Valve are definitely up to something. For a little while, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais has been tweaking steamcompmgr, the SteamOS session compositing window manager.
After being quiet on SteamOS development for a long time with no update since July last year, it certainly seems now like some parts of it are being revived either for the next major SteamOS release or Valve's other Linux gaming projects. Work on steamcompmgr seemed to stall back in 2018, with it suddenly seeing activity on GitHub in October last year.
In fact, it's no longer named steamcompmgr and seems to be expanding to do a whole lot more. It's had so many tweaks and changes, Griffais has actually given it a new name. Meet Gamescope (GitHub), which Griffais said when renaming it that "We're a superset of steamcompmgr now, but have a wider scope, so new name to reflect it.".
Going over the project there's a few things that stick out. It seems that they're going with Vulkan and Wayland (what's supposed to eventually replace Xorg in most major Linux distributions). Exciting!
Once they talk more about what they're doing and their plans, we will let you know. With all that Valve's doing including Steam Play, the Linux container system, this Gamescope and various other projects they're certainly still giving Linux gaming plenty of attention.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: ThetargosEdit, typos, darn phone keypad.Sometimes typos are the best. I like "Netvook".
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Quoting: Whitewolfe80Well i could of gone with retarded financially irresposible dumb fuck decision but i thought silly covered it theres a reason sega arent in the console business anymore and even nintendo had to be bailed out of going bankrupt after the diaster that was wii u. Granted it was never in real danger because of the amount capital the shareholders have but still. MS looses money on every xbox 1 sold still Sony i think break even now on every ps4 they all attempt to recoup the money in game sales. Wheres the problem steam has games i hear you say yes it does third party games that you can buy on epic store or gog the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago."the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago"? I doubt it. I've seen no real indication that Epic has made much difference to the market. Let me see if I can find some info to back my intuition . . . google google . . . OK. So, the total size of the PC game market in 2018 was according to one source $28.6 Billion, not counting browser games. Epic games just yesterday put out an article bragging about how much money their store has made. Ready for it?
Quote$680 M spent by PC players in the Epic Games storeSounds like a lot, although rather small compared to $28.6 billion. Hang on, wait a moment . . . they added another figure:
Quote$251 M spent by players on third-party PC games in the Epic Games storeSo like, more than half the sales in their store was just Fortnite. In terms of actually being a game store that people buy games from other than theirs, do some quick math, that would appear to be slightly under 1% of the market. 3% if you count Fortnite.
Steam has less to worry about than I thought. Even if you assume Epic's sales have been on a gradual upward slope from zero, so that their market share as of the moment is twice the average market share over the year, that's still only 2%. Gog probably has more.
So yeah, they probably could recoup the losses on discounted hardware from an open platform. Especially since sure, people could go buy outside Steam with a Steam Machine, but they were build with an interface setup that takes you straight into Steam by default. I don't see why that would change if Valve were making the hardware themselves. Hardly anybody would go to the trouble of making some other store their main go-to place after buying a Steam Machine that boots them into Steam. People would be as free to use other game stores as ordinary PC customers are to rip out Windows and install Linux.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 January 2020 at 1:55 am UTC
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Mohandevir Jan 16, 2020
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: Whitewolfe80Well i could of gone with retarded financially irresposible dumb fuck decision but i thought silly covered it theres a reason sega arent in the console business anymore and even nintendo had to be bailed out of going bankrupt after the diaster that was wii u. Granted it was never in real danger because of the amount capital the shareholders have but still. MS looses money on every xbox 1 sold still Sony i think break even now on every ps4 they all attempt to recoup the money in game sales. Wheres the problem steam has games i hear you say yes it does third party games that you can buy on epic store or gog the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago."the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago"? I doubt it. I've seen no real indication that Epic has made much difference to the market. Let me see if I can find some info to back my intuition . . . google google . . . OK. So, the total size of the PC game market in 2018 was according to one source $28.6 Billion, not counting browser games. Epic games just yesterday put out an article bragging about how much money their store has made. Ready for it?
Quote$680 M spent by PC players in the Epic Games storeSounds like a lot, although rather small compared to $28.6 billion. Hang on, wait a moment . . . they added another figure:
Quote$251 M spent by players on third-party PC games in the Epic Games storeSo like, more than half the sales in their store was just Fortnite. In terms of actually being a game store that people buy games from other than theirs, do some quick math, that would appear to be slightly under 1% of the market. 3% if you count Fortnite.
Steam has less to worry about than I thought. Even if you assume Epic's sales have been on a gradual upward slope from zero, so that their market share as of the moment is twice the average market share over the year, that's still only 2%. Gog probably has more.
So yeah, they probably could recoup the losses on discounted hardware from an open platform. Especially since sure, people could go buy outside Steam with a Steam Machine, but they were build with an interface setup that takes you straight into Steam by default. I don't see why that would change if Valve were making the hardware themselves. Hardly anybody would go to the trouble of making some other store their main go-to place after buying a Steam Machine that boots them into Steam. People would be as free to use other game stores as ordinary PC customers are to rip out Windows and install Linux.
In fact, ripping out Steamos to replace it with Windows is exactly what happened the first time... Alienware Alpha, anybody?
The "licensed hardware partners" ended up offering Windows variants of the same Steam Machines hardware, making them irrelevant. And that's what is going to happen again if they try the licensing model again.
Imo,Valve would do better to put their efforts on Steam Cloud Gaming if they don't plan to travel the road they have paved, 6 years ago.
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Quoting: MohandevirImo,Valve would do better to put their efforts on Steam Cloud Gaming if they don't plan to travel the road they have paved, 6 years ago.
There is no reason for them not to sell their own gaming oriented PCs with Linux, as long as they provide high quality support. Having that is one of the way to beat MS monopoly. No partners I'd say, that route is ineffective.
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Mohandevir Jan 16, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: MohandevirImo,Valve would do better to put their efforts on Steam Cloud Gaming if they don't plan to travel the road they have paved, 6 years ago.
There is no reason for them not to sell their own gaming oriented PCs with Linux, as long as they provide high quality support. Having that is one of the way to beat MS monopoly. No partners I'd say, that route is ineffective.
Exactly my stance.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 16 January 2020 at 1:19 pm UTC
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