#DRM-FREE

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

It's been 21 years and 29 days since Tor Books published my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. In the years since, Tor has published every one of my novels, sending me around the USA and Canada to talk about them. Now, they've teamed up with Humble Bundle to sell 18 of my ebooks on a name-your-price basis, with part of the proceeds going to benefit EFF:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books

I've been associated with EFF even longer than I've been published by Tor! My first novel came out while I was working EFF's first-ever booth at CES. I split my time between the booth and my motel room, where I paid $0.25/call to dial up to Earthlink's local number and manage the launch-day publicity. Over the years, I've benefited immensely from Tor's editorial and publicity departments, working with brilliant publishing people like Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Patty Garcia, Dot Lin, Laura Etzkorn, Elena Stokes, Sarah Reidy, Lucille Rettino, and of course, Tor founder Tom Doherty.

But I like to think that it was a two-way street. Tor and I have come a long way together on ebooks: most visibly, they allowed me to publish several novels under Creative Commons licenses (my first book was the first ever CC book, coming out just weeks after the licenses themselves launched). As my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden said at the time, "Ebooks have the worst hours-in-meeting-to-dollars-in-revenue ratio of anything in my publishing career. Why not?"

https://craphound.com/down/download/

Just as important – but less visible – was Tor's willingness to let me insist that all my books be published without DRM, meaning that anything you buy on say, Amazon, can be moved to any reader program if you decide to start getting your ebooks elsewhere. This worked so well that in 2012, Tor became the first major publisher in the world to ban DRM on all its ebooks, flying me, John Scalzi and Charlie Stross to New York City to announce it this at a big, splashy event at Book Expo America:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130512022634/https://tor.com/blogs/2012/06/tor-books-announces-e-book-store-doctorow-scalzi-a-stross-talk-drm-free

Tor's unique status as the sole major DRM-free publisher in the world was well timed! That same year, I curated the very first Humble Ebook Bundle, which was very top-heavy with Tor titles, and raised more than $1,000,000 for the writers, publishers and charities associated with it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121017215636/http://www.humblebundle.com/

That opened the floodgates to a series of Humble Bundles, tempting other major publishers to dabble with DRM-free, including Simon and Schuster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-I5QyAfglU

And Harpercollins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHMLfeCrCrE

Now, 12 years after that inaugural Humble Ebook Bundle, I find myself honored by being the subject of a bundle of my own (it helps that I've written a hell of a lot of books in the intervening years). Included in the bundle are (nearly) all of my Tor novels and novellas: The Lost Cause; "The Canadian Miracle" (a Lost Cause story); Red Team Blues; Radicalized; Walkaway; "Party Discipline" (a Walkaway story); Pirate Cinema; Rapture of the Nerds (with Charlie Stross); For The Win; Makers; Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother, Homeland, Attack Surface, and "Lawful Interception" (a Little Brother story).

(The sole exclusion is The Bezzle, which came out two weeks ago and is already a USA Today national bestseller!)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Also included in the bundle is Poesy the Monster Slayer, my 2020 picture book for the littlies:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627/poesythemonsterslayer

All these books are delivered as DRM-free epub files. The Bundle runs for the next three weeks, and the minimum buy-in is $18 – that's just $1/book (full retail value is $187). Of course, you can name a higher price, and, as with all Humble Bundles, you can adjust the final split to share out the money between me, EFF, and the Humble folks.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/03/humbly-bundled/#eff-too

[hanakogames]

Save 50% on pretty-much-everything for Black Friday 2023

[bornangelauthor]

eBooks Now on my website!

DRM-Free and from the author so there's no paying the Corporations and you can have your books anywhere you want to read them!

If you like DRM-Free Ebooks, I now have Ebooks listed on my website store. These books are Fast passed, character driven, Paranormal/Urban Fantasy with Paranormal Romance, Crime thriller, and a twist of Mythology with a heaping ton of Paranormal creatures though the focus is Angels both created and born. Also featuring Fated Mates, Serial killers, Vigilante Justice, and more!

Comp titles for the Born Angel Universe:

If you like The Dresden Files, The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Novels, The Sookie Stackhouse Series, ACOTAR, Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, Succubus Blues, the Mercy Thompson Series, Immortal Instruments, Dark Hunters, and Good Omens. You're sure to LOVE these series.

[krissiefox]

As long as I'm recommending great things, please check out this game too! It's a really nice visual novel game that should especially hit home for trans people.  You can get it DRM-free from this itch io link, and it's also available on XBox One. They have a link to the soundtrack on bandcamp, too!

[savingcontent]

Czech and Slovak Games Week is live on GOG along with Emotion Flow Sale

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[catgirlforeskin]

I’m like one of those egg-cracker girls but for tabletop. Nothing is more satisfying than convincing a GM to stop running 5e for their group and start a different rpg, and hearing about how their mewling worms of players complain but ultimately go along with it because lord knows none of them have the spine to find a new group or GM themselves.

Remember that when your DnD players give you all the work, they also give you all the power. Each will whimper and beg like a dog when you crack the whip and tell them they’re learning Mausritter this week, you need only wield it

[cakesmelons]

You remember the harem timeline where dream fucking dies? No? Too bad 'cause I gotta rush- **sonic speeds to school

[xenticore]

GOG winter sale has begun :] make sure you check it out before any other store (not optional). ends 2024-01-04!

games sold on GOG are free of DRM and come with completely offline installers! they’re yours to keep forever!

here are some newer games i recommend checking out!

Cult of the Lamb – US$14.99, Cultist Edition US$17.98, individual DLCs 25% off. Note: this game launched with “antipiracy” style DRM that causes a savebreaking bug, even on the GOG version. It was patched out, but its existence rightfully turned people off and it’s reflected in the reviews.

Rain World – US$9.99, Downpour US$11.99

Disco Elysium – US$9.99

Terraria – US$4.99

RimWorld – US$27.99, DLCs up to 10% off

The Outer Worlds – US$19.79, DLCs up to 45% off

System Shock (2023) – US$25.99

some classics i recommend as well!

RollerCoaster Tycoon – US$1.49 (expansions included)

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 – US$2.49 (expansions included), highly recommend these two and installing OpenRCT2

SimCity 4 – US$4.99 (Rush Hour included)

Deus Ex – US$0.97

System Shock – US$1.49, this is an enhanced edition for modern PCs that also includes the original unmodified game

System Shock 2 – US$2.49

[melonymint753]

[decepti-thots]

this is getting actually silly now tbh

[g66lol]

These days, almost all of us are creating media and sharing it online.

One problem is finding good music that doesn't infringe on copyrights. 

Even if you're not trying to monetize your creations, platforms like YouTube and Twitch will put ads on anything you create that uses copyrighted music.

I hear some podcast hosts are doing this now, too.

I'm starting a record label that ONLY provides music that is #DRMFree and #CreativeCommons.

You go to the website, choose a genre you like and listen to some music.

Then you buy the albums you like or even just individual songs.

It's immediately available for download and you can then put them in whatever creations you want.

You own the music forever.

Don't worry about your Twitch and YouTube videos being demonetized.

With our DRM-Free Creative Commons music, you'll be able to use your music as you please, on any device you want.

Buy some music now to help raise funds to get the record label off the ground:

If you prefer #InstrumentalHipHop, check out the beatMage: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/a-day-at-the-carnival-with-the-beat-mage

If you like #Industrial music, check out megabyteGhost: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/dead-mans-switch

And if you like #DarkAmbient music, check out Prefecture.Audio: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/prefecture-audio-ii-swamp

[mxi-88]

overusing my new tone brush with more dee es em pee :)

[metamatar]

i wonder if other people have this weird relationship with digital objects too but i can't really think of my lovingly organised music or book collection on my hard drive as something i own or something that is mine. most of it is pirated so maybe that adds to it? i just think of it as a really opinionated archive. the possibility of infinite replication makes it something that automatically belongs to everyone. its just a subset of the commons.

[molags-balls]

I downloaded the GOG edition of Skyrim Special Edition as it’s still on 1.6.629. It has been so much more stable than the Steam version and idk why. I have the exact same mods but it loads up faster and has less stutter.

Plus it’s DRM free. You get an offline installer so you can actually own the game. Since it’s DRM free you don’t need to connect to Bethesda for the Anniversary Edition creations. They’re included as a separate offline installer. It also makes updates optional.

[krissiefox]

Sonic Nebulous Game Review

SONIC NEBULOUS REVIEW

Sonic Nebulous is a free Sonic fan game that I discovered through a youtube video featuring  such games. It is a side scrolling plat-former set in the SatAM universe, hence it's darker visual style.

One of the first noticeable things about the game is that it features all hand-drawn characters, which definitely shows it to be a labor of love and help it stand out. The graphics overall, are quite nice, with only occasional animation issues. And speaking of characters, this game could put many fighting games to shame with its character roster! The game features a whopping 30 characters from various Sonic universes (games, Satam, Underground, Archie and possibly some fan-made characters too!) As a teenager I had started making my own Sonic comic series where I tried together all these different versions of Sonic into one universe, so I liked seeing this game do similar. Many of the characters have unique abilities which helped me a lot playing through the game - any time I'd find myself struggling on a given zone, I'd try out different characters til I found one that helped me get by whatever obstacle was bugging me. I also found it cool that you can even play as some older characters (Uncle Chuck and Rosie, specifically). The enemy designs were pretty cool, some pulled right from the SatAM show, with others being some very spooky boss monsters who often looked they might be old neglected robots Robotnik had left laying around, The game's soundtrack, while I'm pretty sure is all pulled from other sources, is a solid selection of tunes. I find it reminiscent of how SEGA did Sonic Adventure 2's soundtrack, with some of its funky hip-hop tracks.  I recognized tunes from some electronic artists I really like such as Aphex Twin, The Prodigy and The KLF. These helped enhance the dark fantasy/steampunk feel of the world further.

The sound effects were also well-done, but I did have mixed feelings about the voice clips used in the game. It was cool to hear some characters talk, using audio clips from SatAM, but early on in the game I found some voices annoyingly repetitive and was glad I could turn them off (Antoine was the worst culprit for me).

Speaking of turning things on and off, the game thankfully does have a decent options menu, though I do wish it would save my settings so I didn't have to re-set them each time I launched the game or got a game over. One of the game's graphical features is screen-rotation when you go around loops and slopes, which is technically interesting, but I played with it turned off because it made me feel disoriented.

While I really dug all the nerdy Sonic love that was put into this game, it does have some technical issues that I hope will get ironed out in a future update. To get this game to run I had to launch it from steam, as the executable by itself  kept giving me an error message. While playing as the character "Honey The Cat", I once had her freeze in place after doing an aerial dash attack  and was unable to move. The fact that some of the game's controls require the use of F1-F12 keys was problematic for me as well, as my laptop has those set as system shortcut keys by default. I think it would help to add a controller configuration menu added to the options menu.

There were a couple of general design choices that troubled me as well. When you first start the game, you're already being attacked by an enemy, which was stressful for me because I hadn't even gotten to learn the controls yet. In the first zone there's also a certain slope that is extremely difficult to get up over, unless you're playing as someone who can fly or teleport. Lastly, I would occasionally experience frustration in enemy combat because the game lacks invincibility frames after taking damage (which were present in SEGA’s official 16-bit releases), and with the big boss enemies, I couldn't always tell  what parts were and weren’t safe to touch.

I recommend this one, especially for any Sonic fans, or anyone who likes side-scrolling platformers with a badass soundtrack. It may have a few flaws, but nothing was game-breaking for me -  and there was so much love put into the game that I'd like to see it get more attention.If you’d like to give it a try, you can download the game here: https://www.moddb.com/games/sonic-nebulous/downloads/sonic-nebulous-42

[savingcontent]

Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II joins GOG's classic collection

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