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

#781

Post by devnullbrain » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

snvzz wrote: post #504

mhast wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does that matter? I lean towards the yes-the-ISA-matters camp, but I'm also under the impression that most silicon is dark.

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

#782

Post by flaminHotSpeedo » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

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 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…

My understanding of the contemporary argument against publicly traded companies, though I'm not completely convinced of them personally, are that the fiduciary obligations inevitably drive those bad behaviors, and/or that shareholders often demand short term returns at the expense of long term value.

As far as "fixing" the problem, I think it would be important to expand voters' influence over the company in addition to voting changes like you described. I don't know how to make it feasible, but IMO voters should be able to influence or directly decide much lower level business decisions than they currently do

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

#783

Post by chongli » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

emilecantin wrote: post #735

chongli wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A law like this just means getting full time employment becomes that much more difficult and the vast majority of people working for a company will be non-voting contractors without benefits. The existing employees would even vote for changes that make full time hiring more difficult in order to avoid diluting their own votes.

It would obviously need to be accompanied with rigorous enforcement of employee classification. I know there would be a bunch of possible ways to game this, so there are a lot of other rules we'd need to add but I didn't want to make my comment too long. Also, I wouldn't necessarily make a distinction between the full-time employees vs the part-time ones.

I think you’ll find that won’t actually work in practice. Many contract workers are not independent freelancers but actually employees of a different company who contracts the work out as a whole.

For example, a courier company like UPS employs all of its workers but the packages it delivers are for other companies who contract with UPS to do the work. If you force all businesses to employ their own couriers then UPS can’t even exist as a company and small businesses that depend on courier services would simply be unable to function at all.

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

#784

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

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 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…

>and the company should be able to be externally steered via regular elections in a manner that benefits the public and not just its founders.

Why would anyone believe that this means an organization is well run, or to everyone's benefit? Here in Germany we're notoriously unfriendly to public companies, most of the (well functioning) Mittelstand is private and family owned. And I pray to god it stays that way because I'd rather trust a company whose leaders have their family name and reputation staked on it for the next three generations than I do the amorphous blob called "the public". As Kierkegaard said, in the crowd nobody is responsible.

If you want to see what happens under public ownership visit a public bathroom. I don't want anything externally steered by nobody in particular, I want something steered by a handful of people with names and addresses.

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

#785

Post by kilna » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #518

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not one, in the entire global public space? It is genuinely hard to think of one. I treat all companies as adversarial relationships, where I fully expect them to treat me as disposable at least over any time horizon greater than 1-2y. There are certainly some companies that are more likely to find a mutually beneficial equilibrium. I think of Target, IKEA, sometimes Apple. But I don’t trust any of those companies…

Fortune 500 companies are particularly neurotic example of 'all' companies.

Sure, but very modestly due to scale, not core institutional morals. Go to your average small business with 10 or so people and ask the staff how they are treated and paid, and you'll get an answer not much different than the level of employee satisfaction for Fortune 500 companies. Look a their customer reviews... are small restaurants for instance an order of magnitude different that megacorp chains? In an economy with regulatory capture and highly unequal distribution of wealth, the wealthy set the tone across the board.

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

#786

Post by omikun » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

rincebrain wrote: post #317

ewzimm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's only official statement as far as I know is that it will come when they see a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant a new system. If they don't move to ARM, AMD's Medusa APUs are their next architecture with major upgrades, so I would guess that Valve would order another custom AMD chip but based on Medusa, which won't release until at least 2027. I would guess at least H2 2027 but probably early 202…

I would be surprised if they moved to ARM any time soon, because even if the CPUs can punch that hard, they're definitely not competing on the GPU front, from what I understand of the state of the art outside of Apple, so they're gonna wind up with a dGPU anyway if they did. Maybe my knowledge is out of date, but I'd be kind of surprised if a Snapdragon can get anywhere near competing with even the existing Steam Dec…

The X2 [1] is suppose to be more competitive now.

[1] - https://chipsandcheese.com/p/qualcomms-snapdragon-x2-elite

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

#787

Post by jama211 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:11 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #701

bluescrn wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People are mostly perfectly happy with authoritarianism as long as their lives are improving.

This doesn’t apply because valve doesn’t have a monopoly.

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

#788

Post by jama211 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:14 PM 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.

Not a fair comparison. I CHOSE to download and use steam when there are many alternatives. I enjoy their store page. Everything is consensual here.

They don’t force themselves onto your machines mate.

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

#789

Post by nish__ » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 7:00 PM UTC

Gormo wrote: post #757

nish__ wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? "Doesn't seem to be an accurate statement"? What part? Those numbers are actually conservative. According to Yahoo Finance[0], it's actually 93% of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest 10% of American households. And the bottom 50% of Americans own ~1%. You "seem" to be mistaken and you're talking out of your ass. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...

The article you're citing doesn't link to its sources, but seems to be talking about direct stock ownership by households , and not explicitly stating how it's accounting for investment funds.

I think it's accounting for indirect ownership as well. That would be very misleading and irresponsible reporting if it weren't.

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

#790

Post by paulryanrogers » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

uniq7 wrote: post #685

ManlyBread wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. It's absolutely fair to mock them for not releasing these games and keeping radio silence all these years. They managed to dethrone Duke Nukem Forever. There were multiple times in which the internet was hyped for Episode 3 and where it would make sense to release even a basic game like they've did with Episodes 1&2 just to wrap things up. I'm sure plenty of people…

I prefer not to have HL3 rather than a half-baked one, or a very short episode. They have only one chance of publishing HL3, and I hope put in it the same love and care they put in 1 and 2. I'd be very disappointed if they just released it just for the sake of releasing it.

They claim they will only release when the game has something innovative to offer.

But then why release Alyx as VR instead of HL3? What innovation did HL2 episodes 1 and 3 offer? Why are Valve releasing virtual card games today?

Half Life as a franchise is great. Gabe was right to start nearly from scratch on HL1 back in the day. But now, they've got everything they want so the hunger is gone.