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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

igalia.com

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#231

Post by rpdillon »

iinnPP wrote: post #228
jakeec wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope everyone who is so outspoken about loot crates are also fighting for TCG packs to be banned/regulated because they are literally the same level of "gambling".

Let's not forget mystery boxes for real toys and things like mini brands. Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no. Otherwise we need to outlaw everything bad and open to abuse to specific individuals. Things such as cake, donuts, coffee, etc.

> Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no.

This really resonates with me. I feel like self-control has gone out of fashion, but it has a lot of merit.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#232

Post by mikkupikku »

iinnPP wrote: post #228
jakeec wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope everyone who is so outspoken about loot crates are also fighting for TCG packs to be banned/regulated because they are literally the same level of "gambling".

Let's not forget mystery boxes for real toys and things like mini brands. Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no. Otherwise we need to outlaw everything bad and open to abuse to specific individuals. Things such as cake, donuts, coffee, etc.

I think we can ban companies selling packages without disclosing exactly what is in those packages. I think we can regulate companies in that way without finding ourselves hopelessly slipping down some silly slope.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#233

Post by rpdillon »

tarsinge wrote: post #191
tapoxi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It isn't tribalism, at least not from my side. There's a tangible, noticeable, immediate difference between buying a piece of hardware from Valve and buying a piece of hardware from Google or Apple. I really resented Valve after the Steam box debacle that left me with a $1,200 paperweight, but since then, they've done enormous amounts of work to regain my trust through tangible increases in the quality of the gaming experience, including not having to use Windows to game anymore, and providing me with open hardware that I can install whatever I want on, including using their hardware as my own personal PC when e.g. traveling.

Its weird to me that people choose what companies to buy from on the basis of whether or not the CEO owns a yacht or how rich he is. That is not the operative criteria when I choose what products to buy, but rather how well that product suits my needs and how much I trust the relationship with the company that produced it.

Valve is just miles ahead of every other manufacturer in this regard.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#234

Post by Thorrez »

super256 wrote: post #222
tpxl wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is simply not true. Hats have always been cosmetics only. Some unusual hats even give you a disadvantage as they broadcast your position through sounds.

This video describes how, in the past, certain item sets, which included hats, gave stats boosts when worn together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZDIqnS0FcI

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#235

Post by fooblaster »

msy wrote: post #185
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 real secret sauce is that Valve is private and doesn't have external investors. As soon as you're owners are primarily interested in short term capital extraction everything else is inevitable.

yeah this is essentially everything and all this other discussion of corporate structure is irrelevant

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#236

Post by rpdillon »

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.

Their DRM seems to be okay, but they do have some weird bugs.

My biggest gripe with Valve right now is that I bought a copy of No Man's Sky on GOG, and then I also had a copy on Steam. And so I let my son play my Steam copy through Steam Library sharing so we can play co-op while I play my GOG copy. Unfortunately, because I launched my GOG game through Steam, Steam's DRM won't let him play at the same time as me because they think we're playing the same copy.

It seems to be that they simply look at the title of the game and or the executable name to figure out what game it is, but they don't check to see what storefront it was bought from. I'm not sure about this though, I have to do more investigation.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#237

Post by jorvi »

Maxious wrote: post #203
jorvi wrote: post #41

Really cool stuff! Especially nice to see the groundwork being laid for what could become very efficient handhelds, considering how much performance Apple's M-series and Qualcomm's Elite series with relatively few watts. Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. One nit: it's too bad Valve / Igalia choose to completely ignore the lessons from Bazzite. Bazzite already runs a scheduler like LAVD, called BORE[0]. It would…

Igalia benchmarked against EEVDF https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353 Also bazzite uses LAVD by default for steam deck hardware https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/379...

EEVDF is not BORE. Well, technically BORE is something wrapped around either CFS or EEVDF. Interestingly enough, specifically for high sustained load situations (which handhelds are likely to hit given their limited power budget), the CFS version of BORE actually performs better than the EEVDF version.

And Bazzite used to use BORE, they just like tracking upstream as much as possible.

Anywho who is to say, maybe LAVD is indeed better. We don't know.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#238

Post by geokon »

"much of our work extends back through years of Snapdragon hardware, and we regression test it to make sure it stays Vulkan conformant"

would have been nice to hear of a specific device that now has Vulcan support

id be curious what the ballpark cost and time frame of the work was

im honestly surprised the technical expertise to do it (without qualcomms help) is even out there bc this is a space that has notoriously slow development relative to user interest

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#239

Post by sgerenser »

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #39
ozarkerD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bewilders me. Software's gotta be easier than hardware right? Not that either is easy but as a software engineer, the engineering that goes into modern hardware mystifies me.

Software is easier than hardware in general but companies generally pay their hardware guys 25-50% less than their software counterparts

People repeat this line a lot but I don’t think it’s true. Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc. afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or level roughly the same as their hardware folks. To the extent there’s any difference, it’s much less than 25%.

OTOH, there’s a small slice of (mainly) software companies like Google and Meta, along with Unicorn private companies, that skew the average software engineer salary high. Then there’s a long tail of “old school” hardware companies like TI, Motorola, Atmel, Microchip, and tons of smaller less well known companies that all pay much lower than Google. But they pay their software people poorly as well.

So if you just look at “average software engineer salary” vs “average hardware engineer salary” it appears that SW people are making 50% more than HW people, but it’s not at the same companies.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#240

Post by cassepipe »

rpdillon wrote: post #231
iinnPP wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget mystery boxes for real toys and things like mini brands. Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no. Otherwise we need to outlaw everything bad and open to abuse to specific individuals. Things such as cake, donuts, coffee, etc.

> Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no. This really resonates with me. I feel like self-control has gone out of fashion, but it has a lot of merit.

That's because it mostly doesn't work long term.

Depending on how your brain got wired, self-control condemns you to a life of misery while not being exposed allows you to live a normal life. Of course you cannot ask for societal experience to be tailored just for you but there seem to be a consensus on protecting the most vulnerable people from the most destructive habits. Where to draw the line is for everyone to find agreement upon and if that's not good enough for you, you need to find a safe haven.

Self-control is like a tourniquet on a severed leg, it can buy you time but you need an hospital at some point

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