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Steam Machine

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine

#971

Post by herewulf »

Lapra wrote: post #197
thot_experiment wrote: post #37

> Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025 it is somewhat depressing that it's…

Steam is a service that's been running for >20 years and somehow hasn't been enshittified (although, I suppose when it first appeared it was seen as enshittification). It's worth celebrating, to be honest.

I can personally vouch for a great deal of consternation among players of Valve's games at the time of Steam's launch and I have the IRC logs to prove it!

I was also personally resistant to the new thing and to this day have "only" a five digit Steam ID rather than maybe a four or even three digit one.. Haha!

Since then I can say that PC gamers have only benefited greatly from Valve's benevolent dictatorship compared to the alternatives.

Re: Steam Machine

#973

Post by hbn »

SmallDeadGuy wrote: post #804
surajrmal wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a heavy gamer in 2004 and never played HL2 or DOOM3. I know many such people. I think games like Mario party, smash, and Mario kart were far more ubiquitous.

That just sounds like all you had access to was a Nintendo console, not necessarily due to your own choice. I missed out on all the early zelda, metroid, and mario home console games because we were a playstation family until the wii.

Until the 2010s, PC gaming was fairly niche in US/Canada. Growing up I didn't personally know anyone that gamed primarily on a PC.

I feel like it was when Minecraft took off that people started investing in gaming PCs, kids were asking their parents for them, etc.

Re: Steam Machine

#975

Post by hbn »

12_throw_away wrote: post #61
12_throw_away wrote: post #31

In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls) [1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller

In my dream world, hardware enthusiasts would be constantly creating absolutely crazy game controllers with bizarre combinations of inputs that look nothing like an xbox 360 controller. There'd be a universal input protocol that would allow for self-describing gamepads with arbitrary numbers of digital buttons, analog sticks and triggers, touchpads, mouse inputs, haptics, gyro sensors, levers, sliders, wheels, etc. e…

I'm happy we stumbled into in a state where you can buy a controller and plug it into your computer and it'll likely work hassle-free with basically all of your games. And I think that's what most people care about, more than being able to use wacky controllers with extra buttons.

Hell, configuring my own controls for a game is one of my least favorite things to do. I haven't even played the game yet, I don't know what button should do what!

The way it is, the devs know what kind of controller everyone will likely be using, they can figure out their ideal mapping for how the buttons should be used, and we all have an easy time using our controllers.

Re: Steam Machine

#976

Post by dismalaf »

beAbU wrote: post #886
saghm wrote: post #823

My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a han…

I don't think this needs to be a theory. Valve regards Microsoft's flirtations with walled gardens (MS Store) as an existential threat. They see their investment into linux gaming as a hedge against future locked down windows OS, which is at this point probably inevitable.

This is 100% it. In addition to MS Store, MS is trying to converge Xbox and Windows, which definitely had the potential to lock out Steam. SteamOS and hardware is 100% a hedge against that. And thankfully for us, Valve is moving quicker than MS.

Re: Steam Machine

#977

Post by IAmGraydon »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #887
lazyfanatic42 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve respects its customers. It is so insane that this isn't a norm; what a world we would be in if all companies did so.

>> Valve respects its customers. That's the same Valve that doesn't let me play the games I paid it for unless they are running on its platform? That's how it "respects" me?

Were you not aware of that before you purchased the game? How has this negatively impacted you?

Re: Steam Machine

#978

Post by sylware »

aniviacat wrote: post #945
sylware wrote: post #673

Huge streamers/youtubers were already listing games to test on the steam machine... which I already know they do not work on valve proton... (and the lack of official and legally required technical support will show on the medium/long run since proton/wine is not reliable in time). This may backfire if valve does not come clean with this technical support.

> We are expanding our Verified program to include ratings for Steam Machine, so customers can understand how their games will run. They are very upfront about it.

"Verified" does not mean they will technically (and legally) support the game until its "EOS", unfortunately.

One unfortunate patch (past the "refund" time limit), valve proton side or game side, and compat is gone. And those patches do happen.

BTW, that's why I play only F2P games (without paying for any micro-transaction) via proton. Yep, PROTON = 0 BUCKS.

Valve won't provide that support: there is no way valve is going to hire tens to hundreds of advanced system devs in order to QA 100% of the "verified games" and fix their proton and/or contact the game devs to work on game patch fixes, that until those games go EOS. The other side is the game devs doing QA of their game on a linux box with proton anyway (which is 101 retarded if their game engine has already everything linux since they could build their game native linux distribution just there)... and I tell you as a system dev: fixing bugs on linux + proton is hell since there is the additional ultra-complex layer which is proton on top of the video game core software of elf/linux. This diarrhea of software engineering is what we can experience with enshitified corporate software.

Re: Steam Machine

#979

Post by naikrovek »

saghm wrote: post #823

My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a han…

there is a lot of evidence for this. this isn't a hypothesis, this is what's going on.

why else would Valve spend so much time and money on Proton? To eliminate the dependency on Windows. Windows is still the OS for gaming. Valve doesn't like that and they are successfully slowly changing that.

Now, if they would just build their 1st party titles for arm64 macOS. I would love to play Portal 1, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2 et al on my decked out MacBook Pro, but I can't. Why can't I? Well, MacBooks are such a slim slice of the market. Yeah well it would be slightly more of the market if I could play Team Fortress 2 on this thing.

Re: Steam Machine

#980

Post by naikrovek »

GaryBluto wrote: post #658

There goes the XBOX. Microsoft have been letting their consumer products rot for a while now and they're finally going to start feeling the consequences.

Well, hopefully, future XBoxes are fixed-spec PCs which run Steam AND some xbox frontend, and can switch between them as the user wishes.

There's no reason anymore for the xbox to be a different platform or hardware than PCs. An Xbox that is just a PC with fixed specs (or varying specs with some way to measure what spec you're compliant with) and which can use the Xbox store is probably all that people really want anyway.

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