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Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

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Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#381

Post by Telaneo »

stavros wrote: post #326
craftkiller wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why I bought a steam deck: to financially support Valve's Linux efforts. I barely play games anymore but thanks to the Wine devs, CodeWeavers, and Valve, I no longer have to listen to the knuckle-draggers claiming that "Linux sucks because it can't play games". In fact, now it is the opposite: Linux is outperforming Windows[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJXp3UYj50Q

I wonder when games will start supporting Linux natively, especially after the Steam Machine is released.

Given that older Linux builds of games consistently run worse than the Windows versions of those same games through Wine/Proton, I hope never.

Targeting Wine/Proton is the best of both worlds for everyone. Developers need to Just™ not use a few footguns that they mostly don't have reasons to touch anyway, and otherwise they don't need to change anything, while consumers get a game on that works just as well on Linux as on Windows.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#382

Post by cromka »

tombert wrote: post #377
cromka wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an alternative project that runs Windows apps in a VM but integrates them fully and transparently into your Linux desktop, with MS Office particularly tended to. The apps run as if they're native to Linux. It was discussed here just this past week.

Yeah, Winboat, I might be part of that conversation you're referring to. I haven't ruled that out yet. I am planning on trying to convince them on this next time they ask me for tech support.

If you do it would be interesting to hear if/how well they adapted to it. Might do same thing myself with my father.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#383

Post by petabyt »

codeflo wrote: post #137
jonny_eh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's pretty strong rumours that they actually have been working on a new Half-Life. People are hoping it releases with their new hardware in 2026.

Are the rumors still hinting at a VR-only experience as they did a couple of years ago when Half-Life: Alyx released, or is that no longer the speculation? Because that would be unfortunate for me, I'd have to play with a bucket in hand.

Leaks disproved this in 2023. HLX is a single player non-vr PC game.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#384

Post by wilg »

cromka wrote: post #373
johnnyanmac wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a fan of this reasoning when in the same breath: Epic is also a private company but has its share of stuff. It's done some good stuff for the industry and even contributed to some bit FOSS projects. But business is still business.

I think the point was about publicly traded companies becoming inevitably evil due to shareholder expectations, not about private companies being inherently ethical.

This is a pretty serious problem, since we would like lots of companies to participate in public markets so that regular people can gain some of the upside and so there is transparency and increased oversight.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#385

Post by esskay »

kraftman wrote: post #121
bigwheels wrote: post #89

Any leads on when the next generation of Steam Deck will be released? Hoping it could be sometime in 2025, but suspect it will be more like 2026. Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more. As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. T…

I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. Valve don't want to sell hardware, they want to sell games. They only make hardware as flagships for new markets, then they want other hardware manufacturers to take over. the legion go is more powerful and a has a nice screen, but is heavier, boxier, and has a worse batteyr life than the steam deck

Valves moving into hardware more than ever right now, not moving away from it. They've already sand multiple times a deck 2 is on the cards, but only when theres enough of a hardware bump to make it make sense as a product. Slapping a tiny bit newer cpu in there and calling it a Steam Deck 2 isn't what Valve are about.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#386

Post by stavros »

Telaneo wrote: post #381
stavros wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when games will start supporting Linux natively, especially after the Steam Machine is released.

Given that older Linux builds of games consistently run worse than the Windows versions of those same games through Wine/Proton, I hope never. Targeting Wine/Proton is the best of both worlds for everyone. Developers need to Just™ not use a few footguns that they mostly don't have reasons to touch anyway, and otherwise they don't need to change anything, while consumers get a game on that works just as well on Linux…

Yes but the Proton team needs to do work for basically each game to iron out the quirks, no?

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#387

Post by Telaneo »

tombert wrote: post #239
bee_rider wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve seems more like Apple than Google: a well-liked company that has an obvious and not inherently exploitive business model. Google as an ad company was always destined to go bad in a way that most non-ad companies are not. No company is your friend, and they are all fundamentally structures around making a profit. But providing goods and services in exchange for money is not inherently exploitive or evil.

Oh I don’t disagree with anything you said there. It’s perfectly fine for a for-profit company to do things for profit, and Valve selling games and creating tooling in which to do so isn’t inherently bad. That said, I can think of a few things about Valve that are kind of bad, such as normalizing DRM with games. Linux people (including me) have historically been pretty anti-DRM, as they should be, but because everyon…

Valve's DRM is trivially bypassed. It's just there so that the checkbox 'has DRM' is ticked.

You can also publish games on Steam without DRM, as in, you can then just copy the game files and run them anywhere. Most don't because it's extra work and because it's hard to explain to your boss why you should untick that checkbox, while consumers who care mostly go to GOG anyway.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#388

Post by quitit »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #347
xbmcuser wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major reason is they are a private company with good business. The don't have a need to keep adding to shareholder value ie stock price instead just need to generate a yearly income. We have reached a point where the shareholders are a companies real customers and that is who they all try to attract.Everytthing else a company does is just to attract shareholders

I'm not really a fan of this reasoning when in the same breath: Epic is also a private company but has its share of stuff. It's done some good stuff for the industry and even contributed to some bit FOSS projects. But business is still business.

Attributing it to private company behaviour really minimises what Valve chooses to do. Per your counter example: Epic Games has been having a very public meltdown this week regarding Steam's inclusion of Gen-AI labelling - here we have two private companies, with two very different priorities.

It's also worth reminding ourselves that Epic settled with the FTC for over half a billion dollars for tricking kids into making unwanted purchases in Fortnite.(1) Epic also stonewalled parents' attempts at obtaining refunds, going so far as to delete Fortnite accounts in retaliation for those who arranged charge backs.

Furthermore the FTC's evidence included internal communications showing that Epic deliberately schemed and implemented these dark patterns specifically to achieve the fraudulent result, even testing different approaches to optimise it.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#389

Post by esskay »

tonetegeatinst wrote: post #30

Given how arm license is know to be less than friendly.... Wouldn't it be preferable to explore a RISCV architecture. As far as I know RISC provides similar power efficiency and sleep that is like ARM.

RISCV is at least a decade, if not two from being useful enough for mainstream adoption. Neither the hardware or software is anywhere close to being ready.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#390

Post by Telaneo »

sershe wrote: post #287
bee_rider wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve seems more like Apple than Google: a well-liked company that has an obvious and not inherently exploitive business model. Google as an ad company was always destined to go bad in a way that most non-ad companies are not. No company is your friend, and they are all fundamentally structures around making a profit. But providing goods and services in exchange for money is not inherently exploitive or evil.

Valve makes most of their money from Steam lock-in. Given these numbers and the pathetic state of all the alternative game stores, they are ONE company before Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. that richly deserves some antitrust enforcement https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/valves-reported-prof... Not to say they are not great for Linux gaming. But this should not be mistaken for some kind of idealistic position. Win…

Valve is not a monopoly/part of a duopoply/oligopoly. They're also not behaving like knobheads. It's the combination of monopolistic practices and causing harm to consumers that should invoke antitrust enforcement.

There are plenty of other stores to get games from. They're just consistently worse than Steam.

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