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by nindalf 907 days ago
You’re missing the bigger picture. Yes, developers really appreciate that their games work seamlessly on the Steam Deck and Linux with no effort on their part. But there are a couple of knock on effects.

One is that developers now a specific hardware + software combo to test their games with. Even if it’s the same build they’re sending out, they’re still testing their game on the Deck and fixing issues, leading to a better (but not perfect) experience for Linux gamers. Here’s a video of Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian studios playing a game released by his studio on the Steam Deck - https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k. He’s very pleased and promises to test future games released by his studio on the Deck. And he stuck to that promise - Larian released several fixes specifically for the Steam Deck to make Baldur’s Gate III run better. Linux gamers benefit from that.

Second, this increases the % of gamers using Linux. After the Deck’s success in the last couple of years Linux is at 1.91% of the respondents of the Steam Hardware Survey for Nov 2023. Linux was at 1.15% 18 months ago. Doesn’t sound impressive, but if that growth continues and it reaches 3-4%, at that point developers will find shipping native Linux builds more attractive.
1 comments
pjmlp 907 days ago
Valve adocates are the ones failing to learn from OS/2 history, "it does Windows better than Windows".

Studios don't care about native GNU/Linux, despite the games being shipped with Android/NDK, PlayStation POSIX environment, and the available APIs on Switch OS.

All of them much easier than porting from Windows/XBox, almost straight ports if coming from Android/NDK.

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brnt 907 days ago
Having a desktop OS was a big thing 30 years ago, but now nobody cares anymore. Who interacts with their OS other than launching browsers or apps based on browsers? Not even most coders these days.

OSes are irrelevant these days and having basically libwindows.so these days only underlines that.

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pjmlp 907 days ago
That is why GNU/Linux gaming is stuck on 2%, and needs to emulate Windows APIs.

Valve only stresses the relevance of Windows.

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brnt 906 days ago
The Steam user survey isnt a representative number. An API isn't emulated, it's implemented, it's no more or less native than Windows itself.

In various benchmarks Proton is now outperforming Windows. There is no need for it anymore, outside some niche applications.

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pjmlp 906 days ago
Statistics only matter when they make our case, yeah.

I know pretty well how Proton works.

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