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It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

phoronix.com

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Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaching a single digit percentage larger user count in exchange for 30% of your revenue is questionable accounting

Anecdote: some one else's account of this was that it was really helpful because the Linux portion of the community (while much smaller than other segments) provided consistently high quality feedback/bug reports.

That was just one company though. Other devs have said it isn't worth supporting Linux because the majority of the bug reports they get are distro specific edge cases.

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#13

Steam is a trap though, no? You buy software, but if you leave, you lose it all. Is that correct? there's no way to retain what you've bought?

It depends. Some games are DRM free, and those can be backed up and kept wherever you wish. I can copy my Kerbal Space Program directory anywhere, for example, and it works fine. I use this to have several differently modded installs.

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve does quite a bit more than just proton. 0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. 1. They provide a community forum for your users. 2. Host downloads of games (sometimes 100s of GBs). They distribute the content all across the world and handle region specific laws about what can be sold, etc. They host content at edge so downloads are super fast. 3. Process refund requests. 4. Have one o…

>0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. I do not like the app store model. I rather buy from the developer.

From my point of view the store model simply is more convenient for consumers and worth the extra price. I know that I stopped pirating games, music and movies when I started using Steam, Spotify and Netflix.

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#17
>Steam on Linux after opening up access to everyone was seeing around a ~2% marketshare prior to falling with the setbacks in Linux gaming. But ever since Steam Play (Proton) was introduced in 2018, it's begun rebounding. This past month it set a new multi-year high with a 1.13% marketshare for Steam on Linux after surpassing the 1.0% mark this summer.

From 1% to 1.13%. Isn't it glorious?

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve does quite a bit more than just proton. 0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. 1. They provide a community forum for your users. 2. Host downloads of games (sometimes 100s of GBs). They distribute the content all across the world and handle region specific laws about what can be sold, etc. They host content at edge so downloads are super fast. 3. Process refund requests. 4. Have one o…

>0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. I do not like the app store model. I rather buy from the developer.

> I do not like the app store model. I rather buy from the developer.

You, as a person might not like it and you as a developer might like to directly sell games, but as pointed out above, Steam/Valve does make it easier for the developer to be legally clear in terms of taxes, refunds, etc. and also makes it easier to distribute by leveraging their "warehouse" which some do prefer.

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#19

>Steam on Linux after opening up access to everyone was seeing around a ~2% marketshare prior to falling with the setbacks in Linux gaming. But ever since Steam Play (Proton) was introduced in 2018, it's begun rebounding. This past month it set a new multi-year high with a 1.13% marketshare for Steam on Linux after surpassing the 1.0% mark this summer. From 1% to 1.13%. Isn't it glorious?

You have to start somewhere.

Re: It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

#20
Play only on linux since the last year or so and got away from the dedicated windows machine i had to have for only gaming. I had some bugs in the beginning but with recent versions of proton it feels a lot more stable. I don't have any bugs anymore in any games and don't notice any slowdowns or degraded performance. It is quite amazing.
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