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The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

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Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#81

steamdeck verified is a lie, I bought a steamdeck and tested 20 games. Lots of problems.

They really need to do much better about how they communicate this to users.

Developers are unable to opt out of the system and Valve will just put a "verified" tag on a game with zero input from a developer.

Valve needs to set proper expectations of who to be mad at when a game breaks on the Steam Deck if the developer themselves never pledged support.

Most users don't understand what an OS really is or how a game works on the Steam Deck (SteamOS) instead of Windows.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#82

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 really is a blessing for gaming. It just works.

The absolute trash that especially ubisoft tries to push on its users made me hold off on buying some of their games. It's just that bad.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#83
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you qualify them as a monopoly? If you're a game dev, small or big it doesn't matter, and your game isn't on Steam, it might as well not exist. The sales and exposure of a game on Steam dwarf all other alternate PC storefronts. Even Ubisoft caved in and released their games on Steam. Monopoly doesn't mean being the only game in town, you can have 100 other competitors, but if your competitors have 90% then yo…

> If you're a game dev, small or big it doesn't matter, and your game isn't on Steam, it might as well not exist That's an exaggeration. World of Warcraft, COD, League of Legends, all exist just fine. For brand new games, The Bazaar is doing very well and they're using their own launcher. (Slightly off-topic, but The Bazaar is really good, for anyone who likes card-based auto-battler games! Highly recommend.)

Why is the existence of the largest games on the market's survival proof thst Steam doesn't own 90% marketshare? Do people remember what monopoly means? Do they think any small dev can be a COD competitor tomorrow?

Btw, based on my friend Bazaar still has its own balance issues arising every other patch.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#84

They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of, but... I really think Valve have become the de-facto owners of the “don’t be evil” motto nowadays, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such.

My bigger problem with Valve is their unregulated underage gambling platform that they could shutdown in a second but they don't because $ $ $

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#85

They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of, but... I really think Valve have become the de-facto owners of the “don’t be evil” motto nowadays, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such.

Steam isn't really a monopoly though, everyone is free to use whatever marketplace they choose on PC. Steam's just the best one.

It's economies of scale. I strongly feel "just grab it on steam," which my friends say, is colloquially equivalent to "grab a band-aid".

Both Steam and Band-Aid are brand names.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#86
post #74

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…

That's why lots of us are worried about when something happens to Gabe, and some black suited C level raven is promoted as CEO and starts asking questions like "why don't we push for the latest expansion packs? why don't we gate features behind subscriptions?" and all that anti-consumer shit that breaks with the original spirit of so many products.

That's unlikely to happen with Valve's ownership structure

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#87

They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of, but... I really think Valve have become the de-facto owners of the “don’t be evil” motto nowadays, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such.

I hope Gabe Newell outlives me, because I don't want to see Valve go down the road of other game studios...

[flagged]

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those games are the exceptions that prove the rule. There's some major gaming franchises out there that basically have their own gravity field at this point and can drive people to different storefronts(Fortnite, Minecraft, etc), but outside of those games, forget it, if your new game isn't a AAAA blockbuster and isn't on Steam, most people won't really carea bout it.

That's hyperbole at best, especially given that places like itch.io and GoG exist. CDPR also puts all of their games DRM free from release on GoG - including The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.

As long as Steam's pricing parity rule of thumb exists, there's only so much those others can do to compete. The only real reason people use alternative stores is to save money, and Valve put a silent hand on that.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#89

I'm out of the gaming platform loop but assume the timing of this post is related to the Switch 2 announcement? Others have suggested the Switch 2 is one of the best endorsements for buying a Steam Deck. (Not really a gamer, despite having written games, ha ha, but I picked up a Steam Deck a couple years ago to test a game I ported to it — and was duly impressed.)

A licensing deal between Nintendo and Valve. Once could dream. Get the entire Steam lib on your Switch, then Valve gets a "Zelda: Breath of the Wild 3 - Only on Nintendo" store listing on Steam.

Re: The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

#90

> 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…

I don't want to get into this on this discussion because...well. video games. But consider the following: The organization and customers benefits from meritocratic hiring of the best candidates. But individual hiring managers have biases either for specific people (nepotism) or against groups of people (bigotry). Those individuals would be acting against the best interests of the company and customers whether they act consciously or not. A responsible company would adapt hiring processes to remove that kind of bias otherwise everyone suffers. The company suffers due to lower efficiency and blind spots in their points of view. Customers suffer due to worse output by the company. Some individual candidates suffer by being denied opportunities based on attributes they have no control over (gender, race, physical appearance) instead of the merits of their education, experience, and talents.

There's no single way to do this but people have lumped them all together and called them "quotas" (they're not, at least not in responsible processes). It really does a disservice to the fact that it's encouraging meritocratic hiring. Because for most of the 20th century (and even still today) employment was and is stratified by race and gender, not ability.

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