[echelon]

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux.

Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible.

If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft.

One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone. One of Meta's biggest mistakes was to give up on their phone (they gave in early due to technical choices, not just lack of user demand).

Owning a "pane of glass" lets you tax and control everything. Apple and Google have unprecedented leverage in two of the biggest markets in the world. Microsoft wants that for gaming, and since most gaming is on Windows, they have a shot at it.

Valve is doing everything they can to make sure developers start targeting other platforms so PC games remain multi-platform. It's healthy for the entire ecosystem.

If we had strong antitrust enforcement (which we haven't had in over 25 years), Apple and Google wouldn't have a stranglehold on mobile, and Microsoft would get real scrutiny for all of their stunts they've pulled with gaming, studio acquisitions, etc.

Antitrust enforcement is good for capitalism. It ensures that stupid at-scale hacks don't let the largest players become gluttons and take over the entire ecosystem. It keeps capitalism fiercely competitive and makes all players nimble.

The government's antitrust actions against Microsoft in the 1990s-2000s was what paved the way for Apple to become what it is today. If we had more of it, one wonders what other magnificent companies and products we might have.

[debugnik]

> It encourages developers to write for Linux.

Valve actually encourages devs to only provide Windows builds compatible with Proton, or at least it used to, to the disappointment of some professional porters. Mainly because several devs kept leaving their Linux builds abandoned while still maintaining their Windows ones.

[bryanlarsen]

Hopefully developers are being encouraged to target Proton, as it's the subset. Presumably anything that works on Proton will also work on Windows, so it makes sense to target Proton.

[beAbU]

If the windows build already performs better than on native windows, why faff around with another build target and all its associated complexities (testing, etc).

Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros, and that's asking for trouble I reckon.

[kelnos]

> Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros

Valve actually distributes a runtime (or at least used to), that's based on Ubuntu, and provides a stable target for developers who want to release a Linux port.

But I agree in general with your point; if the Windows build already performs great on Linux through Proton, why go through the effort to release a native Linux build?

[0x457]

They still distribute runtime(s). Proton runs inside one of those runtimes. You're talking about 1.0 version, 2.0 was based on debian 10, and 3.0 is based on debian 11.

It still has some assumptions about host system, though, but that's a problem for those who package steam. For example, my non-FHS NixOS provides everything required, and it works out-of-the-box.

[rangestransform]

Was antitrust enforcement necessary in this case, if Valve can break the "monopoly" with a superior value proposition for customers? Perhaps Valve would not feel the need to enter such a capital-intensive industry if it weren't for pressure from the behemoths. I happen to like that antitrust doctrine in the US is focused on good for consumers instead of some abstract ideal of a healthy market.

[iwontberude]

Microsoft and Nvidia (amongst many others) are happy to leave their gaming customers hanging for years in order to inflate the AI bubble further. They don’t care about gaming in any significant capacity. Valve is still a great gaming focused company and they will be successful.

[pjmlp]

Microsoft is one of the biggest game publishers, given the amount of AAA studios under the Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios organisation.

[iwontberude]

Great point. Exactly. They have undermined the marketplace by hovering up and consolidating studios, scuttling a lot of IP that gamers care about and squeezing money out of properties for quarterly gains. They use their market power to push worse games with abusive, dark patterns. Microsoft has really become even more of a heel than they were in the 2000s.

[mschuster91]

> One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone.

They had no other choice.

The technical foundation of the prior WP versions (aka, Windows CE) was just too dated and they didn't have a Windows kernel / userland capable of performantly dealing on ARM, x86 performance was and still is utter dogshit on battery powered devices, they didn't have a Windows userland actually usable on anything touch based, and most importantly they did not have developer tooling even close to usable.

At the same time, Apple had a stranglehold over the upper price class devices, Android ate up the low and mid range class - and unlike the old Ballmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" days, Microsoft didn't have tooling that enticed developers, while Apple had Xcode with emulators that people had been used to for years, and Android had a fully functioning Eclipse based toolchain.

[ThrowawayB7]

As I recall, that is not correct. There was a gargantuan internal effort to refactor Windows 10 to run on everything from mobile devices to servers. Windows Phone 10 was running Windows 10. And the tile UI was well received by those who had WP devices.

As others have said, lack of critical apps and shenanigans from Google is what killed sales which led to the death of Windows Phone.

[echelon]

It really doesn't help when Google repeatedly broke Gsuite and the YouTube apps and mandated their removal from Windows phones.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/aug/15/...

This is the kind of shit regulators should stop. In the 90's, this would have gotten Microsoft broken up into several companies.

[mschuster91]

Apple darn well knew what people want - even the first iPhone, the one that didn't even have an App Store (which got invented as a concept by jailbreakers proving it was possible!), came with YouTube and Maps from the start.

What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.

[echelon]

> What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.

There's a long backstory here.

Microsoft tried everything to get YouTube on Windows Phone. At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app. That didn't happen.

Microsoft tried to use the proper APIs, but Google kept shutting them off:

https://www.windowscentral.com/youtube-access-and-windows-ph...

"Downloading" the videos was Microsoft trying to work around API limitations and shut offs.

Imagine Microsoft's customers getting angrier and angrier that YouTube kept breaking. For years. This was a deal breaker for lots of people, especially young early adopters.

Microsoft tried really hard here.

What Google did was abuse their market position to cripple Windows Phone. Customers abandoned Windows Phone because it didn't have YouTube.

Google had to play nice with Apple in the early days because Apple had all the patents Google needed to continue with Android. It wasn't until they purchased Motorolla that they had a MAD patent strategy.

[0x457]

> At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app.

MS made that offer to probably every developer on top 100 on ios/android stores. That usually meant some small shop in Eastern Europe will be contracted.

[pjmlp]

Not at all, developers will never stop targeting Windows as long as Proton is a thing.