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Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

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Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#81

Post by ShowalkKama »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #76
ShowalkKama wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

becuase the one he linked is from this year, the one you linked is from 10 years ago

And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right? Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility... And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?

>And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right?

the performance difference between SteamOS and Windows did

>Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility... >And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?

the 2025 ars technica benchmark was performed on a Legion Go S, not on a steam deck

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#82

Post by pjmlp »

echelon wrote: post #12
modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux. Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible. If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft. One of Microsoft's biggest mistak…

Not at all, developers will never stop targeting Windows as long as Proton is a thing.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#83

Post by pjmlp »

iwontberude wrote: post #31
echelon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux. Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible. If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft. One of Microsoft's biggest mistak…

Microsoft and Nvidia (amongst many others) are happy to leave their gaming customers hanging for years in order to inflate the AI bubble further. They don’t care about gaming in any significant capacity. Valve is still a great gaming focused company and they will be successful.

Microsoft is one of the biggest game publishers, given the amount of AAA studios under the Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios organisation.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#84

Post by haunter »

modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

As long as they don't sell the Steam Machine in retail stores it will always be a niche

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#85

Post by bryanlarsen »

debugnik wrote: post #33
echelon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux. Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible. If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft. One of Microsoft's biggest mistak…

> It encourages developers to write for Linux. Valve actually encourages devs to only provide Windows builds compatible with Proton, or at least it used to, to the disappointment of some professional porters. Mainly because several devs kept leaving their Linux builds abandoned while still maintaining their Windows ones.

Hopefully developers are being encouraged to target Proton, as it's the subset. Presumably anything that works on Proton will also work on Windows, so it makes sense to target Proton.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#86

Post by kelnos »

beAbU wrote: post #78
debugnik wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It encourages developers to write for Linux. Valve actually encourages devs to only provide Windows builds compatible with Proton, or at least it used to, to the disappointment of some professional porters. Mainly because several devs kept leaving their Linux builds abandoned while still maintaining their Windows ones.

If the windows build already performs better than on native windows, why faff around with another build target and all its associated complexities (testing, etc). Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros, and that's asking for trouble I reckon.

> Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros

Valve actually distributes a runtime (or at least used to), that's based on Ubuntu, and provides a stable target for developers who want to release a Linux port.

But I agree in general with your point; if the Windows build already performs great on Linux through Proton, why go through the effort to release a native Linux build?

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#87

Post by iwontberude »

pjmlp wrote: post #83
iwontberude wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and Nvidia (amongst many others) are happy to leave their gaming customers hanging for years in order to inflate the AI bubble further. They don’t care about gaming in any significant capacity. Valve is still a great gaming focused company and they will be successful.

Microsoft is one of the biggest game publishers, given the amount of AAA studios under the Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios organisation.

Great point. Exactly. They have undermined the marketplace by hovering up and consolidating studios, scuttling a lot of IP that gamers care about and squeezing money out of properties for quarterly gains. They use their market power to push worse games with abusive, dark patterns. Microsoft has really become even more of a heel than they were in the 2000s.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#88

Post by cmxch »

rangestransform wrote: post #56
bryanlarsen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam you download from steampowered.com can be an open platform at the same time that the Steam that comes preinstalled on the Steam Machine is a closed platform. Seems unlikely because we believe Valve has integrity. But it's possible they have less integrity than we think, and they pursue this strategy to make some of those games with kernel-level anti-cheat available on the Steam Machine.

Kernel-level anticheat doesn't necessarily need to be on a fully closed platform, it could be implemented like SafetyNet on the Pixel series to check for system integrity but still allow for bootloader unlock and arbitrary user software

At what point do you have anything different than a console appliance?

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#89

Post by bigyabai »

deadbabe wrote: post #46

Valve should really make something like a Steamphone. No iOS, no Android, just raw SteamOS with gaming and privacy focus, and fully customizable by users if they want. Make it look really sleek and cool, and dockable.

Valve will not do this. First off, there's zero value proposition. Steam Deck, Frame and Machine all make sense as complimentary products to the Steam Storefront. Smartphones are not complimentary to Steam, Steam is complimentary to smartphones.

Secondly, the AOSP already ticks all these boxes while also supporting the apps users expect. Valve is not going to waste money tailoring SteamOS to fill a gap that an APK file could do equally as well. I understand the general disappointment with Google and Apple as smartphone vendors, but you're ignoring Valve's strategy if you're convinced that a Steam Phone is in the cards.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#90

Post by modeless »

a_shovel wrote: post #16
modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

Steam doesn't need to lock down the Steam Machine to subsidize it with store purchases. The casual user could theoretically install another OS, but that doesn't matter because they won't (because they're casual users), and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.

The risk isn't that casual users all spontaneously decide to stop using Steam on their own. The risk is that businesses exploit the subsidy in various ways. For example, businesses could buy the Steam Machine in bulk as a workstation. Or a store competitor could produce an OS of their own that replaces SteamOS and promote it to users.
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