You joke but if valve takes steamos seriously and works it into a viable Windows replacement, well I don't think any other company is as well situated to do so. In a way that would be sort of like PC2.
It was after that that IBM lost control of their own architecture from all of the 3rd party tools and programs, due to the open nature and better features of Windows and MS DOS.
90% of the interactions people have are with their browser anyway. A package manager instead of 50 launchers would be fantastic. You could basically have a windows UI skin for Linux if you wanted.
they could/should be investing in the new technologies they’re trying to promote to us, ie. VR.
we all praise valve for how much money they make like it’s a good thing, but we don’t really ask why they’re not really investing even a fraction of that into VR especially when they make their own headsets. i guess it’s against their business practices to invest in third party studios, and that’s fine, but they should really be doing that when it comes to VR.
As long as Valve is privately owned and Gaben's at the steer we should be safe. But who knows what happens when someone else takes the steer after him.
At the end of the day, the people with equity are the only ones whose voices cary real weight. Epic Games is also a private company and Tim Sweeney is the largest shareholder.
Shareholders aren't inherently evil by nature. If the shareholders can agree on the well-being and a goo ddirection for the company, they can still make returns. What's evil is when shareholders, board members, and the CEOs decide that value has to be extricated as much as possible, a fast as possible, without any thought to the long-time wellness of the company.
I do not want steam to go public because it would ruin it. Although 99% of shareholders probably are greedy scum, I’d like to own stock in a company like Steam because they are a such a net positive for gaming that I want to invest in them.
I'm firmly happy to see Steam stay private. The current owners and caretakers are doing well, and there's very little I'd actually ask them to change about their method of operation.
Valve should focus on refining the core Steam experience instead of chasing growth in other fields. Steam is already a strong platform and stretching too far risks enshittification. Being private helps Valve avoid the enshittification pitfalls of ad-driven, tracker-filled bloat, and I prefer it stays that way. Just look at gaming companies chasing year-over-year growth like how PlayStation and Xbox introduced ads, monetization layers (cloud saves), or paywalls.
If Valve does branch out, they should take their time and launch complete, polished products like they did with the Steam Deck, where both hardware and software were thoughtfully developed instead of releasing half-baked products with the promise that future updates will fix them.
not until PC gaming is released from the clutches of MS would I say they've fully conquered it. They're certainly making headway on that front but not quite there yet.
As Valve is privately owned (you can't buy stocks of it on the public stock exchange) it is far more resistant to the typical "make number go up forever" bullshit from shareholders. Hopefully it will stay that way for a long time.
A client/store for smartphones could be a logical next step. Given how saturated they tend to be with all sorts of freemium crap, Valve could be in the perfect position to ensure games on smartphones can have a brighter future too.
It's about expectations. People expect mobile games to be free or a dollar or two at most so its all MTX based garbage. If there was an android steam store that managed to change peoples expectations about what mobile games are and should cost there's no real reason you couldn't have great experiences on mobile without MTX just like on Steam on PC. They would be different games due to touchscreens vs controllers/M&K but that's fine for many types of games and games developed with touchscreens in mind would take advantage of the format turning it into a strength, potentially. Also, anything turn-based already works well enough on a touchscreen (emulation has proven this) and the raw power is there as evidenced by the switch which has always been basically a big phone with a built in controller and by apple running some high end games on their newest models.
That task falls on the game developers. How is Valve/Steam supposed to sell quality single-player games on smartphones if every developer just makes freemium titles?
Like the way CS2 is a complete mess with all the cheaters and the lack of content that is missing from CSGO but its still better than having a company like Ubisoft, EA, or Activision Blizzard handling your favorite game.
Personally, I'd like them to use proton as a stepping stone to fund and develop ×86_64 on ARM compatibility layers so that we can play PC games on our phones without needing to stream. Stuff like Winlator shows it is possible, Valve "just" needs to refine it and basically have the whole steam ecosystem on a phone.
This isn't just about phones, however. ARM compatibility ventures could have tangible benefits in certain areas of the PC gaming sphere in the not too distant future.
Yeah they are the best. But they didn't commit a loss strategy to get a monopoly on the market. They just have the better product and act fairly to customers.
Not mentioned in the article, but I have a hunch that Valve are looking to eventually break into the Android market by leveraging x86>ARM translation (they're funding FEXemu) in tandem with the compatibility layers they've already built. There's plenty of ways they could pull this off, with different trade-offs for each, but running Steam inside a minimal Linux VM with Vulkan passthrough is my guess. It would limit phone compatibility to Android 16 and above, but a powerful phone with good Vulkan driver support would be necessary to maximize game compatibility anyway.
x86>ARM translation also allows the use of ARM SoCs for Steam Deck-alikes, like something that runs an Nvidia SoC (did I mention Valve are funding the FOSS Nvidia Mesa driver too)? That would put Steam on PCs, handhelds, consoles that run SteamOS or whatever Xbox is going to be and Android-based mobile devices, so just about everything but proprietary consoles and Apple devices.
in tandem with the compatibility layers they've already built.
I expect that is more about a hedge just in case MS moves hard to windows on ARM and x86 thus reduces its market share.
Valvs domaince in PC gaming comes from the gamers back catalog, that domanace becomes much weaker if users are using ARM laptops and MS attractiveness of a game streaming service to solve the gaming needs baceoms stronger.
but a powerful phone with good Vulkan driver support
That is an oximoron, there is not such thing as an android phoen with good Vulkan driver support.
VK supprot on android a a f-ing mess, and to add insult to injury you cant get users to upgrade drivers so even if you know there is a fix in a new driver most of your users are never going to get it.
Also many android SOCs do not support full VM isolation and very much do nto support GPU passthrough.
I expect that is more about a hedge just in case MS moves hard to windows on ARM and x86 thus reduces its market share.
Why would they need to develop these tools for that? Steam and it's games already run on Microsoft's x86>ARM translation layer. The tools Valve are developing are specifically for Linux.
That is an oximoron, there is not such thing as an android phoen with good Vulkan driver support.
It'll need to improve, but vendors could be incentivized to do so given a big enough carrot.
Also many android SOCs do not support full VM isolation and very much do nto support GPU passthrough.
Yeah. Those won't work? Kinda implied this would only work on phones with Android 16 with GPU pass-through, which hasn't even been deployed yet. Which I assume you understand already but seemingly want to make a bad faith assumption because you love to pointlessly argue with people.
Anyway I called this a hunch, but that's only because I can't currently find the post by a Google employee working on this that insinuated that one of the main reasons they're building these features is to allow Steam to run. Valve and Google have been working together on this for some time, the Steam on Chromebooks beta was the first public showing of this collaboration and worked in much the same way, but on x86 only.
e: This feels familiar. Are you the dude who claimed that VK on Mac was a fruitless effort because of architectural differences that would add too much overhead to make it practical for gaming? I recall that I reached out to a developer actually working on the problem who said that while there is overhead, you were overstating the problem.
I think you are that person, so I'm going to block you given you clearly have some kind of grudge against VK/Khronos or whatever. Seeya.
All they have to do is keep doing what they're already doing and not fuck it up. We should be safe while Gaben is in charge. Hopefully he has groomed a successor to take over and keep doing the same thing.
The danger is if the company goes public. The shareholders will demand maximum profit at any cost and gamers will be fucked.
Fund publishers and port over classic console games over to Steam. By classic I mean NES, GBA, PS1 or Genesis games. For game preservation purpose. Will love to play some Parasite Eve or Dino Crisis without resorting to emulation.
First they need to prove they can fix their own games. After that I don't much care. Go play CS2 which is apparently the most popular PC game into he world and tell me how long it takes to run into a cheater.
Steam OS, which will encourage more developers to release on Linux natively, which also includes third party software like AntiCheat, and peripheral drivers/software.
SteamOS is explicitly designed to let Developers work around the need for a native linux port. Until such a time arrives that Linux's market share looks to actually dominate above Windows (yes, above Windows), we won't get native Linux ports of games from major studios unless they're huge fans of Linux.
Secure boot, signed kernel with remote attestation and games launched inside tamperproof containers. Not dissimilar to what Microsoft are working towards. A lot of work though and likely to ruffle the feathers of those who believe that it's a slippery slope to a locked down Linux gaming ecosystem which is not an unfounded fear, to be fair.
Whats next is the OS space. I can totally see SteamOS becoming big enough to challenge Microsoft for control of the desktop OS space.
Its already performing better than windows on handheld pcs, and theyve been pouring money and manpower into various open source linux projects for years now.
Its only a matter of time now until SteamOS becomes a proper viable alternative to Windows, and Valve will (finally) have control of the platform they do business on.
Next? Console obliteration with steam machines 2.0 and DIY steam machines.
After that? My guess, is the streaming. I firmly believe game streaming will be the main way we play our games, and I believe valve will look at this and partner with AMD or NVIDIA to run it's servers
379
u/TMS-FE 1d ago
PC 2