You must log in or # to comment.
I am very happy about Proton/SteamOS and how they assist in making games playable on Linux. I hope the SteamOS devices become popular enough that developers stop trying to shut Linux out.
I’m not looking forward to what will happen with Steam when Gabe is no longer around though.
Having one big marketplace/launcher might be comfy right now but that can turn into a nightmare quickly when there’s a new owner in town.Personally I’m trying to buy any game I can on gog.com instead of Steam. Both to get my own offline installers and to ensure not all my eggs (games) are in one basket. I launch more games from Lutris then Steam today.
Isn’t gog a sinking ship? And games already aren’t being updated at the same rate as Steam?
Some developers make gog users second rate citizens, some don’t publish on gog at all. I wouldn’t call it a sinking ship though, later years they’ve had more big name games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 than before.
Also, if gog shuts down tomorrow I can still install all my games from the installers on my network share, something I can’t say about steam.
You can still access your steam library offline no?
Yesn’t.
Gaben said stuff to the effect “of steam were to shut down we would take steps to allow your library to stay offline forever” but that is nowhere in the tos and also doesn’t really mean much for the fear that steam will stay and progressively enshittify.
I really hope Gabe doesn’t die right now because we are SO CLOSE to having a mainstream windows competitor.
The users-&-software feedback loop snowball is about to go down a mountain and I am so here for it.Agreed.
Hopefully other platforms start caring about Linux because I really don’t want Gabe to be replaced by a “profit all the things” CEO and for Linux gaming to become a locked-down platform.
That already happened with Android.
Successful deployments of Linux for consumers are going to include a DRM app store.
I dont care what android is on paper, in practice it shares almost nothing in common with the rest of linux and it isn’t instructive how this could be done with an actually FOSS os.
Android is quite different though, since the user has very limited access to the actual hardware and largely interacts with the system through approved apps. Whether it uses Linux or some other kernel is largely irrelevant for the functioning of the device.
When I say “Linux,” I mean the rest of the userland as well, whether that’s GNU or something like busybox. There are certain expectations about user interaction that SteamOS satisfies that Android really doesn’t.
I’m 100% fine with Steam as-is, the DRM is optional and you can install anything else you like. If that’s what takes over, I’ll be ecstatic.
I really don’t want Gabe to be replaced by a “profit all the things” CEO
Like with their black market loot crate casinos?
A “profit all the things” CEO would be running the casino themselves. IE: Many of the big mobile games. Hell, I don’t play many modern triple-A titles, but it sounds like they’ve largely gone that route too.
Nintendo’s unbeatable advantage will always be its first-party games, but the Switch 2 — a device rumored to be a fairly light improvement over its predecessor — doesn’t quite feel like it’ll be as culturally dominant as the Switch was in 2017.
That remains to be seen. Back in 2016-2017, every gaming media was skeptical that the Switch would be anywhere near as much of a success like the DS or the GameBoy had been, or if it was going to be another failure like the Wii U.
Why buy a game on PS5 when you can get it on Steam and have access to it on any number of devices?
That has been one of the arguments for PC gaming in a long time, but it never quite reached the console players’ mindset. Not to mention that, despite its dominance in game distribution, Valve and the Steam brand are nowhere near as recognizable as any of the other ‘big 3’. The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays. I can’t see it take less than a decade for that mindset to start changing change and competitors and regulation to get interested, and even that’s an optimistic estimate.
Still, it’s good to hear the platform exlusivity walls are finally breaking down.
The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays.
And yet monthly active Steam users are about the size of all Switches sold over its lifetime, including those who bought multiple Switches as new SKUs came out. I think what the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs capture are people who want to play PC games and play them handheld. Every Switch is handheld, but how many people are they capturing, or will they soon capture, that care very little about Nintendo games and just want to play games handheld? I have a feeling that the “port everything to the Switch” crowd won’t really exist anymore in a world where that game already plays on a similarly-priced PC handheld without having to beg the developers first.
That’s a good point. The number of Switches sold does nearly match Steam’s MAU.
Every Switch is handheld, but how many people are they capturing, or will they soon capture, that care very little about Nintendo games and just want to play games handheld?
Every Switch owner I know has bought at least one Nintendo game over its lifetime, and often several. According to the best selling Switch games list, it’s safe to assume at least one in every two Switch owner has bought Nintendo games for it. Is it due to the marketing and advertisement coming from the fact they own the platform, or that they’re still the kings of both casual and family friendly couch gaming? I suppose indie is strongly catching up, at least on the former but the latter might be more difficult.
I have a feeling that the “port everything to the Switch” crowd won’t really exist anymore in a world where that game already plays on a similarly-priced PC handheld without having to beg the developers first.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Given that PS and Xbox exclusives now all make their way onto PC to the point we barely have to ask anymore. Though if we were to reach that point, I’d seriously worry about the centralisation of the Steam market. Hopefully regulation will catch up soon.
I’m not hoping for regulation to catch up. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think it counts as a monopoly when you reach your market saturation by just being better than your competitors without putting your thumb on the scale. If it did count as a monopoly, I’d hate to break up the best market actor as punishment for giving people what they want. I’m hoping for the competitors to actually compete. Right now, I’d say the only option out there other than Steam is GOG, and there’s a lot I’d like to see them improve too.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
Neither of them has even tried to distribute their own store as a Flatpak. That doesn’t strike me as Valve abusing a monopoly position.
First handhelds, then PCs, then laptops, then phones. Maybe, maybe, maybe we’ll finally see another OS take a big bite out of the OS market. Fuck Macs. They are a shit choice (unless you like being locked in).
Yeah, not a fan of macOS, but I really wish Apple cared more because it could totally drive forward ARM compatibility in games.
what about Microsoft? don’t they make games too? and a whole console? and the os that most pc gamers use? don’t they own like a whole bunch of game studios? why are they not included? why does it have to be 3? is it because of the weebs? we don’t need the weebs to tell us what to do.
