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- cross-posted to:
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From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
There is nothing exclusive to steam with respect to Linux support. All of the things required for games to run on Linux which valve support are fully open source and even existed before valve got involved. They just threw money at the efforts and turbo charged it (which is great).
Yes, which makes it even more puzzling that the competitors don’t even try to capitalize on the success of Steam Deck and publish their own store on Flathub, utilizing the very same FOSS technologies to make the games run.
Maybe they’re making more money behind the scenes from another corporation that perhaps pays for them not to do so? Exclusivity deals, etc. etc.?
It is the simple fact that linux is too low a market share, even with steam deck, to bother throwing money at it.
Three million Steam Decks sold.
You act as if packaging existing open source software is such an insanely expensive task. It is not.
Which is why steam invested in said FOSS projects to begin with, they can now forego having to pay licensing costs to microsoft. It is not like steam did this out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather for their own bottom line.
Yes it absolutely is for a megacorp, for 0 return. Anybody who wants to run games on non-steam launchers can do so just fine, there is mostly only convenience to be gained. The megacorp needs to hire entire teams / departments that understand linux, that understand wine/proton and that can maintain and keep said packages up to date, it is realistically not simple or cheap in corporate hell.
The idea that there is money worthwhile for any store but steam in linux gaming is detached from reality. There is only money in it for steam only because of steam deck.
Steam is not a company, Valve is.
I don’t care. My experience matters to me and Valve delivers on that experience, so I only buy games on Steam.
I pay for convenience. If I wanted to jump through burning hoops, I pirate the games.
No. Valve for the most part didn’t (Pierre-Loup Griffais is a notable exception) but I wouldn’t expect someone who can’t get Valve’s name right to know what outsourcing is.
Through Flathub Epic, CD Project, etc. could get on Steam Decks and completely circumvent any royalties to Valve. Epic also have an affiliation with One-Netbook, the makers of OneXPlayer, though Tencent. An Epic Deck is only one phone call away.
Steam Deck sells well because of superior usability to Windows handhelds.
All this pedantic smugness and yet you still can’t present a half decent argument for why linux support matters for other vendors besides steam.
And even with steam the only reason they matter for them is that it drives hardware profits. Extra game sales are a bonus.
Steam could have sold 30 million decks and it still would hardly matter. You know why? Most people who own a deck also own a PC, and chances are that PC is running windows, the deck is likely not their main gaming platform. Furthermore, many people would be happier if it ran windows, as sad as that may be. Just throw a google search for “SteamOS frustrating”.
At the end of the day, linux support doesn’t matter much for any other vendor. Linux marketshare is small and within that small share an even smaller share are linux exclusive gamers who take a hard line when it comes to linux support and do it how you will, linux support costs money, the ROI isn’t big enough to consider, it is pocket change.
Because there’s no money in Linux. Valve can afford to target Linux for long term growth because they aren’t a public company that has to answer to investors every quarter. People mistake that for valve being pro-consumer, which they’re not.
You should have a chat with the CEOs of Red Hat, Canonical, etc. about that. They surely will value your opinion.
As a consumer, I don’t care about their motivation, I care about the results. Steam Deck is more comfortable to use than Windows handhelds.
Companies focusing on long term growth is good for the consumers compared to the ones that only focuses on short term profits. Though why valve is able to do that and other companies like ea or abk can’t is beyond me.