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The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

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Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#141

Post by candiddevmike »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #51
TehCorwiz wrote: post #22

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons wo…

The sticky thing that keeps me in the steam platform is the software itself: notably, Steam Workshop. I normally source my games DRM free but after some experience trying to manage mods of heavily modded games like Rimworld I have come to discover that the value add of package management via Workshop for the exact same price is 100% worth it. Even though I trade DRM for it.

FWIW RimWorld on steam is DRM free. You can copy it and launch it without steam.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#142

Post by jerf »

haunter wrote: post #96
jerf wrote: post #57

I have a first-gen Switch, still in active rotation. My kids are asking me why we don't hack it. My answer has been, what does a hacked Switch do that my Steam Deck doesn't already do, without hacking? I mean, if you're going to sail the seven seas and yo-ho-ho, not that I've been encouraging that, the answer isn't even "Play Switch 1 games", the Steam Deck does that better too! And at least we can't accidentally hoo…

>the answer isn't even "Play Switch 1 games", the Steam Deck does that better too What about motion control games like Switch Sports?

I don't have any personal experience running Switch games on the Steam Deck, but I do have experience trying to use the Switch Pro controllers. I think they may work fine for some people now, but I have never been able to have them have a stable wireless connection. But when the connection was established, the accelerometers worked fine. (I gave up and just bought some XBox controllers.)

I'm sure the emulators accept the Steam Deck's own accelerometer inputs for when you're in a non-detached mode, and tilting the screen to aim.

The super-mega-motion control games might not work, but part of what I mean by "works better" is that the Steam Deck can generally emulate with more power than the Switch itself, e.g., you can get a Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom setup with a better framerate than the switch itself, so, depends on what you want more. I don't have a lot of motion control games.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#143

Post by candiddevmike »

glenstein wrote: post #4

It truly is, and it's the culmination of a long history of development to get to this point. Back in, I want to say 2016 or so, we had Steam Machines, which were a series of hardware partnerships with various vendors for a console-style form factor of essentially PC hardware running on the first version of Steam OS. It was an incredible idea, but at the time rather frustratingly, I think some people came down with wh…

Valve should acquire Framework and have them do Steam Machine 2.0.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#144

Post by lreeves »

candiddevmike wrote: post #143
glenstein wrote: post #4

It truly is, and it's the culmination of a long history of development to get to this point. Back in, I want to say 2016 or so, we had Steam Machines, which were a series of hardware partnerships with various vendors for a console-style form factor of essentially PC hardware running on the first version of Steam OS. It was an incredible idea, but at the time rather frustratingly, I think some people came down with wh…

Valve should acquire Framework and have them do Steam Machine 2.0.

Please no, all due props to Valve but they really can't count to 3.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#145

Post by mystified5016 »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #22

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons wo…

While I know that Steam has DRM, it's never been as onerous as other types of DRM.

I also know that Steam DRM isn't that hard to bypass. Generally just some patched DLLs. But I've never had a real need to bypass it. Steam lets you play offline with no connection. My games are, to a first approximation, mine and Valve doesn't need to be informed every minute I'm playing if I so choose.

Gabe's premise is right on. We pirate from Netflix and Epic because it's orders of magnitude easier than playing by the rules. I buy from Steam because it's easier than piracy.

As a rule, I don't pirate steam games. If it's something I'm interested in, it's probably worth my money. I do pirate from EA and others because the Sims 4 is not worth $500 in any universe. I pirate shows and movies because it's too much time and money to even figure out who has what I want this week.

You beat pirates by making your service more attractive than piracy. Steam is a better experience than free, and a better experience than all the other paid options. This is how you win.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#147

Post by smotched »

michaelsshaw wrote: post #71
LightHugger wrote: post #45

> Some people have criticized that their company culture of libertarianism sometimes takes precedence over other important values including equity and inclusion. To push for equity is to discriminate and dehumanize people, so it's certainly good that valve does not put this value ahead of anything else let alone allow them to take precedence over taking care of their customer base. They are perfectly inclusive as wel…

It's crazy that, according to people like you, we've always been doing merit-based hiring and still the computer workforce is disproportionately white and male. Nothing fishy there at all.

do you find it fishy 88% of the nursing workforce is female?

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#148

Post by WolfeReader »

thih9 wrote: post #146

How good is platform support - can I install e.g. Diablo 3 and have the thumbsticks control the character and not a virtual mouse? Or would I need to remap the input myself?

It varies by game - if the devs created a default control scheme, the Deck will load that by default and you're good to go. (The green check mark means that Valve verified this behavior, as well as other things.) And if not, the Deck UI makes it pretty easy to create your own mappings and share them, or download "community layouts".

You don't need a Deck to try it - you can run Steam in "big picture mode" on any computer, with a controller, and get the same UI which the Deck uses.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#149

Post by lupusreal »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #22

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons wo…

> Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment.

Eh.. It seems very common for Steam users to have libraries of thousands of purchased games, 99% unplayed, purchased at steep discounts during sales. The way Steam operates does a great job of instilling Fear Of Missing Out, and getting people to buy things they never end up using.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#150

Post by jasonjmcghee »

lupusreal wrote: post #149
TehCorwiz wrote: post #22

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons wo…

> Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. Eh.. It seems very common for Steam users to have libraries of thousands of purchased games, 99% unplayed, purchased at steep discounts during sales. The way Steam operates does a great job of instilling Fear Of Missing Out, and getting people to buy things they never end up using.

> very common for Steam users to have libraries of thousands of purchased games, 99% unplayed

source?

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