Hey fellow self-hosters!
It's u/Alfagun74 from GameVault, the self-hosted platform for organizing and sharing your servers DRM-free games collection. We've come a long way since our initial release, and I'm thrilled to share what's been happening with GameVault since then.
From "Crackpipe" to GameVault
If you've been with us since the start, you might remember our initial quirky name, "Crackpipe." Well, we had a good laugh, but as we grew, we decided to go for something more fitting – GameVault! It's your personal gaming treasure trove, and the name says it all.
What's GameVault?
For the uninitiated, GameVault is like having your own Steam for game files lying on your server. It's a self-hosted, source-available gaming platform. Bring your DRM-free game files, and GameVault organizes them, enriches them with metadata, and gives you a user-friendly interface to manage and play your games. It's all about enjoying your favorite titles with friends.
What's happened since initial release?
Since our initial release four months ago, we've been hard at work, reaching version 9 on the backend and 1.7 on the frontend.
Here's a reel of the exciting big features we've added:
- Auto Extraction and Installation of Videogames
- Uninstalling Games through GameVault
- Uploading Images directly to your GameVault
- Support for a metric ton of archive formats
- Crash Reports
- Database Backups & Restorations
- Bandwidth Control
- Random Game Finder
What's on the Horizon?
We've been listening to your feedback, and here's what was asked for the most:
- UI Redesign for the Library and Installations Tab
- Support for ROMS and Emulators
- Support for extra files like Soundtracks etc.
Right now we're knee-deep in redesigning the Library, the heart of our application. Big changes are on the way, waving goodbye to the installations tab and bringing in a sleeker UI for Library, Game View, and Game Settings. More on and a sneak-peek is coming to our blog soon.
Join the GameVault Community!
If you haven't already, come join our vibrant community on Discord. You can influence the direction of GameVault and participate in exclusive polls over there.
Spread the Word and Stay Tuned!
Help us promote GameVault among fellow self-hosters. Your efforts could inspire a bored developer to join and contribute to our project!
Let's make gaming personal again with GameVault!
This is pretty cool, I remember when you guys released it under the name crackpipe. For the record I really liked the name.
What's the reason you chose to use a CC license? Why not any established open source license? Even Creative Commons themselves recommend using the GPL instead of CC for software.
You have a great sense of humor sir. Well.. first of all im not a lawyer and i really liked the simple terms and conditions of the CC License compared to the usual ones for code. The terms literally fit in a 160x20px image. Also our product is not open-source by definition. That link is an interesting blog-post i made about that topic. You should definitely check it out, if you're interested. I hope this clears this up a bit.
I also find it absolutely hilarious that you were considering monetising a product named Crackpipe. Not sure how successful you'd be at that.
I was side-eying GIMP i guess. Didn't work for us though. 😅
GIMP is FLOSS though?
"gimp" is a slur for disabled people. Thats what i am talking about.
I have no idea what you're talking about at this point.
Thanks for linking the blog post. I may not agree with the conclusion you've come to, but I think you've done a good job at laying your arguments.
Thank you for understanding. It was honestly a hard decision to make and i really respect every single open-source-developer out there, from the bottom of my heart. But having talked to them i really realized the cruel truth in this capitalist world is most of them have a hard time keeping the lights on using their work. It's really a bummer.
Have you looked at things like Photoprism that have an open source free base product and then a modified license covering the subscription features?
Sure, but if you get my point, you'll see that I aim to safeguard our work from being used for profit by someone that did not contribute anything to it. As for the subscription features we're thinking about for the future, my idea is to let users tweak the source code for their own needs without any charge and the license perfectly fits these needs.
AGPLv3 exists for this exact reason https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/
Okay let's be clear here: NO open source license disallows commercial use by a third party. It's literally against the definition of open-source-software. It's even green on the very site you linked.
Yeah, the only thing kind of close is GPL3's infectious license and that still allows for profit use assuming the code is opened. (Harder to be evil here but technically still possible.)
Unfortunately this will cause issues if the community attempts to do anything with this package later as well. See the fiasco with Multimc and Polymc. Nobody came out of that looking particularly inviting for devs. I feel bad for the one guy that walked the line between the two licenses for as long as he did. I just ended up jumping to the community fork because they addressed my issues faster and their license ended up being more permissive.