GPD talk about 'cooperating' with Valve for SteamOS on their devices

Quoting: MrowlLet's forget about GPD for a moment, if this is true, then the bigger story here is that Valve are reaching out to other Handheld Gaming PC companies to ship their devices with Steam OS. This would confirm that Valve doesn't consider these devices to be competition, as they help drive Steam OS adoption.

About a year ago, regarding Deck, Gabe Newell was quoted as saying, "And it’s clearly going to be establishing a product category that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are going to be able to participate in. And that’s going to have long-term benefits for us. So that’s sort of the frame in which we’re thinking about this."

They've always wanted competing systems because that is good for Steam.

Quoting: Nick

Quoting: MrowlLet's forget about GPD for a moment, if this is true, then the bigger story here is that Valve are reaching out to other Handheld Gaming PC companies to ship their devices with Steam OS. This would confirm that Valve doesn't consider these devices to be competition, as they help drive Steam OS adoption.

If you believe that Valve's actual goal with the Steam Deck was to get game developers to target Linux as a platform this makes complete sense and is very expected. Breaking into the hand-held PC market at such a low price-point to drive Steam games adoption would be the public reason to get the device in people's hands, but I think "internally" this is to get a Linux device in lots of people's hands and create the hype to convince game developers and publishers to target Linux. Same with Valve working on Proton to make getting games that targeted Windows to also work on Linux with very minimal effort (especially compared with porting those games to other the other consoles) is another factor in convincing game developers and publishers; this very much in line with a primary goal of getting games running on Linux.

I quote "internally" since Valve hasn't really been that secretive about getting games working on Linux for a long time. The Steam Machines may have been a public "failure", but I think Valve learned lots on that project and on the Steam Controller.

It is both, and more. The point of Steam Deck, Proton, SteamOS, Steam Machines, even Steam Controller, is to slowly but surely wrest control of the gaming platform from Microsoft. With SteamOS and Deck, Valve intends to grow linux market share and in addition create a new "product category" which they hope other manufacturers will join in. If Valve has a ready made OS to throw on other manufacturer's new machines, on which thousands of games will play, and they get a 30% cut from each sold, all the better.

I go as far to think Valve may offer manufacturers a percentage of their cut on game sales in order to enable them to sell their equipment at a lower price, effectively subsidizing it and making it more enticing to consumers than other's equipment that ships without SteamOS. It would be a clever way to keep growing the linux market share and their own market share.

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI go as far to think Valve may offer manufacturers a percentage of their cut on game sales in order to enable them to sell their equipment at a lower price, effectively subsidizing it and making it more enticing to consumers than other's equipment that ships without SteamOS. It would be a clever way to keep growing the linux market share and their own market share.

I don't think that's at all likely. They might bung a lump sum at a device that seems particularly interesting, though, if it's running Linux. Valve did help out Oculus in the early days.

While Valve will eventually make SteamOS publicly available (technically it already is, if you think HoloISO counts), I doubt Valve specifically reached out to GPD. As impressed as I am by SteamOS on the Deck, it's still a work in progress, and I doubt Valve would reach out to "collaborate" with a Chinese company about using something that remains unfinished.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThey sound like jerks. Whether they're telling the truth or not, I sure ain't gonna buy the thing.

I have a couple of GPD's portables (GPD MicroPC and GPD Win Max 2021, both running Xubuntu) and they make really nice hardware, but I've got to agree with this. After their earlier poor conduct, I'm unlikely to consider them again. Glad that they seem to have come round, though!

That said, though they only ever shipped it on crowdfunding backer machines and not retail ones, they have collaborated to get Ubuntu MATE running on some of their hardware in the past (if memory serves, this happened with at least the GPD MicroPC), so they have at least briefly interacted with the Linux side of things before.

I don't care what they said in the past - businesses aren't the only ones capable of looking the other way when it fits their agenda - people kept saying that the problem for Linux adoptions are the lack of devices pre-installed with them and this is yet another step in that ladder. I want to see more of them.

I think the controversy is mostly a language and culture barrier. They make nice hardware and are probably the ones most likely to make a decent SteamDeck competitor.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI go as far to think Valve may offer manufacturers a percentage of their cut on game sales in order to enable them to sell their equipment at a lower price, effectively subsidizing it and making it more enticing to consumers than other's equipment that ships without SteamOS. It would be a clever way to keep growing the linux market share and their own market share.

I don't think that's at all likely. They might bung a lump sum at a device that seems particularly interesting, though, if it's running Linux. Valve did help out Oculus in the early days.

I didn't necessarily mean a permanent percentage, it could be something limited, based on an agreement. Say a handheld manufacturing company agrees to ship with SteamOS, and sell their unit for $Y less than their original retail goal, because Valve negotiated to give them X% back from game sales on shipped units up until $Y is reimbursed. Could be 2%, could be 100%, that's up for negotiation.

The hardware manufacturer takes more risk than Valve here but they'll be able to sell more units since they'll be a lesser expense to consumers. Plus they'll be offering a more polished experiences and the prestige of partnership with Valve. Valve gets to grow their market share, leverage linux onto more machines, and what do they lose?

But maybe a lump sum is more palatable to both parties, I don't know. I think it's more exciting years for linux gaming ahead one way or another.

EDIT: a typo


Last edited by wit_as_a_riddle on 14 July 2022 at 3:18 pm UTC

As in like Valve would be paying people to put SteamOS on their devices? Yeah.

The price of these third party handhelds is quite high (some of them cost more then top end laptop) and I don't think the 6800U APU is worth it even thought its on par with steam deck (basically same).

Also sad how they HARD push windows on these devices, like are you paying $100 on top for the windows license? how that work? I don't think MS give out free copies to companies!

I look forward to RDNA3 Zen4 and above APU's, those will be real interesting.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 14 July 2022 at 11:42 pm UTC