From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
All of the things required for games to run on Linux which valve support are fully open source and even existed before valve got involved.
Yes, which makes it even more puzzling that the competitors don’t even try to capitalize on the success of Steam Deck and publish their own store on Flathub, utilizing the very same FOSS technologies to make the games run.
It is the simple fact that linux is too low a market share, even with steam deck, to bother throwing money at it.
It is the simple fact that linux is too low a market share, even with steam deck
Three million Steam Decks sold.
to bother throwing money at it.
You act as if packaging existing open source software is such an insanely expensive task. It is not.
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Which is why steam invested in said FOSS projects to begin with, they can now forego having to pay licensing costs to microsoft. It is not like steam did this out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather for their own bottom line.
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Yes it absolutely is for a megacorp, for 0 return. Anybody who wants to run games on non-steam launchers can do so just fine, there is mostly only convenience to be gained. The megacorp needs to hire entire teams / departments that understand linux, that understand wine/proton and that can maintain and keep said packages up to date, it is realistically not simple or cheap in corporate hell.
The idea that there is money worthwhile for any store but steam in linux gaming is detached from reality. There is only money in it for steam only because of steam deck.
Because there’s no money in Linux. Valve can afford to target Linux for long term growth because they aren’t a public company that has to answer to investors every quarter. People mistake that for valve being pro-consumer, which they’re not.
Because there’s no money in Linux.
You should have a chat with the CEOs of Red Hat, Canonical, etc. about that. They surely will value your opinion.
People mistake that for valve being pro-consumer, which they’re not.
As a consumer, I don’t care about their motivation, I care about the results. Steam Deck is more comfortable to use than Windows handhelds.
