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.
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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.
Which is why steam invested in said FOSS projects to begin with
Steam is not a company, Valve is.
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.
I don’t care. My experience matters to me and Valve delivers on that experience, so I only buy games on Steam.
there is mostly only convenience to be gained.
I pay for convenience. If I wanted to jump through burning hoops, I pirate the games.
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.
No. Valve for the most part didn’t (Pierre-Loup Griffais is a notable exception) but I wouldn’t expect someone who can’t get Valve’s name right to know what outsourcing is.
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.
Through Flathub Epic, CD Project, etc. could get on Steam Decks and completely circumvent any royalties to Valve. Epic also have an affiliation with One-Netbook, the makers of OneXPlayer, though Tencent. An Epic Deck is only one phone call away.
Steam Deck sells well because of superior usability to Windows handhelds.
All this pedantic smugness and yet you still can’t present a half decent argument for why linux support matters for other vendors besides steam.
And even with steam the only reason they matter for them is that it drives hardware profits. Extra game sales are a bonus.
Steam could have sold 30 million decks and it still would hardly matter. You know why? Most people who own a deck also own a PC, and chances are that PC is running windows, the deck is likely not their main gaming platform. Furthermore, many people would be happier if it ran windows, as sad as that may be. Just throw a google search for “SteamOS frustrating”.
At the end of the day, linux support doesn’t matter much for any other vendor. Linux marketshare is small and within that small share an even smaller share are linux exclusive gamers who take a hard line when it comes to linux support and do it how you will, linux support costs money, the ROI isn’t big enough to consider, it is pocket change.
All this pedantic smugness and yet you still can’t present a half decent argument for why linux support matters for other vendors besides
steamValve.
I gave a reason why it barely requires any effort to bundle up existing FOSS solutions to make Windows games compatible, ie. expanding the potential user base by several millions. I know what I’m talking about because I package Linux software myself.
SteamValve could have sold 30 million decks and it still would hardly matter.
That’s 5 million more than Xbox Series X|S and Windows games would run with hardly any extra work required. That’s different from making native ports.
Just throw a google search for “SteamOS frustrating”.
I don’t care for annecdotal evidence. Sales numbers speak for themselves.
Learn the difference between Valve and Steam before trying to lecture anyone.
