Valve sent the developer of Lutris a Steam Deck to help development

Thats some goodwill for Valve. I use lutris to install GOG games.

Wow, that's.... Amazing, actually.

Hate to sound like a fanboy... But Valve is doing (almost) everything right.

They could have played it by the book, creating Proton for us and then using it to power the Steam Deck and reaping the monetary rewards, and it would have been enough, and certainly more than what many other, purely open source companies have done for Linux in their heyday.

But they actually are going all out and behaving like a real enthusiastic open source supporter, collaborating with independent open source developers, pushing out everything they develop as open source, and really investing in Linux instead of using it only as a convenient cash cow.

At this point I'm seriously considering changing my policy of buying my games on GOG first. I still prefer owning a game instead of renting it, but other than that there is nowadays zero incentive for me to not support Valve and at the same time enjoy the convenience of Proton (not that I don't, there's always Lutris, but still), all for the sake of a company that is stuck in the "free as in beer", Windows freeware mentality of the '00s and refuses to acknowledge that the world has moved on.

I know the article is about Valve and not GOG and I'm going a bit off-topic now, but damn, it's really sad how GOG has managed to go from Linux hero to zero in the span of a few years. And it's not even only about Linux, or about Valve rising up and taking the reins; it's more about GOG feeling like it's in a permanent maintenance mode - Galaxy 2.0, their forums, the community wishlist requests... there is ZERO investment in the platform.

This could all change in an instant if only there was somebody at the top willing and able to do it (like Gaben in Valve's case), but if you go by the sad state of affairs that was the Cyberpunk 2077 launch last year (yes, I'm treating GOG and CDPR as a single entity, let's not kid ourselves) I feel like they may be too far gone by this point. A shame, because other than the overpromised/half-baked features and the slew of bugs and performance issues that plagued it at launch, Cyberpunk 2077 as a game really, really rocks - just as GOG as a concept also really, really rocks. In both cases, it all reeks of extremely bad management.

Nice. I mean really if there were a 'integrate other game stores within the Deck interface so you get the benefits of the ease of use of Proton' would be slightly better, but if there is an easy way to flip between Lutris and Steam, that's also be great!

This kind of goes with the idea that Gabe just wants a great gaming hardware device, rather than 'we want a piece of hardware that is tied to Steam for more $$$.'

Was just listening to a video talking about SteamOS and mentioning that it isn't all open source. And then he went on to say that other vendors could potentially use it to make competitors. Well the most important parts ARE open source, pretty much it's just Steam itself that isn't. So yeah, Asus, Alienware, etc could all try and make a competing device. Good luck to them. But the thing he didn't point out that the Stem Deck has over others is the custom controls. All the competitors so far just have standard xbox controls. I'm hoping a Steam Controller 2 comes out and that becomes the standard controller for PC gaming, and the features from it become a standard thing. We've been stuck on the standard of a xbox 360 for WAY too long.

awesome...

What's Valve's endgame here?

Seems pretty obvious. Make the Steam Deck a more attractive device by improving the ability to play games on the device outside of Steam, of which Lutris is currently the best way to do so. Given Valve's comments about not wanting exclusives and the nannying behavior from Microsoft that urged them to invest in GNU/Linux in the first place, it seems they don't want to be hypocritical and instead make it easy for users to leave Valve's own service, Steam, if they need to. The hope, I'm sure, is that it will make the Steam Deck a more attractive device to continue using in the long run and users will opt to stay with it out of affection for the experience outside of Steam, too.

When Amazon manufacturers devices like the Amazon Swindle, Echo, Firestick, Astro, Ring and whatever else, their primary concern is also getting people hooked on the Amazon ecosystem. Ebooks aren't that different from games on Steam, as whether the book is DRM-encumbered is up to the individual publisher and no one else (and in fact Amazon recommends that you don't enable DRM in the KDP publishing screen). But where Amazon has made the decision to make their GNU/Linux devices limiting for end users to improve the customer's experience with Amazon products, Valve has decided to give users better options to explore what you can really do with the device, even if that means the customer leaves Steam for a time. It doesn't even have a locked bootloader. Helping to improve Lutris just means the user can have a better experience.

Either approach will work well for different people. iOS offers a stable and consistent experience because Apple controls everything, and I'm told that Android offers a more powerful and featureful experience because the user is provided more options.

What's Valve's endgame here?

Seems pretty obvious. Make the Steam Deck a more attractive device by improving the ability to play games on the device outside of Steam

Yeah, as games go it's really not an "end" thing. More of a "right now" game.

This kind of goes with the idea that Gabe just wants a great gaming hardware device, rather than 'we want a piece of hardware that is tied to Steam for more $$$.'

its a win win situation for him.
either other stores support linux/work on it flawless, or every steam deck owner will purchase more games on steam and less in other stores.

in the first case he get ride of windows dependence, in the second case he make tons of money.

. So yeah, Asus, Alienware, etc could all try and make a competing device

well, alienware already tried and burned thenselves in the fist steam machines atempt, didnt they?
not to mention they would have a huge disadvantage in terms of pricing, steam deck is most likely sold at loss to make money in the games.

another thing to consider, if others try to do their own machines, will they ship it with steamOS or windows?
steamOS is free, so they will have trouble to make their prices competitive if they dont use it, but valve has the diadvantage that they have to invest into improving proton/steamOS as well as testing all the games, while other vedors dont have to.

there is ZERO investment in the platform

they are in financial trouble afaik, but other than that, this make me think:
canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.
what valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

there is ZERO investment in the platform

canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, [then went and made all the wrong moves like developing software behind closed doors (Canonical was GNOME before GNOME was GNOME) and with CLAs forced on the contributors, trying to force their own solutions onto the community instead of using their resources to help the development of established open source technologies (e.g. Wayland & Flatpak), refusing to cooperate with the other big Linux companies/entities, forming rivalries and behaving like a douchebag, making agreements and contracts with the Devil (Mocrosoft) to monetize Ubuntu, trying to manhandle the Linux userspace by pushing the Canonical-controlled Snaps as if they owned Linux], failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.

FTFY :)

what valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

Alright, I'll freely admit that I only read the first part of your comment before hitting that quote button. So yeah, turns out I pretty much agree with you :P

Stopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....

there is ZERO investment in the platform

they are in financial trouble afaik, but other than that, this make me think:
canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.
what valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

I think that would indeed be a good idea - improvements to the GIMP, get it running nicely on wacom hardware (or the many clones that exist), make sure colour calibration and correction is handled properly, and tie it into where the art is going. That means maybe trying to make it work more seamlessly with Blender, for example, or plugins to directly export to Godot, Unity3D, Unreal Engine, etc.

I would definitely like to see improvements in developing games on GNU/Linux, and I think the potential is there for a distro flavour centered around that. All the tools exist, and the entire OS is well suited as a full development environment, so my opinion is that if a distro was tweaked to be out-of-the-box setup as a development platform (with accompanying support of course) then it might start to be appealing.

For example, setup that ties an editor (probably vscode, seems popular enough) into a gitlab or github account, helps to configure any ssh keys required, comes pre-installed with Blender, the GIMP, perhaps Ardour for audio mixing. Bundle in a setup for using Godot, along with some samples, and of course all the necessary development libraries, compilers, etc. Project management that ties all the assets together in a meaningful way and allows backups to be created. Maybe look into tying in some collaborative work (at the very least the ability to remote screen share with others). Anything to make it a seamless experience to setup and develop games on GNU/Linux, not just run games on GNU/Linux.

audio seems to be our weakes point/link in that chain.
we need the industry standard tools ported too, otherwise no musician will migrate and game development involve a lot of things including music.
i think wwise is already ported?

Maybe he just received his purchase? :)
Valve will also send me a unit that I ordered,eventually.

Maybe he just received his purchase? :)
Valve will also send me a unit that I ordered,eventually.

He's saying they sent it "...to help the development of Lutris" though.

Stopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....

Or just stop using Mangohud as it is not very essential to play games?

Stopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....

Or just stop using Mangohud as it is not very essential to play games?

Lutris doesn't seem to give me any trouble with MangoHud. I've used it for adaptive vsync with several games from Itch, GOG and Steam, configured so that the HUD is not visible unless I hit a key combo. And I don't actually hit that combo unless I'm trying to troubleshoot performance problems (so almost never). I find even a simple FPS counter way too distracting to have on screen when I'm trying to enjoy a game.

What's Valve's endgame here?

Money. And cooperate dominance, which gets more money.
By getting more people hooked into the Valve ecosystem, you make more money. Now they can charge at every step, from hardware purchase to every software purchase. Having access to other stores doesn't matter to them. They are betting it will lower the psychological cost of entry (bring all your games with you!) and that the default-store (Steam) will outcompete the others and generate more revenue. All on a device you already paid Valve to have.

It's nothing new and fairly typical for large cooperations. Expand by monetizing the whole experience. I think there's a proper name for it, but it's escaping me.