A look at the top 100 Steam games and how many will work on Linux and the Steam Deck

Quoting: BielFPsAlso Liam you should include in your post that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, so you kinda can play it with proton but you won't be able to speak with the ghosts.

Good point, thought it was already noted. Added.

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

why? its not their fault if linux dont have this feature, its a fault of linux as an platform to run thirdyparty apps that it didnt developed speach reconiniton tech.

Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.


Last edited by Arten on 6 October 2021 at 7:59 am UTC

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

That's a sure way of making sure your game is completely unplayable in 5 years is what that is.

at the worst case scenario, they disable this feature and the game do work.
you seem like someone who prefer an game to never exist than to exit for a few time.

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

i certainly never wasted billion of dollars into something not expecting profits in return.

Quoting: BielFPsso you kinda can play it with proton but you won't be able to speak with the ghosts.

SPEAK... With the ghosts?! 😮

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

i certainly never wasted billion of dollars into something not expecting profits in return.

Do you have billion of dollars?

You think all the billionaires giving away their assets to charity are doing it for profit? Some of them do it for taxes, but part of it gives away so much that it doesn't make tax sense. They're doing it for something other than monetary gain. Some do it for a good feeling, someone else to be accepted back into the human race (Gates). Nobel, for example, created the Nobel Prize because he wanted to improve his reputation.

I keep saying valve can do it for profit (which I personally don't think is a bad thing), but they doesn't have to. They can count on losses to be acceptable or they can even guess that they might be profitable, but we don't have the information to say they're doing it for profit. Even that profit may end up being a side benefit of their efforts to do it for a different purpose.

Quoting: dxmnHopefully Valve adds an easy way to implement GE's Proton into the steam deck. There are already tools like protonup that automate the aforementioned 5 minute process

Why?
If Valve wants you to use ProtonGE, the straightforward way is to ship it by default alongside "vanilla" Proton.
Are there licensing issues i'm not aware of?

Quoting: ripper81358The out of the box experience will be the crucial point here. But even a failed steamdeck will bring better gaming to linux on the desktop, so i am quiet happy with how things develop right now.

If we assume that the enormous effort Valve made for Linux gaming was finalized to the Steam machines first and the Deck now (i never trusted the hypotesis of the Windows store threat), then you say well:"right now" is the key.
If the Deck will fail, Linux gaming will follow shortly, and badly.


Last edited by kokoko3k on 6 October 2021 at 11:33 am UTC

It's no secret why Valve push Linux. They're aware of how crucial an open platform is to having a healthy software ecosystem, and then - with Windows 8 - Microsoft showed that they wanted to close it all up so that they were in control. Whether would succeed or not isn't as important as the fact that they wanted to. And if they did that, that would kill Steam.

So Gabe Newell said

QuoteWe want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.

They need an exit strategy from Windows in case they get locked out of it, and they need to visibly have an exit strategy as a deterrent from being locked out in the first place. And they feel qualified to hold the doors open because "people don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior."

They need a way for all the Windows Steam users, should Microsoft go nuclear, to still be Steam users not on Windows, rather than Windows users not on Steam. They made their own games and client work on Linux. They tried to get OEMs to sell machines with Linux pre-installed (which didn't work). They made it pretty easy for game developers to make their games for Linux (which only kinda worked). So they brute-forced all those Windows games to work on Linux regardless of anyone else helping or not, with Proton.

Having done that, they still need everyone (particularly gamers, and particularly Microsoft) to know that they've done it. That locking Steam out of Windows isn't a viable plan, because gamers can go somewhere else. They need, say "new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements." Which is what the Steam Deck is for. So that everyone can say, "you know what, gaming on Linux is perfectly fine. I wouldn't miss Windows because I can play all my games on Linux."

Quoting: BielFPsThe fact that they don't need to is the key point, remember that most of the profit from steam comes from Windows users so Valve isn't losing anything from developers not supporting Proton.

They would lose the investment made for Proton (hence, the Deck).
I don't think it isn't that much.

Quoting: kokoko3kIf we assume that the enormous effort Valve made for Linux gaming was finalized to the Steam machines first and the Deck now

It wasn't. They aren't making anywhere near enough units for the Steam Deck to be a console platform, and they're (still) perfectly happy for other OEMs to make gaming machines with Linux on. The Steam Deck is a demonstration device, not an end point.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: kokoko3kIf we assume that the enormous effort Valve made for Linux gaming was finalized to the Steam machines first and the Deck now

It wasn't. They aren't making anywhere near enough units for the Steam Deck to be a console platform, and they're (still) perfectly happy for other OEMs to make gaming machines with Linux on. The Steam Deck is a demonstration device, not an end point.

Don't forget it's also partly jealousy. Gabe Newell previously said he was jealous of Nintendo with them making hardware and software together. There's many reasons for Valve doing all this, I wouldn't say any one specific reason any more.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: kokoko3kIf we assume that the enormous effort Valve made for Linux gaming was finalized to the Steam machines first and the Deck now

It wasn't. They aren't making anywhere near enough units for the Steam Deck to be a console platform, and they're (still) perfectly happy for other OEMs to make gaming machines with Linux on. The Steam Deck is a demonstration device, not an end point.

Heheh, sounds nice, i must admit.

Quoting: Liam DaweDon't forget it's also partly jealousy. Gabe Newell previously said he was jealous of Nintendo with them making hardware and software together. There's many reasons for Valve doing all this, I wouldn't say any one specific reason any more.

Sure, there are plenty of things that are great about the Deck from Valve's perspective.

People buying PC games on Steam that would never want to deal with a PC? Awesome.

People buying their PC games on Steam rather than elsewhere because it's the easiest way to play them on the Deck? Awesome.

Developers using standardised Steam APIs rather than This One Weird Trick? Awesome.

People buying all those crazy unique indie games, so the big publishers can't dictate terms simply by being big? Awesome.

Every media outlet and YouTuber talking about Steam for months on end? Awesome.

But it's definitely not primarily a hardware play (they aren't making anywhere near enough units, by several orders of magnitude), and it's not the reason for the Linux investment but an extension of it.

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI would be really surprised if Valve were unable to persuade those people to enable their anticheat to work with Proton.

The fact that they don't need to is the key point, remember that most of the profit from steam comes from Windows users so Valve isn't losing anything from developers not supporting Proton.

Don't forget that the release of the Deck is a major event, so there will be adds, and promotions and perhaps even parties. As a game dev you want as much publicity / visibility as possible so they should be interested in being included in the upcoming Deck promotions.

This is one of the reasons why the big publishing houses never release a native linux build even though they obviously have one internally (for Stadia) -> that doing so won't get them inclusion on some big event and why they instead release on say the Switch since Nintendo will give them free air time.

So if Valve handles to release of the Deck properly then there should be huge interest to be on the hype train.

Quoting: ArtenYou've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

Again, my point is some people (don't know if it's your case too) are thinking Valve is doing all of this in a "holy crusade of pushing Linux game for the greater good"

Let's pretend this was true, a very effective way would be for them to subsidize the development of Linux versions of the most popular games at the moment for example, but this wouldn't make them (Valve) profit more with sales than they already do with those games being windows only (again they profit in both cases)

Quoting: BeamboomSPEAK... With the ghosts?! 😮

It's a feature of the game :)

Quoting: kokoko3k

Quoting: dxmnHopefully Valve adds an easy way to implement GE's Proton into the steam deck. There are already tools like protonup that automate the aforementioned 5 minute process

Why?
If Valve wants you to use ProtonGE, the straightforward way is to ship it by default alongside "vanilla" Proton.
Are there licensing issues i'm not aware of?

I feel that most people who buy the deck are looking for a simple handheld comparable to the switch or something alike, and wouldn't want to go as far as to open the shell or change to a desktop environment in order to use it, or wouldn't be confident that they wouldn't break something along the way.

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

That's a sure way of making sure your game is completely unplayable in 5 years is what that is.

at the worst case scenario, they disable this feature and the game do work.
you seem like someone who prefer an game to never exist than to exit for a few time.

Disclaimer, I know nothing about this game, if the feature is entirely optional, then sure, that's fine.

If it's a core part of the game, then making it depend on some tech existing and shipping by the operating system is braindead. API's change, technologies change, it's not like the Cortana API has been standardized. In a few years Cortana will change enough that the game would be borked.

Adding voice recognition to games is a smart idea, sure. Just the technology used to implement it was wrong. They could have used some third party library (open source preferable of course) they could ship and not worry about it changing.

Again, if the feature can be disabled and is entirely optional, then sure, go nuts.

Quoting: kokoko3kThey would lose the investment made for Proton (hence, the Deck).
I don't think it isn't that much.

A minimal acceptable one, check the analogy I made in my other posts.

They can make this (minimal) risky investment because Proton / Deck are just a sub product for their main revenue (steam games). In other words, their Linux support is just a means (not being Microsoft dependent) to an end (keep their position as the biggest game store)