Subj : Re: Latest Valve's announcement
To   : Arelor
From : Nightfox
Date : Wed Nov 26 2025 09:45:59

  Re: Re: Latest Valve's announcement
  By: Arelor to Nightfox on Wed Nov 26 2025 08:28 am

 Ar> Valve has invested a huge amount of resources in order to not become
 Ar> dependant on Microsoft.

 Ar> Think about it. Steam has a 70% market share when it comes to PC games,
 Ar> but most of their games used to run only on Windows. This means Steam had
 Ar> a HUGE business going, but it all depended on a third party (Microsoft)
 Ar> for their customers to run their licensed games.

 Ar> If Microsoft were to play a Google/Apple style scheme and make it so only
 Ar> official app stores were supported by their Operating Systems, Steam would
 Ar> be in trouble. If Microsoft released their own games store and actively
 Ar> tried to hinder third party stores, Steam would be in trouble. The people
 Ar> at Valve is smart and they know this. The best way to survive long term is
 Ar> to ensure they don't depend on Microsoft playing ball forever, therefore
 Ar> they NEED their product to run on different Operating Systems just in
 Ar> case.

That all makes sense, and I wouldn't argue against any of that.  Even though Steam supports other operating systems, they're mainly an app store.  I'm pretty sure the vast majority of games they sell aren't made by them (though I know Steam/Valve does make games), and many PC game makers target Windows.  But having the Steam store on other operating systems definitely helps motivate game makers to support other operating systems.  I currently dual-boot my main PC between Windows and Linux, and I've thought of fully using Linux; one of the main things keeping me using Windows is the games.  But there are some other programs I use that don't have a Linux version yet too.

Nightfox
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