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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

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Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

Steam has supported native Linux games for a decade.

It has, yet the focus is all about Proton.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

all valve games are linux native, as are lots of steam releases

The point is about the large majority that runs on top of Proton.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

On my deck, I can run native Linux games

Sure, pity that the large majority on Steam library are running on top of Proton.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#44
post #15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the end of the world to develop for macOS and iOS. These platforms are just idiosyncratic and don’t have many serious gamers. Neither smartphones nor Macs have been powerful or ergonomic enough to play current-generation games for decades. So the user base is almost entirely people who don’t play games. For a developer, the juice is not worth the squeeze (and by far!). The platforms are challenging to port f…

Point is that Apple is deliberately blocking Vulkan support. Which prevents things like Wine / Proton from offering decent performance for games there (MoltenVK is not really adequate for that). Being it's Apple, not some kind of poor entity who can claim lack of resources, I'd say they very much on purpose disregard gaming as a use case and therefore it's a strong reason to stay away from Apple to begin with if you…

> deliberately blocking

What do you mean by that?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#45
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

Are you suggesting they aren't serious about Linux unless they stop selling games without a native Linux version?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#46
post #2

It would be great if this meant proton is coming back to macOS :) I don't have high hopes however.

No native Vulkan on macOS, right? I know of MoltenVK, but I have no idea how suitable it is.

Yeah, no native Vulkan on macOS. MoltenVK[0] is a workaround. Decent for some projects.

[0] https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#47
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my deck, I can run native Linux games

Sure, pity that the large majority on Steam library are running on top of Proton.

Could you help me understand why that is a pity? Seems like Valve’s adapter pattern is a great development tool to get Linux games without dev studios spending excessive dev time/money on it.

Is Proton in some way inferior to native?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#48
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

Valve got a scare with Windows 8 that they could be pushed off the platform.[0] It became clear to them that they were just guests in a house owned by Microsoft. That was in 2012, the first Steam Machine (running Linux) came out 3 years later and they've been working at it ever since.

It's not about saving the cost of a license, it's about guaranteeing their own survival.

As for "supporting native games," I take that to mean "sufficiently incentivize game devs to port their games to Linux." How would that work, or did you have something else in mind?

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#50
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

> They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences.

In what way are they supposed to be paying for Windows licenses? What do you even mean by that? You aren’t required to give 30% to MS to ships Windows apps (nor macOS)

If anything they are trying to build a moat, good-luck playing Xbox games on your Steam Deck if you don’t go out of your way to install Windows. Making them affectively a monopoly for now.

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