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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#191

Post by tarsinge »

tapoxi wrote: post #87
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.

Yes everybody is trying to find rational reasons but to me like in recent politics a lot has to do with irrational tribalism.

I stumbled on an article of Gabe talking about his new yacht[0] and it made me realize he is not different than other billionaire (and maybe worst than average because he doesn’t even give to charity). But he looks like he is "one of us" and he likes Linux, so it’s okay.

Would gamers keep the rose colored glasses if Valve was exactly the same but the CEO was a business suit style type?

[0] https://fortune.com/2025/11/17/gabe-newell-leviathan-superya...

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#192

Post by BlueTemplar »

RobotToaster wrote: post #175
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Steam isn't always-on DRM. For instance Valve's own games don't have any.

Their worst failure is allowing games with Denuvo on their store.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#193

Post by BlueTemplar »

tpxl wrote: post #187
ecshafer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that valve loot crates/hats have also always been tradeable, and Ive never had to buy them or suffer a disasvantage.

TF2 hats used to bring an advantage until about a decade ago.

Oh - were they already tradeable ?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#194

Post by mschuster91 »

MindSpunk wrote: post #108
fidotron wrote: post #2

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.

Qualcomm is by a lot of accounts on HN a law firm with a side hustle of selling chips.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#195

Post by jsheard »

kawsper wrote: post #170
jsheard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's a real gap in the market for a relatively compact handheld which can play low-spec PC games. The AMD-based handheld PCs available today are all pretty chunky.

AYN Thor looks quite promising in that category https://www.ayntec.com/products/ayn-thor It’s an ARM machine running SteamOS.

Your link says it runs Android?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#196

Post by mort96 »

Spivak wrote: post #54
sbarre wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I had not connected those (hypothetical) dots, but I could see it.. Or maybe there's 2 next-gen Steam Decks, an ultra-portable ARM-based one that's as small as can be, and a more performant x86 one with AMD's next-gen APU...

Why not just make a performant ARM device? Apple demonstrated to the world that it can be extremely fast and sip power.

Valve isn't in the position to make their own best-in-class ARM chips like Apple is. They'd have to find a vendor which can sell them the chip they need.

Which SoC on the market do you think fits the bill?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#197

Post by nolok »

awill wrote: post #162
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a super high opinion of Valve. Sure, they have loot crates. But sensible people don't buy them. I guess you could blame them for having it in the first place. That's fair I guess. But I've never for a second considered buying any of that junk. I just buy single player offline games with no IAP, and Steam is amazing. It's a million miles ahead of the competitors, and it's really surprising that EA/Ubi etc.. try…

The problem with loot crates, and the reason why they're being slowly regulated against in several places, is that "sensible people don't buy them" has never stopped people to lose their life to gambling.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#198

Post by michaelt »

Rapzid wrote: post #186
swiftcoder wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no world where Apple silicone is competing with a 5070ti on modern workloads. Not the hardware and certainly not the software where Nvidia DLSS is in it's own air with AMD just barely having gotten AI upscaling out and started approximating ray reconstruction.

Certainly, nobody would buy an Apple hoping to run triple-A PC games.

But among people running LLMs outside of the data centre, Apple's unified memory together with a good-enough GPU has attracted quite a bit of attention. If you've got the cash, you can get a Mac Studio with 512GB of unified memory. So there's one workload where apple silicon gives nvidia a run for their money.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#199

Post by xzjis »

zamalek wrote: post #75
fidotron wrote: post #2

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

> 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…

In reality, Valve is doing all this work on GNU+Linux because they've been afraid of Microsoft ever since Windows 8 and the introduction of the Windows Store. For now, Microsoft is remaining open and isn't restricting installations to its own store; we even see that with the full-screen gaming version of Windows for handhelds, they display games from other stores, including Steam. But Microsoft also has a history of abusing its dominant position and monopoly to push its own products (Internet Explorer, Edge, OneDrive, etc.). Gaben made the only possible decision to protect Valve from that: having their own OS.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#200

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

l11r wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #43

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

> There are no ARM chips with enough power.

Disagree.

Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have mobile SoC which are more performant than the M2 and the X2 Elite is in the ballpark of Apple top SoC.

Considering how I currently use my Steam Deck, there is nothing my current phone couldn’t do. Sure, you won’t get PS5 performance but I’m personally completely happy with Switch 2 level performance.

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