> and modern multiplayer games with anti-cheat simply do not work through a translation layer, something Valve hopes will change in the future.
Although this is true for most games it is worth noting that it isn't universally true. Usermode anti-cheat does sometimes work verbatim in Wine, and some anti-cheat software has Proton support, though not all developers elect to enable it.
Valve is the only company I'd let inject anti-cheat software directly into my veins if it meant I could play CS and be sure others were not cheating haha.
I honestly don't know why so many people say that anti-cheat with Proton or SteamMachines won't work. SteamOS is an immutable Linux - especially with their own SteamMachine they can enable SecureBoot and attestation that you are using the SteamOS verbatim efi boot file, kernel, and corret system fs image - all signed by Valve. Just as Battlefield 6 does on windows (relying on SecureBoot). That would still allow you to install other OSes on your SteamDeck/SteamMachine, but it would fail the anticheat attestation. I personally see the push in hardware from Valve particular so that they can support anti-cheat on linux.
companies will go where the money is. If Valve enables, say EA, to have their yearly franchise and in-game-stores on mobile devices, they will find a way.
I think if Linux gaming becomes popular someone may come up with a solution where you run a native linux kernel-mode anticheat. That somehow connects to the wine-hosted game.
I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it's what I think will happen.
The key difference is that Valve isn't trying to make Windows work, just desktop gaming, which I'd imagine is a large part of why Microsoft's efforts failed. As much as Linux desktops haven't particularly had much polish over the years, there's still an advantage to taking something bare bones and trying to flesh it out in a way that's works well compared to taking something that's already pretty bloated and then trying to retrofit it into something new.
It's mostly because Microsoft have lost focus & interest in the desktop OS market and have shifted priorities to cloud service (Azure). Right now Microsoft is a sleeping giant that doesn't see the writing on the wall regarding Valve's efforts.
I don't understand what you mean by this. My wife's HP laptop has an ARM processor with Windows and it.. just works? Like everything works. The computer is super fast, quiet, great battery usage, ultrathin and even scary affordable for what you get. All software works. I've not found x64 programs to run noticeably worse, at least not the ones we use, and plenty programs have an ARM build.
As a Windows user you don't even need to know that it's an ARM computer. Just use it like you'd use any other Windows computer.
Don't just say stuff, man. This is not Twitter. Try to at least figure out whether you're vaguely directionally correct before writing snarky comments.
RISCV is at least a decade, if not two from being useful enough for mainstream adoption. Neither the hardware or software is anywhere close to being ready.
I thought for a moment from the title that Valve has finally started funding game developers to make content from SteamOS, but no, this is just another case where Valve pays some contractors for open source projects and force developers to foot the bill for verifying compatibility.
The last studio I worked at where the Steam Deck came up, the rendering lead muttered “ew, no! we don’t have time to figure that out!” and that was the end of the conversation.
A week after launch, the Proton devs pushed a hotfix and the binary’s been compatible with Linux ever since.
Does anyone know what the limfac is? The machine code produced is of course different on different CPU arches, but isn't this handled at the compiler level? I.e. lower level than game devs worry about.
Any leads on when the next generation of Steam Deck will be released? Hoping it could be sometime in 2025, but suspect it will be more like 2026.
Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more.
As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. There are some alternative comparable form-factor devices:
* Lenovo Legion Go S
* Asus ROG Ally
But I have yet to see any of these in real life, so not sure how good or bad they really are.
I recently bought a Legion Go S because the primary way I game nowadays is streaming from my desktop to a handheld, and the higher quality display (1900x1200 resolution with 120 Hz over the 1280x800 and 90 Hz on the Steam Deck OLED) seemed worthwhile given that my desktop can easily provide enough throughput to play with relatively high graphics settings. It came with SteamOS preinstalled, and from a software perspective, everything does seem pretty close to identical. The only things I've slightly missed from the Steam Deck are slight hardware nits with the Legion Go S; the placement of the equivalent of the two SteamOS-specific buttons (not sure exactly how to refer to them, but they're labeled "Steam" and "..." on the Deck) just above the Start and Select buttons while looking and feeling the same mixes me up sometimes in a way that never happened on the Deck, and I miss having four unmapped buttons on the back of the device that I can set up however I like in games rather than only two. I also tend to prefer having symmetrical thumbsticks higher up on the device rather than having one high and one low; I've noticed that my hands aren't quite as comfortable when using the D-pad for extended amounts of time, which is unfortunate given my preference for it when playing stuff like emulated GBA games (incidentally one of the few things I tend to do locally instead of streaming; the low power profile setting already is an easy battery life win when streaming, and in practice it make the battery life when GBA emulation also much more tolerable, along with keeping the fans much quieter without seeming to impact performance of the emulation, given that even with this setting the fast-forward function can go far faster than I'd ever need it to).
I don't need Android apps that often, but it would be neat for the options here to expand and improve. I want to say much as Proton has accelerated things, but man, I am pretty lost now tracking which projects Proton encompasses and the history of where Valve backed/helped these efforts.
I still really want to believe it's collaborative. That good work is going to flow upstream, to collaborated Valve + crowd spaces.
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.
The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.
Valve is sort of like modern Bell Labs for software. It has almost-monopoly on PC game sales, which results in massive profits. Then it uses part of these profits for public good on projects that are at best tangentially related to their actual business.
>The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore.
It's absolutely fair to mock them for not releasing these games and keeping radio silence all these years. They managed to dethrone Duke Nukem Forever.
There were multiple times in which the internet was hyped for Episode 3 and where it would make sense to release even a basic game like they've did with Episodes 1&2 just to wrap things up. I'm sure plenty of people that make up various explanations to why that happened but the end result is that Valve has chosen to disappoint the fans who have been waiting for the conclusion to the story. It's not like doing that would prevent them from releasing an another new entry in the series that uses revolutionary new technology or whatever.
> Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.
Some of it is counter-productive though. Proton made WINE commercially viable, and in doing so, disincentivized native Linux builds of games to the point that some studios that had been releasing games natively for Linux have stopped doing so, since the Windows version now plays well enough under Linux.
As far as I know, all of the following stores take a 30% cut:
* Steam
* GOG
* Microsoft store
* Xbox store
* PlayStation store
* Nintendo eShop
* App store
* Play store
* Kindle store
There's also stuff like Audible where Amazon takes a 75% cut unless you agree to exclusively sell your audiobook through them. And there was a lawsuit over that because it turned out Audible was actually only paying authors a 15% cut, while keeping 85% of sales for themselves.
Can someone tell me how much more power efficient is ARM actually? Like under load when gaming, not in a phone that sleeps most of the time. I've heard both claims, that it's still a huge difference and that for new AMD Zen it's basically the same.
I find it kinda ironic that they phase out 32bit at the same time. I’d guess it would be easier to emulate 32but x86, although the difference perhaps goes away with a JIT.
There's no point in emulating just 32-bit x86 when modern games are all built for x86-64 plus several extensions. If they could make devs target an arch of their choice, they'd ask for aarch64 and skip funding FEX.
Hypothetically, if Valve made a strong push to make SteamOS compatible with all Windows programs, not just games, could they make a serious run at knocking down Windows?
Thank god. Microsoft has shown they don't care about their users as anything other than eyeballs to shove bullshit to for _years_ and Gabe called them out on it back with Windows 8, and Valve has been working on this since.
Steam Deck is fantastic to use. Good riddance to Windows.
I cannot speak for the Steam console and I don't care about playing PC games on my phone: it's not the form factor for me.
But I'm really grateful for Valve and Steam.
Increasingly, more and more Windows-only games "just work" with Linux (or work with minor tweaks taken from ProtonDB).
I bought a Lenovo Legion a couple of weeks ago and I'm having a terrific experience with Linux+Steam so far. I don't claim to play the latest AAA games, but I don't feel the need to live at the edge anyway.
One game that has resisted running so far is Space Marine 2. Eventually I'll get it going. Some people report success.
The best thing Valve could do is nuke Wayland/X11/Xwayland from orbit. Wayland is a mess that apps still don't support and doesn't work with NVIDIA GPUs. X11 is ancient and screen tears. Xwayland is the worst of both worlds.
Unless I misunderstand something (not quite awake fully yet...),
that's good right? Aka "play games on any platform" as goal. A
bit with the inofficial goal of scummvm, to rescue old commercial
games from vanishing for young, future generations.
68 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] threadAlthough this is true for most games it is worth noting that it isn't universally true. Usermode anti-cheat does sometimes work verbatim in Wine, and some anti-cheat software has Proton support, though not all developers elect to enable it.
I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it's what I think will happen.
and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment
As a Windows user you don't even need to know that it's an ARM computer. Just use it like you'd use any other Windows computer.
Don't just say stuff, man. This is not Twitter. Try to at least figure out whether you're vaguely directionally correct before writing snarky comments.
As far as I know RISC provides similar power efficiency and sleep that is like ARM.
A week after launch, the Proton devs pushed a hotfix and the binary’s been compatible with Linux ever since.
The exception I see is if SIMD intrinsics.
Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more.
As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. There are some alternative comparable form-factor devices:
* Lenovo Legion Go S
* Asus ROG Ally
But I have yet to see any of these in real life, so not sure how good or bad they really are.
Source: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices
I don't need Android apps that often, but it would be neat for the options here to expand and improve. I want to say much as Proton has accelerated things, but man, I am pretty lost now tracking which projects Proton encompasses and the history of where Valve backed/helped these efforts.
I still really want to believe it's collaborative. That good work is going to flow upstream, to collaborated Valve + crowd spaces.
The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.
because that's the foreseeable trajectory at this point
It's absolutely fair to mock them for not releasing these games and keeping radio silence all these years. They managed to dethrone Duke Nukem Forever.
There were multiple times in which the internet was hyped for Episode 3 and where it would make sense to release even a basic game like they've did with Episodes 1&2 just to wrap things up. I'm sure plenty of people that make up various explanations to why that happened but the end result is that Valve has chosen to disappoint the fans who have been waiting for the conclusion to the story. It's not like doing that would prevent them from releasing an another new entry in the series that uses revolutionary new technology or whatever.
Some of it is counter-productive though. Proton made WINE commercially viable, and in doing so, disincentivized native Linux builds of games to the point that some studios that had been releasing games natively for Linux have stopped doing so, since the Windows version now plays well enough under Linux.
And people have forgotten that they existed. I mean it is 18 years since the orange box.
As far as I know, all of the following stores take a 30% cut:
* Steam * GOG * Microsoft store * Xbox store * PlayStation store * Nintendo eShop * App store * Play store * Kindle store
There's also stuff like Audible where Amazon takes a 75% cut unless you agree to exclusively sell your audiobook through them. And there was a lawsuit over that because it turned out Audible was actually only paying authors a 15% cut, while keeping 85% of sales for themselves.
Steam Deck is fantastic to use. Good riddance to Windows.
But I'm really grateful for Valve and Steam.
Increasingly, more and more Windows-only games "just work" with Linux (or work with minor tweaks taken from ProtonDB).
I bought a Lenovo Legion a couple of weeks ago and I'm having a terrific experience with Linux+Steam so far. I don't claim to play the latest AAA games, but I don't feel the need to live at the edge anyway.
One game that has resisted running so far is Space Marine 2. Eventually I'll get it going. Some people report success.