this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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In older times when in-game scenes weren't invented yet game studios often played Bink videos.
You need a licence for the codec meaning someone has to pay to play.
Wouldn't that someone be the game company, when they first made the game? I can't imagine games rely on some system library to decode bink, it must be embedded in engine. Besides, pretty sure bink can be played on vlc, so lack of free/open source decoders isn't the issue.
It's not just a FOSS issue; it's a software patent issue.
VLC doesn't attract a huge amount of attention because they don't really make any money and would just get forked if someone did try to destroy them.
However, larger distros with commercial backing (OpenSUSE springs to mind) often won't directly include potentially patent-infringing packages, so you have to get them from a quasi-third-party repo like Packman.
Vlc is also hosted in France, where software patents aren't legal.
France based