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Thank You, Valve

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Re: Thank You, Valve

#431

Post by account42 »

willis936 wrote: post #198
jowsie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still talking about a bunch of work and effort. The people aimbotting in CSGO aren't doing it because they love hard work and a challenge.

It boils down to a risk assessment. The fact is people interested in cheating continue to escalate the norm. That's the arms race. Meanwhile we are letting shady companies illegally spy on users [0] and mine crypto [1], for what? What is the gain? What is the value proposition of kernel-level drivers in the anti-cheat application? What's more, the average gamer doesn't know anything about computers. How can they be e…

Let's not forget that a large need for anti-cheat comes from focus on centralized matchmaking overr community-hosted and community-moderated servers that were more common before the game industry's focus on monetizing their games to the last bit.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#432

Post by marcus_holmes »

stubish wrote: post #414
marcus_holmes wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer. Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good…

> I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on. I'm starting to use GOG Galaxy for this reason, as it happily integrates with many of the services. I got shifted from my 'if it ain't on Steam, it doesn't exist' mindset by Epic giveaways (resulting in a single actual well discounted sale!) and later Gamepass. I'd still prefer a single service with everything for the righ…

I bought a few on GoG too, mostly because they were old games that aren't on Steam, and DRM-free :) Happy to support that! But I'm not signing up to Galaxy.

I supported HumbleBundle's Choice, mostly because again they were either DRM-free or sold as Steam keys. Then it got weird and "here's 12 games you're never going to play" each month.

I'm not going anywhere near Epic (or the shitshow that used to be Blizzard) because I know they're just trying to break Steam's grip, and as soon as they do they'll treat their customers badly.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#433

Post by marcus_holmes »

longsword wrote: post #248
marcus_holmes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got how this worked on Steam. You have a consistent Steam ID, which the game is tied to, and all your achievements/ranks/etc. Isn't that what you are talking about here? You can create a new Steam account, sure, but that would start you again from scratch as a total newbie (and losing access to anything you'd bought)

I'm talking about steam accounts. There are many cheaters our there, who just dont care if they lose an account. They will cheat on an alternative Account and when they get banned, they will buy a new one. They dont even care spending some bucks on the Game again. Edit: Take Rust as an example. A year ago, the Developers made some stats public: 12 Million copies sold, 600.000 Banned Accounts. Thats 5% of all sold Acc…

Griefers gonna grief. Some people aren't happy unless they're making someone else miserable :(

Re: Thank You, Valve

#434

Post by account42 »

user432678 wrote: post #400
ineedasername wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Valve makes it possible to play many/most games on Linux then an influx of Linux converts may incentivise more native development. Certainly the current market has not created those incentives, whereas a massive backcatalog w/ a (potentially) popular portable device may move that ball forward if it means there's a built in market for it going forward.

Recent release of the Windows 11 with requirements to have at least 8th gen CPU might help actually. My 6th gen is perfectly fine for a lot of games, and thanks to Valve I have quite a good library on Ubuntu.

Same was said for Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10 and probably many other times. Microsoft is not that stupid - they are doing these changes only after they are confident that they can get away with it and can easily change their strategy if needed.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#435

Post by account42 »

zamalek wrote: post #389
ribit wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not mentioning Proton explicitly. But the core of my point is that Proton de-facto delegates Vulkan to be a second class citizen whose purpose it is to serve as a backend of implementing a Microsoft-compatible technology stack. With Proton working well, the incentive to develop native Linux applications and games goes to wards zero — why would you even bother if you can just develop and test for Windows and let…

This comment is loaded with some pretty unrealistic conclusions. Firstly, Vulkan support is becoming extremely common even on Windows-exclusive titles. > Apple has their own Metal, so Vulkan is dead in the water there anyway. How is Apple at all relevant in a thread about games? Apple has proactively shut out gaming in the past few years. Metal is almost exclusively used to draw fancy GUIs. Furthermore, DXVK is an op…

What defnition of "extremely common" are we working with here? PCGW lists 151 games [0] with Vulkan support of any kind (not neccessarily on Windows).

Meanwhile there are 188 with DirectX 12 support [1] and 2723 with DirectX 11 support [2].

Don't get me wrong, I too would like for the open cross-platform API to win, but so far support is far from extemely common.

[0] https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games

[1] https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DirectX_12_games

[2] https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DirectX_11_games

> As to the root comment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experim...

Could you expand on what you are trying to argue? It seems to me that Proton is the immediate reward while waiting for the platform to grow to get native ports would be the delayed reward. Yet "In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes" would support the caution against Proton if you were to generalize from children to platform strategies (not saying that you should).

Re: Thank You, Valve

#436

Post by rubyist5eva »

kinduff wrote: post #225
rubyist5eva wrote: post #188

Valve doesn't want your thanks - they want your money. Did the author even buy a Steam Deck?

I'm well aware it's a company doing things for profit, but the benefit to the Linux community is gigantic, as I stated on the post. Regarding the Steam Deck, I'm on the queue for the preorder, since still need to wait 18 days to do it.

I commend you for putting your money here your mouth is :)

And I also agree that the benefit for the community is enormous as well. I am watching what Valve is doing very closely as an example of how commercial interests and free software can benefit eachother.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#437

Post by account42 »

neogodless wrote: post #360
ribit wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not mentioning Proton explicitly. But the core of my point is that Proton de-facto delegates Vulkan to be a second class citizen whose purpose it is to serve as a backend of implementing a Microsoft-compatible technology stack. With Proton working well, the incentive to develop native Linux applications and games goes to wards zero — why would you even bother if you can just develop and test for Windows and let…

Are you saying it's the case that running a game on Proton on Linux is a superior experience to running it natively on Vulkan? That's surprising to me, but yes, if it's better than a native graphics API, it's probably better for everyone if developers stick to DirectX. On the other hand, I don't think you addressed my point (with my assumption that games run better natively on Linux in Vulkan). If gamers are just goi…

> If gamers are just going to skip Linux entirely without Proton

Gaming on Linux was a thing before Proton and so far, it has not brought a giant jump in Linux users - e.g. Steam hwsurver still has Linux users hovering at about 1% [0]. Maybe that will change but so far this argument falls flat.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Re: Thank You, Valve

#438

Post by account42 »

fartcannon wrote: post #299
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For 80% of people that’s going to be a web browser. Why do some people think this is a point in Linux Desktop's favor? Anyone who just needs a web browser could use ChromeOS. Those of us who use a desktop for other things have legitimate criticisms and this is an unfair (and lazy) dismissal.

KDE has been the best desktop experience since 3.0 in 2002. There's no comparison if you value your time and mental state.

> KDE has been the best desktop experience since 3.0 in 2002.

Except for 4.0.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#439

Post by account42 »

moffkalast wrote: post #242
goda90 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue being private is the only reason Valve has accomplished what it has accomplished. If they had to answer to non-gamer shareholders, they'd have not done a lot of things that have made gamers happy, but looked risky initially.

On the other hand, making Artifact was a very shareholder style move of them. Such an utter cashgrab it's was actually disgusting.

Valve has also played a major role in normalizing DRM, microtransactions and lootboxes. They definitely do have the capacity for shady shit even if they are "better" than some of the competition.

Re: Thank You, Valve

#440

Post by account42 »

jamil7 wrote: post #89
tapoxi wrote: post #30

Is it too little, too late? Microsoft now owns a lot of the biggest game franchises through the Activision and Bethesda acquisitions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat.

> and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat Surely this wouldn't make any sense for them strategically? They want as many people playing and making noise about the franchises they own as possible - especially multiplayer.

No, they care about maximizing profit as a whole not about any individual franchises. Platform holders have shown again and again that they are willing to sink money into exclusives if it means they can make more money off their platform.
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