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Hey if paying for a game isn’t owning it, pirating it isn’t stealing it
It never was, it’s just copyright infringement.
pirating isnt stealing, its a different crime!
Coming up next: Gamers whining that studios don’t put as much effort and time into game development anymore.
I think you are 20 years late
Eyyy, it’s that phrase I came up with again! It’s so goddamn great seeing everyone pick it up!
Too bad it’s just factually incorrect, but hey, congrats on the successful meme I guess.
Think what you like. The point isn’t intended to be direct. Companies are doing all they can to exert control over us and our products they sell, so we shouldn’t have any place giving a damn about their loss of control over their media.
Give me the razor and I’ll pirate the blades.
Exactly. Regardless of whether buying is owning or not, piracy still isn’t stealing.
How the fuck is Steam Deck a monopoly? Literally anyone could have made a great Linux based handheld. Anyone still can do it. Only Valve did.
And Valve would probably love for the new handheld to also use the Valve libraries, if that helps them penetrate the market even faster.
They weren’t even the first, Ayn and Ayaneo were making handheld gaming computers well before Valve or the other major companies started to get involved.
This isn’t even Valve’s first dedicated platform, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
Yeah, anyone can but no one has yet
Is valve supposed to wait for someone else to do it first?
Actually, there are a few different ones. If you look for pocket PCs or even specific for gaming. The mainstream just didn’t know about it because they don’t have marketing reach.
It’s a niche market. Niche markets are always under served.
As great as the steam deck may be, it’s only going to appeal to a small percentage of gamers. Generally more tech savvy players who frequently travel some distance with enough down time to justify that purchase. Whether that’s commuters or guys who travel for work. Or guys who just want a really expensive controller so they can play from their favorite chair.
device to play theI have done nothing complicated with the steam deck. It arrived, I turned it on. Hit download. Played a game.
Best part.
Put it to sleep. Took a piss. Picked it up and immediately starting playing again.
I’d love to see Windows do that. Until they can. It’s a non starter.
On a planet of 7 billion people, conservatively assuming that less than 1 billion game, yes, millions is a small percentage.
Sorry that my data upset you 😥
As of 2021, there were an estimated 3.24 billion people who played video games, a figure that includes PC, console, and mobile gaming.
So yeah, the Steam Deck passing the 3 million mark is a small percentage.
It actually very likely brought a lot of women to Steam who predominantly played with handhelds because they were indoctrinated to believe PCs are only for “tech savvy men”.
December 2021 less than 10 % of all Steam users were women. Between 2022, when the Steam Deck was released, and December 2023 the number shot up to 32 %.
And I’m here for it! Microsoft is actually, definitevely trying to monopolize the market by buying all its competitors. Valve just makes such good products that nobody can compare. Since they’re not buying off competitors, their business will actually have the opportunity to wane if their products ever become subpar. Steam has ridiculous discounts, they let people use their Source engine for pretty much whatever because they never forgot that iD let them modify the iDtech engine to make Half-Life, they’re pushing Linux gaming lightyears ahead, and now they have an affordable, portable gaming PC that is not dependent on any of Microsoft’s garbage OS.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” ~ Gabe Newell
EDIT: double-quoted Lord Gaben
I love that all it takes to beat Microsoft is to make an actual, quality product and one that respects the customer. Seems these huge corporations are so bloated and disconnected that they’re actually incapable of making anything worth a damn anymore
All it takes to beat Microsoft is to have consistently pumped money and developer time into Linux, wine, mesa, radv, vkd3d, dxvk (each significant in their own right) plus an OS or two for over 10 years now. It’s really easy!
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I also find it hilarious when Asus comes along with the Ally trying to claim a piece of the pie, only to fry their own SDs with their flawed design. Later Valve R&D comes out with the refined OLED model effectively nullifing any lead the Ally had.
This all while Proton continues to free gaming from windows and open it up to more OSes and hardware for the benefit of all with contributions upstream to WINE.
Valve even salvaged everything they learned from the original SteamOS, Steam Link, and controller, then revived it in the Deck.
i mean i wouldnt say the gen 1 steamdecks are fully cleared. the gen 1 steam deck is sensitive to the power consumption of the ssd you put in, which isnt a problem with the new oled version. Valve hasnt officially on documentation put out the hardware requirements of the SSD as of yet.
there have been users who have fried their ssd power circuitry over time because of that mishandling.
Remember that a monopoly is a monopoly and unless it’s a State corporation, you’ve got no say in the way it’s run.
Valve could turn around and start implementing bullshit and they would be in a position that you would pretty much have no choice but to give up on the ease of access to all your games if you decided not to do business with them anymore or they could decide to ban you for one reason or another and you would lose everything you purchased from them.
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They are, you don’t need 100% of a market to be considered a monopoly, just a big enough share that you’re considered to be the default option.
Valve are actually getting sued for having anti competitive provisions in their contracts preventing devs from selling their games for less on other stores.
I also doubt you wouldn’t complain about Valve if they made you want to drop the service, they don’t necessarily need to ban you for you to regret your decision to only buy from them, it could simply be a scandal about internal issues or them introducing features your disagree with to increase their profits (which they could do considering their position in the market).
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And if all my eggs get destroyed after putting them all in one basket, I'm not gonna sit around blaming the company for being a company, I shoulda bought non-DRM from GOG.It was in reply to that part.
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You are both correct, and way off the mark in what you’ve said.
Valve is mostly a store platform for the last like 15 years. They’re also privately owned, so no appeasing share holders and releasing all of their data and everything else that goes with going public, so they have a lot of freedom to do what they want, but they still do things that make them money, and that GabeN likes.
Valve takes a 30% cut of any game purchase on steam. That’s their bread and butter/huge revenue source. All the sales you talk about aren’t valves, so much as they’re the game license holders choice. If No Man’s Sky is 80% off It’s because Hello Games made it 80% off. Not Valve.
The Steam Deck is Linux because Gabe likes it and there’s no license fee to worry about paying to windows. If gaming becomes easy for PC based systems and doesn’t require a paid OS like windows, more people will go to PC gaming, which means more people will buy games through steam and make Valve money.
The Steam Deck works so well because unlike every other handheld PC manufacturer, Valve doesn’t have to or even likely really care to make a direct profit on its sale. Again, they’re a storefront that gets 30% of anything sold on steam. Steam Decks mean more game purchases through steam.
It’s also why Valve has offered up free use of Steam OS to any other hand held PC. An Asus Rog Ally isn’t competition against Valve. It’s a free revenue source to sale more games on Steam, and you’re even more likely to buy games through the steam store if you’re using Steam OS because a lot of customers like easy with no setup needed.
So it doesn’t matter if their product sales wane. It’s not their revenue stream. Selling other people’s PC games is their revenue stream. Their competition isn’t Microsoft. It’s other game stores like Origin, Amazon, Gog, and Epic. Thus far Valve seems to be crushing the competition.
Monopoly? More like, the choice that doesn’t suck. Same game store for last 20 years. Free online play for games. FPS games support mouse and keyboard. No OS fee or subscription. Crazy cheap deals with stuff like humble bundle. Plus: sharing library with friends and family supported. Meanwhile Xbox 360 store is closing this year. Microsoft, Nintendo and PlayStation are all trying to get me to subscribe to a Netflix style gaming service.
In the end, we will never get to keep any of the games you buy on their store.
You can keep a copy of the drm free ones.
At this point, if you don’t have every single Nintendo game pre-Gamecube already saved on a hard drive somewhere, no one can help you lol
Considering the amount of PC portables releasing these days and the fact Nintendo made a portable that sold 9 figures, I wouldn’t worry about a monopoly just yet
People in online forums and pretty much everywhere else as well always talk PS vs XBox and never talk about Nintendo. Nintendo absolutely crushes the competition with almost everything they release. The WiiU has been about their only miss in the last few decades. I think the GameCube may have gone a bit stale but not positive on that one.
The switch has sold over 132 million systems. PS4 sold 113 million its entire run and PS5 is sitting on 50 million. Poor Xbox series s/x has only sold 21 million.
Gamecube was absolutely a miss. It was neck-and-neck with the Xbox, and may have even been beaten out. To think, that was Microsoft’s first console. Also, the Nintendo 64 was beaten completely by the first Playstation, which was also a first console, but for Sony. If anything, Wii and Switch are the odd ones out depending on where you want to set the cutoff.
But NES owned, SNES owned, Wii owned, Switch owned, Gameboy owned, and DS absolutely crushed it. I guess Nintendo had 3 consoles they didn’t lead the race on.
Plus the virtual boy, but no one talks about it anyway.
I left that out because it was never really set to be a replacement of a different game system. Quite frankly, I’m surprised they even bothered trying to mass produce and sell the damned thing. Stereoscopic headache machine. The one red color was just to save a few bucks on production, too. I leave that in the junk pile with R.O.B and the Power Glove.
Valve is a massive company because they put their customers first, go figure.
It’s not a monopoly, most pc gamers choose to use steam because of the significantly better user experience it offers vs the competition
I don’t know why you have any downvotes. Everything you wrote is true. Steam has a very nice user experience, but if you don’t want to use it, GOG, Epic, and retail still exist as a means of buying PC games. It just so happens that Steam makes the whole process painless.
The “steam is a monopoly” thing is really drilled in deep in some people. Meanwhile I just finished guardians of the Galaxy and outer worlds from the epic store freebies. Entirely on my steam deck. I also installed some other games from gog and put on my captain hat and hook and installed some repacks using bottles. You aren’t forced to use steam, apart from if you want to use game mode and control customizations which will work regardless of game sources. You lose essentially nothing by using other stores, apart from your money and achievements I suppose…
I switched from mostly Playstation to mostly Steam slowly over the last decade cause I like their services. It just works. I explicitly at this point won’t get a computer game that isn’t on Steam. I own one of the little physical Steam Links and cant believe it’s still supported by Vavle. Steam Deck was the final nail. I once didn’t like a game and got a refund on it. I have made older games playable and comfortable with the controller custom configurations. My older games and game saves still work on my new PC’s cause it’s all mostly backwards compatible. I love the Guide, Discussions, and Community Content parts of Steam. It adds so much life, answers questions, builds camaraderie, for some games.
With Playstation, the 2011 hack was bad enough. Being a day 1 Vita adopter, I feel forgotten and taken advantage of. I’ve had to deal with Sony repairs before and didn’t get my console back for months. Before Sony introduced 2FA far too late, my account got hacked. Sony rep’s treated me like a criminal and only gave me my account back because I so happened to still have the unfunctional console (and serial number) I originally created my PSN account on like 6-8 years earlier. PS4 initially lacked basic features PS3 had. PS5 has done the same. The games hardly drop in price relative to PC games. Backwards compatibility is questionable every generation. I signed up for PS Now to stream PS3 games and a month later they changed it and stopped adding more PS3 games. The PS Portal and proprietary wireless only further shows how stupid Sony is.
I’ll never buy another Playstation again.
I was REALLY into PS4 (also have a switch and PC) but the PS5 just doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi for me. Nothing, other than graphics, that PS5 is doing couldn’t have been done on PS4.
It’s so funny when you remember what people said (or better: screamed) when Steam first came into existence… It was pretty much the opposite of what you wrote in your post.
I mean, they worked really hard for this and did tremendosly improve linux gamig while doing so.
Having a monopoly because your product is too good comoared to everyone is something different than forcing a monopoly with market power, and I think that in this case it could be okay
Having a monopoly because everyone chooses to purchase from you is not “having a monopoly”, so not only should it be ok, it should be a wake up call to the competition that they can and should do better.
Meanwhile Nintendo releasing the same chip from 2016 for the 8th year in a row on an underpowered handheld.
Who cares if the Switch doesn’t have the hardware to compete with Sony and Xbox? It never was trying to compete with Sony or Xbox. It’s been a serviceable device with a huge library of awesome games. Graphics aren’t gameplay.
the GrEaTeSt HaNdHeLd EvEr
I don’t understand people. I hate using the Switch. My phone seems faster.
If you want performance, buy a PC. If you want Nintendo games, buy a Switch.
Ehh, Steam Deck covers it all.
nah that’s ds lite
They’re using a cut down 700 series Nvidia gpu. Your phone doesn’t feel faster, it is faster.
New Nvidia chips are very power efficient. The switch could be a powerhouse for wattage if they used a new chip but then they couldn’t pocket as much profit. And people keep buying the switch anyways it seems. No matter that Zelda TOTK runs like a laggy potato.
The vast majority of Nintendo’s 1st party Switch titles run just fine.
Even just the menu’s or the store on switch is leggy. It’s pathetic.
At least they do it with a good freakin console. XD
And I love how it’s the opposite of other console approaches.
Everyone else: “let’s rope some devs into exclusives, and make some more in house, that’ll lock them in!”
Valve: “let’s develop improvements to OSS publicly, so it runs better on PC for everyone (and our product)”
Microsoft came crawling back. EA came crawling back. Ubisoft came crawling back. Square Enix came crawling back. Activision came crawling back. Most viable competitor can’t turn a profit despite third-party exclusives and free games.
Now they’ve got handheld users and the entire Linux gaming community suctioned onto Gaben’s tits.
As a Linux user I can confirm that I only use Steam (with the exception being the Prism Launcher), the funniest part is any of Steams competitors could launch on Linux with minimum effort but instead they chose to essentially give Steam a monopoly over Linux gaming.
exactly, literally every tecnology that steam uses, or created for steam/steam deck is open source
Gaben’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
Meanwhile Nintendo is laughing it’s ass off because half of their library is based on gimmick consoles that aren’t easily emulated. They figured out long ago consoles would die if they didn’t start innovating
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Yeah i like its even open for non steam game launchers ( epic games etc… ).
And the trackpads are my favorite, its so easy to scroll or move the cursor with them. They even have a super long charging cable. Its just valves baby, you know it when you have one.
EPIC GAMES: Why will no one buy games from me 😭? The market is unfair!
The steamdeck could theoretically install epic games launcher!!! So if the user wants epic games on it then do it ;D
But because epic games doesnt have really good controller support or steam input support it is not so good. But you could just add the games to your steam library ;D
I get all that. But if both companies will the games, then why bother with epic, steam gives a lot more than just the game. Epic is a half baked experience.
Thats true too + epic games had some hmmmmm moments.
The only real epic games only gmae you get is fortnite.
And you can’t even play that on Linux
yeh loll forgot that XD. At least you can just swap to windows if you REALLY want fortnite ;D
I don’t think the current mobile gaming monopoly is going anywhere. Switch or deck are tiny compared to phones.
i think of phones as tools, not gaming consoles or computers
of course because games on it are either money grabs or used to waste time, rarely is a phone game an actual game
So wait. You can run switch games on the deck?
Most, yes.
The secret is crime
Ryujinx and yuzu both work and run well in my experience. Biggest barrier was navigating the deck file structure for setting them up, but not impossible. Both also perform well via streaming from a desktop.
Easier way would probably be RetroDeck, which has Yuzu installed
I’m out ofnthe loop, but I hear good things about yuzu. There are other emulators, but I don’t remember any (I hear they are also good though).
yuzu tends to be more performant, but ryujinx tends to scale with resolution options better. on strictly handheld, most of the time due to the steam decks resolution, there isnt a hard need to scale resolution conpared to the switch so more often then not, yuzu is the no brainer choice.
Steam Deck is a step in the right direction but I wish they’d make games
