Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by komali2 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

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.

Valve's employee handbook: https://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1074301/Valve_Handbook_Lo...

They seem to have a high ownership, consensus driven organizational structure. The only time I'm aware the consensus model was violated was when Gabe overruled a veto to ship Steam with half life 2.

It's very interesting to me because it seems to operate similarly to a lot of anarchist shit I've been involved in, but at a highly effective level. And they make oodles of money.

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

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Post by johncolanduoni » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

hamdingers wrote: post #169

strbean wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From interviews with the Alyx devs, it really sounded like the only reason they didn't call it HL3 was fear of not living up to the name. Given the org structure at Valve, it's going to take someone with massive hubris to say "I can be the one to lead the HL3 project." That or Gabe getting off his megayacht to lead it (or tell someone their project is worthy of being called HL3).

They decided to make it a prequel for fear of not living up to the name, the decision was made much earlier. If you're at all familiar with the contents of Alyx and the Half-Life franchise it wouldn't have made any sense to call it HL3.

In a narrow sense, it did move along the story point at the end of HL2 (I won’t explain how because there’s no way to do so without massive spoilers). But yeah, it would be weird to call in HL3 just because of that.

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

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Post by nicoburns » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #415

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private ownership is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to have a business which has a healthy relationship with its customers. You also need the owners to be people of reasonably good character who understand that the best way to run a business is a win-win approach on both sides, not people who see nothing wrong with extracting maximum profit from the business no matter whom it hurts. The PE horror stories…

You hypothesis then is that there is not a _single_ public company that has a healthy relationship with its company? Not one, in the entire global public space? When does this relationship with customers happen? Is it at the IPO? When they file the paperwork? When they contemplate going public for the first time? Or is it that any founder who might one day decide to contemplate going public was doomed to unhealthy cu…

From what I can see, it's often when the founder loses control of the company (either voluntarily (e.g. retirement) or not) and it falls to the board (representing the shareholders) to appoint the CEO. At that point it's at best a toss up whether they'll appoint someone who actually intends to create value or someone who intends to extract value.

> The obvious next thing we in society should do is abolish public equity as a concept as a customer protection mechanism?

Abolishing public equity is quite drastic, but there are lots of other things we could (and IMO should) be doing to protect society from the negative externalities it causes. For example:

- Mandating worker representation on company boards. So shareholders still have some power, but less.

- Progressive corporation tax (larger companies pay more tax). This would bias the economy towards smaller companies which generally have less problematic externalities.

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

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Post by snvzz » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:40 AM UTC

mhast wrote: post #329

bigyabai wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if that's really the case where are the power efficient x86 chips? Where are the power inefficient x86 chips? If you normalize for production process and put the chips under synthetic load, ARM and x86 usually end up in a similar ballpark of efficiency. ARM is typically less efficient for wide SIMD/vector workloads, but more efficient at idle. AMD and Intel aren't smartphone manufacturers. Their cash cows aren'…

Jim Keller goes into some detail about what difference the ISA makes in general in this clip https://youtu.be/yTMRGERZrQE?si=u-dEXwxp0MWPQumy Spoiler, it's not much because most of the actual execution time is spent in a handful of basic OPs. Branch prediction is where the magic happens today.

>Spoiler, it's not much because most of the actual execution time is spent in a handful of basic OPs.

Yet, on a CISC ISA, you still have to support everything else, which is essentially cruft.

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

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Post by sophrosyne42 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #446

sophrosyne42 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the disadvantage worth the relatively high overhead of specifically adding arm support? I doubt that. It is better game devs focus on what they're better at - x86 - while valve and open source devs focus on what they're better at, than trying to split funds across competing solutions to the problem.

The solutions have distant tradeoffs. When you want to run the latest PC games on mobile hardware using a battery, every cycle matters. Using translation layers for x86 will never be as good as as a native port.

Yeah. Also, software written for a wide gamut of hardware configs, even those under the same CPU ISA, will always be slower than software written for a unique hardware stack and only shipped for that hardware. Does it follow that all software should be written for specific hardware? I think not, because the performance overhead you take on allows saving on massive economic costs. It just isn't realistic to use development resources in that way. Even if devs are better at making ports for their games than fex, that takes precious time and money away from making the game, adding features, polishing, etc. It is much more realistic and sensible to focus on the comparative advantage than the absolute advantage [1].

[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativead...

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

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Post by energy123 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:47 AM UTC

harrall wrote: post #473

energy123 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it's just being morally lucky. They found themself in a situation where there was temporary and situational alignment, why give them any credit for that? They didn't create that situation. It's like AMD open sourcing FSR or Meta open sourcing Llama. The outcome itself is good, but if they ever become leaders in these verticals, they will pivot to closed source quicker than you can blink, because the reason t…

I strongly disagree with this approach in life. I am “morally lucky” because every decision I make is to ensure I can always be morally lucky, 10 years later. I take certain kinds of jobs in certain kinds of industries. It’s my same approach to reducing stress or getting things done. I never get a parking ticket not because I’m amazing — it’s because I know if I have to go out later and move my car, I’ll forget, so I…

I don't see it as an "approach", I see it as a description. If the FSR upscaler becomes better than DLSS, then my description leads to the prediction that AMD will make FSR closed source. The prevailing camp that says AMD are exercising their moral compass will predict that AMD will keep FSR open source. We'll see who has a description that aligns with reality if that day comes.

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

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Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:48 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #479

johnnyanmac wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's always this question when Valve comes up of, "why are people more upset about gambling for cosmetics in a game than gambling for power/features in a game?" Aren't people upset about both? The whole "gamble for features" is pretty much why the mobile market and console market are divorced in audiences (or at least, community). People are "more" upset about Valve here because this is in the console space. They…

> Aren't people upset about both? I'm sure a few people are, but typically no. People are aware that trading card games can be a monetary black hole, but Magic and similar games usually don't take the same heat for the business model that Valve does for loot boxes, even though they're actually worse on paper. > They've long dismissed the mobile scene as lost. I'm not talking about the mobile market. Are you not aware…

Oh you're talking about trading card games? I thought we were comparing to the gacha/lootbox market.

I think the simplest fact is that most people online don't think about offline product. Out of sight, out of mind. It's also an interesting market where WotC and Co. Actively try to avoid the resellers market. They don't want any risk in valuing individual cards themselves, so they stick to boosters.

For digital stuff, you are inherently the market itself. So it's hard divorce yourself when you are the one who implemented trading and controlling rarities and drops.

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

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Post by the_af » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:52 AM UTC

estimator7292 wrote: post #303

eggsome wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads can be disabled in the settings.

Not an excuse. It is not okay to abuse someone just because they can ask you to stop.

They are ads for games in a store that sells games, right?

I'm very anti-ad, but if there's one situation where I don't have a beef with it, it's the Steam app.

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

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Post by IAmNotACellist » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:55 AM UTC

blibble wrote: post #18

kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment

They can't even make Explorer work. They're pathetic.

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

#510

Post by protocolture » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 2:57 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #400

concinds wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple leadership cares more about "games on the Mac App Store built for Metal on a Mac" than it cares about "games on the Mac". This won't change until leadership changes.

Honest question, did Apple ever care about games on the Mac as a real priority?

I remember a friend of mine, gloating about how he could play Unreal Tournament on Mac, and I looked at it, and man did it ever run natively. But I could see a lot rendering wrong and a lot of stutters.

I think the pentium compatibility stuff in the powermac was also supposed to attract gamers, but I recall not being able to progress past the installer for Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, which would have been the game that made me change my mind. Ran the installer tho, which was something.