I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:
"""
In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:
"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "
(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)
AFAICT SKG doesn't really make a distinction between games bought with a one-time purchase and games that are subscribed to. In their FAQ, they explicitly say it would apply to MMOs too (see https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq "What about large-scale MMORPGs? Isn't it impossible for customers to run those when servers are shut down?) although they don't spell out whether they mean exclusively games bought with a one-time fee or games that are subscription-only.
Ross from Accursed Farms said this in a video FAQ on youtube:
"
Would this initiative affect subscription games?
Well, that's another question that depends on what the EU says. Personally, I think it's very unlikely because that doesn't fit well with other existing consumer laws. I think the only way you could even make that argument would be that this is necessary for preservation and most governments don't seem to care about that at all.
However, I don't think this is a huge loss, since only a handful of games operate that way today.
So if we can give up those but then save 99% of other games, I'm willing to make that bargain.
"
so it seems like they actually are suggesting that they'd like for (a law that came out of) SKG to apply to subscription games but there's an understanding that it probably won't.
I've spent a little time in this space, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to write shaders in Rust, although it's probably better than GLSL or WGSL.
Let me start with the pros:
1. Don't have to learn 2 different languages
2. Modules, crates, and the easier ability to share code
3. Easier sharing between rust structs and shader code.
Now the cons, in comparison to Slang [1]
1. No autodiff mode
2. Strictly outputs SPIR-V, while Slang can do CPU, CUDA, Pytorch, Optix, and all the major graphics APIs
3. Less support - Slang is supported by the Khronos group, and Slang gets use at Nvidia, EA, and Valve.
4. Safety isn't very valuable, most GPU code does not use pointers (it's so rare it's considered a feature by Slang!)
5. slangc probably runs a lot faster than rustc (although I would like to see a benchmark.)
6. Worse debugging experience, slang has better interop with things like NSight Graphics, and their Shader Debugger. Slang recently got support in NSight graphics for shader profiling, for example.
7. Slang has support for reflection, and has a C++ api to directly output a JSON file that contains all the reflected aspects.This makes handling the movement between rust <-> gpu much easier. Also, the example shown on the website uses `bytemuck`, but `bytemuck` won't take into consideration the struct alignment rules[2] when using WebGPU. Instead, you have to use a crate like `encase`[3] to handle that. I'm not sure given the example on the website how it would work with WebGPU.
8. If you have pre-existing shaders in GLSL or HLSL, you can use slangc directly on them. No need to rewrite.
9. In reality, you may not have to learn 2 languages but you have to learn 2 different compute models (CPU vs GPU). This is actually a much harder issue, and AFAICT it is impossible to overcome with a different language. The problem is the programmer needs to understand how the platforms are different.
If you programmed this as a chess strategy, it would probably result in an engine that played the Scholar's mate every game. This is actually close to what low Elo players do in chess, but as you get closer to 800-ish ELO the probability of attempted scholar mates drop dramatically (likely due to it being an opening that isn't that good).
I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:
""" In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:
"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "
(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)
[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29... """
So a US court of law has decided that it's at least possible that this isn't true.