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!
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.