Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

phoronix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 123 posts

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

#111

Post by h2odragon »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #105
bluely wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Steam Family Sharing? https://store.steampowered.com/promotion/familysharing It won't support every game but it should help you in your quest to share games with your son

The problem with Family Sharing is that it requires that the donor account not be playing any of its games while the recipient does. The workaround is to kill the internet connection to the donor account, then both accounts can play to their hearts' content! Er, as long as the donor doesn't mind single-player content. Which is essentially what grandparent is already doing. Alas!

you dont have to kill your internet connection, the steam client has an "offline mode" that works as well

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

#112

Post by johnny22 »

thrower123 wrote: post #95
squarefoot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Windows user base is too large, and the cost of maintaining two versions is too costly for most publishers to even think of making two versions. They instead learned how to write Windows games that can be easily run under Linux with no or minimum effort. Once a significant number of people will transition to Linux because they have enough apps/games that do what they want under Linux, and the gain in stability, p…

It's just an interesting shift in the wind. A few years ago I'd get flamed hard for suggesting that just building Wine-compatible Windows builds was smarter than trying to build native linux versions.

you still will. there just happens to be more people arguing with them now than there used to be.

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

#113

Post by yvdriess »

milesvp wrote: post #87
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

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.

Jeff Vogel, his talks are all very much worth watching.

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

#114

Post by quickthrowman »

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.

I still pirate most movies and some TV shows because the selection on streaming services is bad, particularly for movies. I don’t pirate many new movies, it’s almost all back catalogue stuff.

I don’t pirate games and music because Steam and Spotify (or Apple/Amazon music) are a better experience than piracy.

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

#115

Post by revolvingocelot »

h2odragon wrote: post #111
revolvingocelot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Family Sharing is that it requires that the donor account not be playing any of its games while the recipient does. The workaround is to kill the internet connection to the donor account, then both accounts can play to their hearts' content! Er, as long as the donor doesn't mind single-player content. Which is essentially what grandparent is already doing. Alas!

you dont have to kill your internet connection, the steam client has an "offline mode" that works as well

>the steam client has an "offline mode"

I know it's unusual for HN, but I read both the GGGP and am a user of the thing under discussion! Steam's settings in that regard aren't "sticky" enough for me. I've set myself to Offline, quit, and then found myself Online often enough under both Windows and Linux that it's just easier to write a little script to keep Steam from connecting to the internet.

Worth pointing out to others that even if offline mode fails and one intemperately starts a game while someone else is using one's library, that user will get a minute or two to save their game before Steam closes the game for them, but my cousins have found this annoying enough that I figured I'd take OS-level action.

Ensuring that the recipient also has the ability to deny Steam internet access allows my cousins to log into actually-offline Steam as me, and play single-player content, while I'm actually-online and playing multiplayer.

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

#116

Post by simion314 »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #115
h2odragon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you dont have to kill your internet connection, the steam client has an "offline mode" that works as well

>the steam client has an "offline mode" I know it's unusual for HN, but I read both the GGGP and am a user of the thing under discussion! Steam's settings in that regard aren't "sticky" enough for me. I've set myself to Offline, quit, and then found myself Online often enough under both Windows and Linux that it's just easier to write a little script to keep Steam from connecting to the internet. Worth pointing out t…

I never had the issue with Steam going Online without my permissions on Ubuntu.

One thing that affects me with Offline mode is this scenario,

1 the kid is playing with his friends soemthing

2 I am in Offline mode but I just found a cheap game I want to try, but I would need to go Online but this would kick my son out.

so going Offline is an ugly workaround for my scenario.

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

#117

Post by 0dayz »

squarefoot wrote: post #68
thrower123 wrote: post #29

I think it is incredible that after all these years the best target for Linux gaming is still a Windows compatibility shim.

The Windows user base is too large, and the cost of maintaining two versions is too costly for most publishers to even think of making two versions. They instead learned how to write Windows games that can be easily run under Linux with no or minimum effort. Once a significant number of people will transition to Linux because they have enough apps/games that do what they want under Linux, and the gain in stability, p…

I don't think MS is still in its EEE days (or at least its EEL), but its pretty obvious they want part of the new cake while having their own.

Microsoft will most likely continue to adapt the open source model with lock downs like the rest of the industry.

The question is will they be like red hat or Oracle.

Also they already have a distro although internal: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-released-cbl-mar...

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

#118

Post by LegitShady »

cma wrote: post #109
LegitShady wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, they don't want you to generate code sand then sell for less than you sell at steam because that's a suicide level business model for them. But you can still sell the codes yourself without cost to you. I don't understand why what you're saying is relevant.

You are bringing in new users and locking them into Steam. Steam only allows it because they want to be one centralized hub with more and more people locked in through social features, existing libraries, recommendation traffic, etc., but it is only allowed if it isn't price competition so that consumers can't feel the weight of the 30% directly.

no one is locked in anywhere. It's the developers choice to put in DRM or not. Steam by itself doesn't force it.

No business plan makes sense if they give away their product for free without taking any form of revenue. Casting that as evil is odd and misleading. That they allow devs to generate codes that give steam no revenue at all is pretty incredible.

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

#119

Post by revolvingocelot »

simion314 wrote: post #116
revolvingocelot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the steam client has an "offline mode" I know it's unusual for HN, but I read both the GGGP and am a user of the thing under discussion! Steam's settings in that regard aren't "sticky" enough for me. I've set myself to Offline, quit, and then found myself Online often enough under both Windows and Linux that it's just easier to write a little script to keep Steam from connecting to the internet. Worth pointing out t…

I never had the issue with Steam going Online without my permissions on Ubuntu. One thing that affects me with Offline mode is this scenario, 1 the kid is playing with his friends soemthing 2 I am in Offline mode but I just found a cheap game I want to try, but I would need to go Online but this would kick my son out. so going Offline is an ugly workaround for my scenario.

Feh, it works on your machine, eh? :D

But seriously, you need Family Sharing. Make your kid an account, then set your account to Family Share with his. Now, he can play games from your library as long as you're not playing any, even if your account is online too.

So, when you want to play some singleplayer stuff, log into your account and buy and download the game as you normally would, whilst your son plays with his friends. Now kill Steam's internet connection on your computer, and play your freshly purchased cheap singleplayer game without bothering or having bothered your son.

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

#120

Post by no_time »

thrower123 wrote: post #29

I think it is incredible that after all these years the best target for Linux gaming is still a Windows compatibility shim.

You would be writing linux-to-linux compatibility shims instead. Desktop linux is forever stuck in the "move fast and break things" mindset that just isn't compatible with the release-and-forget style of proprietary software.
Post reply on HN