[eproxus]

Couldn’t #2 shaders be compiled once and shared between users? A game could compile them on first run, submit them to a server with a unique hash of the OS, driver and shader version (and what else). Then other users could download the already compiled shaders if there’s a network connection. If not, you simply compile them anyway.

If security is an issue (can a shaders be dangerous?) you could wait until you have X copies of the same hash and verify that they all have compiled to the same code before adding it to the online cache.

Developers could even pre-compute such shaders for popular GPUs that they have access to.

[seba_dos1]

Steam already does that automatically.