I suppose this will is in order to be able to push lower powered hand helds to penetrate further into global markets. Not everyone can afford an X64 Nvidia usd5000 gaming workstation.
Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
571–580 of 876 posts
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a little known alternative: Steward-ownership [1]. It's the kind of structure used by Novo Nordisk, Bosch or Patagonia. LLM summary: "Steward-ownership is a model where a company’s control stays with long-term stewards (founders, employees, or a mission-aligned foundation) while profits are limited and the company cannot be sold for private gain. The goal is to protect the mission permanently." The key, if I…
This model, unfortunately, often leads to a "well, we might as well spend the extra profits on executive benefits"-issue. Whenever you have money without oversight, you always face a moral hazard. If the company makes a profit and there aren't shareholders there to keep the stewards in check, excesses can and do develop.
I get the first point, but having shareholders doesn't solve that in any way. Shareholders would just give themselves payouts instead of letting the execs take everything as bonuses. And unlike the execs, whose bonuses could be limited by charter and who could be chosen on the basis of trust, shareholders are "whoever has the most money to throw around", so there's no mechanism to align them with company values.
So it's not perfect, but it sure as hell beats having shareholders.
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a little known alternative: Steward-ownership [1]. It's the kind of structure used by Novo Nordisk, Bosch or Patagonia. LLM summary: "Steward-ownership is a model where a company’s control stays with long-term stewards (founders, employees, or a mission-aligned foundation) while profits are limited and the company cannot be sold for private gain. The goal is to protect the mission permanently." The key, if I…
This model, unfortunately, often leads to a "well, we might as well spend the extra profits on executive benefits"-issue. Whenever you have money without oversight, you always face a moral hazard. If the company makes a profit and there aren't shareholders there to keep the stewards in check, excesses can and do develop.
Steward-ownership is a philosophy more than an actual structure, my understanding is that each such company is in practice structured somewhat differently.
This article explains roughly how Patagonia is structured: https://medium.com/@purpose_network/the-patagonia-structure-...
For Patagonia a trust owns 100% of the voting rights, while a charity collects 100% of the dividends. I don't doubt that there are ways the structure could be subverted, but it's a far cry from "money without oversight".
Do you have examples of Steward-owned companies that ended up with "well, we might as well spend the extra profits on executive benefits"-issues?
(I personally think Steam should go in that direction, otherwise I'm afraid enshittification is unavoidable once Gabe Newell is no longer at the helm)
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and…
"The major reason is they are a private company with good business..." This is unquestionably, undoubtedly incorrect. It is a really low information meme that's racing around the Internet right now. If you want a contemporary counterexample take a look at NASCAR. They're also not publicly traded, they're family owned, yet they are abusive toward drivers, teams and fans, and they're gradually ruining the sport that ma…
It's not that being private guarantees that the company will behave well. But it does make it possible.
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#575Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact. The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"
This is because it’s still majority owned by the original founder(s).
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They are also surprisingly effective because they often show things that I might actually buy (especially when it's on sale, which is precisely when they show ads for it).
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#577Earlier 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
There's a little known alternative: Steward-ownership [1]. It's the kind of structure used by Novo Nordisk, Bosch or Patagonia. LLM summary: "Steward-ownership is a model where a company’s control stays with long-term stewards (founders, employees, or a mission-aligned foundation) while profits are limited and the company cannot be sold for private gain. The goal is to protect the mission permanently." The key, if I…
One of the issues with founders is that they get really into one specific idea and sink the company, rather then to switch strategy.
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#578Would love to see it on MacOS X -- Steam works great on my Mac Mini for the games it supports, would be great to see everything run on it.
Main issue is the lack of Vulkan support on macOS. Currently, solutions like MoltenVK have to be developed to add Vulkan support, which isn't as clean as just supporting it. For some reason the prospect using Wine, Rosetta 2, and DXVK with MoltenVK on top just to run some games doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that this whole thing will be performant and/or stable.
LunarG is working on first party Vulkan driver for MacOS https://www.lunarg.com/lunarg-achieves-vulkan-1-3-conformanc.... My understanding is performance is worse than MoltenVK at this point, but it's getting there.
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire point of this thread is that there are many things that Valve could do to increase its profits over the short, intermediate, and long terms... that it doesn't (presumably because that's not the kind of company it wants to be). As the simplest example, they could have stamped HL3 on a third party game and made several millions of dollars with only a minor hit to their brand (in 5 years, "that bad HL"). In m…
I don't see a problem with the first, if they want to outsource HL3 go ahead. Consumers can decide if they want to buy it when it releases, that's just normal economics. As for the 2nd, that's sort of what Epic does, yet Valve's store revenue is 10x Epic. So if enacting these anti-consumer practices were actually more profitable, why is Epic doing so shit? Not even in terms of absolute numbers but in terms of growth,…
> So if enacting these anti-consumer practices were actually more profitable, why is Epic doing so shit?
Because it is "common wisdom" even if the wisdom is short sighted and doesn't always amount to increased profits.
See Netflix removing the ability to cast, because fuck you. How much of the current growth is borne out of that crackdown on people using all their profiles they pay for?
There currently isn't a "good guy" so they can keep turning those screws and force some extra growth. Being anti-consumer would be beneficial for Valve because they are currently the only good guys.
Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
App stores for desktop computers have pretty consistently failed except for Steam. I don't think I've installed anything from the App store on my Mini, instead I have just dropped all kinds of images into my Applications folder. The Windows store is about as marginal as it can get. My corporate desktop at work is locked down with the Windows store disabled, they made it so I can elevate and do almost anything I need…
Not sure if that counts, but homebrews cask is some kind of appstore. Yes, command line based, but I can install closed-source software using "brew install --cask "
It's a package manager. On Windows, winget serves the same function.