this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I love that all it takes to beat Microsoft is to make an actual, quality product and one that respects the customer. Seems these huge corporations are so bloated and disconnected that they're actually incapable of making anything worth a damn anymore
All it takes to beat Microsoft is to have consistently pumped money and developer time into Linux, wine, mesa, radv, vkd3d, dxvk (each significant in their own right) plus an OS or two for over 10 years now. It's really easy!
I also find it hilarious when Asus comes along with the Ally trying to claim a piece of the pie, only to fry their own SDs with their flawed design. Later Valve R&D comes out with the refined OLED model effectively nullifing any lead the Ally had.
This all while Proton continues to free gaming from windows and open it up to more OSes and hardware for the benefit of all with contributions upstream to WINE.
Valve even salvaged everything they learned from the original SteamOS, Steam Link, and controller, then revived it in the Deck.
i mean i wouldnt say the gen 1 steamdecks are fully cleared. the gen 1 steam deck is sensitive to the power consumption of the ssd you put in, which isnt a problem with the new oled version. Valve hasnt officially on documentation put out the hardware requirements of the SSD as of yet.
there have been users who have fried their ssd power circuitry over time because of that mishandling.
Remember that a monopoly is a monopoly and unless it's a State corporation, you've got no say in the way it's run.
Valve could turn around and start implementing bullshit and they would be in a position that you would pretty much have no choice but to give up on the ease of access to all your games if you decided not to do business with them anymore or they could decide to ban you for one reason or another and you would lose everything you purchased from them.
They are, you don't need 100% of a market to be considered a monopoly, just a big enough share that you're considered to be the default option.
Valve are actually getting sued for having anti competitive provisions in their contracts preventing devs from selling their games for less on other stores.
I also doubt you wouldn't complain about Valve if they made you want to drop the service, they don't necessarily need to ban you for you to regret your decision to only buy from them, it could simply be a scandal about internal issues or them introducing features your disagree with to increase their profits (which they could do considering their position in the market).
And if all my eggs get destroyed after putting them all in one basket, I'm not gonna sit around blaming the company for being a company, I shoulda bought non-DRM from GOG.It was in reply to that part.
You are both correct, and way off the mark in what you've said.
Valve is mostly a store platform for the last like 15 years. They're also privately owned, so no appeasing share holders and releasing all of their data and everything else that goes with going public, so they have a lot of freedom to do what they want, but they still do things that make them money, and that GabeN likes.
Valve takes a 30% cut of any game purchase on steam. That's their bread and butter/huge revenue source. All the sales you talk about aren't valves, so much as they're the game license holders choice. If No Man's Sky is 80% off It's because Hello Games made it 80% off. Not Valve.
The Steam Deck is Linux because Gabe likes it and there's no license fee to worry about paying to windows. If gaming becomes easy for PC based systems and doesn't require a paid OS like windows, more people will go to PC gaming, which means more people will buy games through steam and make Valve money.
The Steam Deck works so well because unlike every other handheld PC manufacturer, Valve doesn't have to or even likely really care to make a direct profit on its sale. Again, they're a storefront that gets 30% of anything sold on steam. Steam Decks mean more game purchases through steam.
It's also why Valve has offered up free use of Steam OS to any other hand held PC. An Asus Rog Ally isn't competition against Valve. It's a free revenue source to sale more games on Steam, and you're even more likely to buy games through the steam store if you're using Steam OS because a lot of customers like easy with no setup needed.
So it doesn't matter if their product sales wane. It's not their revenue stream. Selling other people's PC games is their revenue stream. Their competition isn't Microsoft. It's other game stores like Origin, Amazon, Gog, and Epic. Thus far Valve seems to be crushing the competition.