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

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

#22

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 anecdote is in part due to the fact that the engine that was used was already Linux-friendly and was already ironed-out, so it made sense that more agnostic bugs are reported, whereas other developers resent (native) Linux support due to distros not even fully following LSB or outdated libraries, which in Windows has at least the concept of side-by-side libraries.

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

#23
Yes, that's why you still have these 'ubuntu_12' folders in the Steam installation, since they have never updated this in the past 9 years. So in reality, native Linux development has pretty much failed, and they have put all their money on Proton. That is probably the right decision from a business perspective, but it's pretty much a defeat nonetheless.

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

#24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> I know that I stopped pirating games, music and movies when I started using Steam, Spotify and Netflix.

But is it a causal relation? You probably have a steadier income now than you had back then.

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

#25

>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?

Since Linux only has between 1-2% market share of desktop operating systems in total, that 0.13% increase is a reasonable proportion of the Linux users out there. So not too bad I'd say.

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

#26
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.

How do you feel about package managers?

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

#27

Something I always told myself I'd get around to. I've been meaning to set up Ubuntu on my desktop so I can use it for development, anyone have a good tutorial for setting up steam/proton?

You basically just install steam from within your linux distributions package manager. I use and recommend some arch based distro but for Ubuntu it should be apt-get or some gui tool like synaptic.

After you installed steam it will probably just work. You might need to go into settings -> steam play and enable proton. that's it.

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