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by jakobson14 1007 days ago
It *doesn't matter* wtf windows does in the future. you don't have to run it, you're not beholden to it.

Once a game works on wine it will continue to work FOREVER. Steam controls the update process so there's nothing microsoft can do to break it.

Beyond that, I don't give a shit. If I can't make a new game work on my steam deck, I won't buy it, and that's clearly where valve (who still control most of the windows gaming market) are pushing things.

1 comments

>Once a game works on wine it will continue to work FOREVER

Sure, once a game works. I'm thinking about the future. And unfortuantely that future is bound by Microsoft's whims. Valve doesn't control window and that's what most games target.

>If I can't make a new game work on my steam deck, I won't buy it

that's fine, 97% of the market will. Valve isn't going to be hurting by this. They won't give a shit either, just default back to the status quo.

Valve has the steamdeck, a successful product in a market all it's own that runs exclusively on linux. Want your game to run well on it? Target linux.

They would never have gotten to the point of selling thousands of linux devices without wine to make their existing catalog work.

>Valve isn't going to be hurting by this. They won't give a shit either, just default back to the status quo.

You might not know this, but the steam deck is the culmination of over 15 years of work by VALVe to become independent of microsoft. They recognize the threat of living on someone else's OS and they've been working on that threat for very a long time.

Valve tried *exactly* your plan (bribing devs to care about a non-existent market) ten years ago with the Steam Machines, and it failed miserably. Their investment into WINE and the development of the steamdeck is the result of the lessons you refuse to accept.

>They would never have gotten to the point of selling thousands of linux devices without wine to make their existing catalog work

Sure. But they never HAD to sell linux devices to begin with. I wonder how many PC's valve would had sold if they took Sony's old "Gaming on the Go" marketing and actually pulled it off.

I'm glad they didn't go that route, but food for thought.

>They recognize the threat of living on someone else's OS and they've been working on that threat for very a long time.

Yup, they have backup plans. And when the plans petered out from Microsoft (thankfully) Valve relaxed. I unfortunately still see other looming threats, but those threats aren't as catastrophic as what came before. So I understand if Valve does not care as long as they can keep their software on Windows.

>Their investment into WINE and the development of the steamdeck is the result of the lessons you refuse to accept.

My solution doesn't involve hardware so I'm not sure what you're getting at. All I'm saying is "make it not a pain to port to linux, and incentivize devs to do it" and you make it sound like I'm trying to launch my own console.

Linux runs on pretty much any and everything, so I don't care too much about taking the Nintendo route and providing exclusive blockbuster titles to pull users into my own walled garden. That boat sailed before I was born; even Valve can't do that today (despite doing that 20 years ago when they made games) and I won't pretend to pursue that venture myself.

Fortunately that is not the only way to gain market share these days, so I'll take advantage of alternative methods.