EagleDelta2

@Pokester99 I can't speak to all in Japan, but having worked for a Japanese-owned company, they have a very strong cultural feeling about their work. Hell, game modding in general is illegal in Japan itself as it is felt that you are to use the creations of a creator as they were intended and trying to change it into something else is an insult to the "art". It's not just a money thing (though that is totally part of it), but also a cultural thing

@Dethmunk Unfortunately in many countries, a public company is bound by law to make money for their shareholders and if the board members hold enough stock, they can legally demand this. As long as people continue to give S-E, Nintendo, Activision, EA, Amazon, <insert giant company here> money they have no reason to stop.

As long as we can't give up Final Fantasy, Diablo, Call of Duty, Zelda, Battlefield, etc then we really don't care

@HeadPirate

If the kernel is Linux, then the OS is linux-based.
If the kernel is BSD, then it's a BSD OS.
If the kernel is WinNT, then it's Windows.
Etc.

The KERNEL defines what the core of the OS is, NOT the name of the OS. Android is STILL Linux because it runs off the Linux kernel. THAT'S what defines if something is Linux or BSD or Windows or UNIX based, not some arbitrary name or proprietary code.

If the Switch uses a Linux Driver for hardware, then the kernel IS Linux. Drivers HAVE to be written for the specific kernel. There's a reason I can't run Windows software for managing a gaming mouse/keyboard/etc through WINE on MacOS/BSD/Linux/etc - because the driver was written for WinNT and NOT for Darwin, BSD, Linux, etc.

Even if it is NOT Linux/BSD-based, the point still stands. It looks to be a UNIX-based OS of some sort (or at least POSIX compliant), which still proves my point that the OS doesn't actually matter to developers. It's the adoption rate and the issue with Steam not using Windows is purely a perception and expectations issue that centers around Steam == PC and CANNOT be anything else. If enough people bought something like the SteamPal (or whatever), then devs would make games compatible with Linux (or at least Proton) so they could reach that market.

@Brady1138 Chances are they probably will. Linux-based is not the issue, market share and perception is.

• PS4/5 run off a fork of FreeBSD (a UNIX OS)
• Switch runs off a modified Linux or UNIX system (not sure which)
• Most of Nintendo's recent consoles are Linux or UNIX based.
• Google Stadia, which has business issues not really technical ones, gets great performance and it's also 100% Linux and Vulkan.

This is more of a matter of getting people to buy the handheld device which, depending on price, is probably the smarter move. I'd love to play many of my Steam games on the go or docked. Add in that Steam has its own built-in local and internet streaming tech AND GeForce Now uses that tech for streaming a user's Steam games. It's a smart move on Valves part and more likely to get adoption.

If it does get adoption, be sure that the ports will come along with it.

Also, since 2017/18 Steam has had a layer in the SteamPlay feature called "Proton" that allows users to play Windows games on Linux with a click of a button. It's not always 100%, especially where Anti-Cheat is concerned, but it works really really well a vast majority of the time.

@jamesthemagi I'd hold off on the "Entire" Steam library part. Valve has been pushing Linux-based as their OS of choice for projects like this for a while and, as such, has a LOT of tooling that allows both Windows and Linux games to run on Linux without a lot of user intervention. That said, games like CoD: Warzone, Star Wars: Squadrons, and so many more that utilize kernel-level Anti-Cheat (EasyAnti-Cheat, Vanguard, BattleEye, etc) do NOT work through this tooling as they require access to the Windows OS kernel.

So unless the device became popular enough to justify a Linux port, then there would remain a lot of games with Anti-Cheat unplayable outside of a Windows device.

I'll stop there and not go into my rant about how BAD running any non-critical software in an OS kernel is. There's a reason that game consoles, Linux OSes, MacOS, and iOS don't allow it

@mjhopkins81 What was wrong with XII? I actually prefer the setting/gameplay of the Ivalice games

@Paraka Erdrick is a Title given to the Dragon Quest 3 hero at the end of the game. Prior to that his name is whatever you give him. In fact, the Dragon Quest remake on GBC won't let you put Loto (The japanese name) into the name box for the DQ3 hero ( though I haven't tested this on the Android remake with Erdrick or the NES original)

@Kalmaro That's just a reality of modern software development. In the pre-internet days of consoles, once the game was finished, it was done with bugs and all in there.

Now though for physical releases, they have to freeze development for a time (and ignore certain bug fixes to ensure the features are ready for release), but once the physical production starts, the dev team is back fixing bugs, enhancing features, and creating DLC.

@Wexter I'd agree except DragonRuby uses mruby rather than full ruby, doesn't include all the extra ruby libs needed to exploit the system (assuming it could even gain access), and to add those from within the switch you'd have to have access to not just the dev console, but a shell and C compiler as many Ruby libs are written in pure C then compiled into Ruby (such as nokogiri - a very common dependency for external libs).

You even have to jump through hoops (for now) to require other ruby files (using $dragon.require instead of just plain require).

@JoyconGang Just because Nintendo does something doesn't mean they are right. It could be a knee jerk reaction or an evaluation of allowing a game engine that requires an interpreter to be packaged with the game on their store.

The game itself does nothing wrong, it's the GAME ENGINE that has the interpreter. Blaming the game is like saying that if Unity 3D exposed a dev console for a game built with it, but punishing the game dev instead of taking it to the Engine dev.

@BulbasaurusRex That's not entirely true or the upcoming game Fuze would not be allowed as it allows the user to write custom games in a form of BASIC (I believe it's based on BASIC, though why that would be chosen is beyond me as it has little modern value outside of Excel scripting).

Again, he didn't sell anything that can mod the switch. It's part of the GAME ENGINE, not specific to the game, but any game made with DragonRuby needs the mruby interpreter to run the game. That interpreter could get access to the system if the SYSTEM has a bug/vulnerability that allows it to gain access, but otherwise it's limited to the game the engine is running (since DragonRuby is self contained per application).

@BulbasaurusRex The interpreter is part of the game engine the game runs on, not something with OS-level access. There's the potential the game could be used as an entry point, but guess what, that can be done with any game that has user-created content. Go search for exploits related to Smash Brawl's stage creator or Mario Maker.

The only way to reasonably prevent it would be to never allow user-generated content and even that is no guarantee. He didn't advertise to Nintendo that it existed because it's part of the game engine. Can't have the game without the engine and can't have the engine without the interpreter.

@Caterplease stupid enough to do what?

The game was built with https://dragonruby.itch.io/, from what I can tell, all he did was show users how to access the dev/debug mode (which happens to be ~).

@JoyconGang - Knee jerk reaction based on news and users overreacting to something they know nothing about. I'm a ruby dev, the amount of ignorance on this thread directed at the dev amazes me. Don't speak to what he should/shouldn't do unless you know what you're talking about.

@JoyconGang except he didn't hack anything. He gave users access to the interpreter in the game and only to the game. You couldn't control the system with that prompt unless Nintendo allows games to have full system access (which I highly doubt).

@SeanP2500 My primary fear is that this will get blacklisted just because of the Ruby interpreter. I was hoping to be able to play around and make simple games for any platform using a language I already know, but that may be a bust now.

@SeanP2500 The dev would've had to get system level access from the switch through his game first. I find that unlikely for what his purpose is here. The environment would be isolated (I've been playing with DragonRuby locally as I'm a Ruby dev myself). Unless Nintendo is giving all the games unrestricted access to the entire system and the dev allowed that from within the game, then I highly doubt you could.

@Caterplease the dev spoke in the very Mastadon thread that's linked that he did significant pen testing before publishing. That said, the game was built in a tookit called "DragonRuby" and unless they did something that I'm missing, the Ruby Interpreter being there (mind you it's mruby and not full ruby) is a requirement for the game to run. He did nothing crazy wrong, he just gave the user access to the interpreter from within the game..... nowhere else.

If that is wrong for him to do (let users modify HIS game) then so is the upcoming Fuse4 on switch (which does basically the same thing - let you write code to create games in a game) also would have the same issue.