I know this is extreme, but people buying these Xbox handhelds over a Steam Deck are directly harming the future of gaming on PC. It's time that the PC gaming ecosystem breaks free from its dependency on Windows. Proton and SteamOS, combined with the unpopular mess that is Windows 11 is the perfect opportunity to do so.
The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code. Once users are locked in, expect service fees to sharply rise just to use Windows. People should not fall for it. Leave Windows for crusty corporations that love their office 365 employee spy platform.
I love my Steam Deck, but it is really frustrating how many of the games i regularly play can't be played on it - Madden, EA FC, PUBG, all won't run even though the hardware is plenty to play them. The limitations of anti cheat on Linux might be insurmountable
Counter: it's the publisher's fault, not Linux. As you said, the hardware is perfectly capable, and the OS is capable, publishers just refuse to allow it without installing kernel level malware.
It's EA's fault that you're required to install a damn rootkit to play a game. It's not the fault of Linux for refusing to allow this. Microsoft shouldn't allow it either, and they will likely shut it down before too much longer.
EA wants to intentionally compromise your computer. Linux says they can't do that. EA doesn't want you to play on Linux.
I am choosing to let them install kernel level software because I want to be able to play multiplayer games without cheaters. There doesn't seem to be any other way that people have found to effectively block cheaters.
A user is in full control of their Linux install, which is great... unless I want to play them in a game and they decide to cheat.
It is a tradeoff, yes, but one I choose to make because being able to play cheater free multiplayer games is worth it to me.
I’d almost be ok with this if the kernel-level malware actually stopped cheaters but it doesn’t! Most (all?) modern multiplayer shooters that employ anti-cheats still are struggling with cheaters. So you get the worst of both worlds: you need to install a rootkit and still have to deal with cheaters. Why do gamers accept this abuse?
Kernel-level anti cheats are not perfect, but they decrease the amount of cheaters to the point where they stop being “common” and become “extremely rare”. An imperfect solution is much better than no solution.
Just play with your actual friends. If they start cheating you can go over and kick them in the nuts. Match making was a horrible development for gaming.
I play games at odd hours, when I get a chance between a busy life with being a father and working full time. I have a once a week game night with my friends, and we play games together online. However, most of the time I just want to play a few quick games. I don't want to try to organize with friends or do anything like that. I just want to play some people in fun competitive games.
Online matchmaking is what lets that be possible. I used to dream of having something like that, all the way back when I first started playing online games when you had to call your friend, then tell your family not to pick up the phone because it was your friend calling your modem, then lose connection when your sister tried to make a call. I remember having to set up a code with my friend; if the phone rang twice and then hung up, that means the next call would be me on a voice call wanting to talk, otherwise let the modem answer it.
I used to dream about being able to play people at any hour of the day, and now it is possible. It is an amazing invention.
My favorite part about playing Madden and FIFA/FC is that I can login, hit play online, and within 30 seconds I am playing against someone who is pretty close to my skill level.
That is impossible with custom servers. I have played MANY games that are based around custom servers (and still play some today), and there are many great qualities with those types of games. However, you lose that 'find a good game in under a minute' quality.
I am older now, and I don't want to spend the time to find and join custom servers. I don't want to have to talk to people or deal with server admins or get caught up in drama that a community like that can have. I just want to play competitive, fair games.
> It's not the fault of Linux for refusing to allow this.
Linux doesn't refuse anything, it's free and open source software. If publishers want to offer anti-cheat software developed for Linux, it will run. In fact, many games do have anti-cheat, like Insurgency: Sandstorm, which uses EAC through Proton.
Publishers can even develop invasive kernel-level anti-cheat just like they do for Windows. They don't because it's a small portion of the market currently, and I assume they consider it not worth the investment as of now. To what extent existing Linux users would willingly allow such software to run is also an open question.
There's also the point that even invasive kernel level anti-cheat on Windows with requirements for secure boot continues to be inadequate to stop cheaters in competitive online games.
Anti cheats basically don't work on Linux at all. One of the primary jobs of anti cheat software is to monitor the OS environment and detect people trying to inject code into the game process or read the game process's memory. On Windows kernel access is gate kept by Microsoft and restricts cheat software's options for how to read memory and inject code. The standard Win32 APIs are monitored and the cheats need exploitable kernel drivers to get in.
On Linux this can't work because a cheater can just build their own kernel with all the protections disabled or with intentional vulnerabilities. From what I've heard, statistics for games running anti cheats on Linux alongside Windows find the vast majority of cheaters on Linux.
Given this situation I think it's entirely reasonable to not support Linux if you're handing cheaters the game on a silver platter.
Assuming the Anti-Cheat won't be GPL licensed (which would probably make it useless), the Linux kernel does indeed refuse to cooperate: https://lwn.net/Articles/939842/
Sure, there are technical solution around this, but they are legally questionable.
Would it be technically possible for these anti-cheat companies to make third party proprietary kernel modules I wonder, a bit like Nvidia does with their driver for example, and then require that to be installed and loaded to play? Although with the user able to make custom kernels that'd be a bit of a nightmare. Probably would have to be only supported with specific distro's kernels or something.
I agree with you and I wouldn't want to install that myself but just something I've thought about.
Competitive online gaming is the least strong part of the steam deck. But on the flip side it’s way better for local multi player. You can pack it in your bag with some controllers and plug it in to a friends TV easily.
Idk about that. The selection is pretty huge. Sonic racing just came out with 4 player local multi player, stardew valley has it, the majority of Nintendo games. Almost the majority of games designed for a TV and controller have local multiplayer. And there’s software you can use to split screen most games which don’t have it by just running two instances of the game.
Nintendo games generally have it but not so much the actual major console games. I believe the last local multiplayer fps on xbox platform was halo mcc for example.
I have been working in the industry now for 11 years, and this defeatism surrounding anticheat is frustrating. Especially when Epics anticheat which used to be free to use, supports linux.
What does defeatism mean here? As opposed to lobbying our representatives to make DRM (of which anticheat is a subset) or product tying restrictions (e.g. artificially requiring something to run on Windows/Xbox or Google Android or a Switch when a generic computer is perfectly capable of running it) illegal or something?
kernel level anticheat is a chicken and egg problem.
No game developers of seriously looking at enabling even in the cases where it is extremely easy and trivial to enable, because the additional support button isn’t considered worth it for the number of users as they might get.
so when I say it’s defeatist, what I mean is all you have to do is vote with your wallet enough and the games will follow. I know this an absolute fact because I’ve been in this conversation many times.
Kernel-level DRM isn't a chicken/egg problem; it's completely at odds with people who are choosing to run an OS that obeys them instead of some random third party like Microsoft/Google/Apple on hardware they own. Voting with their wallet is precisely what the other user said they do.
In fact, it’s one I chose at home (option 3) because I was unwilling to compromise my computing environment just so I could browse the internet and program on the same device I play games with.
If publishers were comfortable developing for Linux, maybe that would change, I don’t think it has to be so binary as “either you have total control or none at all”, especially since there’s so many non-free components to your system already and multiplayer games are a luxury product (and thus; totally optional).
Option 3 was already stated: don't buy software that requires a DRM rootkit. Vote against it with your wallet.
Battlefield 6 requires a rootkit? Battlefield 1942 and 2 are still fun and don't. I've had only Linux on my home computers for like a decade now, and Windows has since then become unusable so I'm not going back. Why would I buy software that won't run?
Your wallet has next to no voting power as is, in part due to self inflicted injuries making gnu/linux unviable for game development. Or any app development for that matter.
Sounds good, but gamers never vote with their wallets and the publishers know this. They complain and moan about everything but when the next year’s Madden or FIFA comes out, they forget their complaints and inevitably fork over their money.
Is it defeatism? I don’t game on Linux and generally like Windows, but from a principle and security perspective I’d preferably check a box on Windows to disallow any kernel-level anticheat from installing, and avoid any such games.
That’s fine, then those games are not available to you.
I’ll be honest, no matter how unpopular it is I’m really sorry, but those kind of solutions genuinely are the only way. I’ve said it before on HN, but we really do try everything. And not having anything leads to some of the worst experiences possible.
If you genuinely have a better solution, then you are more than welcome to enter the industry and make a significant amount of money.
Simple solution that makes everyone happy: make it optional. Anticheat was optional in pretty much every 00s game that had it, and even in the servers that had it disabled, cheating was still rarely an issue. Diablo 2 even let you still bring your single player characters that you could obviously cheat with (which everyone knew from Diablo 1) onto Open Battle.net. Make the Internet optional like it used to be while you're at it with LAN/direct IP support so you can stick to friends only and keep your purchase forever.
Oh but then you can't make all of your revenue on stuff like gambling for textures that anyone could just mod in like they used to.
> That’s fine, then those games are not available to you.
See, this is my problem. I have no interest in online multiplayer, so anti-cheat is purely of negative value to me.
I understand the problem with cheaters, and if I did play multiplayer games, I'd want every effort taken to eliminate cheating.
I'd be perfectly happy if I could uncheck the "anti-cheat and online capabilities" checkbox in the game installer (or have it default unchecked when the OS indicates that anticheat isn't supported), and I could go on my way and play my single player game.
IMO that's a better solution technically, and for me personally, but I don't know that there's much money to be made in sales to single-player-only non-microtransaction-consuming gamers who were otherwise forgoing games.
I have been playing Madden and FIFA/FC for 30 years now. I love them. I love being able to play competitively against other people without having cheaters in every game.
Those two desires (to play Madden and FIFA/FC and play online without cheaters) requires that I not simply refuse to buy those games.
That's highly debatable. How do you know for certain they aren't using any undetectable cheats (like a driver-level cheat, say an aim assist) or a hardware level cheat? Cheating aside, how do you know that they aren't better than you simply because they've got better hardware? How do you get satisfaction from playing such games when there's so many variables that can affect gameplay that goes beyond human skill that you can't do anything about?
Cheating is often very obvious, even when the player is on your team. It’s when multiple improbable, too-perfect situations happen for the cheater in the same game.
But that’s beside the point. Gaming companies who produce competitive online games know that the competitive scene will die very quickly if there is rampant, unaddressed cheating. This is why kernel-level anticheat exists. When you have a free to play game banking on the competitive scene & selling cosmetics, cheating is an existential threat to your entire business model, and players demand you do something about it.
Valorant players BY FAR don’t care about kernel-level anticheat, but do care about cheaters getting detected and banned. People put a lot of time into ranked matches, and enjoy the game a lot.
Does riot have other options? Sure, and it probably uses a lot of tools beyond the kernel-level system to help with it. But there is zero business incentive for them to migrate to a different anti-cheat system.
It does not take much to upset your competitive players, because they spend so much time in your game system. And they’re the ones paying for season passes & cosmetics keeping the game alive. There is a lot of risk that companies have no business reason to tackle.
This doesn’t matter for plenty of games, sure, but for people who care about doing well and who enjoy being able to be ranked (and work toward being better) in a fair system, anti-cheat is an important part of the puzzle.
The HN crowd is asking people to prioritize something they don’t care about (how anticheat works) over something they already enjoy and put a lot of time into. That’s not how this works.
It’s going to take a company seeing the value of a Linux market to invest in better anti-cheat solutions for Linux, or investing completely into server-side tech.
If a player's hardware improves their skill, they will get a higher skill ranking and will play against people who match their skill. All of the things (hardware, skill, network, etc) go into generating the person's skill level. That is fine.
Actual cheats are different because it fundamentally changes the game.
Sure, but on the margin you can still change your behaviour.
Ie for games that previously you were on the fence about, a look at whether they play or do not play well on the Steam Deck or Linux in general can push you over the fence (on way or another).
Like I said, I have a lot of games that I love playing on the Steam Deck. I am often looking for games that run well on Steam Deck.
I am not sure what behavior on the margins I can change that would change the situation. My favorite games can't be played on Steam Deck. Like I said, I have been playing these games for 30 years. I am not about to change my favorite games just so I can make a point about the importance of Steam Deck compatibility. That won't change anything other than I won't be able to play my favorite games anymore.
Honestly, I am happy that they have added proper PC support along with cross platform play at all. Most sports games focus almost exclusively on consoles, and most of the player base play on consoles. Before they added cross platform gameplay a few years ago, it was really hard to find games when I would try to play online. Now it is easy.
The reason they are able to offer cross platform support is because of the anti-cheat.
Take. for example, the NBA2k series, which I used to play a lot; the anti-cheat for PC is awful. They don't allow cross platform play because of that, so games are hard to find and every few games you play a game against a guy who is 12 feet tall and hits every 3 pointer from any spot on the court. It was so bad I stopped playing entirely. For years I settled on playing on XBOX, but i eventually got annoyed enough i stopped buying the game completely.
> My favorite games can't be played on Steam Deck. Like I said, I have been playing these games for 30 years. I am not about to change my favorite games just so I can make a point about the importance of Steam Deck compatibility. That won't change anything other than I won't be able to play my favorite games anymore.
Oh, I wasn't suggesting you change your favourite games or how you play them.
But I was assuming you are playing more than just your three favourite games over and over again?
> For years I settled on playing on XBOX, but i eventually got annoyed enough i stopped buying the game completely.
This is an example where you changed your behaviour on the margin.
Or another example: if one cupcake tastes massively better to you than another, you are going to buy that. But if there are two drinks that could go about equally well with your cupcake (Pepsi and Coke, say) and you are fairly indifferent between them otherwise, you'll probably going to have a look at the price or what's more convenient etc.
As an avid gamer for 35+ years, I have played a ton of PvP both locally and online.
One of those experiences can't replace the other.
I am married with two young children. All of my video game time comes in the hour or two after they go to bed and before I go to bed. I don't have friends around at that time, yet I still want to get some good multiplayer gaming in.
Online matchmaking is amazing these days. You are able to match up against people of about your skill level at any time of day. That experience is magical, compared to the matchmaking from 25 years ago where you would try to find a random lobby, and the players might be amazing or terrible.
For most online games, especially ones without chat, playing against sufficiently good bots is better than online. You don’t have to worry about cheating, connection issues, can quit mid game without issue, etc.
That is fine if you feel that way, but I really don't. I get much more satisfaction playing against real people. It just doesn't get my competitive juices flowing in the same way when I play against bots. There is no psychological aspect when you play against bots.
Basically. It kinda sucks. New BF6 actually seems good for once ( since Bad Company mebbe ). And Tarkov seemed to be really up my alley. But.. kernel drm. Hard pass. Unfortunately ( or fortunately depending on your individual interpretation ), it really is up to us.
As for the kids? Well, I suppose they gotta get their hand burned somehow.
Bought GTA IV only to find out the Rockstar Launcher got broken on Linux about a month before I purchased it. Downloaded all twenty gigs of the game, can’t use a penny’s worth due to the broken Rockstar Launcher.
I wonder how League of Legends (LoL) manages, given it didn't rely on kernel-level anti-cheat when I was playing. Granted, you'd have to report one or two players per week; but that was quite a rare thing and mostly it was obvious levelling bots. Clearly they manage without root kit-level hacks.
I use cinema glassses (rayneo S3). absolute game changer. I can play games on massive virtual screen in 1080p. and best of all, it fits in the bag alongside my steamdeck.
Same here - I did consider buying a steam deck, then after experimenting with GeForce now on a small screen realized that pc game designers assumed larger screens. This is ok, but this makes many games unplayable on a small screen unless you have some kind of cyber vision. So no steam deck, even though every now and then I want to buy one.
Valve wont's give anti-cheat tools root access, and Microsoft will, but after the CrowdStrike fiasco, there's rumors that Microsoft will limit root access to monitoring tools, so anti-cheat engines on Windows might lose their advantage.
The tools for owning your Linux OS are strong enough that anti-cheat is pointless because they're just broken all the time and nobody wants a linux box they can't control at all.
I think most people who buy Steam Decks don’t care whatsoever about Linux and would be perfectly fine with not having control over it as long as all their games worked.
I think Steam Decks wouldn't ever have existed without Linux enthusiasts as early adopters of Steam Decks and the few previous iterations of Steam + Linux either playing games on their own machines or on the previous iteration of a Steam Linux computer. If at any point it was all tied up with DRM and that complete loss of control required for anti-cheat it would have just died and not be seen again.
The only way it changes course is an enormous rug pull that removes most of the differentiation between PC and Console gaming and you end up with Steam as a dying product unable to compete with either other modes of PC gaming or the dominant console players. (Sadly that's basically what I expect when gaben retires)
The differentiation of the Steam Deck is the game ecosystem, ability to play your existing PC game library on the go, and low game costs compared to consoles during the frequent sales.
I don't think Linux is a differentiator for the Steam Deck. It's obviously essential as a technical foundation though, similar to how it’s essential to Android phones.
But locking it down with DRM won't affect gamer interest in the platform as long as the games are still cheap, plentiful, and run well.
I can imagine a world where you still have full control most of the time, but when you open a multi player game the system reboots on a clean / verified OS image. Then when you quit it can reboot in to the OS with all of your mods and customisation on.
The anti-cheats that the competitive games use rely on being able to trust that the checks they add to the kernel can't be overridden. It relies on Windows not being able to be modified to lie about that.
It's possible to change windows, just a lot harder. Unless you are talking about secure boot, but that's available to Linux just as much as to Windows.
It is about secure boot and TPM. Linux is unable to 'lie' well enough to emulate windows because it can't cryptographically verify that it is a legit windows install.
The anti cheat developers rely on Microsoft asserting that other cheats aren't loaded prior to the anti-cheat in the kernel. There is no such entity in Linux to attest that a particular linux install is not modified to load the cheats into the kernel before the anti-cheat.
Now, such an entity could be created, and a linux distro released that is signed by that entity, and then the anti-cheat could work on that distro. That would require you to only use that particular distro, though, and you would be limited in how you could change the kernel.
So far, there has not been the push needed to make that happen.
It would be virtually impossible to completely disguise the fact that you are on Linux. It’s hard enough to trick software in to thinking it’s not running in a VM.
> The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code
Defender already forces binaries to be signed by developers that spent money on certs from Microsoft-certified CAs.
Pull those certs, or don't use them at all, and 99.999% of users will not figure out how to run what they want, because the OS will trick them into thinking they're about to get owned by Russian hackers for just thinking about running something that wasn't blessed by Microsoft.
I keep telling folks that Proton was a mistake and SteamDeck will suffer the same fate as netbooks.
FOSS folks don't get that the gammer culture does not overlap with FOSS, everyone is cool with NDAs and IP, it is all about the experience in that realm.
The call to migrate in droves to Linux has been happening since a unpopular Windows version comes out, since Windows XP, and still Valve had to come up with Proton, as even the game studios targeting Android/Linux with the NDK don't care about GNU/Linux.
XBox console is in a mess currently, however lets not forget XBox the business unit is part of Microsoft Games Studios, and Microsoft is one of the major publishers due to the amount of game studios that they own, beyond XBox.
I hear you, but at the same time, you can't deny the amount of improvements the Linux ecosystem has seen due to Valve's involvement: tons of AMD-related improvements in the kernel, tons of mesa/radeon improvements, massive improvements in KDE, improvements to Arch etc. Not to mention lots of other contributors riding the wave and contributing things like drivers for gamepads and other bits, making power user tools like LACT/OCCT etc.
Linux hardware compatibility has never been as good, and I suspect a lot of it is due to so many gamers trying Linux on a myriad of systems and submitting bug reports. I've also seen some folks in some communities go from complete Linux noobs to actually making FOSS software. We've also seen some very innovative distros being born as a result of all this hype (Bazzite, the uBlue family, CachyOS etc). So you can't deny the massive impact Valve has had on the overall ecosystem, and personally I think that's a good thing - even if Proton doesn't exactly sit well with FOSS ideals.
You keep bringing up Proton but you forget that Proton is just Wine + a couple of other existing FOSS projects + some of Valve's patches. Wine is really what makes the magic happen, and Wine existed as far back as 1993, and there was barely a Linux community back then. So you can't really blame the community for Proton, it's just a natural result of things. Even before Proton came along, there were similar projects to make Wine gaming easier, such as PlayOnLinux, CrossOver etc. So Proton is nothing new, its just a natural evolution of an ecosystem that's been evolving over three decades.
Because that is ultimately what makes Windows games run on Linux, and represents Valve's failure to change the culture of game studios to consider GNU/Linux worth targeting, even when they have Android/NDK builds that they could easily use as starting point.
Indeed nothing is new, rebooting the Linux Desktop every couple of years, and I still cannot buy a GNU/Linux powered desktop at the shopping mall, with 100% everything working, unless it comes packaged on a VM running on top of macOS or Windows.
And when a problem is found in sleep modes, graphics, audio, fingerprint reader or whatever, there is always that person replying like being in some Linux forum powered by phpBB during the early 2000's.
Windows games work on Linux, until Microsoft decides it is time to do something about it, ROG XBox Ally is only the first step, and lets not forget current Valve's management won't live forever.
So it remains to be seen if the new owners when it comes to be, will be that willing to keep the same culture.
> Because that is ultimately what makes Windows games run on Linux, and represents Valve's failure to change the culture of game studios to consider GNU/Linux worth targeting
Unfortunately, eliminating the diversity of the Linux ecosystem would also be eliminating one of its strengths. Proton covers up that diversity, making it easier for game developers to target Linux (whether they do so intentionally or incidentally). While a few Linux gamers may be bothered by the Windows API providing that abstraction layer, I doubt that many are.
> I still cannot buy a GNU/Linux powered desktop at the shopping mall, with 100% everything working
If you tried installing Windows from official media on one of those shopping mall computers, you would likely find that significant pieces of hardware would not work. Sometimes, it is difficult to proceed through the install process due to this. (I have a laptop where neither the trackpad nor touch screen will work until drivers are installed, so you have to navigate through the installer with a keyboard or attach a mouse). Other times, it is theoretically impossible to complete the install process unless drivers are installed during the installation process or you temporarily add supported hardware to the machine. (Windows does not support the network adapter out of the box on the aforementioned laptop, so you theoretically get stuck at the network connection screen of the OOBE.) Do the same with Linux, and the only unsupported piece of hardware out of the box is the fingerprint reader. Heck, even the printer and scanner works out of the box. I haven't managed to get the printer or scanner working consistently under Windows even with the vendor's software installed. It's also worth mentioning that none of this hardware is obscure. (Lenovo Yoga laptop, Epson printer.)
I realize that this is misinterpreting your point, that you can walk into a store and buy a Windows laptop and you cannot do the same with Linux. At least from a major retailer. Yes, that is a valid point. On the other hand, the infrastructure is already in place. The thing that is missing is consumer demand.
> lets not forget current Valve's management won't live forever
I'm not even sure how that's relevant here. You could easily argue the same thing about Microsoft. If anything, the situation for Microsoft is worse since Linux, WINE, etc. isn't controlled by a single entity. Valve is, so the convenience of Steam could vanish. On the other hand, there are open source projects that aim to create Windows game launchers that are not tied to Valve.
They've sold ~8 million units. Well past the technical argument and the devs who can't be told, that's 8 million Windows licenses they haven't bought. I thin they've more than paid off the salaries of the few people they've hired to make Proton a reality.
Not sure I see your comparison to Netbooks; they failed because ultra-cheap laptops are inherently bad. You cut that many corners, you lose quality. They lost out to tablets, better phones, and Chromebooks, each doing something a netbook did but better. Steam Decks are a format that will persist.
I completely agree. I pre-ordered the Steam Deck without knowing if I would actually use it, telling myself that at least I was supporting gaming on SteamOS by providing financial support. I boycott all Windows-based alternatives, even if they are better, because I refuse to use a product sold with Windows.
Steam is doing the same thing as Microsoft, between DRM-locking everything so you don't own it, and gatekeeping what titles are actually allowed in their store. They're both locking you into their vision of the future.
DRM is optional on Steam. The dev can opt to not include it, and the default Steam DRM is trivially bypassed anyway.
Valve barely does any gatekeeping that isn't caused by outside pressure, i.e. Visa and Mastercard in the latest instance, which they're atleast trying to fight back against, from what I can tell.
Valve does some important gatekeeping that has a real impact:
There's (almost?) no ads and microtransactions in Steam games. If you look at mobile games or browser games, you can see that developers would put them in, if they could.
Fair point! Although that's a gate I very much like.
I don't think Steam has any complete blockers to microtransactions, given that there are games that do have it, although I don't think they're as predatory about it as mobile games are. Maybe that's down to cultural differences between PC and mobile, or maybe there's more too it.
Ads standing in the way of gameplay are indeed banned,[1] although there are ways around that I'm sure if devs really wanted to be knobheads about it, but people on PC tend to be more loud about ads in their games than on mobile.[2]
There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.
Valve has been gatekeeping long before this year's Visa and Mastercard crackdowns. It's been an ongoing problem since at least 2018. They'll flunk a title at review without telling the developer what they did wrong, or even allowing them to resubmit with adjustments. I don't see any sign of them fighting.
> There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.
For Steam's own DRM I do believe that to be true, but mostly not a problem, since Steam's DRM is just there so that the DRM checkbox is ticked. Any user can bypass it if they care, and the ones who do go to GOG for their games.
For DRM beyond that, this isn't true. Denuvo and Securom is listed on store pages for games that have it, and the same goes for kernel-level anti-cheat.
PCGamingWiki has a good list outside of that,[1] but from what I can tell, Steam has a warning about DRM on all the store pages listed there.
> I don't see any sign of them fighting.
Quoting this article:[2]
> Apart from that, both Valve and Itch.io explicitly stated that payment processors are the reason games were deindexed or removed from sale entirely.
Given that Visa and Mastercard some pretty big giants, I'd say they're making a fight of what they can. Valve's hardly to blame. They're just in a bad situation. Blame Collective Shout for starting the ruckus.
No they are not. You can install the Epic store and others right on a Steam deck and use it. You can start any binary you wish, direct from the steam launcher. You can use the steam deck as a full-on desktop if you wished.
If Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus, what happens when his estate sells majority control to pay the inheritance and estate taxes?
With federal taxes of 40% over $15 million, there's no way his estate maintains majority control, no matter Gabe's good intentions. After that, we can look forward to Microsoft Steam. Or, if the FTC is annoyed, Amazon Steam.
C. And the estate may just want to sell more Steam shares to keep whatever they are intact
D. Even if by some miracle Gabe Newell still owns the required ~85% of Steam to barely squeak by on federal estate taxes ($16B presumed valuation = ~$5.5 billion tax bill if he owned 85%, leaving him with ~51% after payment), who is taking the reins?
- edits - additional points -
E. I forgot Gabe Newell lives in Seattle. If Washington is his actual residence, then Washington has an additional 35% tax rate on high-value estates. Which makes it completely impossible even with 100% ownership.
F. Why would his estate even bother trying to salvage Gabe's vision at this point, when they're left with an illiquid minority stake? A very possible scenario is to sell all shares they possess, in one transaction. The possibility of majority control could inflate the share price dramatically over a piecemeal sale.
G. In which case, within 9 months of Gabe's death (IRS deadline), there is a high likelihood there will be an estate auction of all shares to any willing purchaser (highest value per share extracted + tax bill paid). And that purchaser will then have immediate intent to cash in.
H. Betting on Steam then, promoting them as better than other companies, is completely dependent on Gabe's actuarial tables. Not to be harsh but just honest, considering Gabe's decades of obesity before getting to a healthier place now, they're probably worse than average, as long-term obesity has persistent irrevocable effects. (This sounds harsh, but actuarial analysis is directly used in insurance and estate planning; you can be assured every major company's CEO has been assessed.)
I’d have to assume that a man of his wealth has an army of accountants and attorneys working for him and they have his assets sufficiently shielded from taxes through webs of trusts, shell companies, charitable foundations and so on.
Just speaking from things we can see, he owns yachts, a yacht building company, and a racing team. He also quite likely has a large investment portfolio like every other billionaire on the planet.
Let's say all those things added up to even $2B, as a hypothetical.
That means there's a $800M tax bill to keep those assets. If the estate has already lost majority control of Steam regardless; there's no real reason to not hand over even more of Steam, to keep hold of those other assets.
> It's time that the PC gaming ecosystem breaks free from its dependency on Windows. Proton and SteamOS, combined with the unpopular mess that is Windows 11 is the perfect opportunity to do so.
Looking at the Deck's popularity, the PC gaming ecosystem alreadyd did break free.
The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code. Once users are locked in, expect service fees to sharply rise just to use Windows. People should not fall for it. Leave Windows for crusty corporations that love their office 365 employee spy platform.