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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

#81

Post by jhanschoo »

gravypod wrote: post #7
smallpipe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

9. Controller support

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

#82

Post by pjmlp »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #35
deng wrote: post #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.

What's wrong with it? Having the Windows APIs turn into a portable abstraction layer is certainly amusing, but having wine sitting underneath the program is really nice (essentially for the same reason a VM is). For one thing, winedevs are way better at linux support than random gamedevs.

Check OS/2 and Windows compatibility layer.

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

#83

Post by pjmlp »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #65
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, they were hoping for native Linux support.

Going through a shim is better. It allows you to modify the open-source shim to analyze and patch the closed source game. This is why Proton can release fixes so fast. It also lets each party care about the natural thing for them: gamedevs care about windows and do a good job writing windows code; winedevs care about linux and do a good job writing linux code. Gamedevs don't care about linux so their native linux cod…

Android and ChromeOS games make use of ISO C, ISO C++, OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenSL, almost no one cares to port their games to GNU/Linux, quite telling.

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

#84

Post by pjmlp »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #36
alex_smart wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be? What were you hoping would happen?

Presumably, they were hoping for native Linux support.

Android and ChromeOS have native Linux support in what concerns game development APIs, amount of games that were ported to GNU/Linux, almost irrelevant.

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

#85

Post by ajvs »

debaserab2 wrote: post #70
paulryanrogers wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the broken or neglected games on Steam I've lost trust in them. GOG has started slipping in quality as they've grown, but at least they strive to host playable games and without DRM. Competition among stores and hosting is good IMO, even if a modest inconvenience.

Platform loyalty in gaming has always struck me as an odd phenomenon. You don't hear people raving about netflix or hulu being superior, but for some reason there is a huge fanbase for Steam itself. I mean, I don't mind steam, but I'd really prefer to have software that I purchase not check with a gate keeping entity before launching itself.

Most people don't care about privacy much, so they don't notice that if you try to use Steam in offline mode permanently it's impossible. Valve like most other big tech companies wants all their user data too.

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

#87

Post by milesvp »

smallpipe wrote: post #4
thioordc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I rarely ever “like” a company but Valve has done so much it’s honestly amazing. The 30% they take is soooo worth it for developers who don’t have natural Linux support.

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

I saw an RPG maker who’s been making games for over 20 years on GDC recently. He talks about steam’s 30% cut. His basic takeaway, is that he used to need to employ an entire fulltime employee to handle all the things that steam now does for him. For him, the steam tax pays for itself for support and distribution alone.

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

#88

Post by nicolaslem »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #69
LegitShady wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not a subscription service, so that's a strange analogy.

I'm kind of surprised it doesn't have a subscription service yet. Seems like an obvious way to go, and Game Pass seems to have been fairly successful.

Is Microsoft actually making money with Game Pass? I'm guessing many users just subscribe for a month or two when a new interesting game is released and cancel just after they are done with it.

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

#89

Post by 999900000999 »

deng wrote: post #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.

Personally I'd rather have all software like this.

Have platform agnostic code, or let it prefer windows. If your compatibility layer is so good I don't care.

Better than what we have now where tons of applications don't run on Linux or Mac OS.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

bnegreve wrote: post #24
I_Byte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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