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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#311

Post by swiftcoder »

jayd16 wrote: post #244
swiftcoder wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.

Are there real world game benchmarks for this or are these synthetic tests?

Only a few, because it's not easy to find contemporary AAA games with native macOS ports. Notebookcheck has some comparisons for Assassins Creed: Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077[1]

[1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Cyberpunk-AC-Shadows-on-Apple-...

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#312

Post by saghm »

righthand wrote: post #263
saghm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a few years before I eventually got a Steam Deck, I played a lot of games that I bought outside of Steam, and over the past decade, the experience of doing this on Linux has massively improved. Plenty of their improvements get upstreamed to Wine, and there's nothing stopping you from obtain proton (or even one of the various unofficial tweaks of it) to run games that you don't buy through Steam to get the benefit…

Exactly they have no track record so the benefits remain to be seen how gaming improvements to Linux are advantageous to people who use FOSS beyond paying Valve for Steam DRM’d games without requiring a Windows license.

I'm not sure what you're reading into what I said, but to reiterate: I've been seeing benefits personally from their work for years playing games that were not obtained via Steam. It's unclear to me why you think this is "exactly" the point you're making, because it's quite literally the opposite.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#313

Post by ndriscoll »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #305
ndriscoll wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are disadvantages. e.g. if you don't want to update a program (maybe the new version breaks your modded setup), too bad. Or if you need Windows still for compatibility, it no longer supports Windows 7, so you have to go hunting for old versions of the client and fiddle with it to prevent updates (if that still even works), at which point you'd might as well just mod it to remove the DRM instead. Basically, it c…

Can't you run old versions by setting the version in the game properties?

Not that I see. The publisher can add old versions as a "beta" that you can select if they want (e.g. Kerbal Space Program and Factorio do this), but otherwise you can only run the latest. Your choices for updating are "when launching", "when Steam decides", and "immediately". There is no "when I decide" or "never". e.g. Bethesda has apparently broken Fallout 4 multiple times over the last 1.5 years with no ability to revert after it had been stable for 5 years.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#314

Post by cassepipe »

majormajor wrote: post #303
cassepipe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it mostly doesn't work long term. Depending on how your brain got wired, self-control condemns you to a life of misery while not being exposed allows you to live a normal life. Of course you cannot ask for societal experience to be tailored just for you but there seem to be a consensus on protecting the most vulnerable people from the most destructive habits. Where to draw the line is for everyone to f…

Huh? Most people have perfectly well avoided blowing all their money on baseball card packs or whatever other random "box of randomized items" without enduring a life of misery... It's not that hard.

> Depending on how your brain got wired

Most people are lucky that their brain is cabled somewhat sanely

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#315

Post by oxcidized »

caphector wrote: post #260
GuB-42 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't become a billionaire by having your hands clean. But what set them appart to other companies is that they go out of their way not to be hostile to their users. Loot boxes done well are not user hostile, players pay because they like them, and sure, it uses all the tricks from the gambling industry to get as most money as they can, but player don't feel scammed or considering it an obstacle to their goals. I…

Steams default landing page can be changed in Settings -> Interface -> Start Up Location. Setting Library skips the store when opening. Steam

While true, you do still technically get pop up ads occasionally when set that way.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#316

Post by righthand »

saghm wrote: post #312
righthand wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly they have no track record so the benefits remain to be seen how gaming improvements to Linux are advantageous to people who use FOSS beyond paying Valve for Steam DRM’d games without requiring a Windows license.

I'm not sure what you're reading into what I said, but to reiterate: I've been seeing benefits personally from their work for years playing games that were not obtained via Steam. It's unclear to me why you think this is "exactly" the point you're making, because it's quite literally the opposite.

Because games are entertainment and this technology is not necessary for the betterment of humanity or enabling some kind of real technological progress, therefor it only really benefits who? Valve and really only in the short term. Once the contributions back are good enough, people will start to use the stack to cut Valve out. There for Valve only has incentive to contribute things that make their products great. If you enjoy playing older games on Linux because of Valve, that is only a side effect of the current efforts.

Do you understand now what I'm reading?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#317

Post by pbhjpbhj »

zozbot234 wrote: post #281
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at buying a Beelink NAS and paying for a Windows license when I'm just going to install proxmox on it (I think) definitely counts against it.

I wouldn't worry about it. The cost OEMs pay for those Windows licenses is negligible for a "low-end" device like a simple NAS box.

How much do you think Beelink pay?

I'm expecting say ~£20, which is significant.

The price for Win 11 home on https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-home/dg7gmgf0kr... is £120.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#318

Post by wiredpancake »

tarsinge wrote: post #191
tapoxi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.

Yes everybody is trying to find rational reasons but to me like in recent politics a lot has to do with irrational tribalism. I stumbled on an article of Gabe talking about his new yacht[0] and it made me realize he is not different than other billionaire (and maybe worst than average because he doesn’t even give to charity). But he looks like he is "one of us" and he likes Linux, so it’s okay. Would gamers keep the…

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest.

What does it matter if Gabe has a yacht? He has multiple of them. Gabe also have an undersea research company called Inkfish, which is a non-profit company designed to "conduct deep-sea research and explore, map, and study the least-explored parts of the ocean".

In 2020 he donated $300,000 to the Starship Children's Hospital. In 2020 Gabe Newell arranging free concert for New Zealand. In 2014 Gabe founded a Racing Team which helps support Grassroots motorsports, the Heart of Racing Team also supports the Seattle Children's Hospital. Game is also the co-founder of a company called foundry10, which is an education research organization focused on youth philanthropy.

Gabe is not the evil person you are trying to make him out to be. He has visited numerous schools, colleges and universities and done free talks out of goodwill. He has put millions into research and development of Linux software for the bettering of Linux community as a whole. He doesn't "Just like Linux", through his investments and care for the Linux community, Valve has made Linux a viable gaming platform, which it would be likely a decade behind without his investments.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#319

Post by saghm »

righthand wrote: post #316
saghm wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're reading into what I said, but to reiterate: I've been seeing benefits personally from their work for years playing games that were not obtained via Steam. It's unclear to me why you think this is "exactly" the point you're making, because it's quite literally the opposite.

Because games are entertainment and this technology is not necessary for the betterment of humanity or enabling some kind of real technological progress, therefor it only really benefits who? Valve and really only in the short term. Once the contributions back are good enough, people will start to use the stack to cut Valve out. There for Valve only has incentive to contribute things that make their products great. I…

No, I still don't have any idea what you're trying to say honestly. At first I thought you were trying to say that they didn't contribute to open source in a way that actually helped anyone outside of themselves. I stated that it definitively helped me do something I already had tried to do sometimes but would sometimes have issues with, and no longer do in large part because of their work. As best as I can tell, you're essentially arguing now some combination of an assertion that it's impossible by definition for a company's open source contributions to benefit anyone else in the long run (which feels pretty reductive, like the economics arguments that everyone always acts purely rationally, despite the fact that plenty of people quite often don't do that) and that because it's only software that helps running video games, it can't possibly be beneficial to humanity in general (which independent of whether it's accurate feels kind of irrelevant given that the original proposition from the parent comment was that they did care about that and therefore wanted to support it financially).

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#320

Post by jcelerier »

swiftcoder wrote: post #176
jcelerier wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even the most powerful apple silicon GPU is terrible compared to an average Nvidia chip

While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.

a 4.5k$ M4 Max barely competes with an entry-level laptop with a 4060 which will be around ~1K in FPS in cyberpunk given the same settings. For AI it's even worse - on NVidia hardware you're getting double-digit speeds for FPS for real-time inference of e.g. stable diffusion, whereas on the M2 Max I have you get at best 0.5 FPS
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