better than that. Hurd is irrelevant and we don’t need it. We certainly don’t need to let Valve abuse us.

You are right that the world isn’t black and white, but proprietary software and libre software are incompatible ideas. You can’t have freedom when someone is actively trying to take it away from you. Developers of proprietary software are our enemies and we can’t support them. If we let developers have power over us, they will abuse it. It’s been happening for decades and it will never stop. We need to work on making our society less dependent on non free software, not find ways to sustain our dependence. If you want to run a proprietary game on your system that’s your choice, but we don’t have to pretend that the developer of that game isn’t doing something unethical and that there isn’t an ethical way.

I also don’t think people will take much more abuse, the EU is also pushing back hard against abusive US companies.

Yes, but it’s not good enough by itself. It’s nice that Windows users can now uninstall Edge or whatever, but it’s only in EU and that’s just one of many terrible things Microsoft has been doing to their users. It is a small improvement and I’m glad they are doing something (other than spending lots of money on funding free software projects every year), but the law is not enough.

We will keep enough freedom. It’s a gradient.

But you are not just proposing a journey to freedom. You are proposing that we should accept proprietary software and praise companies that develop it, because it will somehow give us more freedom in the future. You want us to support the same type of abuse that we need to get away from.

I get that proprietary software and DRM is a general problem, and Steam is part of that problem, but completely getting rid of that is simply a battle for another time, further in the future. The first battle is to get Windows users abandon their Microsoft/Apple cages, and that’s a win that’s actually within reach now.

The free software movement was started 40 years ago. We can’t just give up now. How many years should we wait? People are only becoming more dependent on computers and our problems keep getting worse. Windows users have been able to abandon it many years ago, but they don’t care about freedom.

Windows also becomes worse by itself, further accelerating the change.

I had the same feeling about 10 years ago, but users of proprietary software are willing to take a lot of abuse. It’s almost impressive how stubborn they are. This includes users of Reddit, Twitter, Apple and others. I don’t think Microsoft will lose any significant amount of users just by abusing them more, and when it comes to features, Windows is improving lately.

That’s important, because running a proprietary OS is still much worse than running some proprietary applications or games on a free OS. A closed OS completely shifts control away from the user, leaving only what the developer allows you to do, and it allows the dev to always push his or her agenda by favoring applications from the same developer, and allowing the developer to establish proprietary APIs and libraries like DirectX which was problematic for the competition for quite some time.

I agree that more freedom is better, but if people don’t understand the end goal, they will keep making the same mistakes. SteamOS is proprietary. Most of the popular GNU/Linux distros have proprietary software in their repositories. On mobile I see people switching from proprietary Android to proprietary Sailfish OS. They just keep falling in the same traps over and over again. Steam is one of those traps. If GNU/Linux became mainstream on desktop today, I have no doubt that it would be a proprietary distro. Then it will be only a matter of time before it turns into something even more proprietary like Windows. Because why wouldn’t it?

A regular user does not understand the ethics behind closed and open source and will never choose a worse free option over a better proprietary one. That either means the free options must become true rivals, or - which is the easier goal for now - the proprietary apps have to run on Linux just as well as people are used to.

That’s why we must explain it to them. Some will listen and others will not, but there is nothing else we can do. We are doing our best to rival the proprietary apps, but it’s a battle we’ve been fighting for 40 years. There will always be something missing and even if there isn’t, it will always be inconvenient to switch from something you already know. Reddit users could switch to Lemmy, but they won’t. If at some point they decide to switch to some other proprietary alternative, that will not fix their problem. It will be only a matter of time before the other company or developer starts abusing them too.

A “war” isn’t being won all at once instantly, but by winning several smaller battles after one another. Which takes time.

I know, but if we make compromises on our freedom, we will never keep it. The companies that make proprietary software will not let us. They could make money from developing libre software instead, but they don’t have to, because our society thinks non free software is fine.

I wasn’t disregarding Valve’s contributions to free software. I’m glad to hear that they have contributed so much and I would like to read more about them if you have the links. They deserve to be praised for that, but it doesn’t cancel out all the bad things that they’ve been doing for many years. Microsoft (for example) contributes to free software too, but at the same time they take away their user’s freedom. Valve deserves criticism for this just like Microsoft deserves criticism for the unethical things that they are doing. It’s awesome that Valve is contributing to a good cause in the last few years, but look how much freedom they have taken away from us.

It seems very important to you that people use GNU/Linux, but if they will be using Steam and other proprietary software, how is that better than them using Windows? They still won’t be able to control their own computers, so what’s the point? The goal isn’t to have people leave one proprietary ecosystem to become trapped in another. The goal is for them to have freedom. I want to live in a free society. The only way to make that happen is to destroy proprietary software. So as long as Valve makes non free software and takes away their user’s freedom with DRM, they are our enemy. Just like Microsoft, Apple, Google and any other company that does the same.

It seems that your goal is to have the most features, but the goal of GNU/Linux and the free software movement is to have freedom - something that Valve doesn’t want their users to have.

PS
GOG’s client is proprietary, which is terrible, but at least it’s not required and there is a libre alternative - Heroic Games Launcher (it works on GNU/Linux too).

I should absolutely be able to sell my license to a game to another person. It’s bizarre that I can in the physical world

Actually you can’t, since most PC games contain Valve’s DRM, even if you buy a physical copy :). So best you can do is sell your Steam account and risk getting banned.

Edit:

Also from just a platform standpoint it’s absurd I can’t disable updates on steam

People have told me that you can do that now. But once you update, I doubt that you can go back to the previous version if the new one turns out to be worse. Devs can literally remove features from their games. Most patches are useful though, so if your only options are getting all updates or not getting any, it sucks.

Windows and other proprietary software is unethical, because it gives developers power over users. People can’t easily see what such software does on their device and they can’t change it. So they can’t control those programs and as a result they have no control over their own devices. It’s also very easy for developers to abuse those users with spyware, DRM and other malicious features. In case of Windows we know for a fact that it does those things. But even if it didn’t, people deserve to be able to control their computers, so it’s unethical to take that right away from them.

Free software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. Any programmer in the world can audit what such program does and change it. So it’s very hard for a developer to abuse their users. If they add some malicious feature, any programmer can remove it and share the modified version with others. So with free software, it’s the users who are in control (as long as there is at least one programmer among them that can make the changes they want).

https://piped.video/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM

As I said, in this case you could have both convenience and freedom. You just don’t care enough to try to change your situation. Most gamers do the same and that’s why the game industry is so bad.

You should add to your microtnx bullet that they literally invented the Battle Pass. They also recently abandoned it for Dota 2, but that’s probs because nobody wants to work on it.

Woah, you are right! There is even a Wikipedia article about it.

I don’t know of any actions they are taking to stop people putting a better OS on their hardware.

Microsoft doesn’t prevent me from using another operating system on my PC either (you are right that it would be way worse if they did, though). But they developed Windows - an operating system that takes away user’s freedom. Valve does the same with SteamOS. Most software they make is proprietary, but Valve fans get distracted with things like Proton, which is just a fork of Wine.

I wouldn’t criticize some company for sticking Windows on a machine, if the machine is meant to work out of the box, and the chosen OS is Windows.

If Windows is an unethical operating system and some company makes money distributing it, isn’t that unethical?

SteamOS is proprietary software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS

They should exist and I’m glad they do, but that doesn’t mean that every storefront needs to be the same if there are benefits worth the tradeoff.

But you are not getting any extra benefits. Whatever you are getting can be achieved without DRM and with free software. Valve is just screwing you over, because they can. Instead of admitting it, you choose to defend them for some strange reason.

Apparently you don’t remember SafeDisc and all the bullshit for PC games in the 90s which required physical discs.

I do remember and it restricted the user way less than Valve’s DRM. What kind of argument is this anyway? We were also abused in the past (just less), so abuse is good?

All kids of games had DRM that was not the same as always online DRM, but was actually even more annoying than what we currently have.

Inserting a disc (or mounting it is an ISO) is more annoying than installing a proprietary app on every device and logging in to your account? To me it isn’t, but that’s subjective. Valve’s way is certainly more unethical, though.

Everything else is a tradeoff, but your memory is failing if you think PC gaming was a better and cheaper experience before steam.

It certainly was better, since our rights were abused less. I can’t tell if it was cheaper, though. But since you used to be able to sell games that you no longer played, I assume that it was. I can’t sell my Steam games or trade them for other games.

DRM was not popular on PC before Steam became popular. It used to be possible to buy physical copies of games without DRM. On consoles that is still the case.

I didn’t participate in the used games market, but the steam sales are like paying used game prices.

I don’t know, but you can’t sell your game anymore if you get bored of it, so it’s still a loss. Games are overpriced most of the time only to have a -75% off sale a few times a year.

I must have missed how vavle contributed to lootboxes and microtransactions, was that in their games?

Yes, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, CS:GO.

Updates are turned on by default, but honestly moat games need the regular updates and steam made those so much easier.

They have also removed content from people’s games.

The devices with steamOS installed are sold to distribute steamOS…

Which is proprietary software.

f course they have to use proprietary libraries to use features. That is how it works…

So I can’t release a libre game on Steam and use those features. I can’t compete on the same level with proprietary games.