Hey at least they went with beans and not the “no poo for a month” one

Definetly don’t need to go all in, you can start with a few LXCs from the community scripts

Biggest advantage for me is not having to juggle with ports or modify stuff that I already have running to try something new. Each LXC gets its own IP so I can start a new copy of let’s say Jellyfin to tinker with, and use what I learned to fix/improve my running instance.

Another really neat thing is how it handles backups. I have my LXCs on their own ZFS subvolumes and I back them up sporadically to external drives (cold storage). Backups start as a single big file but all the subsequent are way smaller, and checking and restoring them is a 2-click endeavour.

It looks corporate and intimidating, but it has an awesome community and you don’t need to learn all the bells and whistles to get a lot out of it

Yup, that’s my whole point. It leeches time and resources that might amount to more than what valve takes as commission

Started with the beta of CasaOS, really welcoming discord community and all, but when I went from a busted laptop to a purpose-built machine, I dove into the deep end and went with Proxmox.

It can be daunting at first with all that lingo but there are plenty of good tutorials. Can’t recommend enough. Also as a gap closer, there’s proxmox community scripts, which are great to spin new LXCs to tinker with and learn/try new stuff without annoying the family with downtime

There are practical barriers still tho. You’ll have to either maintain or outsource maintaining:

• hosting infrastructure
• CDN
• Security (both frontend and backend)
• DRM (either serial numbering or yet another hosted verification services)
• user accounts and data handling
• payment processing

And that’s for a basic game, if you want feature parity with steam, add on top:

• version control and access (playtests, betas)
• version control for other platforms (Mac, Linux)
• hosting for savefile sync, achievements
• hosting for UGC (mods, screenshots, configs, recording)
• hosting and infrastructure for user livestreaming
• CDN for mods
• review (automated or manual) for mods or UGC
• legal protection and compliance against UGC
• multiplayer service infrastructure
• automated/manual moderation of game servers/lobbies
• anticheat system
• hosting for newsfeed (update announcements, news)
• and so on, you get the point…

By the time you implement the basic stuff and half of the extras, might as well pay the 30% commission and just focus on what you wanted to do: make games. Instead of having to cosplay as a sysadmin or orchestrate 15 different providers

+1 for Barony, especially with the DLCs. However, it’s important to go easy at first. Don’t scoff at the assistance shrine/items and custom options like turning off hunger or modding to make your first runs a bit easier. Vanilla can be excruciatingly frustrating, and you might bounce off a really fun game!