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Valve is basically carrying Linux gaming. While no one should trust a corporate entity, their actions speak pretty loudly. Thanks, Valve.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Valve knows they need to provide an alternative to windows if they want to stay relevant. Windows + XBox exclusives could kill their business model if they allowed it to happen. And they've been trying to improve Linux gaming for over a decade now.
That threat definitely kicked this whole thing off. With Windows 8, Microsoft made moves for a Windows App store only version of Windows. It didn't pan out for them, but had it it would have effectively killed Valve at the time.
I think Windows 12 will likely renew that push. Valve has positioned themselves to resist it, and in Microsoft does do a strong push in that direction, it is possible they will lose the PC gaming market, in large part thanks to Valve's work.
Many are resistant to trust a corporation, and I agree, but Valve isn't a normal corporation of that size. They are owned by one guy, and as such his choices are the only ones that matter. As long as he keeps making the right choices and Valve doesn't go public or sell out, they will likely continue being a good shepherd of PC and Linux gaming.
Yep, Gabe's long term vision is key. If they were a public company Wall Street would be pressuring them to kill the Linux stuff for short term profit, without any care of where that would leave them strategically in a few years.
I do worry about what would happen to Valve after Gabe. I trust him, but corporations outlive their owners eventually.
Rightly so, see this current Thread: Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud
Windows 365 is a service that streams a full version of Windows to devices. So far, it’s been limited to just commercial customers, but Microsoft has been deeply integrating it into Windows 11 already. A future update will include Windows 365 Boot, which will enable Windows 11 devices to log directly in to a Cloud PC instance at boot instead of the local version of Windows.
If Microsoft really wants to slowly kill "local windows", Valve would be fucked if there is no way for gamers to game locally.
It'll be hard enough to compete with "performance on demand" anyway, at least until Microsoft pushes the pricing back up after luring everyone in.
See Netflix, everyone loved it, no-one bought DVDs/BlueRays, and now everyone hates Netflix for raised prices, going after password-sharing, cancelling shows etc.
I expect exactly the same with "cloud PCs"
Well that's just incredibly dystopian. Lovely.
The decade of work is starting to show for real. Many other tech companies have tried to break into new market "segments", but often pull the plug after the product isn't an instant hit. Valve had similar stumbles at first, but took what worked and tried to make that useful for as many people as possible.
Complete opposite of stadia, etc. which didn't really amount to anything after the initial failure.
I trust that they want my money
Well yeah but is it a bad thing in this case? I mean, one of the main reasons devs don't support Linux is because it's a small community and it doesn't seem worth the time and money to support it. It's fantastic that Valve is spending the time, resources and money to improve gaming on Linux, which is obviously a smaller market than Windows in a lot of cases. Yes, the main reason is probably because that makes their Steam Deck more viable and thus increases sales for them. But this benefits the entire Linux ecosystem, so I don't think that really matters.
No, I mean that I trust them to want to keep selling me Linux games :)
OH. Wow I feel stupid for writing that whole wall of text. 😅
It happens
So long as Gabe is at the helm, I'll bet they'll keep being rad. Once he's gone, though, the enshittification will undoubtedly begin.
Yeah I keep telling people to enjoy it as long as they can, cuz with Gabe I'm not worried
I was so skeptical of staying on steamos instead of replacing it instantly with windows for the deck, but compatability has been great and relatively easy to get working for even games that aren't verified.
Big difference from when they tried the steam machines and game compatibility with Linux back then.
They learned from their mistakes and didn't try to ship something crap. Also reviews helped, in part due to the fact that Windows didn't have drivers for a while after launch.
Valve knows better than to put all of their eggs into one basket. Microsoft has signalled that they’re slowly but steadily moving towards a Windows + Xbox walled garden ecosystem, and while we’re not there yet, it is coming and Valve know that it could kill them off when it does.
Valve are putting all this effort and money behind a Windows alternative. It's our responsibility to use it!
I do and it's awesome, I very rarely need Windows now, like twice a year lol.
What's the biggest problem for you when it comes to gaming on Linux?
It's easily anticheat for me; I'd still like to play genshin or paladins but their anticheat either makes it very difficult/risky (bans) or just impossible
Yup same. Aside from the few times a year my friends want to play some game with certain anticheats, I can't remember the last time I had a game straight up not work. It's been years.
Yeah the anticheat issue is very annoying. These games would run great on Linux if devs didn't implement kernel level anticheat or would enable EAC / BattleEye support for proton. From what I can tell (just reading the docs) it seems extremely easy for devs to enable it. Maybe 1-2 hours of work.
It's a great time to be making that push with Microsoft now talking about putting Windows in the cloud and adding all sorts of AI bloatware to the OS.
I played through the steam next fest demos on the deck. And pretty much for a lot of other games. Love it.
It is the coolest thing to see a major corporation contributing so much to Linux gaming. Linux gaming is more viable than ever and it's amazing!!!
I'm so torn about valve. It is after all a proprietary platform. I use it since always and have hundreds of games and just know they'll all be gone at some point in the future. No word about making steam client open source, not even talking about something like decentralized proof of ownership etc. (For obvious reasons)
That said: they do incredible work for Linux. Their games have been Linux compatible since ages! And actually play well on Linux. Their client works flawlessly. And what they have done with proton is just flat out incredible. As you say Linux gaming is awesome currently and has not been that exciting for a long time. In short they do awesome work, I'd just wish they were a little bit open sourceier.
@afunkysongaday @Nyla_Smokeyface they did say that they’d make a system to allow you to still access your games if it were to ever shut down.
I'm gaming with no issues in Linux desktop, since the arrival of the steam deck
I decided about three years ago to give "100% Linux" gaming a go for a few months, since I was fed up with Windows shitting itself on a dual-boot system, see how I got on. Never went back. It does help that I'm not in to MMOs or things which require anti-cheat, since that's a stumbling block, but it's rare that I even check protondb before purchases now, nearly everything just works and it keeps getting better.
I wish Linux worked with anti-cheat Most games I play have some kind of anti-cheat, haven't used Linux for anything but school and work (cybersecurity) for the past 10 years... before that I didn't have a gaming PC so I had a Linux laptop and I'm excited to get rid of windows
Has Valve's work on SteamOS so far affected any of the other distros positively in some way? Are the improvements transferable or is it all just for SteamOS?
Very yes. Not only are Steam and Proton usable on distros aside SteamOS, improvements from those regularly flow upstream into Wine, DXVK and also the Linux kernel itself.
Did you set the Hashtags yourself? Sorry but I find them pretty annoying.
They're probably replying from mastodon and using the tags for discoverability
Almost nothing Valve has worked on is only for SteamOS, other than packaging and distributing SteamOS itself. They've upstreamed kernel patches, RADV patches, KDE patches, etc which affects all desktops. Not to mention the open source tools like Gamescope and Fossilize, the latter of which is used automatically on all Linux PCs playing Steam games, and their contributions and funding to Wine and other projects. Even the new Steam big picture UI, which was initially only available on SteamOS, is now broadly available.
Lets take the imaginary program Y. It is free open source software with the GPLv3 license. If Valve wants to include Y in SteamOS, they are free to do so. Any time Valve makes changes or fixes to Y, they are legally required to provide the source code of their changes, as stated in the GPL license included with Y.
A lot of programs have this license (or a similar one), which forces corporations to contribute back to FOSS projects.
Some Valve-made components in SteamOS are truly "SteamOS only", but a good amount of fixes to non-Valve programs are submitted "upstream" (to the original project). Due to the nature of Linux, it might be possible to copy the few non-foss components in SteamOS and directly use them in another distro.
Alongside forced contributions due to licensing, Valve contributes a lot of code to "gaming" programs on Linux, such as Wine or DXVK. They also make some SteamOS components FOSS, including Gamescope for example. Valve is (currently) doing a lot of work "for the community" rather than for direct profit.
Mainly their creation of Proton, and contributions to DXVK and WINE have helped Linux gaming become possible on any distro.
Before SteamOS could become a thing Valve made HUGE effort to make Linux useful for gaming. All the games everyone can now easily play on any x86 Linux distribution - that was possible, in a big part, by Valve efforts. Driver improvements, compatibility layers (not just Proton, but also improvements in the upstream wine), etc.
And they do continue the improvements, not just for their own Linux systems.
Since Proton can be used on any other distro, every distro is positively affected by Valves development/improvements of it.
There can only be benefits to wider Linux acceptance in gaming, as it stands it's shocking that it isn't already there. Linux imo will never be window's equal in distribution, too many people use windows compared to the various distros. But more people seem to use Linux now than before so there's an untapped market here.
I think the days of the Windows monopoly are already gone - in my (academic) circles at least, I see more OS X/Mac than Windows users.
The OS X dominance is probably less sustainable than the Windows monopoly was, as it depends on one (already abusive) company for both hardware and software. In addition, mobile devices are increasingly taking over, shaking up the entire industry.
To me at least, it seems to be turbulent times where there is absolutely room for changes to happen. Not saying it's going up be the year of the Linux desktop though, that one is getting a bit old.
This sounds so unreal, especially for big company like Valve lol.
Valve is truly one of the last respected game companies. Sure, they make a lot of money and take a 30% cut from developers on Steam, but because of how satisfied their users are, they keep coming back and keep buying more games, which is a win in the long term. Too many companies think short-term or quarterly while Valve seems to look at the big picture. I give a lot of credit to Gabe for not truly selling out at any point. And if it hasn't happened by this point, I don't see it happening in the future. It would have happened by now if so.
yeah 30% is a lot. Like lawyer level but honestly considering some places do even more or have at times and at least its within reason. Barely so but there is precedence. Still would love to see 20, 10 or even 5. 5 is the other end of the spectrum from a third in that its not very reasonable to expect it to be any less and still receive any value at all.
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I don't use SteamOS, but there work for Linux gaming is undeniable. Proton does an excellent job running the majority of games, and the Steam Linux client runs very well.
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