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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

#621

Post by bloqs »

komali2 wrote: post #501
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.

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 highl…

this is widely known (been discussed on here many times) that the employee handbook was marketing apparatus and doesnt reflect how the business actually works day to day, and never did

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

#622

Post by bluescrn »

levocardia wrote: post #147
adverbly wrote: post #98

Everything 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"

It's an interesting case study. They're essentially another 'App Store middleman' raking in a huge 30% cut for selling games digitally. But they do enough really good stuff to keep both gamers and developers generally very happy.

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

#623

Post by viktorcode »

bigyabai wrote: post #61
jsheard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI they intend to retire support for x86 macOS apps in a few years, but Rosetta will remain as a low-level component so that things like Crossover and Parallels can continue to work. Maybe not forever, but there's no immediate threat of it being EOL'ed. > Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – a…

Yeah, that's not very reassuring. You guys remember when you bought a computer and could run the software you wanted, independent of political motives? In perpetuity? Reading excuses like this makes me feel validated for cutting macOS out of my professional workflow. The concept of paying Apple to provide high-quality long term support only works if Apple does better than the free offerings. Free offerings that still…

I'm not sure what you are referring to, but I remember way less cross-platform software than we have now, and way worse working WINE. No, there was never time when we could run whatever software we want on a machine of our choice.

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

#624

Post by KolmogorovComp »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #371
reactordev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things do not prevent cheating at all. They are merely a remote control system that they can send instructions to look for known cheats. Cheating still exists and will always exist in online games. You can be clever and build a random memory allocator. You can get clever and watch for frozen struct members after a known set operation, what you can’t do is prevent all cheating. There’s device layer, driver layer…

That's easy to say. But they do prevent some cheating. Don't believe me? Consider the simplest case: No anti-cheat whatsoever. You can just hook into the rendering engine and draw walls at 50% transparency. That's the worst case. Now, we add minimal anti-cheat that convolutes the binary with lots of extra jumps and loops at runtime. Now, someone needs to spend time figuring out the pattern. That effort isn't free. No…

> You can just hook into the rendering engine and draw walls at 50% transparency

A properly designed game should not send the position of ennemies out of view

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

#625

Post by tpxl »

abtinf wrote: post #340
YmiYugy wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of complaints about them. The highly addictive gambling mechanics in their games, the extortionate cut afforded them by their dominant market position or the very rough UX in many parts of the Steam client (takes forever to startup, shows pop up ads on startup, is quite the resource hog, the store that is a pretty poorly optimized website and a lot of cruft in the less well trodden areas). But they do m…

> pretty poorly optimized website What are you on about? The steam store is pretty much always fast, efficient, and has lots of little touches that increase information density. It is one of the last remnants of the web from the good old days.

The steam store used to burn CPU on Windows until at least up to 2017 (on fresh install it would a strong PC stutter on startup). It tries to kill your DNS resolver on linux when downloading games (~20 requests/sec when) which actually decreases your download speed by a bunch. This bug has been documented in 2014, and was still present last time I had to debug this a year or two ago.

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

#626

Post by dontlaugh »

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #624
phendrenad2 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's easy to say. But they do prevent some cheating. Don't believe me? Consider the simplest case: No anti-cheat whatsoever. You can just hook into the rendering engine and draw walls at 50% transparency. That's the worst case. Now, we add minimal anti-cheat that convolutes the binary with lots of extra jumps and loops at runtime. Now, someone needs to spend time figuring out the pattern. That effort isn't free. No…

> You can just hook into the rendering engine and draw walls at 50% transparency A properly designed game should not send the position of ennemies out of view

That is not always possible for genres with fast gameplay like most shooters. It's quite common for player movement to be able to put an enemy in view before the light could've round-tripped from the server.

This is generally the anti-cheat problem. Certain genres have gameplay that cannot be implemented without trusting the client at least some of the time.

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

#627

Post by xp84 »

franga2000 wrote: post #572
nikanj wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> Shareholders would just give themselves payouts

Precisely, in the form of the #1 trend of public companies, stock buybacks! I've seen aggressive buybacks take a company with a ton of money in the bank and a profitable business and drive it right to Chapter 7 bankruptcy in just a few short years.

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

#628

Post by niek_pas »

andy_ppp wrote: post #575
levocardia wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This really makes me wonder if publicly traded companies are just a bad idea.

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

#629

Post by dontlaugh »

thewebguyd wrote: post #51
EA-3167 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more than "little motivation" if we're being honest. Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out. Their very clever approach has been a full end-run around the OS by using Proton, which I'm sure genuinely thrilled Apple... as long as Valve is only doing that to MS. Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same…

Especially looking at Apples recent gaming history. When Cyberpunk, AC, and a couple other AAA titles came to macOS, Apple made a big deal of them being in the mac app store, specifically. They didn't go out of their way to call out that they run on mac, you can get them from Steam, etc. The big deal was they are in the app store. That's where Apple wants mac gaming to happen so they can get their 30% cut. I wish tha…

Sure. And Valve want their own 30% cut.

It does suck if you just want to play games on hardware you own that can handle said games.

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

#630

Post by aperture147 »

I think Valve is not some kind of God who free the human from the hand of Microsoft, they are a private company, they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. The movement towards Linux benefits Valve the most since they have invested on Linux Gaming for 10 years now and that movement "conveniently" benefits the gamers too. That's a win-win situation, users can escape themself from a bloated Windows and Valve has the pioneering advantage.
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