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Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

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Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#131

Post by chii »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #75
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than…

> " Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. " Valve is the one putting in the effort and paying for it at their own expense. If they ever lose interest in paying for it, like GabeN retiring and Ebenezer Scrooge replacing him, then it's game over for Linux gaming (literally).

> paying for it at their own expense

valve would recoup the cost from a bigger customer base, as well as paying it as insurance against windows/microsoft targeting them as an existential threat.

It's cheap for what they're getting. And iirc, it being open source means the foundation could be built upon by others if they do decide to call it quits.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#132

Post by chii »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #53
dartharva wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with store purchases I mean.. it's pretty obvious such a thing would be immediately suicidal for them. If Steam stops being an open platform, it stops being a PC platform.

The Steam you download from steampowered.com can be an open platform at the same time that the Steam that comes preinstalled on the Steam Machine is a closed platform. Seems unlikely because we believe Valve has integrity. But it's possible they have less integrity than we think, and they pursue this strategy to make some of those games with kernel-level anti-cheat available on the Steam Machine.

> Steam you download from steampowered.com can be an open platform at the same time that the Steam that comes preinstalled on the Steam Machine is a closed platform.

i dont think that's possible unless steam choose to go the route of what apple does with iOS and macOS - both essentially are "different" OS's.

But if that's the case, then games would have to be written "twice" (or have engine support directly from engine vendors). I highly doubt this can or will occur, as game developers are short on time as is.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#133

Post by NuclearPM »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than…

ADHD? What do you mean?

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#134

Post by thenthenthen »

ee64a4a wrote: post #66
potatolicious wrote: post #35

Are they actually running the Apple playbook in reverse? It seems to me that they're actually running Apple's playbook pretty squarely, just in another domain. First-gen product that seemed to not know where it's going? Check. Continued quiet iteration behind closed doors despite first-gen being a flop? Check. Sticking with the product line over many years, where most other companies would have written off and thrown…

The "in reverse" framing was largely in reference to the fact that Apple built the software ecosystem after getting loyal hardware consumers, whereas Valve got loyal software users first and is now selling hardware to them. Otherwise, I do think a lot of what you say is true, and some of it is in the article (e.g. the software "just works").

Thanks for the in reverse explainer, i did not really get this from the article. That said I havent had my coffee yet.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#135

Post by throwaway314155 »

happymellon wrote: post #111
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #9

It will be interesting to see if they can answer a question better now than with the original Steam Machines ten years ago: what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer. I…

> are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Absolutely. The UI on Windows 11 is not designed for couch gaming, and Microsoft licencing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.

> Microsoft licensing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.

What do you mean? As in - manufacturers can't create an overlay similar to Steam Deck's "Gaming Mode"?

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#137

Post by benoau »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #135
happymellon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Absolutely. The UI on Windows 11 is not designed for couch gaming, and Microsoft licencing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.

> Microsoft licensing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows. What do you mean? As in - manufacturers can't create an overlay similar to Steam Deck's "Gaming Mode"?

Steam do on Windows through "Big Picture" mode.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#138

Post by chihuahua »

NuclearPM wrote: post #133
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than…

ADHD? What do you mean?

They probably mean that with some projects, Microsoft builds something half-assed and then moves on to something else. Instead of sticking with the project, evaluating it critically, and committing to fixing whatever sucks about it until it's high quality.

One could get that impression from the Windows Store/Microsoft Store. And also the state of the Settings UI for at least the past 13 years - Windows 8 moved a small fraction of Settings to Metro design, but 13 years later there are still some pieces of Windows 7 UI left.

Or the Edge browser fiasco - how can a company as large as Microsoft conclude "eh, I guess we just can't have a browser that works well enough for enough of the web to be competitive, let's just give up and do a Chrome branch"

Or the Kin phone: "we launched this 4 weeks ago and I guess it sucks, let's just pull the plug and never mention this again"

Or Windows features like home group, libraries, and Windows Home Server - they're around for a few years, then someone decides "we don't really care about this" and dump them.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#139

Post by throwaway314155 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #41

> Competition is difficult once a big aggregator has emerged, even for deep-pocketed incumbents. And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor. With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No…

Playing two Steam games simultaneously typically results in a logout from the second (offending) PC.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#140

Post by petterroea »

Contrary to what the article claims, the market being open and sloppy isn't enshittification. Jacking up prices and removing features users were using in the name of extracting profit is. But what I strongly agree with the author about is the uncertainty of Valve's fate after GabeN. Any company is able to enshittify, we are just one change of owners away. It's almost like potential energy vs kinetic energy - a company like Valve has saved up a _lot_ of enshittification potential waiting for the "right" condition to be realized.

I'd love to believe Steam will keep being the market leader because they haven't really enshittified yet. I'd love to believe that Tim Sweeney and Epic games are so unable to read the room and so blinded by being a public company that consumers just aren't interested. But considering their biggest game is Fortnite, they are practically selling to kids, who lack any sort of market opinion of that regard. Regardless, consumers don't really buy with their wallet unless there are immediate, solvable problems in front of them.

Regarding metaverse, I believe anyone who has been on VRChat instinctively understands why metaverse was doomed to fail from the get-go. I wrote some notes about my experiences which I released while doing winter-cleaning of my notes recently: https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.

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