The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

Indeed, it's hard to imagine a person (that I don't personally know) who I more want to ensure a very, very long and productive life than GabeN. He has done more for us Linux/open source people than nearly anyone else I can think of besides maybe the Linux kernel team, Red Hat, and Arch, Debian and other bigtime contributors.

That's unlikely to happen with Valve's ownership structure

Lets enjoy the moment while it lasts…

Interesting. I think the software is absolutely tasteless. For a long time it had to update "twice", asking you to restart steam 2 times in a row.

Headbangingly bad software and UI design. I've seen people from Fiverr create better UI in 2 hrs.

Yeah, GoG is my other go-to for games. I'm not a big fan of DRM, but I'm OK with DRM that respects me. Valve has never abused the DRM or let it get in my way. I can play offline, I can use multiple computers, I can share games with my family on their computers. All things considered it's pretty respectful of the reality of how people want to experience and share their content.

FWIW RimWorld on steam is DRM free. You can copy it and launch it without steam.

Do something more useful with your money like lighting it on a bonfire. That flop of a game isn't even worth pirating, that's why it came for free.

I know that some portion of profits from the game, even on Steam, will go to them because they funded and published it. But after the exclusivity expires I'd expect Remedy Entertainment will probably have the standard 70/30 split with valve and whatever Epic see from that sale will be a smaller percentage. I love Remedy and how they practice their craft and art.

Economic semantics aside, yes. I hate Epic so much I'll pay them again not to have to use it any longer.

> The Deck is so transformative that if Microsoft were serious about XBOX at all, the next XBOX would be a handheld.

Or they’d realize that the Deck is successful because it’s open and bring Steam to the Xbox.

The next Xbox is a handheld.

There are rumors about an Xbox handheld https://www.pcworld.com/article/2656008/leak-more-evidence-o...

I'd much rather a partnership than an acquisition. Valve is great, but open, repairable hardware is not their core mission. I think Framework needs to stay independent to maintain that.

But also, Valve is doing a decent job of it on their own already, with the steamdeck being quite repairable and upgradeable, especially in comparison to the competition. I'd rather there be a greater number of companies all independently demonstrating that repairable hardware can be a commercial success rather than the market takeaway being "oh that's just that weird Framework thing, it won't work for us".

Please no, all due props to Valve but they really can't count to 3.

Breaking the seal and demonstrating the capabilities, and getting it into the hands of consumers set the conditions for the Steam Deck's success. The Steam Deck exists because the Steam Machine existed, and it's in this context that the Steam Machine succeeded. You don't need overnight instant success for the program itself to succeed.

You also probably know this, but they don't really care about the console per se. What you buying the console means is that Nintendo gets to stand on the bridge between your console and game developers and demand 30% or whatever it is.

Also getting a Switch 2, if nothing else than for all the first-party Switch 1 games I haven't had legal access to.

> by being very very good to their users

For example, I still don't use Epic. And I've probably even paid on Steam for games that Epic gave away for free.

What's worrying is Steam has enough mass to preclude me from buying games on GoG to a point. Linux support, for one. Frictionless playing on a Deck if i choose to get one in the future, for two. Steam built in streaming, for three.

I bought GoG first for a couple years, but now I'm agnostic again. Esp with games that have Linux versions.

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Still, the only games you really own are those you've downloaded the crack for. Unless they're from GoG and DRM free.

And only if you have a good backup strategy :)

> If they were maintaining it through anticompetitive means, sure, but I've never seen anyone claim that they are

They did get sued for having "anticompetitive restraints on pricing" and "Federal Judge John C. Coughenour ruled that those claims were credible and that Steam gamers can claim compensation for Valve's illegal monopoly, but gamers, unlike developers, must file individual arbitrations to do so."

So, yes, it's been claimed and legally found that they have at least some anticompetitive practices, at least in the USA.

(Quoted text is from https://www.bucherlawfirm.com/steam-case-explained)

> [...] by being very very good to their users [...]

Helps that they don't have to be very very good to shareholders that don't give a fuck about games and just want money. I'm not really looking forward to find out what happens once Gabe passes on control of the company.

Yeah, when you wanna be evil, be evil to devs. They are stuck on two fronts and gamers are already pre-disposed to blame them for any problems anyway.

>If they were maintaining it through anticompetitive

Well we know they are now thanks to the lawsuits shedding light in the long known pricing parity clauses. Anyone asking "why isn't this game cheaper on Epic if take take a smaller cut" now has their answer. Without risking any dev's NDA.

Deadlock is absolutely not a Team Fortress spiritual successor, it has much much more in common with Dota 2 than TF2, and is really full of interesting features and polish for where it's at in its development.

In some ways, it's because valve caved and did the equivalent of tax cuts for the rich. You have revenue more than like, 25 million/yr as a publisher and you reduce your infamous 30% cut to 20%.

Im sure at thst point it's more worth considering.

And there are tons. Epic, EA, Ubi Play - they are pretty shitty.

Gog is the only one I would say is on par with Steam, but they have a different niche. Still, Valve is on top and not because they hinder the competition, but because the competition likes to shoot their feet. Often.

It's economies of scale. I strongly feel "just grab it on steam," which my friends say, is colloquially equivalent to "grab a band-aid".

Both Steam and Band-Aid are brand names.

Same with Microsoft in 90's

>How do you qualify them as a monopoly?

If you're a game dev, small or big it doesn't matter, and your game isn't on Steam, it might as well not exist. The sales and exposure of a game on Steam dwarf all other alternate PC storefronts. Even Ubisoft caved in and released their games on Steam.

Monopoly doesn't mean being the only game in town, you can have 100 other competitors, but if your competitors have <10% market share and you have >90% then you're basically a monopoly.

My main long term worry with Steam is that Gaben will die and then Valve will IPO.

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The library one amasses is a huge lock-in though, you’re downplaying it

I believe saints would implement some sort of distributed platform that others could interoperate with, by sharing the launcher’s list of games (e.g. have Epic games automatically appear on the list), share the list of friends and achievements between platforms, and so on.

Break the network effect, and incentivise things that work against it. Implement open protocols rather than walled gardens.

Allow other platforms to truly have a chance.

Saints sadly have no place in the capitalistic world we live in though. If they exist, they are quickly outcompeted.

I have kids, and have had a Nintendo switch since launch. I cannot even let them play Mario kart alone without them being prompted to visit the store to buy levels or more characters. My 4 year old cannot go a few minutes without ending up back on the home screen, stuck in the settings menus or in the controller reconfiguration menu, asking me to get them back into the game (because they pressed the Home button)

Nintendo has lost it's way in regards to sandboxing a child in a safe environment. I looked at the new console and all I could think about is "another button I have to teach the kids to avoid"

Call me old fashioned, but I have purchased Nintendo DS lites for each of them as that is the last handheld I could find that doesn't introduce a browser or storefront with internet connectivity.

> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.

My impression is that the general quality of games on the Switch (or Switch 2 or eShop) is sub par the quality of, e.g. Zelda. This is obviously because Zelda is a landmark title and it doesn't make sense to compare it with "the general quality" of games on Steam. It would make more sense to compare it with the quality of other landmark titles on Steam e.g. Baldur's Gate 3.

You can compare the general quality of games on Steam (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5") with the general quality of games on Switch (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5"), though I'm not sure it is that interesting of a comparison, since no one buys the "average" game but what they consider to be the best games on the platform.

I'd suspect that any attempt at an "objective" comparison (obviously, an impossible task) would land in favour of Steam simply because it has basically all of (core) gaming for most of history on it. Though obviously such an "objective" comparison would be meaningless for something like this where literally your subjective opinion should matter the most for your choice.

I would agree that the Switch's really big feature at this point is that it is where Nintendo games appear, and in that family-friendly-but-still-high-quality niche they are still worth chasing if you want them.

I don't know how you get from there to "games on steam are sub par quality" because at this point, everything else is on Steam, so calling the rest of the Steam library "sub par" is effectively calling the entire rest of the industry, from top to bottom, "sub par", and I'd have a hard time with that one. Nintendo has a pretty good track record but they're just one company. And not because I love AAA, I'm pretty much out of the AAA loop entirely at this point, but because it's literally everything else. In particular, the XBox exclusive and PS exclusives are, if not dead, on life support. PS may still have a sort of "Japanese game that doesn't appear on Steam" niche, but even that's getting eaten into; every major Atlus release lately is showing up on Steam as a first-class citizen, for instance.

> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.

What? Given that 99.9% of all games are published on Steam, what you are comparing is Zelda against gaming as a whole, not “the quality of games on steam”

Zelda is good, but it’s not better than literally all of gaming. If you are not a die hard Nintendo fan, I’d rather use Steam and enjoy saner pricing. There is always emulation for Nintendo.

A lot of games need ui redesign for hand held controllers. That’s often the biggest issue.

Nintendo games have consistently disappointed me with their lack of depth in their stories. Breath of the Wild had an amazing open world, but the characters came off as two-dimensional and the final boss was completely disappointing. (there's something especially uncanny about having a protagonist who doesn't utter a word, even if it's meant to help players self-insert) Mario Odyssey was even more pitiful in how it retread the same surface level cartoonish villainy of Bowser kidnapping the princess. Nintendo certainly makes games that are fun to play, but as an adult, I've come to expect more from art, and plenty of the games on Steam actually respect the capability of their audience to not turn off their brains.

> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.

An impossibly high bar given that the Zelda games are some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.

Totally. Steam store looks like a god damn aliexpress marketplace and is tasteless design.

The Store UI is disgusting and intrusive compared to all other competitors who actually have a decent overview and design..

You can collect gems, cards and other misleading virtual currencies.. Tons of misleading business practises and time-consuming bloatware distractions hidden behind that terrible UI.

Steam is first and foremost DRM. A game-prison. You don't own a single thing. Gamers have totally drunk the kool aid.. They forgot back when Steam was bloatware forced on Half-Life and Valve games and it was despised for a decade before they became complacent little worshippers.

It's a trickle down effect for sure. Where indies suffer the most. You have games getting away with $70 price tags, but your indie game you spent 2+ years on better no cost more than 15-20 a pop and better have a 50% launch discount. You really can't sustain yourself even as a true solo dev in western countries (let alone if you need to commission/hire an artist/composer).

And when I say "sustain in western countries" I'm talking the bog bottom line of "us federal minimum wage", coming down to approx. $15k/year. That's 1000 copies of a $15 game that is probably upped to 1800 copies after valve and other's cuts. Even that paltry marker is hard just becsuse the market is so saturated (and not in a good way).

It's only gonna get worse as a generation that is raised on mobile games and game pass settle in. The idea of spending money upfront from a game may be lost entirely.

>I also wonder whether Nintendo's pricing does a better job of maintaining the integrity of the experiences they want to offer players.

That was indeed an explicit strategy of Nintendo. Keep a premium brand and a price thst reflects that. Sales are rare to maintain this idea of an evergreen title that is always selling.

I don't have any personal experience running Switch games on the Steam Deck, but I do have experience trying to use the Switch Pro controllers. I think they may work fine for some people now, but I have never been able to have them have a stable wireless connection. But when the connection was established, the accelerometers worked fine. (I gave up and just bought some XBox controllers.)

I'm sure the emulators accept the Steam Deck's own accelerometer inputs for when you're in a non-detached mode, and tilting the screen to aim.

The super-mega-motion control games might not work, but part of what I mean by "works better" is that the Steam Deck can generally emulate with more power than the Switch itself, e.g., you can get a Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom setup with a better framerate than the switch itself, so, depends on what you want more. I don't have a lot of motion control games.

While not a Switch, I use Wiimotes with motion accelerometer + gyro (MotionPlus) with my Steam Deck & Dolphin just fine.

"Local multiplayer on Steam" has no referent, because Steam does not do local multiplayer at all. It's all up to the game. I've played plenty of games that way, Steam and the Steam Deck add no particular problem with it.

While I wouldn't pin this on Steam qua Steam as a program, it is a fair complaint about the ecosystem. I have some games that are as flexible as the Switch about being docked. I have some games that can be docked but can't handle any resolution changes. I have some games you just plain can't switch. I have some games that you can switch from using the physical Steam Deck controls to an Xbox controller seamlessly, complete with the in-game hint graphics changing to match the controller in use. I have some games that have to be restarted to pick up a new controller. At least a few months ago I had one particular combination of games that if I played them in sequence would somehow permanently render XBox controllers non-functional until I rebooted the Steam Deck, though that is certainly an exception.

The Switch does handle the Switch-ing in the Switch name better than the Steam Deck, and it is a structural advantage that Valve will have a hard time addressing in a practical way. That said, my family does use the Steam Deck as a de facto Switch 1.5, as a thing that is used fairly evenly between "docked" and "in hand", and it is functional enough to work, even if it is undeniably not as slick.