[khoury]

Can't start the game in the browser without a local executable of the game?

[voxic11]

Copyright, you have to provide all the copyrighted material yourself so that they can't be sued for distributing it.

[netsharc]

Man, what a waste of resources. It'd be funny if the client side just did a hash of the "uploaded" files, told the server the hash, and then the server can compare the hash and use the server copy of the assets, to save bandwidth. But as "What colour are your bits" (1) say, that'd still probably not be legal.

Oops, it's a browser based game, you still need the assets on the client side, i.e. in your local memory... never mind

(1) https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

[RankingMember]

yeah, bit of a buzzkill. What's the point of being able to launch from a web browser if you've gotta go dig up the game anyways?

[tgv]

Now you can run it on more platforms.

[Aurornis]

The point is they don’t get sued for distributing game assets they don’t own.

If they could distribute them, they would.

[nonethewiser]

Point taken, but there is an answer to your questions. Cross platform compatibility

[shortrounddev2]

It's a copyright thing

[torginus]

They really should've added the demo files.

[brovonov]

Yes, because they don't own the assets.