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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

#671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always interpreted that as cosmetics are OK because it doesn't make the game unfair. You can't buy advancement in the game that way. Subsidizing the game's devel/ops cost isn't a bad thing. Especially if it's optional and doesn't change the game.

Very few people have a problem with just paying for cosmetics in a game. The main issue here is that it's gambling for cosmetics, rather than straightforwardly purchasing specific items.

Most people do have an issue with it, because every game that's replaced loot boxes with discrete cosmetics purchases has to then massively increase the price of them. For 20 bucks in Overwatch 1, you got (afaik) 10 loot boxes which all had 4 random items. In Overwatch 2 20 bucks barely gets you single good skin.

It's very much a grass is greener type of situation in my experience, having been part of communities of both types of games.

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

#672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CodeWeavers, the developers of Crossover, also do most of the development on proton under contract for Valve. This is speculation but I suspect there's something in that contract that prevents Valve from competing with Crossover on MacOS.

Nah, nothing like that. We explored shipping Proton for macOS early on, but decided it wasn't where we wanted to spend our time, so we removed it[1] to focus on Linux. There's only so many hours in the day, and supporting two platforms is a lot more work than one. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d817...

wtf take my money expand your team!!!

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

#673
post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam makes installing windows games easy. With GoG i would need to setup wine myself.

^ The essence of why we're doomed.

Because Steam gives customers useful features that are good? GoG should also directly support Linux.

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

#674

The one thing that worries me is that PC gaming is going fast to requiring controller support. Which is reducing the complexity of control schemes to either nothing or mortal kombat like combos. Forward, down, forward, high punch to build a new city in a 4X in a few years?

> PC gaming is going fast to requiring controller support. Hmmm I don't know. I did play Elden Ring & Clair Obscur with a controller but I also played Baldur's Gate 3 on mouse and keyboard. I also play VR games with controllers or hand tracking. Basically I play with whatever the game recommends. To me it's like saying PC game is dead because mobile phone is so popular. Sure a LOT of players, and thus money, goes int…

> Elden Ring & Clair Obscur with a controller

I play soulsbornes on consoles with a controller, of course. Because From doesn't know how to do any other control scheme, they have "console DNA".

But how do you play Civilization (<= 5, the good ones) with a controller?

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

#675

Would 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.

Valve employed Alyssa Rosenzweig while she developed the graphics stack for asahi linux. That's a very simple statement that masks the size of the achievement and its impact on the world. No, we haven't entered a golden era of gaming on macs, but the world has been shown the way. And no, the software challenges are not insurmountable.

bummed she left for intel she was next level. asahi lina commented after she left that there's currently no one doing graphics work anymore on asahi. projects kinda got some uncertainty to it now

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

#676
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have reached a point where the shareholders are a companies real customers and that is who they all try to attract. We currently have a handful of AI companies who make no profit, have revenue far below operating costs, their entire business runs on investment and they're posturing themselves for IPOs. Meaning that the reason they can keep the lights on solely comes from attracting investors (and will likely be t…

That's not unique to AI though. That's very common for tech startups. If they keep doing it, it must be because sometimes it works.

While AI is an example, it's an extreme one - the uniqueness here is that the AI companies have very large spend commitments that exceed expected cash generation, even under presumption of no faults and very strong revenue assumptions because infrastructure costs outpace revenue by a significant margin.(1)

This differs quite a bit from a typical venture-backed or boot-strapped entity, which has a realistic pathway to profitability.

https://www.analyticsinsight.net/news/hsbc-warns-openai-coul...

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

#677
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel spent years trying to get manufacturers to use their x86 chips in phones, but manufacturers turned them down, because the power efficiency was never good enough.

Well, they were targeting Android, and the apps were emulating ARM on x86, and they were going against a strong incumbent. Accounts on the web of this failure seem to bring up other failings as the main problems.

> the apps were emulating ARM on x86

They weren't (except some games maybe). Most apps were written in Java and JITed.

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

#678
post #329

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.

Jim Keller has to say that.

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

#679
post #331

I cannot speak for the Steam console and I don't care about playing PC games on my phone: it's not the form factor for me. But I'm really grateful for Valve and Steam. Increasingly, more and more Windows-only games "just work" with Linux (or work with minor tweaks taken from ProtonDB). I bought a Lenovo Legion a couple of weeks ago and I'm having a terrific experience with Linux+Steam so far. I don't claim to play th…

Space Marine 2 runs on my desktop, running Manjaro. Never tried on a handheld. Works fine!

Any tweaks for Proton that you think were helpful? I tried stuff from ProtonDB but it hangs during the initial cutscene and never recovers.

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

#680
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what does that mean. Americans poor and wealthy are in the top 10% of the world wealthiest and own a huge part of the world stock value accordingly. That's simply capitalism, money is spread unevenly across everyone, that does not make everyone an elite

So it’s more like the top 0.001% who have the voting majority in this wonderful democratic system we all have our life savings dumped into. What was your attempted point? Or did you not understand the issue that was brought up?

Is that a bad thing? Why would I want someone who can't even manage their own money to manage my life savings? If anything I'd expect a company where the decisions are in the hands of 99% John Smiths and 1% Warren Buffets to be even more short sighted, *especially* when it comes to splurging on dividends.
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