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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#171

Post by rixed »

pksebben wrote: post #164
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the company. Valve is flat. Employees have 100% control over their time. By not centralizing decision making, you create the conditions for good ideas to form and connect with the problems they are going to be best suited for. The dynamics at work here are very well understood (see Ackoff / Sycara / Gharajedaghi, and yes I had to look the spelling up). Hierarchies an…

Thank you for the references; Is there any article/blog describing that secret sauce from the insde for the curious outsider that you would recommand?

I've always been interrested in organisations, but not so much by the theory that I've always found too dry.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#172

Post by rixed »

inejge wrote: post #169
pksebben wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the company. Valve is flat. Employees have 100% control over their time. By not centralizing decision making, you create the conditions for good ideas to form and connect with the problems they are going to be best suited for. The dynamics at work here are very well understood (see Ackoff / Sycara / Gharajedaghi, and yes I had to look the spelling up). Hierarchies an…

> The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the company. Valve is flat. I'm too lazy to dig up references, but there have been semi-exposés over the years by ex-employees stating that Valve's flatness was anything but. Namely, in the absence of formal hierarchy an informal one will inevitably arise, and can be equally constraining and pathological, without the benefit of having known avenues for redress. To…

My understanding is that the emergence of informal hierarchy can actualy be the feature; The problem being addressed being the rigdity of formal hierarchies in a changing environment. As long as informal hierarchies emerge and die according to circumstances, that can be a win.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#173

Post by rockskon »

protimewaster wrote: post #115
jsheard wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and give refunds so they get a free pass. They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was found to be illegal in Australia.

Also, competing stores like EA's Origin had a pretty friendly refund policy before Valve did, helping to put some pressure on Valve.

I seem to recall Origin initially reserving the right to revoke your license to play games you purchased after a few years of inactivity.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#174

Post by kubafu »

rustystump wrote: post #139
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

Valve is private right? One of the reasons they are not pure evil is because they have the luxury of not needing to chase the magic dragon of inf growth. They can focus on product. Bet your ass if they were public u would see the slimiest shit coming out to eek every possible percent so bonuses are made. I wish more companies were private for profit but not inf growth.

Came here to write exactly this. IMO it is the big reason what Valve is as a company.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#175

Post by RobotToaster »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

It's amazing that an always-on DRM company can become the "good guy" by staying the same level of asshole they've always been, while every other company became much worse assholes.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#176

Post by swiftcoder »

jcelerier wrote: post #163
zozbot234 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the GPU on Apple Silicon machines a tile-based "mobile" GPU design? Many of the hardware features that traditional GPU's have and mobile GPU's lack can be easily "faked" with GPU-side general compute.

But even the most powerful apple silicon GPU is terrible compared to an average Nvidia chip

While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#178

Post by Rohansi »

swiftcoder wrote: post #176
jcelerier wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even the most powerful apple silicon GPU is terrible compared to an average Nvidia chip

While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.

And it will consume almost as much power as the Nvidia GPU to do so.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#179

Post by IshKebab »

vrinsd wrote: post #132
IshKebab wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done both. There are difficulties with both but overall I would say software is significantly more difficult than hardware. Most hardware is actually relatively simple (though hardware engineers do their best to turn it into an incomprehensible mess). Software can get pretty much arbitrarily complex. In a way I suspect it's because hardware engineers are mostly old fogies stuck in the 80s using 80s technologies…

Wow, super hard disagree, comment here sounds like the typical arrogance hardware engineers face from people in software who've never really done the job or have some superficial experiences. I won't blindly state "software is easier" but software is definitely easier to modify, iterate and fix, which is why sofware tools and resulting applications can evolve so fast. I have done both HW & SW, routinely do so, and sw…

> But have you ever DESIGNED a microcontroller

Yes... But in fairness I was just talking about the digital RTL, not the messy analogue stuff (PLLs, power/reset, etc.) I've never done that.

> but software is definitely easier to modify, iterate and fix,

Definitely true.

> which is why sofware tools and resulting applications can evolve so fast.

Not sure I agree here though. It seems to me that EDA tools evolve super slowly because a) hardware engineers are timid old fogies who never want to learn anything new, and b) the big three have a monopoly on tooling.

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