[jakobson14]

Even in a hypothetical world where you have lots of money, you don't get to boss people around. VALVe would have to pay every single developer their perceived linux development costs for every game, just to port them to linux. Plus additional money on top to make it worth considering, since with near-zero linux gamers there's no profit to be had.

It's a really stupid move to simply throw money at someone to do something which they don't have any other reason to do. They'll charge as much as you're willing to pay them and do the bare minimum the contract allows. Let's not forget that stadia was a massive failure that burned unthinkable amounts of cash to produce *absolutely nothing.*

Tools? Talent? Enablers with *zero value.* You don't need the extra tools/talent if you simply ignore linux.

WINE, by comparison, is a fixed cost that doesn't depend on the number of games it enables. It also doesn't require buy-in from *anybody* outside VALVe. With zero outside help from gamedevs VALVe now has a linux gaming device that's sold like hotcakes and comes with thousands of games.

In your world they'd be several million in the hole, have maybe a few dozen low-effort linux ports for all that cash, and the steam deck would be the same gameless failure the steam machines were ten years prior.

I read your post all right. It's just really naive.