This is why I have respect for Valve. They’re willing to invest into changing the status quo instead of seeing it as not profitable immediately. They’re playing the long game, and they’ve put their version of Linux into millions of hands. They’ve built hardware for it, they’ve invested a ton into Wine/Proton, they’ve invested in open-source graphics drivers. They’re actively fixing up third party games to the point some of them run better on a their handheld than decent Windows PCs. And a good chunk of it is open-source and given away for free to everyone to use.
Meanwhile Sweeney is just there whining that Linux is too hard. They can’t even be bothered to try.
I would give money to Valve just so they keep going. I have no desire to buy an Epic game they’re not even willing to try to at least make it easier to run in Wine.
I am all for valve in terms of games, even though I don’t like the buying but not owning things stuff I would always prefer Steam over anything else. They earned my trust, something no other non-human entity will ever get. This company just has it figured out.
Valve is one of the few companies left that are not just a pure investor-pleaser and actually do some meaningful progress rather than changing the colors of their button every so often.
It’s what can be done only with a private company and some decent people in charge. Once you go public your company loses its soul.
Meanwhile Sweeney is being litigious instead of inventive.
Not that the lawsuits don’t have merit, just very interesting to see the vast difference in focus between the two companies.
Meanwhile Sweeney is just there whining that Linux is too hard.
I’m with you on Valve trying to be more open (in a semi-walled-garden with Steam on Steamdeck, circumventable with some effort). But gaming on Linux - practically nobody is actually writing games natively for Linux. They’re writing for Windows (or a console) and the community is making the run under Proton/Wine on Linux. Is Epic intentionally preventing them from running on Proton? Well, effectively, yes - but that’s not a Linux-to-hard problem, more of a “we don’t want to have to police cheating on another OS” problem.
Do you mind elaborating on why you think the Steam Deck is a semi-walled garden?
Sure. By default you get the Steam store. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s the only option to load games from the default Gaming interface. There is no option to load from Gog, Epic, Uplay, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, or any other 3rd party store. If you are not willing (or able) to manage the deck in desktop mode, you can’t install non-Steam games so - as a console - it’s a walled garden. I say semi- because it’s not terribly difficult to switch to desktop mode and install other applications, launchers, and games - but if you’ve never used Linux and are not computer savvy, Steam is the only way to get games onto the device.
Thanks for answering and explaining.
I feel like you’ve just described a garden. There are no walls. You can just walk out of the carefully curated garden and nobody will stop you. Heck, you can even bring things from outside of the garden back with you. Yes, things aren’t as pretty outside the garden, and yes, it may be a bit intimidating if you’re not familiar with the wild lands of Linux, but that’s just the nature of modern computing (regardless of what OS you’re using).
By default you start in Steam Big Picture mode, but you can, without doing anything unusual, likely without even needing to read a manual or follow a guide, easily get to Desktop Mode. From there, you can easily install anything that’s available for Linux. You can even install an entirely different OS. At no point does Valve do anything to stop you - if they did, that would be the “wall” in question. And they make it pretty easy to add anything available in desktop mode to Steam, which means you don’t even have to leave the “garden” to play those games.
You can also, once in desktop mode, easily install Heroic or Lutris (which enable installing games from other third party stores, like GOG and Epic), EmuDeck, or Chiaki via the Discover Store. (You can even install RetroArch directly via Steam.) AFAIK, the repo Discover uses isn’t maintained by Valve, so everything available there is “outside the garden,” as it were.
If you’re not computer savvy and aren’t familiar with all this, there are tons of resources out there that can help. But even if there weren’t, I struggle to understand how the Steam Deck would be different from any other computer, with the exception being that it provides a console like experience with Valve’s storefront emphasized - and every modern OS I can think of has an app store or GUI package manager, so… that’s not really all that different.
So I guess my follow-up question is: how could Valve change the Steam Deck to make it not a “semi-walled garden” (optimally without making the experience worse for the people still in the garden)? I can’t really think of anything other than somehow enabling anyone (e.g., GOG or Epic) to add their store as a Steam app and then letting those stores add games to your Steam library - and unfortunately that would be problematic for a number of reasons (both legal and practical).
I still say it’s semi-walled. It has a bunch of gates in and out but and, unlike the Switch or iOS, there are no locks on the gates or gatekeepers. But the gates are latched in a way that requires specialized - if freely available - knowledge to open.
I can’t really think of anything other than somehow enabling anyone (e.g., GOG or Epic) to add their store as a Steam app
No, no as a Steam App, but as an alternate startup interface. I would say that the garden is open if there were a startup screen allowing you to pick the launcher of your choice. For argument’s sake, I’ll say Android TV. You can one-click download any content launcher with no technical ability. You can watch content (“play games”) purchased at Amazon, or on Netflix, or HBO Go (or whatever they call themselves now) and it’s the native store interface. You can do the same thing with Google’s in-house launcher. An acceptable alternate would be any other content player - like Apple’s TVOS, Roku, or Amazon’s FireTV. You can’t just load anything you want like it’s Linux or Windows, but the startup page lets you select a content provider and then you use their interface to navigate your content. It’s a good analogy as the same content is available from multiple providers, and all three (four if you include Google/Youtube) have their own in-house content libraries - which often overlap with competitors. I have both Roku and Apple actively on my TVs and I don’t purchase any content from either one of them except the hardware.
I should say that I don’t blame Valve for not including competitors stores. It’s a cleaner interface not to have a loading or Home screen. They also have customized their interface for optimal user experience. And, if they are still selling at a net loss (after engineering, marketing, and distribution) then this is a loss leader to drive gamers to their store. You could say, of course, they have done it on an OS that doesn’t natively support other game launchers and therefore it is impractical, but Linux also doesn’t natively support the vast majority of major game titles, so that’s a little disingenuous. And that partly wraps us back to the Fortnight topic at hand.
I think your Android TV metaphor is a bit off base. By default you only have access to Google Playstore apps (the equivalent to games on Steam). And it takes a not insignificant amount of research to learn how to sideload apps. And many Android TV devices flat lock you out of doing so to begin with.
Android TV is more of a “large enough walled garden that you can miss the walls and might not noticed you’ve even been locked in” situation imho.
I mean, the whole Epic v Google lawsuit was about the walls in this garden.
By default you only have access to Google Playstore apps
Yes, but for the purpose of video content, those aren’t “games” in the context of the steam deck. For the steamdeck (or any console) you have games and launchers instead of shows and apps. Steam loading Gog or Epic or Uplay as the interface from an initial “home” menu, analgous to the home menu for Android TV (not Android), Apple’s TVOS, or the Roku home page loading Netflix, HBOGo, Prime, or AppleTV+. None of those are “games” - you don’t do anything with them - they launch the content from their catalog - content which competes with the hardware/OS vendor’s own catalog. I can buy a movie from Apple or Roku or Amazon from within their launcher, even though I could have bought it through Youtube.
So I might load up my SteamDeck and choose Epic as my Launcher. Then the Epic Launcher shows me all of my games and allows me to buy new ones or collect Epic Points (IDK, I don’t use their launcher, tbh) and chat with all my Epic friends. If I want to play a Steam game, I press Home and select the Steam interface (which is the only one on the real Deck) and then I have the familiar Steam launch interface.
Epic v Google was about Fortnight and the 30% fees on in-app purchases which had to go through Google with no way around it. Same with Apple. This same problem might exist in SteamDeck if Steam required that any purchases made in the Gog or Epic launcher had to be processed through the Steam store and Steam took 30%. And, of course, the only reason this doesn’t exist for the steam deck is because you can’t even buy Fortnight on Steam. I don’t think, if you purchase a video through Amazon Prime on AppleTV or Roku, if Apple or Roku get a cut. If you subscribe to their monhtly license, they do - but not for discrete purchases made. The gaming angle - and fortnite’s fight with the stores, is about this cut applying to everything.
Valve doesn’t want to support Apple computers for their own games. No, Valve is not better, the two companies CEOs are just jerks.
They tried. Then apple dropped 32bit binaries support.
Apple is a very expensive partner to have. They do whatever they want with their ecosystem and many developers have been burned when apple decides to make their work obsolete or outright copies it and makes part of the bundled in apps.
So. It would be amazing if valve updated every one of their games for new versions of macOS and if they would kept MacOS proton support. But macOS is a moving target that will break backwards compatibility whenever it suits apple. So I understand that is hard to justify the investment.
In the end MacOs and Linux where less than a 1% of the Steam user base. But one is an open ecosystem where there is competition and some semblance of respect for backwards compatibility and the other is a closed and sometimes hostile environment.
If we only had a few more programmers
Poor, poor Epic, a tiny startup barely making it to the next month with their 3000 employees and $5B annual revenue
Translation, “You do all the heavy lifting and then I’ll jump in to enjoy the results while I complain about it.”
Jokes on him. There is a whole infrastructure to make windows games work on linux, except those that are explicitely programmed not to work on that.
The steamdeck-like hardware market is going to explode and they are fools for not putting in even a tiny amount of effort there. Yeah a lot of steamdeck form factor devices will run windows, but idk linux has passed a critical threshold where windows just looks less and less attractive as an OS to base this kind of device around.
It doesn’t really matter how well Valve does or doesn’t do in the near term, the existence of the steam deck right now as a functional, easy to use gaming device irrevocably changes the pc gaming market. In the future kids are going to get these things before their parents shell out for a gaming pc, they are the clear gateway step into pc gaming because you can always buy a nice pc down the road and have all the same games to play as you do on your handheld.
It will increasingly matter more and more what multiplayer action game you can pick up and get running most easily on a steamdeck-like linux device to play with your friends. Right now for example Halo Infinite is pretty perfectly situated, it doesn’t have much competition for being the easy to get into steam deck multiplayer shooter choice.
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That’s the reason I absolutly refuse to ever buy a game from Epic. Fuck’em.
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You can claim the free games from the website last time I checked. you don’t even need to open the games store app
they just give you games for free anyway, no need to ever buy from them.
Well, most of those games suck anways. I just grab them cause it loses them money.
It doesn’t, we know from their Apple lawsuit that publishers are given pre-negotiated fees for the whole giveaway.
There’s an interesting issue here that shows Linux support is a cultural thing, not a business thing.
They’ve presented it as “it doesn’t make sense to financially support Linux due to low player count.” But they don’t need to provide official support, they just need to tick a box and say “yeah, we don’t support this, do it at your own risk.”
From a purely financial point of view, Linux support is almost free. If you release your game, a bunch of developers off of your payroll will just add Linux support. You don’t even need to give them technical support because they use an unsupported platform.
To use business lingo, blocking Linux support is just leaving money on the table.
But I think a lot of companies feel like they have to have full control of everything. That everything they do most be fully supported and approved by them. That they are scared of letting the community take charge of things because it might tarnish your brand or whatever.
They are worried that there’ll be graphical bugs or something and that’ll make Fornight look bad, so it’s better for their brand image to just block everything they don’t have control over.
It’s a worrying pattern I’ve seen in a few places, including Mozilla of all things.
… Or maybe it’s just that Epic are too stubborn to accept help and contributions from anyone else, especially their “enemies”.
I have been wondering why they don’t just take Heroic launcher and add a skin around it to make an “official” launcher. It’s probably just because they are too prideful to support anything open source or Valve. They think that they need to make their own thing, rather than using existing code.
Sorry for the rambling post, but I think this situation is more due to an unhealthy company culture than “lol 2% market share” as they present it.
But they don’t need to provide official support, they just need to tick a box and say “yeah, we don’t support this, do it at your own risk.”
I suspect you need to factor in the efforts needed to prevent cheaters exploiting the unofficial client and spoiling the experience for other gamers
There is no “unofficial client” to exploit, there is an unofficial installer/launcher. Windows games run using proton run in exactly the same way they do on windows, the game itself is not modified in any way, that’s the whole point.
It allows you to run games, as if they were on windows. All these companies have to do, is fucking allow it.
Epic already makes anticheat that supports Linux, and other games they own already run on Linux with anticheat.
They’re just holding out on fortnite because… actually I’m not sure why. Probably Sweeney’s personal thoughts on it. If they actually wanted it to run on Linux/deck I have no doubt they could without much trouble.
Sweeney is lying through his teeth here. From things he has said previously, it becomes very clear he hates the whole idea of linux. When steamdeck became a thing, it was clear he was salty about how it would shine a light on it as an alternative OS. With this interview, by now it seems he is beginning to bend under the pressure and at least pretending that “oh I have nothing against such and amazing platform, so sad we can’t support it” in order to not look like an ass.
Which is an out that will bite him in the ass, they can support it, so soon interviewers won’t be asking, “why can’t you support linux” but “why won’t you”.
Valve is guilty of the same crime, a billionaire can’t hire anyone to do CSGO2 Apple support. It’s never been about money or support. The CEOs are just being jerks.
Sweeney does not want to contribute in any way towards making the steam deck more profitable.
I think he actually wants a monopoly. He wants to be, functionally, the only digital storefront on PC. And doing anything that could help Valve, even in another market, would detrimental to that goal.
I’d rather not play games at all if Epic ever gets a monopoly. Though I would of course keep playing games, just without paying for them. Epic won’t see as much as a single cent from me.
Sweeney has had a chip on his shoulder with Linux for at least 15 years. It’s honestly a bit weird since if you look at stuff before around 2005, he had quite a different tone.
Legend has it xX-1337_gnu_h4x0r-Xx once stalked Tim Sweeny in Unreal 2004. That led to the development of Unreal 2: The Liandri Conflict, where that same Linux user hacked Tim Sweeny’s character model to his own grandmother. It was Xbox only, but still somehow the Linux user killed him, at Tim Sweeny’s own video game! He just couldn’t handle that so he took 2 years to develop the technology to block all Linux users out of sheer spite. He accomplished his goal in 2007 when finally, Sweeny’s mission was completed with Unreal Tournament 3. It was so successful that no game from Epic since Unreal Tournament 2004 has had a Linux release.
But that wasn’t enough for Tim Sweeny. He needed more, he needed… Control. Afterall, we all know Gears of War 1 sales for PC were terrible because of pirating, which only Linux users do. Time passed and in June 2012 an opportunity arose, an offer that he could not refuse. Tencent, a multibillion dollar investment company purchases just under half of the shares of Epic Games. His own words, “Tencent’s directors are super valuable contributors whose advice and participation helped make Epic what it is today.” And thus, the adoption of the live service model arrives with Fortnite: Battle Royale.
Unfortunately for Tim, Beijing’s gaming laws culled any revenue from Fortnite China, but that doesn’t matter. Tim Sweeny’s goal was complete, being able to now buy out any game he desires and kill Linux support for it before it can even begin, even going so far as to actively remove support for it from existing games. With gamers faith in Epic now Dauntless from free games and their image as pioneers of developer first PC gaming, we can finally go to today.
The release of LEGO Fortnite and the other modes. See, there was a competitor to Epic Games that inspired Tim Sweeny deeply. Roblox. The game where you spend money to play games people have made, all without ever leaving the store. A concept that Tencent has successfully established elsewhere, but one that hasn’t quite fully succeeded in the United States (except of course for Steam, the actual anti-christ of PC gamers). But no longer, now gamers of all ages, young and younger can see the value of Epic Games all-in-one game, Fortnite. Soon, Tim Sweeny’s goal will be complete by extinguishing all games on Linux. But the Pariah Valve ruined that plan by releasing… the Steam Deck. The Linux device that steals candy from babies and money from developers.
Linux. Not even once. It turns your children into striped sock wearers who will grow up to not understand why having everything centrally located in one account is actually a good thing.
Not related to Steam Deck, but this caught my eye:
As soon as we thwarted their effort, they went around to 27 different developers and offered each one a payoff to undermine any effort we had to get their games onto our store exclusively. Activision and Riot and Supercell had direct distribution plans that they were planning on; Google paid them not to pursue those plans. Just direct blatant violations of anti-competition law, it’s crazy a company of Google’s scale would do that.
So Tim is stating that Google making exclusivity deals with applications developers is breaching laws and should be stopped, but Epic having exclusivity deals on their own stores is okay and not anti-competitive. Hypocrite much, eh?
