this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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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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[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 63 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's not Steam's fault if their competitors can't make a good product. Steam is still the only one with Linux support.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is nothing exclusive to steam with respect to Linux support. 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. They just threw money at the efforts and turbo charged it (which is great).

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe they're making more money behind the scenes from another corporation that perhaps pays for them not to do so? Exclusivity deals, etc. etc.?

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is the simple fact that linux is too low a market share, even with steam deck, to bother throwing money at it.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. 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.

  2. 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.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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~~ Valve.

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.

~~Steam~~ Valve 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.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fact that it can be done or even relatively easily means nothing. Whether teams are hired in-house or the task is outsourced does not matter, it still costs a decent sum of money and requires ongoing maintenance costs. You need additional devs, you need QA and customer support, you even need new features in your client. You can’t just wing it and bundle some packages, we are not talking hobby projects here.

Again steam did not do this to drive game sales, otherwise they'd have done this before they needed a deck solution. And this is because stand-alone the amount of game sales this would drive is nothing to major vendors because most linux gamers are willing to use heroic/lutris/bottles/wine whatever themselves or dualboot / vm passthrough to play what they want.

And you keep hinging on steams hardware sales figures but it is not like the praise or demand for steam deck comes from it running a linux base. It would be more accurate to say people love it despite that fact.

The praise steam is getting and what is driving steams device sales numbers comes almost in its entirety from the hardware platform being really good and the price being really low. And this comes back full circle - this is almost exclusively why steam invested in linux compatibility.

So no, steams hardware sales numbers don’t speak for themselves.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Again steam did not do this to drive game sales, otherwise they’d have done this before they needed a deck solution.

Proton exists far longer than Steam Deck. You don't know what you're talking about.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And steam has been trying to push linux based steam hardware before proton, so maybe you are out of your depth here?

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

so maybe you are out of your depth here?

No.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Lmao, you should go look into the origins of steams hardware line then and why steam invested in proton. Come back with something more than “ackchyually”

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Cybersteel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Companies focusing on long term growth is good for the consumers compared to the ones that only focuses on short term profits. Though why valve is able to do that and other companies like ea or abk can't is beyond me.

[–] Coasting0942@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Next CEO will literally just kill the program and pocket the money. Saying they need to focus on their core windows users, times are hard, “the economy”

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lol it is literally steam's fault and they intended to be this way from the very beginning. They intentionally cornered the market with HL2. It's incredible how people act like this just accidentally happened because valve made a supposedly good product.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Epic is worth 5 times as much as Valve and EGS is still fucking garbage years after it launched. If anything, Valve is the underdog here, yet Steam is objectively better than every other store. It's not their fault if competing products are trash. Valve is not responsible for UbiSoft being incapable of making software that works as advertised, of for Epic refusing to support Linux.

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You can't solve this problem with money. People don't want multiple game launchers. It's like asking why Apple hasn't cornered the desktop market when they're one of the largest companies in the world.

Valve 100% knew what they were doing with HL2.

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You are sure an old head, you saw Half-Life 2 bound to Steam once and never forgave it. People don't care that much about Half-Life 2 today, it's not that which is keeping them there. Meanwhile today Epic not only makes their in-house games exclusive but games from other publishers as well.

The gaming market is much more fickle than general computing, one generation Sony might be on top, and the next one is Microsoft or Nintendo.

Sure people don't want multiple game launchers, but a launcher that has their favorite game and does all that they need would be enough to get people to switch over. Epic got Fortnite and loads of players because of it. If their launcher did all that players wanted it to, maybe more people would make it their main platform. But Epic doesn't care to add features to it. If I want to read guides, or listen to game soundtracks, or mod games, I can do that without leaving Steam. But other than exclusivity, you know, the thing that you denounce Valve for having done, there is nothing that Epic does better than Steam or any other store on the market.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 1 points 1 year ago

Apple could easily eat into MS's pie by licensing macOS to OEMs.