[DiskoHexyl]

SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004.

On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many millions of Minecraft players who never even launched Fortnight. And DOTA2/LOL players who've never launched either of those 2. And then you see a bunch of indie titles selling tens of millions of copies, and their player base is completely unrelated to those above.

The days of the gaming mono-culture are long gone, and inability to play a limited number of Game As A Service titles is not as severe of a handicap anymore, especially since people who play those kinds of games aren't typically as interested in any other titles. For better or worse, peer pressure doesn't work as heavy these days, as it used to

[surajrmal]

I was a heavy gamer in 2004 and never played HL2 or DOOM3. I know many such people. I think games like Mario party, smash, and Mario kart were far more ubiquitous.

[SmallDeadGuy]

That just sounds like all you had access to was a Nintendo console, not necessarily due to your own choice. I missed out on all the early zelda, metroid, and mario home console games because we were a playstation family until the wii.

[surajrmal]

I played plenty of PC games such as Warcraft, StarCraft, and random stuff on steam. I was just not much into FPS (although TF2 was an exception). I also had all 3 consoles (all of my teenage paychecks went into games), but I think it was really Nintendo games which were commonly played by everyone I knew. Even if you didn't have one you'd play them via local multiplayer at someone's house.

[nwsm]

Saying “everyone” played those two titles is still incorrect. Personally I think the landscape was more fragmented then.

[antonyh]

Absolutely is fragmented. Even though I own a Wii I've never played Zelda or any Mario games, and I don't think I know anyone who owns a modern Nintendo. We all live in bubbles. And we change bubbles occasionally; I no longer play Fifa or CoD mostly because of the kernel anti-cheat. I got bored of CSGO. I play less gory games now because of family. We play less Lego games because we grow up.

[hbn]

Until the 2010s, PC gaming was fairly niche in US/Canada. Growing up I didn't personally know anyone that gamed primarily on a PC.

I feel like it was when Minecraft took off that people started investing in gaming PCs, kids were asking their parents for them, etc.

[shawn-butler]

Your definition of heavy gamer I think differs from the norm if your main plays were Mario kart, et al.

[rkozik1989]

Yeah, I am pretty sure most heavy gamers in 2004 were knee deep into MMOs and FPSes.

[TheTon]

There isn’t a single one way to be a dedicated gamer.

Inevitably everyone has finite time and access to games and has to make choices about what to play.

As a Mac guy, I always found the game platform wars weird because even on the weakest gaming platform there are still more good games than anyone can individually play. And even on Windows, probably the strongest gaming platform, you’re still missing out on many significant games.

I totally understand buying a system because it has some game that you absolutely must play. I bought an OG Xbox back in the day because I thought I desperately needed to play Deus Ex: Invisible War when it didn’t come to Mac. Got burned on that one, but at least I had Halo before it came to Mac (and was in the end much better there than on Xbox due to expanded online multiplayer).

What I actually don’t get is folks who have to play the hot game of the week every week. Just seems expensive in terms of money, time, and space for different systems, and you only scratch the surface of the games.

[lazyfanatic42]

What made you go with comparing things to 2004? Seems random, there is so much that is different in the Linux ecosystem generally, Valve just put the situation on a rocket and shot it into space.

Point taken, it really is marvelous! When I was running Gentoo Linux, and Windows 2000 back then I never thought things would be so portable and simple!

[NooneAtAll3]

> What made you go with comparing things to 2004?

I guess HL2 release?

Steam launch was late 2003 and first non-valve Steam games appeared in 2005, so "thereabouts" can be a reason as well for "Valve era"

[MetaWhirledPeas]

> the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside

It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.

[rtkwe]

More likely is that some linux distro like SteamOS gets a large enough install base that it actually makes sense as a target and these big platforms make their anti-cheat work on at least that distro. As unfortunate as it is not having a very strong anti-cheat or a system like Valve's VAC ban to detect and lock cheaters out leads to really shitty online experiences in public lobbies for PVP games.

[Hikikomori]

Some anti cheat works with proton if the game dev allows it. But anti cheats are generally not effective on Linux because you can just load your cheat as a kernel driver.

[awakeasleep]

What kind of device & kernels driver attestation is possible in linux at the present time?

[Hikikomori]

Secure boot, signed drivers, attestation, is all possible. But you can just sign your own driver anyway so kinda useless.

Might be possible with a more secure mode that is booted into when you launch a game that only allow specific drivers and programs like the game and maybe discord.

[BlueTemplar]

Your comparisons are a mess.

"Casual player" is very poorly defined.

You are comparing concurrent players with unique players (IIRC half a billion for Fortnite ?)

"Many millions" hardly means anything when you use it to cover 3 orders of magnitude.

And so on and so forth...

[morshu9001]

True. Things were better the old way with so many kids at least having a video game like Melee or CoD or Halo in common. I would've liked those to run on Linux, but that doesn't matter so much.

[spookie]

Eh multiplayer games are doomed.

Computer vision based cheats using an external machine that records the game's final rendered frames, process them with specialized YOLO models, and control "mices" and "controllers" to aim for you already exist.

If the aim for kernel level anti-cheats was to combat cheating, they have failed and are completely worthless.

[fulafel]

You don't need an external machine. Since games are set up to allow twitch etc streaming, it's easy for apps on the same machine to get access to the video.

[jack1243star]

That's like saying online banking is doomed because rubber-hose cryptanalysis exists. The defense does not have to stop 100% of the exploits to be effective.

I hate kernel level anti-cheats but they do provide friction and reduce cheating.

[spookie]

There are open source solutions out there. If anything there is less friction now.