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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

igalia.com

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#291

Post by immibis »

jakeec wrote: post #220
RobotToaster wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that an always-on DRM company can become the "good guy" by staying the same level of asshole they've always been, while every other company became much worse assholes.

Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides. It only sounds like you're making a good point when you frame "provides the best shopping and library experience in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The Valve hate-boner is so weird.

> always-on DRM is actually just purely an advantage for the consumer

Look me in the eyes and read this quote to me again. Then think about how yourself from 20 years ago would feel about reading this quote from someone else. You've gone so far down the rabbit hole but you don't realize you're in one.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#292

Post by npteljes »

rpdillon wrote: post #236
RobotToaster wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that an always-on DRM company can become the "good guy" by staying the same level of asshole they've always been, while every other company became much worse assholes.

Their DRM seems to be okay, but they do have some weird bugs. My biggest gripe with Valve right now is that I bought a copy of No Man's Sky on GOG, and then I also had a copy on Steam. And so I let my son play my Steam copy through Steam Library sharing so we can play co-op while I play my GOG copy. Unfortunately, because I launched my GOG game through Steam, Steam's DRM won't let him play at the same time as me beca…

In case you launch the GOG game because of Proton, then I suggest using Heroic launcher to start it instead. You can use Proton there too, automatically downloads and everything, same as Steam. And there will be no clashes with Steam.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#293

Post by immibis »

inejge wrote: post #169
pksebben wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the company. Valve is flat. Employees have 100% control over their time. By not centralizing decision making, you create the conditions for good ideas to form and connect with the problems they are going to be best suited for. The dynamics at work here are very well understood (see Ackoff / Sycara / Gharajedaghi, and yes I had to look the spelling up). Hierarchies an…

> The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the company. Valve is flat. I'm too lazy to dig up references, but there have been semi-exposés over the years by ex-employees stating that Valve's flatness was anything but. Namely, in the absence of formal hierarchy an informal one will inevitably arise, and can be equally constraining and pathological, without the benefit of having known avenues for redress. To…

The tyranny of structurelessness

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

This isn't about valve specifically

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#294

Post by Rohansi »

jayd16 wrote: post #250
MindSpunk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs either don't have, or that run very slowly. Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not get peak thr…

What about the Switch 2 (nVidia's Tegra) line? The one in the Swich 2 is using Ampere architecture. That should be feasible, no?

Linux support is in a terrible state for Nvidia chips. Not going to happen.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#295

Post by Rohansi »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #243
l11r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

Why couldn’t they have an AMD GPU and an ARM CPU?

What would that do? Power consumption would mainly come from the GPU because these devices are for gaming.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#296

Post by bigyabai »

jorvi wrote: post #41

Really cool stuff! Especially nice to see the groundwork being laid for what could become very efficient handhelds, considering how much performance Apple's M-series and Qualcomm's Elite series with relatively few watts. Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. One nit: it's too bad Valve / Igalia choose to completely ignore the lessons from Bazzite. Bazzite already runs a scheduler like LAVD, called BORE[0]. It would…

> Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia.

My impression is that Nvidia still leads in power-efficiency when compared node-for-node. The Switch 2 is a miracle beyond anything Apple or AMD ever did with 8nm silicon.

Everyone else is shipping less power-efficient raster hardware unless you're super pedantic about idle draw.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#297

Post by jakeec »

immibis wrote: post #291
jakeec wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides. It only sounds like you're making a good point when you frame "provides the best shopping and library experience in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The Valve hate-boner is so weird.

> always-on DRM is actually just purely an advantage for the consumer Look me in the eyes and read this quote to me again. Then think about how yourself from 20 years ago would feel about reading this quote from someone else. You've gone so far down the rabbit hole but you don't realize you're in one.

Yeah I remember PC gaming 20 years ago, it sucked. Thank god Steam exists and made PC a real gaming platform.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#298

Post by david-gpu »

MindSpunk wrote: post #277
david-gpu wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations. Often when people run into problems with a GPU they blame "the drivers". How confident are you that the problems you ran into originated from the drivers, and not from other sources, such as the hardware itself? Just because an issue goes away with a driver update it doesn't…

I suppose from the outside I cant meaningfully distinguish from hardware or software bugs except in a few cases. Doesn't change the outcome for us either, it's not like we can rely on driver updates to be shipped on Android. Many extensions are broken like extended dynamic state to the point of being unusable. We've hit plenty of issues in the driver shader compiler too, even in Vulkan 1.0 features like relaxed preci…

Yeah, I get where you are coming from. The inability to send you timely driver patches was a paint point for us, too.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#299

Post by stubish »

safety1st wrote: post #147
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

No one is hiding anything. No one is pretending to be something they're not. Life is not a Saturday morning cartoon. There are no good guys vs bad guys. There are just businesses trying to earn more profits. Valve is a business. When Microsoft introduced a Store they threatened Steam's market share. In theory Microsoft could one day update Windows so that it's hard to buy games through non Microsoft stores. Valve res…

It is also doesn't even have to be about more profits. In Valve's case, I do think they like profit or they would lower their commission. But what Valve most needs to do is maintain market share. If they lose market share, they become as relevant to the market as GOG. Steam's market share is the only thing that allows them to dictate pricing in their favor, and that is the only thing stopping Microsoft from owning PC gaming.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#300

Post by stubish »

david-gpu wrote: post #216
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every major company open sources software that is not part of its core competitive advantages. It’s part of “commoditizing your complements”

Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks? OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.

I think this is the wrong way around. There might be an economic incentive to keeping something closed source, for example having licensed other closed source code. And remaining in control without oversight also might be an incentive. But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work, making your product better. It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value. Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting.
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