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

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: CatKillerBut it's definitely not primarily a hardware play (they aren't making anywhere near enough units, by several orders of magnitude)

Why so? I always tought it was a matter of offer and demand, in the hardware market... You want to have enough inventory to meet the demand, but not too much of it so as not to get stuck with it. If there is a demand, why wouldn' Valve try to ramp up the production of Steam Decks?

To make a credible console, you need to be aiming at sales of around 100 million units, and you need everyone to know that you're aiming for that kind of audience for your platform so that everyone buys in. Low sales breaks the entire model. Valve aren't making anything like that many. Nowhere near. You need to sell worldwide to normal people in normal shops. Valve aren't doing that, either.

As a demonstration device for Linux gaming, you only need to sell a few million devices; the important thing is to get people talking about it. That's perfectly in line with what we've seen about Valve's production capacity. As a demonstration device for Linux gaming, your primary audience is PC gamers. You need to already have a Steam account to buy a Steam Deck. For a console, having competitors making similar devices running the same OS and the same games would mean that you'd lost, and badly; as a demonstration device for Linux gaming, having competitors making similar devices running the same OS and the same games means that you've won, and someone else is doing your work for you. Valve have said that they want other companies to make similar devices.

I'm sure that Valve are very satisfied that there's lots of demand, and they'll scale up production to make as big a splash as they can. It's just not at the scale of a console and isn't doing console things. They've said themselves that it's an experiment, to gauge their assumptions about where they've got to.

I get your point, but I see a "flaw" (might be too strong a word)... No other company will be able to challenge Steam Deck's pricing ranges. Valve was able to offer agressive pricing because they mainly sell games. Those that could challenge them are Sony or Microsoft, who knows how to undersale consoles and get the money invested back on game sales. DELL's potential UFO will never be able to challenge the Steam Deck on this aspect... Just like any other PC handheld that we've seen up to this date. The Steam Machines suffered from too high prices in the same way.

I'm quite sure that the Steam Deck will stay relevant for years, in this market and will be the leader of the segment. Let's hope Valve is aware of that and ready to face the challenge.

Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: CyrilI'm just really surprised how nobody mention that Cortana is a shit that spy on people...

Same as Google, Siri, Alexa and such. Nothing new there that is worth mentioning. At least in a game it stops listening when you quit playing.

No it's not the same Cortana is installed by default on Windows and you can hardly disable it (majority of people won't anyway).
Yeah it stops listening in-game, but then continue listening back at your desktop, lol.

Quoting: Arten

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.

you forgot to mention 2 things...
yes there is tax exemptions but there is also:
1)an free publicit for the company.
2)political influence (for example, if you government give up this idea of using linux/teaching how to use linux , to gain technologycal independence, then we will not remove our contributions to charity/jobs)

but yeah, you are right, if i was billionaire i would use part of my money for an good cause, i was just kidding.

the main issue is: most bilionaries made their profit in ethical questionable ways, so its a matter : the means justify the ends.

Quoting: Arten

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?

Yes. Bad example.

Mind you, in the very specific example of Valve and Gabe Newell + core team, I am not actually certain what their motivations are and am willing consider it plausible they could not just have but be acting on some relatively normal, human motivations. At a minimum, I'd want to say that the ways Valve pursue profit are seriously shaped by a certain style and set of beliefs and values--so for instance, they have a strategy of dealing with threats from Microsoft by pushing for open platforms in part because they like open platforms and want to think a strategy pushing them will work (I hope they're right). So I agree with you on your main point.

But this is a rare case. All those billionaires "giving away" tons of money are mostly doing it with the assistance of huge money-management companies like Price Waterhouse Cooper or whatever, and they don't actually give the money away. What they do, is dodges like putting the money into a "charitable trust", which is an organization theoretically dedicated to giving money to charity, which gets tax breaks because of this, but which they control and which has few rules about how much money actually gets given. And their press releases talk about this money in this trust which they control and which is still being invested for profit but paying less or no tax, as if they had just given all that money away. But they haven't, they've just shielded it from taxes. Billionaires do a lot of that stuff.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 6 October 2021 at 5:08 pm UTC

Quoting: ShabbyX

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.

many games are shipped with specific versions of directX for that reason, things break over time.
im not sure about speach rec/ia stuff, if its possible to ship with an specific version of it.

i was planing to make an game using speach recognition since the windows vista days, one of the reasons why i gave up was because its only avaliable for windows, but looking back it seems like an stupid idea to give up on the game due to it, and to blame microsoft for spending billions of dollars into making an feature then making it windows exclusive, its not their fault if the opens source comunity couldnt produce something but they could, then i rather see this feature and any derivative software that come as consequence to exist than to not.
one of the things people told me about it was:
"linux dont have niche features that no one uses"
but even computers for layman users was seen as an niche stuff before apple and microsoft proved that there is demand for this market, IBM lose the opportunity to make billions due to their lack of vision.
even stuff like GUI was an niche in the past.

if the open source comunity cant see that speach recognition is an platform rather than an gimmick, and join efforts to make an "minimum viable product" for developers who want an derivative product, instead of making tons of desktop enviroments that no one asked for to solve problems that could probably be solved by customizing KDE and fragmenting the developer efforts to support then all...
then we cant blame microsoft/google/apple for creating such tech.

honestly i tried to find an solution, but by the time that i found both an game engine and speach rec solution for linux, the speach rec tech was no longer free to use (google solution)
now im looking for an alternative, meanwhile working on other game ideas.
honestly using an open source library would be an priority if such thing existed, but it dont, and the main issue is: it need training data wich we refuse to do, telemetry if you will. or at least an public repository of voice samples, mozilla tried to create that one, and there are some projects of open source speach rec traning material and data somewhere but no where near an drop in replacement for the proprietary solutions.


Last edited by elmapul on 6 October 2021 at 4:53 pm UTC

Quoting: MohandevirI get your point, but I see a "flaw" (might be too strong a word)... No other company will be able to challenge Steam Deck's pricing ranges. Valve was able to offer agressive pricing because they mainly sell games. Those that could challenge them are Sony or Microsoft, who knows how to undersale consoles and get the money invested back on game sales. DELL's potential UFO will never be able to challenge the Steam Deck on this aspect... Just like any other PC handheld that we've seen up to this date. The Steam Machines suffered from too high prices in the same way.

I'm quite sure that the Steam Deck will stay relevant for years, in this market and will be the leader of the segment. Let's hope Valve is aware of that and ready to face the challenge.

It's that they're willing to let other companies make similar devices that shows that they aren't going for the sell loads of hardware to get locked in ecosystem sales console play. I agree (and have said in comments elsewhere previously) that other companies aren't really going to be able to.

Hardware companies don't have Steam to lean on, so they need to make profit on the hardware itself, and at the low end the aggressive pricing of the Deck shuts that out. At the premium end there could be profit, but for current and near-future technology the Deck has hit the optimum compromises so that a more expensive device would be a worse device: higher resolution screen means worse performance and worse battery life, a better battery means a heavier device, and so on. Maybe in a couple of tech generations there'll be space. I think it's naïve, maybe, certainly optimistic, for Valve to think that everyone's going to leap in and make SteamOS devices and solve their worldwide logistics things for them.

Microsoft, of course, does have a gaming software ecosystem to lean on for profits, and releasing an Xbox-branded handheld that plays Windows games could really put a spoke in the wheels of the Steam Deck.

Quoting: CatKillerMicrosoft, of course, does have a gaming software ecosystem to lean on for profits, and releasing an Xbox-branded handheld that plays Windows games could really put a spoke in the wheels of the Steam Deck.

But they said that the Steam Deck is an Xbox Handheld.

https://bgr.com/tech/phil-spencer-hints-that-the-steam-deck-could-be-the-portable-xbox-of-our-dreams/

Edit: This said, it feels like Valve is using the Steam Deck and SteamOS 3.0 to try and create something similar to Google and Android with many OEM jumping in the fray along with their own hardware and, who knows, custom SteamOS versions.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 6 October 2021 at 5:38 pm UTC

Quoting: BielFPsThey don't need to say this exactly, they can just keep saying as they says today "Sorry we don't have support for your platform" and let the users do the math.

They can do this as long as they don't care about missing out on any sales that would go to Steam Deck owners. In that case, they don't really have to say anything. How important this is to them depends on how many Steam Decks end up being sold.

Quoting: BielFPsI don't think so, specially if this results in "more games being available to my console". Remember that not all Steam Deck buyers are Linux fans (most don't even care about which system they're running) so more games (specially the not support popular ones) are a great motivation for people to change (which was my first comment).

Imagine for example, if there was a (legal) way to run Nintendo games in the play station, where the procedure would involve just tweaking the system's console, even non technical users would have interest in doing this procedure because it would mean "more new games" as result.

This seems out of touch with mainstream users.

If users could practically run Windows from the SD card, then there might be a more significant percentage to actually do that, but my experience with SD cards and with Windows suggests that would not be a terribly pleasant experience, assuming it's possible without messing up the existing operating system.

Changing the operating system to Windows is not something the majority of people will be interested in doing (especially not permanently).

Quoting: BielFPsYep

Yes, very much so. Valve making sure Windows will install is in no way the same thing as supporting it. The person writing that article makes an assumption. Nothing I have heard from Valve suggests they will be supporting Windows. Valve's "support" of Windows will consist of making sure there are no absolute roadblocks to using it as far as I have heard them say up to this point.

You seem assured that running Windows on the Steam Deck will be a very common thing. The only way that this will happen is if things don't work out the way Valve wants them to at all. If the Steam Deck were to flop once released, then Valve might consider actually supporting Windows installations to sell through the remaining units.

Most people don't replace the operating system on any device they buy. I say this as someone who is perfectly willing to do that myself, but is self-aware enough to know that I am in the minority.

Quoting: kokoko3kWhat i say is that Valve doesn't need to add anything to implement (nor to implement anything).
All the implementation is already there; Valve just need to ship protonGE alongside Vanilla Proton.

I suspect that there are legal obstacles to them shipping protonGE, or they would already make it available through Steam.

Quoting: CFWhitman

Quoting: kokoko3kWhat i say is that Valve doesn't need to add anything to implement (nor to implement anything).
All the implementation is already there; Valve just need to ship protonGE alongside Vanilla Proton.

I suspect that there are legal obstacles to them shipping protonGE, or they would already make it available through Steam.

Everytime that somebody suggest to install a WMF patch with a link included, Kisak delete it because is a "legally problematic workaround"