This is the beauty of open source in action - everyone can benefit. Valve are no stranger to open source, and as it turns out they're using a little bit of code from Godot Engine now too.
next fests, returns, single handedly making linux a viable gaming platform for the casual user, popularising vr, having reasonable refunds, steam client having basically all the functions youd ever need, forcing companies to be upfront about kernel level anti cheat, etc. Valve is nowhere near as bad as ea, ubisoft, etc.
Valve is basically the only decent american big games company. I understand some need the narrative for the promised class war in order to distract you from the crisis in democracy, but not everyone with a company is literally lenin or stalin or polpot or hitler.
well yes, steam is better than ubisoft or ea. however, i like GOG better than steam for drm free stuff. so i can ask steam to be better. and even though rn i like GOG the best, ill call them out if they do something i don’t like…
Returns and refunds happened because the EU warned them that if they didn’t, they’d create legislation so they’d have to, as they were already in a grey area under EU law. EA had a similar refund policy for games bought through Origin before Steam did.
Other than that, nearly everything you listed was done because it made business sense and would lead to more profit. Decoupling PC gaming from Windows by working on Linux means they’re not at the mercy of Microsoft’s whims, and was started at a time where it looked like Microsoft might make a version of Windows that could only install third-party software through the Windows Store. Discouraging kernel-level anti cheat discourages one of the last hurdles to Linux being able to play all Windows games. Supporting VR lets them still VR games through Steam.
Not being publicly traded lets them be concerned about their long-term profits above their short-term ones, so they won’t do things that tarnish their reputation nearly as often as their competitors, and can do multi-year projects. They look good because their competitors are bad rather than because what they do is altruistic.
Edit: I just did some maths. The Steam Deck has sold somewhere around 5 million units and a Windows licence costs somewhere around $50 to an OEM with a volume licensing deal. Both these figures are approximate as I couldn’t find precise numbers, but they’re enough for a ballpark figure. This means that Valve have saved around $250 million by shipping the Deck with SteamOS instead of Windows. Even if my figures are way off, it’s still a huge amount of money and goes a long way towards making all their work on Linux pay for itself.
single handedly making linux a viable gaming platform for the casual user
Well, not really single-handedly. Most of the work was done by open source communities, Valve’s part was mostly in integrating it and normalizing it, making it easy for users and giving developers an incentive to support it. They did their part and I love them for it, but I’m also grateful for all the volunteer contributions to projects like wine and dxvk!
After using lutris I very much appreciate valves huge effort that makes you forget what OS you are on since you just click play and have a good time. Where hardcore, extreme tweaking is selecting another proton from a dropdown menu.
I don’t even know prefixes existed until I was forced to use lutris.
In my experience it seems OS communty made games run on linux so OS and linux hobbyists can play games easily. Valve made it so regular folks can play games easily.
I patiently await more people to come over to linux so that I can use my hotas as well.
next fests, returns, single handedly making linux a viable gaming platform for the casual user, popularising vr, having reasonable refunds, steam client having basically all the functions youd ever need, forcing companies to be upfront about kernel level anti cheat, etc. Valve is nowhere near as bad as ea, ubisoft, etc.
Valve is basically the only decent american big games company. I understand some need the narrative for the promised class war in order to distract you from the crisis in democracy, but not everyone with a company is literally lenin or stalin or polpot or hitler.
spoiler
They become that once the company goes public.
well yes, steam is better than ubisoft or ea. however, i like GOG better than steam for drm free stuff. so i can ask steam to be better. and even though rn i like GOG the best, ill call them out if they do something i don’t like…
Returns and refunds happened because the EU warned them that if they didn’t, they’d create legislation so they’d have to, as they were already in a grey area under EU law. EA had a similar refund policy for games bought through Origin before Steam did.
Other than that, nearly everything you listed was done because it made business sense and would lead to more profit. Decoupling PC gaming from Windows by working on Linux means they’re not at the mercy of Microsoft’s whims, and was started at a time where it looked like Microsoft might make a version of Windows that could only install third-party software through the Windows Store. Discouraging kernel-level anti cheat discourages one of the last hurdles to Linux being able to play all Windows games. Supporting VR lets them still VR games through Steam.
Not being publicly traded lets them be concerned about their long-term profits above their short-term ones, so they won’t do things that tarnish their reputation nearly as often as their competitors, and can do multi-year projects. They look good because their competitors are bad rather than because what they do is altruistic.
Edit: I just did some maths. The Steam Deck has sold somewhere around 5 million units and a Windows licence costs somewhere around $50 to an OEM with a volume licensing deal. Both these figures are approximate as I couldn’t find precise numbers, but they’re enough for a ballpark figure. This means that Valve have saved around $250 million by shipping the Deck with SteamOS instead of Windows. Even if my figures are way off, it’s still a huge amount of money and goes a long way towards making all their work on Linux pay for itself.
Well, not really single-handedly. Most of the work was done by open source communities, Valve’s part was mostly in integrating it and normalizing it, making it easy for users and giving developers an incentive to support it. They did their part and I love them for it, but I’m also grateful for all the volunteer contributions to projects like wine and dxvk!
Oh yes the community laid the bricks but as we seen with linux desktop its the easy to use part thst actually gets users to go there.
Guess who also made it easy for valve to use it
After using lutris I very much appreciate valves huge effort that makes you forget what OS you are on since you just click play and have a good time. Where hardcore, extreme tweaking is selecting another proton from a dropdown menu. I don’t even know prefixes existed until I was forced to use lutris. In my experience it seems OS communty made games run on linux so OS and linux hobbyists can play games easily. Valve made it so regular folks can play games easily. I patiently await more people to come over to linux so that I can use my hotas as well.