This is why I have respect for Valve. They’re willing to invest into changing the status quo instead of seeing it as not profitable immediately. They’re playing the long game, and they’ve put their version of Linux into millions of hands. They’ve built hardware for it, they’ve invested a ton into Wine/Proton, they’ve invested in open-source graphics drivers. They’re actively fixing up third party games to the point some of them run better on a their handheld than decent Windows PCs. And a good chunk of it is open-source and given away for free to everyone to use.
Meanwhile Sweeney is just there whining that Linux is too hard. They can’t even be bothered to try.
I would give money to Valve just so they keep going. I have no desire to buy an Epic game they’re not even willing to try to at least make it easier to run in Wine.
Meanwhile Sweeney is being litigious instead of inventive.
Not that the lawsuits don’t have merit, just very interesting to see the vast difference in focus between the two companies.
I am all for valve in terms of games, even though I don’t like the buying but not owning things stuff I would always prefer Steam over anything else. They earned my trust, something no other non-human entity will ever get. This company just has it figured out.
It’s what can be done only with a private company and some decent people in charge. Once you go public your company loses its soul.
Valve pushes the medium forward in most everything they do. And they do it while not being dicks, too. I hope they can stay true to this direction forever.
Meanwhile Sweeney is just there whining that Linux is too hard.
I’m with you on Valve trying to be more open (in a semi-walled-garden with Steam on Steamdeck, circumventable with some effort). But gaming on Linux - practically nobody is actually writing games natively for Linux. They’re writing for Windows (or a console) and the community is making the run under Proton/Wine on Linux. Is Epic intentionally preventing them from running on Proton? Well, effectively, yes - but that’s not a Linux-to-hard problem, more of a “we don’t want to have to police cheating on another OS” problem.
Do you mind elaborating on why you think the Steam Deck is a semi-walled garden?
Sure. By default you get the Steam store. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s the only option to load games from the default Gaming interface. There is no option to load from Gog, Epic, Uplay, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, or any other 3rd party store. If you are not willing (or able) to manage the deck in desktop mode, you can’t install non-Steam games so - as a console - it’s a walled garden. I say semi- because it’s not terribly difficult to switch to desktop mode and install other applications, launchers, and games - but if you’ve never used Linux and are not computer savvy, Steam is the only way to get games onto the device.
Thanks for answering and explaining.
I feel like you’ve just described a garden. There are no walls. You can just walk out of the carefully curated garden and nobody will stop you. Heck, you can even bring things from outside of the garden back with you. Yes, things aren’t as pretty outside the garden, and yes, it may be a bit intimidating if you’re not familiar with the wild lands of Linux, but that’s just the nature of modern computing (regardless of what OS you’re using).
By default you start in Steam Big Picture mode, but you can, without doing anything unusual, likely without even needing to read a manual or follow a guide, easily get to Desktop Mode. From there, you can easily install anything that’s available for Linux. You can even install an entirely different OS. At no point does Valve do anything to stop you - if they did, that would be the “wall” in question. And they make it pretty easy to add anything available in desktop mode to Steam, which means you don’t even have to leave the “garden” to play those games.
You can also, once in desktop mode, easily install Heroic or Lutris (which enable installing games from other third party stores, like GOG and Epic), EmuDeck, or Chiaki via the Discover Store. (You can even install RetroArch directly via Steam.) AFAIK, the repo Discover uses isn’t maintained by Valve, so everything available there is “outside the garden,” as it were.
If you’re not computer savvy and aren’t familiar with all this, there are tons of resources out there that can help. But even if there weren’t, I struggle to understand how the Steam Deck would be different from any other computer, with the exception being that it provides a console like experience with Valve’s storefront emphasized - and every modern OS I can think of has an app store or GUI package manager, so… that’s not really all that different.
So I guess my follow-up question is: how could Valve change the Steam Deck to make it not a “semi-walled garden” (optimally without making the experience worse for the people still in the garden)? I can’t really think of anything other than somehow enabling anyone (e.g., GOG or Epic) to add their store as a Steam app and then letting those stores add games to your Steam library - and unfortunately that would be problematic for a number of reasons (both legal and practical).
I still say it’s semi-walled. It has a bunch of gates in and out but and, unlike the Switch or iOS, there are no locks on the gates or gatekeepers. But the gates are latched in a way that requires specialized - if freely available - knowledge to open.
I can’t really think of anything other than somehow enabling anyone (e.g., GOG or Epic) to add their store as a Steam app
No, no as a Steam App, but as an alternate startup interface. I would say that the garden is open if there were a startup screen allowing you to pick the launcher of your choice. For argument’s sake, I’ll say Android TV. You can one-click download any content launcher with no technical ability. You can watch content (“play games”) purchased at Amazon, or on Netflix, or HBO Go (or whatever they call themselves now) and it’s the native store interface. You can do the same thing with Google’s in-house launcher. An acceptable alternate would be any other content player - like Apple’s TVOS, Roku, or Amazon’s FireTV. You can’t just load anything you want like it’s Linux or Windows, but the startup page lets you select a content provider and then you use their interface to navigate your content. It’s a good analogy as the same content is available from multiple providers, and all three (four if you include Google/Youtube) have their own in-house content libraries - which often overlap with competitors. I have both Roku and Apple actively on my TVs and I don’t purchase any content from either one of them except the hardware.
I should say that I don’t blame Valve for not including competitors stores. It’s a cleaner interface not to have a loading or Home screen. They also have customized their interface for optimal user experience. And, if they are still selling at a net loss (after engineering, marketing, and distribution) then this is a loss leader to drive gamers to their store. You could say, of course, they have done it on an OS that doesn’t natively support other game launchers and therefore it is impractical, but Linux also doesn’t natively support the vast majority of major game titles, so that’s a little disingenuous. And that partly wraps us back to the Fortnight topic at hand.
I think your Android TV metaphor is a bit off base. By default you only have access to Google Playstore apps (the equivalent to games on Steam). And it takes a not insignificant amount of research to learn how to sideload apps. And many Android TV devices flat lock you out of doing so to begin with.
Android TV is more of a “large enough walled garden that you can miss the walls and might not noticed you’ve even been locked in” situation imho.
I mean, the whole Epic v Google lawsuit was about the walls in this garden.
By default you only have access to Google Playstore apps
Yes, but for the purpose of video content, those aren’t “games” in the context of the steam deck. For the steamdeck (or any console) you have games and launchers instead of shows and apps. Steam loading Gog or Epic or Uplay as the interface from an initial “home” menu, analgous to the home menu for Android TV (not Android), Apple’s TVOS, or the Roku home page loading Netflix, HBOGo, Prime, or AppleTV+. None of those are “games” - you don’t do anything with them - they launch the content from their catalog - content which competes with the hardware/OS vendor’s own catalog. I can buy a movie from Apple or Roku or Amazon from within their launcher, even though I could have bought it through Youtube.
So I might load up my SteamDeck and choose Epic as my Launcher. Then the Epic Launcher shows me all of my games and allows me to buy new ones or collect Epic Points (IDK, I don’t use their launcher, tbh) and chat with all my Epic friends. If I want to play a Steam game, I press Home and select the Steam interface (which is the only one on the real Deck) and then I have the familiar Steam launch interface.
Epic v Google was about Fortnight and the 30% fees on in-app purchases which had to go through Google with no way around it. Same with Apple. This same problem might exist in SteamDeck if Steam required that any purchases made in the Gog or Epic launcher had to be processed through the Steam store and Steam took 30%. And, of course, the only reason this doesn’t exist for the steam deck is because you can’t even buy Fortnight on Steam. I don’t think, if you purchase a video through Amazon Prime on AppleTV or Roku, if Apple or Roku get a cut. If you subscribe to their monhtly license, they do - but not for discrete purchases made. The gaming angle - and fortnite’s fight with the stores, is about this cut applying to everything.
Valve doesn’t want to support Apple computers for their own games. No, Valve is not better, the two companies CEOs are just jerks.
They tried. Then apple dropped 32bit binaries support.
Apple is a very expensive partner to have. They do whatever they want with their ecosystem and many developers have been burned when apple decides to make their work obsolete or outright copies it and makes part of the bundled in apps.
So. It would be amazing if valve updated every one of their games for new versions of macOS and if they would kept MacOS proton support. But macOS is a moving target that will break backwards compatibility whenever it suits apple. So I understand that is hard to justify the investment.
In the end MacOs and Linux where less than a 1% of the Steam user base. But one is an open ecosystem where there is competition and some semblance of respect for backwards compatibility and the other is a closed and sometimes hostile environment.
In the end MacOs and Linux where less than a 1% of the Steam user base
It’s very low, but to be precise, macOS is 1.53% and Linux is 1.91%, according to the November 2023 survey. Almost 3.5% between them.
SteamOS is by far the largest Linux version, at 42.99% of Linux installs, followed by Arch at 7.81% and Ubuntu 22 at 6.67%.
Steam isn’t dropping support for all Macs, just those on Mojave and older, and Apple no longer even supports them. This impacts 2% of Steam customers with Macs - meaning roughly 0.03% of Steam’s customers, or around 46,000 people (assuming 150 million customers worldwide, which would track with historical numbers that end at around 2021).
Their dropped support coincides with Google ending support for Chrome in those OSes, and Steam has Chrome as a dependency. It’s not just because of having a tiny market share.
It’s getting bigger, but I said they WERE less than an 1%. And macOS was bigger that Linux for ages.
Then Apple proved they were not an ideal alternative platform, being even more closed than Microsoft, and not understanding the games ecosystem, so Valve pivoted and got into the Linux thing, failed with the Steam Machines, pivoted into Proton, and now I have a Deck.
Valve only source is not a legitimate source to prove anything. Valve is known to lied to everyone and everything.
That’s ONLY according to Valve and has many court cases revealed, Valve has a history of lying.
Valve lies about ownership of the game controller.
Valve lied to AU to not get refunds to the people.
Valve lied about VR funding.
Valve lied to the EU government officials in GEO region lawsuit.
Valve is not a trusted company and you should not trust sources based solely off Valve.
It’s certainly reasonable to be sceptical, but you should also ask yourself: what would be their motivation for lying here? What would they gain by saying there are 3.5% non-Windows users when there are actually less than 1%? Lying about funding and legal compliance has obvious motivation. And maybe there is some reason for lying about their platform usage breakdown too, but it’s certainly not as obvious.
People are just believing in the status. In the old days the sales numbers from individual businesses were the focus. Nowadays they are used as a console indicator for sales.
Steam blocking people from accessing API sell means Valve can lie without proof.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/steam-privacy-changes-block-steamspyIf you play Genshin Impact, a false god was believed to be their god for years. Only it wasn’t their actual god. This is the same thing, Valve wants people to believe in the status and they want people to not question it.
Valve wants people to believe in the status and they want people to not question it
But why would they want people to believe in the status of Mac being much higher than it is? Or Linux?
Not to mention having zero support for Vulkan or modern OGL, excepting compatibility layers on top of Metal (which is not an easy task) by third parties.
Steam also drop 32bits in their games. Again it’s a corporate problem not support or game related problems.
Steam recently announced that after February of 2024 they’ll no longer support Mojave (a 5 year old OS) and older versions of MacOS, which Apple no longer even supports with security updates. The dropped support is due to Chrome dropping support for those OS versions, and Steam relies on Chrome for some of its functionality. The lack of support also doesn’t mean Steam will suddenly stop working, simply that they are no longer going to provide updates or customer service for it. This impacts 2% of Steam customers with Macs - meaning roughly 0.03% of Steam’s customers, or around 46,000 people.
Just to be clear, is that what you’re talking about?
You do know Valve could have not use Chrome and just spent money to build it right. Don’t defend Valve for being cheap.
The technology used by Valve is Irrelevant. The operating system losing support is not even supported by apple. The users of that version of MacOs are at risk because they use a closed source unmantained operating system.
As I said Apple is not concerned with kind of old software. They expect everyone to move up with them, developers and users, or get left behind.
Portal is a game released THE SAME YEAR the iPhone was. In classic hit PC game time that’s “nothing”, you expect to be able to run it, but in Apple’s timeline is ancient history. Take a look into how many iPhone games just won’t work anymore.
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If we only had a few more programmers
Poor, poor Epic, a tiny startup barely making it to the next month with their 3000 employees and $5B annual revenue
Translation, “You do all the heavy lifting and then I’ll jump in to enjoy the results while I complain about it.”
There’s an interesting issue here that shows Linux support is a cultural thing, not a business thing.
They’ve presented it as “it doesn’t make sense to financially support Linux due to low player count.” But they don’t need to provide official support, they just need to tick a box and say “yeah, we don’t support this, do it at your own risk.”
From a purely financial point of view, Linux support is almost free. If you release your game, a bunch of developers off of your payroll will just add Linux support. You don’t even need to give them technical support because they use an unsupported platform.
To use business lingo, blocking Linux support is just leaving money on the table.
But I think a lot of companies feel like they have to have full control of everything. That everything they do most be fully supported and approved by them. That they are scared of letting the community take charge of things because it might tarnish your brand or whatever.
They are worried that there’ll be graphical bugs or something and that’ll make Fornight look bad, so it’s better for their brand image to just block everything they don’t have control over.
It’s a worrying pattern I’ve seen in a few places, including Mozilla of all things.
… Or maybe it’s just that Epic are too stubborn to accept help and contributions from anyone else, especially their “enemies”.
I have been wondering why they don’t just take Heroic launcher and add a skin around it to make an “official” launcher. It’s probably just because they are too prideful to support anything open source or Valve. They think that they need to make their own thing, rather than using existing code.
Sorry for the rambling post, but I think this situation is more due to an unhealthy company culture than “lol 2% market share” as they present it.
Pro individual agency? Linux.
You’ll own nothing and be happy? Micrapple
We can take an easy guess at which one if these things Epic is.
In the case of fortnite, this isn’t really true. The issue of fortnite is the anti cheat system is not designed to play nice with Linux and allowing Linux without having the anti cheat on point would lead to players getting mad at cheaters and the collapse of fortnite. It’s happened to several games in the past that couldn’t prevent people from cheating.
Easy anti-cheat stays on. Several other games have implemented it on Linux without problems. Easy anti-cheat made it as easy as the developer (Epic Games) checking a box to allow it to run on Linux. That’s what the person you’re responding to is referring to. It’s a recent development that happened earlier this year.
It’s happened to several games in the past that couldn’t prevent people from cheating.
And those games are…? There are plenty of games that have allowed anticheat to work on Linux and haven’t imploded, but I don’t know of a single one that has. Care to encourage enlighten me?
I don’t specifically mean games that used anti cheats that ran on Linux. I just mean games that couldn’t keep from too many people cheating and it ruining the online aspect of a game. A couple different Diablo games come to mind. COD:Warzone got pummeled for a while. Fall Guys had a very rough season 1.
But they don’t need to provide official support, they just need to tick a box and say “yeah, we don’t support this, do it at your own risk.”
I suspect you need to factor in the efforts needed to prevent cheaters exploiting the unofficial client and spoiling the experience for other gamers
Epic already makes anticheat that supports Linux, and other games they own already run on Linux with anticheat.
They’re just holding out on fortnite because… actually I’m not sure why. Probably Sweeney’s personal thoughts on it. If they actually wanted it to run on Linux/deck I have no doubt they could without much trouble.
Sweeney is lying through his teeth here. From things he has said previously, it becomes very clear he hates the whole idea of linux. When steamdeck became a thing, it was clear he was salty about how it would shine a light on it as an alternative OS. With this interview, by now it seems he is beginning to bend under the pressure and at least pretending that “oh I have nothing against such and amazing platform, so sad we can’t support it” in order to not look like an ass.
Which is an out that will bite him in the ass, they can support it, so soon interviewers won’t be asking, “why can’t you support linux” but “why won’t you”.
There is no “unofficial client” to exploit, there is an unofficial installer/launcher. Windows games run using proton run in exactly the same way they do on windows, the game itself is not modified in any way, that’s the whole point.
It allows you to run games, as if they were on windows. All these companies have to do, is fucking allow it.
I always love how People with no clue how any of it works tell how terrible decisions were made to prevent cheaters.
Are you aware that Fortnite uses EasyAntiCheat which is already working on Linux with plenty of other games? It’s literally as simple as Epic Games allowing it. And yes the anticheat still works, so no it’s not about preventing cheaters. Read the news from earlier this year about EAC enabling it on Linux and how a whole host of games have already done so.
Not relevant to my comment.
I think you’re replying to the wrong person
I presume this is a jibe at me, but you don’t tell me why I’m egregiously wrong.
Valve is guilty of the same crime, a billionaire can’t hire anyone to do CSGO2 Apple support. It’s never been about money or support. The CEOs are just being jerks.
I’m sure Valve would be very happy to let people use a Vulcan to Metal translator if one existed.
I’m not asking Epic to hire anyone to add Linux support, just asking that they let Linux users try it out and get it working on their own.
Sweeney does not want to contribute in any way towards making the steam deck more profitable.
I think he actually wants a monopoly. He wants to be, functionally, the only digital storefront on PC. And doing anything that could help Valve, even in another market, would detrimental to that goal.
I’d rather not play games at all if Epic ever gets a monopoly. Though I would of course keep playing games, just without paying for them. Epic won’t see as much as a single cent from me.
Famously understaffed and broke Epic Games.
Sweeney has had a chip on his shoulder with Linux for at least 15 years. It’s honestly a bit weird since if you look at stuff before around 2005, he had quite a different tone.
Yeah they used to ship Linux executables on the same disk for Unreal didn’t they?
Legend has it xX-1337_gnu_h4x0r-Xx once stalked Tim Sweeny in Unreal 2004. That led to the development of Unreal 2: The Liandri Conflict, where that same Linux user hacked Tim Sweeny’s character model to his own grandmother. It was Xbox only, but still somehow the Linux user killed him, at Tim Sweeny’s own video game! He just couldn’t handle that so he took 2 years to develop the technology to block all Linux users out of sheer spite. He accomplished his goal in 2007 when finally, Sweeny’s mission was completed with Unreal Tournament 3. It was so successful that no game from Epic since Unreal Tournament 2004 has had a Linux release.
But that wasn’t enough for Tim Sweeny. He needed more, he needed… Control. Afterall, we all know Gears of War 1 sales for PC were terrible because of pirating, which only Linux users do. Time passed and in June 2012 an opportunity arose, an offer that he could not refuse. Tencent, a multibillion dollar investment company purchases just under half of the shares of Epic Games. His own words, “Tencent’s directors are super valuable contributors whose advice and participation helped make Epic what it is today.” And thus, the adoption of the live service model arrives with Fortnite: Battle Royale.
Unfortunately for Tim, Beijing’s gaming laws culled any revenue from Fortnite China, but that doesn’t matter. Tim Sweeny’s goal was complete, being able to now buy out any game he desires and kill Linux support for it before it can even begin, even going so far as to actively remove support for it from existing games. With gamers faith in Epic now Dauntless from free games and their image as pioneers of developer first PC gaming, we can finally go to today.
The release of LEGO Fortnite and the other modes. See, there was a competitor to Epic Games that inspired Tim Sweeny deeply. Roblox. The game where you spend money to play games people have made, all without ever leaving the store. A concept that Tencent has successfully established elsewhere, but one that hasn’t quite fully succeeded in the United States (except of course for Steam, the actual anti-christ of PC gamers). But no longer, now gamers of all ages, young and younger can see the value of Epic Games all-in-one game, Fortnite. Soon, Tim Sweeny’s goal will be complete by extinguishing all games on Linux. But the Pariah Valve ruined that plan by releasing… the Steam Deck. The Linux device that steals candy from babies and money from developers.
Linux. Not even once. It turns your children into striped sock wearers who will grow up to not understand why having everything centrally located in one account is actually a good thing.
This is another reason Epic games will lose everything to Valve. Their storefront is useless and is a money loser. But even if it weren’t, valve is moving themselves to be the gaming king of Linux. Where no competitor exists meaningfully. Maybe GoG?
GoG doesn’t even have a Linux version so yea, there is no competition. Some games on GoG that are natively available in Linux have an installer for manual install but that’s it.
Jokes on him. There is a whole infrastructure to make windows games work on linux, except those that are explicitely programmed not to work on that.
Are there really that many people up in arms about this? Fuck epic and fuck fortnite, but were there really that many steam deck users that even wanted to play it in the first place? I see no issues with epic continuing to make dumb and short sighted business decisions, so long as somebody salvages unreal if they ever crash and burn.
For me it’s not about fortnite but more about fast-paced multiplayer on the steam deck
When I played Rocket league on the deck instead of my Desktop with Lan, higher resolution and much higher framerate I always felt as if I’m playing much worse than I usually do which is not fun in the slightest
It’s a great console for singleplayer and more tactical multiplayer but whenever reading the screen in less than a second and reacting very fast to it in an online game is necessary that’s not great…
I generally suck at playing shooters with controllers but I was looking forward to try the Gyro controls for Fortnite.
You can as a workaround play Fortnite on the Deck via XBox Live in a browser. But there you don’t have Gyro controls :(
Not sure what you mean by that, are you asking for a Linux variant of fortnite and other fps games or something else?
No - I’m just saying that the delay in WIFI and the low framerate and small resolution of the screen makes the Steamdeck a sub-par choice for fast-paced games for me. It’s fine if you are only playing on that device but if you also have a desktop to play at it’s far worse imho
Well yeah but his sentiment is about Linux in general especially with their store only being supported on windows (maybe Mac as well?). Idc about fortnite but would be nice if more companies take the effort to support or simply stop kicking Linux out.
I mean, yes I don’t have a gaming machine but also I just find playing shooters more fun on the steam deck to be honest. I can also play it while in so many more contexts (not necessarily out and about, just even at home) that the loss in computing power and screen fidelity doesn’t really bother me. Do I mostly use guns with scopes? Yes lol… but whatev it works fine.
I recently had a game I was waiting for released on steam and epic. The steam version (with some supporter pack stuff, because I like the dev) was $100, while the epic version was less than $50(with the same extras). I considered for a moment buying it on epic, but then I thought - “fuck, it’s epic games” and bought it on steam instead. I just couldn’t handle the thought of epic fucking games being in charge of my ability to play the game. I don’t trust them. Not even if all their shit is 50% off.
Idk much about business, but if you can’t be trusted to be reliable even when you’re offering massive discounts, maybe you don’t have a lasting business on your hands.
Not related to Steam Deck, but this caught my eye:
As soon as we thwarted their effort, they went around to 27 different developers and offered each one a payoff to undermine any effort we had to get their games onto our store exclusively. Activision and Riot and Supercell had direct distribution plans that they were planning on; Google paid them not to pursue those plans. Just direct blatant violations of anti-competition law, it’s crazy a company of Google’s scale would do that.
So Tim is stating that Google making exclusivity deals with applications developers is breaching laws and should be stopped, but Epic having exclusivity deals on their own stores is okay and not anti-competitive. Hypocrite much, eh?
I believe what wormtongue was saying here was that Google was paying developers to abandon their plans to release exclusively for the Epic store.
It doesn’t mention forcing anyone to drop Epic, or other platforms. Not sure what is anti-competitive aside from forcing the Epic store to compete on their merits (price/platform support) instead of their exclusive game deals.
So how many Steam decks have been sold?
Valve’s only official said “multiple millions” and estimates are around 3 million
Thank you! I wonder if they could get an overall count of all Linux players, not just the Steam deck
Valve distinguishes between the Steam Deck and other Linux systems in their monthly Steam usage statistics.
I heard it’s over a couple millions now but my info could be outdated.
The steamdeck-like hardware market is going to explode and they are fools for not putting in even a tiny amount of effort there. Yeah a lot of steamdeck form factor devices will run windows, but idk linux has passed a critical threshold where windows just looks less and less attractive as an OS to base this kind of device around.
It doesn’t really matter how well Valve does or doesn’t do in the near term, the existence of the steam deck right now as a functional, easy to use gaming device irrevocably changes the pc gaming market. In the future kids are going to get these things before their parents shell out for a gaming pc, they are the clear gateway step into pc gaming because you can always buy a nice pc down the road and have all the same games to play as you do on your handheld.
It will increasingly matter more and more what multiplayer action game you can pick up and get running most easily on a steamdeck-like linux device to play with your friends. Right now for example Halo Infinite is pretty perfectly situated, it doesn’t have much competition for being the easy to get into steam deck multiplayer shooter choice.
Lmao how long until something like the ROG Ally tries to partner with Epic and claim that it’s the only handheld that can play Fortnite
Ok look don’t give them any ideas
