[HN Gopher] Helping Valve to power up Steam devices
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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices
Author : TingPing
Score : 789 points
Date : 2025-11-21 17:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.igalia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.igalia.com)
| fidotron wrote:
| > This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that's
| exactly what we've done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS
| Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs.
|
| Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing.
|
| Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| It's incredible how bad driver support is the ARM space. I was
| looking into some of the various Ambernic handhelds and their
| Linux firmware. Despite their SoCs being advertised as having
| Vulkan 1.1 support every firmware for the device ships with it
| disabled.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So many chipmakers and development board manufacturers see
| software/driver support as some kind of necessary evil--a
| chore that they grudgingly do because they have to, and they
| will do the absolute minimum amount of work, with barely
| enough quality to sell their hardware.
| ozarkerD wrote:
| It bewilders me. Software's gotta be easier than hardware
| right? Not that either is easy but as a software engineer,
| the engineering that goes into modern hardware mystifies
| me.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| Software is easier than hardware in general but companies
| generally pay their hardware guys 25-50% less than their
| software counterparts
| sgerenser wrote:
| People repeat this line a lot but I don't think it's
| true. Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc.
| afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or
| level roughly the same as their hardware folks. To the
| extent there's any difference, it's much less than 25%.
|
| OTOH, there's a small slice of (mainly) software
| companies like Google and Meta, along with Unicorn
| private companies, that skew the average software
| engineer salary high. Then there's a long tail of "old
| school" hardware companies like TI, Motorola, Atmel,
| Microchip, and tons of smaller less well known companies
| that all pay much lower than Google. But they pay their
| software people poorly as well.
|
| So if you just look at "average software engineer salary"
| vs "average hardware engineer salary" it appears that SW
| people are making 50% more than HW people, but it's not
| at the same companies.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Software can always ship a new update for bugs or
| features.
|
| Hardware not so much
| bri3d wrote:
| It's different definitions of "easy."
|
| With hardware, you have about one billion validation
| tests and QA processes, because when you're done, you're
| done and it had better work. Fixing an "issue" is very
| very expensive, and you want to get rid of them. However,
| this also makes the process more of, to stereotype, an
| "engineer's engineering" practice. It's very rules based,
| and if everything follows the rules and passes the tests,
| it's done. It doesn't matter how "hacky" or "badly
| architected" or "nasty" the input product is, when it
| works, it works. And, when it's done, it's done.
|
| On the other hand, software is highly human-oriented and
| subjective, and it's a continuous process. With Linux
| working the way it does, with an intentionally hostile
| kernel interface, driver software is even more so. With
| Linux drivers you basically chose to either get them
| upstreamed (a massive undertaking in personality
| management, but Valve's choice here), deal with
| maintaining them in perpetuity at enormous cost as every
| release will break them (not common), or give up and
| release a point in time snapshot and ride into the sunset
| (which is what most people do). I don't really think this
| is easier than hardware, it's just a different thing.
| generativenoise wrote:
| From the outside looking in. It really seems like both
| fields are working around each other in weird ways,
| somewhat enforced by backwards compatibility and
| historical path dependence.
|
| The transition from more homogeneous architectures to the
| very heterogeneous and distributed architectures of today
| has never really been all that well accounted for, just
| lots of abstractions that have been papered over and work
| for the most part. Power management being the most common
| place these mismatches seem to surface.
|
| I do wonder if it will ever be economical to "fix" some
| of these lower level issues or if we are stuck on this
| path dependent trajectory like the recurrent laryngeal
| nerve in our bodies.
| altfredd wrote:
| > intentionally hostile kernel interface
|
| If open-sourcing your entire kernel is being "hostile", I
| don't think that there is or ever was a "friendly" OS.
| OvermindDL1 wrote:
| I think what they were referencing with that is that the
| kernel hardware interface is unstable, it changes
| literally every version, which is why you went to
| upstream it so you don't have to keep it up yourself
| after that.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I've done both. There are difficulties with both but
| overall I would say software is significantly more
| difficult than hardware.
|
| Most hardware is actually _relatively_ simple (though
| hardware engineers do their best to turn it into an
| incomprehensible mess). Software can get pretty much
| arbitrarily complex.
|
| In a way I suspect it's because hardware engineers are
| mostly old fogies stuck in the 80s using 80s technologies
| like Verilog. They haven't evolved the tools that
| software developers have that enable them to write
| extremely complicated programs.
|
| I have hope for Veryl though.
| poly2it wrote:
| What do you think about Atopile? I'm not a hardware
| person yet, but these seem similar.
|
| https://atopile.io/
| bri3d wrote:
| PCB and RTL are completely separate disciplines.
| vrinsd wrote:
| Wow, super hard disagree, comment here sounds like the
| typical arrogance hardware engineers face from people in
| software who've never really done the job or have some
| superficial experiences.
|
| I won't blindly state "software is easier" but software
| is definitely easier to modify, iterate and fix, which is
| why sofware tools and resulting applications can evolve
| so fast.
|
| I have done both HW & SW, routinely do so, and switch
| between deep hardware jobs and deep software so I'm
| qualified to speak.
|
| If you're blinking a light or doing something with
| Bluetooth you can buy microcontrollers that have this
| capability and yes that hardware is simple.
|
| But have you ever DESIGNED a microcontroller, let alone a
| modern processor or complex system ?
|
| Getting something "simple" like a microcontroller to
| reliably start-up involves complex power sequencing,
| making sure an oscillator works, a phase-locked-loop that
| behaves correctly and that's just "to make a clock signal
| run at a frequency" we're not talking about implementing
| PCIe Gen5 or RDMA over 100Gbps Ethernet.
|
| Hardware engineers definitely welcome better tools but
| the cost of using an unproven tool or tool that might
| have "a few" corner cases resulting in your $5-million
| SoC not working is a hard risk to tolerate, so sadly(and
| to our pain) we end up using proven but arcane
| infrastructure.
|
| Software in contrast can evolve faster because you can
| "fix it in software". New tools can be readily tested,
| iterated on and deployed.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > But have you ever DESIGNED a microcontroller
|
| Yes... But in fairness I was just talking about the
| digital RTL, not the messy analogue stuff (PLLs,
| power/reset, etc.) I've never done that.
|
| > but software is definitely easier to modify, iterate
| and fix,
|
| Definitely true.
|
| > which is why sofware tools and resulting applications
| can evolve so fast.
|
| Not sure I agree here though. It seems to me that EDA
| tools evolve super slowly because a) hardware engineers
| are timid old fogies who never want to learn anything
| new, and b) the big three have a monopoly on tooling.
| lonjil wrote:
| In my experience, hardware companies all believe that
| software is trivial nonsense they don't need to spend any
| effort on. Consequently, the software that drives their
| hardware really sucks.
| andyferris wrote:
| But - doesn't open sourcing it kinda make it someone else's
| chore?
|
| Obviously it has to "work" at sale but ongoing maintenance
| could be shared with the community.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Come to think of it, for them it is basically customer
| support.
|
| Most will want to outsource it as cheap as possible and/or
| push it to the community. They won't care if it takes an
| eternity for the customer to get their issues solved as
| long as new customers keep buying.
|
| And a few companies will see an opportunity to bring better
| customer care as an advantage and/or integrate it in their
| philosophy.
| LtWorf wrote:
| And it's the reason why for several years I didn't
| consider buying anything that had an AMD card (not now,
| but for many many years it was insanity).
| doubled112 wrote:
| Are you talking about the FGLRX drivers on Linux
| desktops?
|
| Or their Windows driver quality back then?
|
| I remember them both being pretty brutal.
| LtWorf wrote:
| The linux desktop was my reason.
| colechristensen wrote:
| They're stuck in the building model of making semi-custom
| SoCs for enormous corporations and releasing/developing
| drivers for them in extreme NDA environments.
|
| It's fine (or arguably not) for locked down corporate
| devices.
|
| Not so fine for building computers people want to use and own
| themselves.
| opan wrote:
| I would recommend the Anbernic RG353M running ROCKNIX, or for
| a more powerful device, Retroid's Pocket 5 running ROCKNIX.
| Most other options have awful software support and are just
| e-waste, unfortunately.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Glad too see that while Qualcomm tries to keep things closed
| shut tightly, Valve and their contractors are trying to do the
| opposite.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.
|
| Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they
| sell games. These devices are merely another storefront.
|
| Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will
| into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a
| cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community.
|
| Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by
| [mostly] doing right by the consumer. I'm not sure if there's
| more to the secret source, her sauce, because we've yet to see
| another CEO pull their head out of their arse far enough to see
| how lucrative this approach can be: consumerism is fickle,
| fanaticism is loyal.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to
| having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats.
| Etc.
|
| It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably
| somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve
| looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on
| occasion.
|
| When your competition is EA... it's not hard.
| tapoxi wrote:
| > They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc.
|
| Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to
| gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely
| on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to
| curtail.
|
| But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free
| pass.
| jsheard wrote:
| > and give refunds so they get a free pass.
|
| They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the
| no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was
| found to be illegal in Australia.
| nananana9 wrote:
| They made the new refund policy worldwide, which they
| absolutely did not have to.
| jsheard wrote:
| Sure, but I imagine they saw the dominoes falling and
| realized that the optics of going down kicking and
| screaming in endless battles against basic consumer
| rights would be exceptionally bad. If they hadn't fully
| conceded then the EU would have been up their ass too
| before long.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| > kicking and screaming in endless battles against basic
| consumer rights
|
| "Apple has entered the chat."
|
| There are so many examples of other companies doing
| exactly that.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Whatever the reason for their policy, it provides a nice
| sense of safety to Linux gamers. They can buy the game
| without worrying about compatibility; if the game doesn't
| run then its two clicks for an automated refund.
| protimewaster wrote:
| Also, competing stores like EA's Origin had a pretty
| friendly refund policy before Valve did, helping to put
| some pressure on Valve.
| rockskon wrote:
| I seem to recall Origin initially reserving the right to
| revoke your license to play games you purchased after a
| few years of inactivity.
| abustamam wrote:
| Classic EA.
|
| "Oh, you haven't played this game in a while. You should
| pay us again if you wanna play it again. Give you a sense
| of pride and accomplishment!"
|
| (reference for those who haven't seen it https://www.redd
| it.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b... )
| jchw wrote:
| I truly believe that Valve has two fundamental things
| working in their favor:
|
| Firstly: Despite inventing or at least popularizing a lot
| of new microtransaction concepts, they've just never been
| the greediest company in the business when it comes to
| microtransactions. Mobile gacha games have cleaned up
| their business quite a lot lately, with most of them
| being significantly less predatory than they used to be,
| but even back when TF2 introduced lootboxes and hats, the
| important thing was that the game was not pay to win; you
| could get all of the items in relatively short order just
| by playing, and the only benefit to paying was cosmetics.
|
| Contrast this to the earlier reign of Korean MMOs: pretty
| much all of them had egregious microtransactions.
| MapleStory, PangYa, Gunbound, etc, and even some current
| platforms like Roblox. Valve also came into this whole
| thing before lootboxes became the root of all evil, and
| while TF2's lootbox mechanism looks bad in retrospect,
| there was simply no stigma against a system like that,
| and it never felt like a big deal during the game's
| heyday. Just my opinion, but I strongly believe it to be
| true.
|
| Secondly: The most egregious things going on are not
| things Valve is directly involved in, they are merely
| complicit, in that they don't do much to curtail it. It's
| not even necessarily cynical to say that Valve is turning
| a blind eye, they benefit so significantly from the
| egregious behavior that it is hard to believe they are
| not influenced by this fact. But: It _is_ consistent with
| Valve 's behavior in other ways: Valve has taken a very
| hands-off stance in many places, and if it weren't for
| external factors it seems likely they would be even more
| hands-off than they are now. I think they genuinely take
| the position that it's not their job to enforce moral
| standards, and if you really do take this position
| seriously it is going to wind up looking extremely bad
| when you benefit from it. It's not so dissimilar from the
| position that Cloudflare tries to take with its services:
| it's hard to pick apart what may be people with power
| trying to uphold ideals even when it is optically poor
| versus greedy companies intentionally turning a blind eye
| because it might enrich them. (And yes, I do understand
| that these sites violate Valve's own ToS, but so does a
| lot of things on Steam Workshop and elsewhere. In many
| cases, they really do seem consistently lax as long as
| there isn't significant external pressure.)
|
| Despite these two things, there is a nagging feeling that
| every company gives me that I should never take anything
| but a cynical view on them, because almost all companies
| are basically lawnmowers now. But I really do not feel
| like I only give Valve the benefit of the doubt just
| because they support Linux; I actually feel like Valve
| has done a substantial amount to prove that they are not
| just another lawnmower. After all, while they definitely
| are substantially enriched by tolerating misuse of their
| APIs, they've probably also gotten themselves into _tons_
| of trouble by continuing to have a very hands-off
| attitude. In fact, it seems like owing to the relatively
| high standards people have for Valve, they get criticized
| and punished more for conduct than other companies. I
| mean seriously, Valve has gotten absolutely reamed for
| their attempt at adding an arbitration clause into their
| ToS, with consequences that lingered long after they
| removed and cancelled the arbitration clause. And I do
| hate that they even tried it -- but what 's crazy to me
| is that it was already basically _standard_ in big tech
| licensing agreements. Virtually everyone has an insane
| "you can't sue us" rule in their ToS. It numbs my mind to
| try to understand why Valve was one of the first and only
| companies to face punishment for this. It wouldn't numb
| my mind at all if it was happening to all of them, but
| plenty of these arbitration clauses persist today!
|
| So when I consider all of this, I think Valve is an
| alright company. They're not saints, but even if the bar
| wasn't so terribly low, they'd probably still be above
| average overall. That can be true simultaneously with
| them still having bad practices that we don't all like.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| The same api users use?
| koolala wrote:
| a social chat interface where bots pretend to be humans.
|
| so its a UI not a API yeah
| cornhole wrote:
| there are worse capitalists to give money to
| tarsinge wrote:
| Yes everybody is trying to find rational reasons but to
| me like in recent politics a lot has to do with
| irrational tribalism.
|
| I stumbled on an article of Gabe talking about his new
| yacht[0] and it made me realize he is not different than
| other billionaire (and maybe worst than average because
| he doesn't even give to charity). But he looks like he is
| "one of us" and he likes Linux, so it's okay.
|
| Would gamers keep the rose colored glasses if Valve was
| exactly the same but the CEO was a business suit style
| type?
|
| [0] https://fortune.com/2025/11/17/gabe-newell-leviathan-
| superya...
| rpdillon wrote:
| It isn't tribalism, at least not from my side. There's a
| tangible, noticeable, immediate difference between buying
| a piece of hardware from Valve and buying a piece of
| hardware from Google or Apple. I really resented Valve
| after the Steam box debacle that left me with a $1,200
| paperweight, but since then, they've done enormous
| amounts of work to regain my trust through tangible
| increases in the quality of the gaming experience,
| including not having to use Windows to game anymore, and
| providing me with open hardware that I can install
| whatever I want on, including using their hardware as my
| own personal PC when e.g. traveling.
|
| Its weird to me that people choose what companies to buy
| from on the basis of whether or not the CEO owns a yacht
| or how rich he is. That is not the operative criteria
| when I choose what products to buy, but rather how well
| that product suits my needs and how much I trust the
| relationship with the company that produced it.
|
| Valve is just miles ahead of every other manufacturer in
| this regard.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The difference is that valve loot crates/hats have also
| always been tradeable, and Ive never had to buy them or
| suffer a disasvantage.
| tpxl wrote:
| TF2 hats used to bring an advantage until about a decade
| ago.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Oh - were they already tradeable ?
| OoooooooO wrote:
| All items had stats / skill changes, no?
| super256 wrote:
| That is simply not true. Hats have always been cosmetics
| only.
|
| Some unusual hats even give you a disadvantage as they
| broadcast your position through sounds.
| Thorrez wrote:
| This video describes how, in the past, certain item sets,
| which included hats, gave stats boosts when worn
| together:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZDIqnS0FcI
| super256 wrote:
| The author is completely ignoring that you didn't have to
| _BUY_ these hats. For example, you could (and still can)
| craft the Milkman hat with 1 refined metal + 1 special
| delivery weapon.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _It 's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's
| probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point -
| ..._
|
| Sounds like we need someone to.. raise the bar.
| jefftk wrote:
| What's wrong with hats?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You don't become a billionaire by having your hands clean.
| But what set them appart to other companies is that they go
| out of their way not to be hostile to their users.
|
| Loot boxes done well are not user hostile, players pay
| because they like them, and sure, it uses all the tricks
| from the gambling industry to get as most money as they
| can, but player don't feel scammed or considering it an
| obstacle to their goals. It is just an additional feature
| they may or may not use. Compare to say, locking part of
| the game behind a paid DLC, players don't like that, they
| feel forced. Same end goal, that is to make their money
| your money, but the latter is considered hostile.
|
| And ads, Steam is full of ads, from recommendations to the
| store page showing up right as you launch steam. But they
| won't put a popup between you and your game. They show you
| the ads you want to see... And you buy games you wouldn't
| have bought otherwise.
|
| And Steam has DRM, that's weak DRM, but effective at what
| it does, and importantly, if you bought the games legally,
| you won't even notice, contrary to some other company
| intrusive practices.
| caphector wrote:
| Steams default landing page can be changed in Settings ->
| Interface -> Start Up Location. Setting Library skips the
| store when opening. Steam
| awill wrote:
| I have a super high opinion of Valve. Sure, they have loot
| crates. But sensible people don't buy them. I guess you
| could blame them for having it in the first place. That's
| fair I guess. But I've never for a second considered buying
| any of that junk.
|
| I just buy single player offline games with no IAP, and
| Steam is amazing. It's a million miles ahead of the
| competitors, and it's really surprising that EA/Ubi etc..
| try to compete but don't get the reason they're losing.
| They screw customers and then act surprised that customers
| hate them.
| m12k wrote:
| They've hedged their bets by making, and selling, both
| games whose monetization is exploitative and non-
| exploitative
| nolok wrote:
| The problem with loot crates, and the reason why they're
| being slowly regulated against in several places, is that
| "sensible people don't buy them" has never stopped people
| to lose their life to gambling.
| jakeec wrote:
| I hope everyone who is so outspoken about loot crates are
| also fighting for TCG packs to be banned/regulated
| because they are literally the same level of "gambling".
| iinnPP wrote:
| Let's not forget mystery boxes for real toys and things
| like mini brands.
|
| Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals
| need to come to terms with telling themselves no.
|
| Otherwise we need to outlaw everything bad and open to
| abuse to specific individuals. Things such as cake,
| donuts, coffee, etc.
| rpdillon wrote:
| > Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals
| need to come to terms with telling themselves no.
|
| This really resonates with me. I feel like self-control
| has gone out of fashion, but it has a lot of merit.
| cassepipe wrote:
| That's because it mostly doesn't work long term.
|
| Depending on how your brain got wired, self-control
| condemns you to a life of misery while not being exposed
| allows you to live a normal life. Of course you cannot
| ask for societal experience to be tailored just for you
| but there seem to be a consensus on protecting the most
| vulnerable people from the most destructive habits. Where
| to draw the line is for everyone to find agreement upon
| and if that's not good enough for you, you need to find a
| safe haven.
|
| Self-control is like a tourniquet on a severed leg, it
| can buy you time but you need an hospital at some point
| virtue3 wrote:
| I think it's difficult to just call things "self control"
| when there have been entire college majors / studies /
| casinos dedicated to tricking us into making the choices
| they want.
|
| Look at the Apple price ladder on ipads. Look at any
| tactic by a casino - go to Reno and see many retires at
| the beginning of the month drop their whole social
| security check in the casino. Look at why they label
| things $9.99 instead of $10.00 Look at why they put all
| the overpriced candy at the cash register in a super
| market. Look at how they create junk food to be "perfect"
| and addictive source:
| https://archive.globalpolicy.org/world-hunger/trade-and-
| food... I have a lot of friends that stopped playing
| gacha games because they would come home drunk - the game
| would incentivize you to login - and then blow more money
| than they truly wanted to.
|
| At some level it's unfair to say we should just "have
| self control" when you have entire academic institutions
| and entire industries figuring out how to get you to
| "crack" and make a bad decision that favors their pocket
| book.
|
| So yeah - I agree - we need more self control - but it's
| being purposefully assaulted every second of our day by
| EVERYTHING.
| tormeh wrote:
| Yeah, existing in the modern world you're surrounded by
| mind-hackers. Everywhere you go there are hacking
| attempts against your mind, trying to get you to buy
| stuff you shouldn't or want stuff you don't. It's really
| absurd.
| kakacik wrote:
| Well then regulation should help. And people should stop
| doing outright stupid things - you have no reason to be
| in casino, in same way you have no reason lighting that
| cigarette or doing another round of binge drinking (or
| those gacha games, had to google WTF that is, same mind
| cancer as the rest, no thank you). You, nor me are not
| stronger than those addictions. Billions of miserable
| poor fuckers before us are proof enough, learn from their
| mistakes.
|
| Attack from both sides, heck all sides - from the top
| with regulation. From the bottom by being mentally more
| resilient, there are endless ways to get there - ie do
| rock climbing (yes, not joking, it will change you for
| the better for good if you stick long enough). Or other
| sports and activities that challenge you, your fears,
| your laziness, push yourself physically. Do it 10 times
| and something clicks in the mind and it goes almost on
| its own afterwards.
|
| Another angle - shame those working in such business.
| Goes for fuck ton of FAANGS and many others. I know its
| blurry and whatever else of an excuse will fly around,
| don't care. Have a clearly moral work or accept shame, or
| change for the better.
|
| Its a terrible situation but by far the biggest mistake
| is throwing hands in the air and giving up immediately
| just because some greedy sociopathic billionaire wants a
| bigger yacht or rocket to compensate even more for their
| fucked up childhood, and thus pushes a lot of psychology
| phds against you. You don't have to even start to play
| that game, not even for a second. We are stronger, much
| stronger than that and real good life (TM) is not about
| anything digital in any way.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| If self control were reliable we wouldn't need seatbelts,
| antilock brakes, bumpers, and other safety mechanisms. We
| would all just drive safely all the time. But that would
| be silly. Self control is not as simple and reliable as
| we want it to be.
|
| Sometimes systematic solutions are better.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I agree that humans are fallible, but the analogy is
| still off despite being catchy, yet flawed. Seatbelts are
| passive mechanical systems; self-control is a complex,
| context-dependent cognitive function. Conflating the two
| oversimplifies how human behavior actually works.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I think we can ban companies selling packages without
| disclosing exactly what is in those packages. I think we
| can regulate companies in that way without finding
| ourselves hopelessly slipping down some silly slope.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| There's definitely a double standard in the gaming
| community where people don't treat TCG packs as ethically
| fraught in the same way, despite being the same thing.
| gpderetta wrote:
| People do compare TCGs to loot crates, in fact calling
| them the "original" loot crates. Also why "buy singles"
| has been the mantra for a long time.
|
| Aside of gambling, packs have at least a plausible use
| for limited format.
| xinayder wrote:
| And loot boxes in Valve games never bothered me, because
| if you want a particular skin you can just buy it off the
| market. I can't remember being angry at Valve for having
| loot boxes.
|
| All other games require you to keep opening loot boxes to
| get what you want.
| aaarrm wrote:
| Well not with their battle passes in Dota. They employed
| a lot of FOMO tactics where you had to spend hundreds to
| guarantee a set that you'll otherwise never be able to
| get again.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's amazing that an always-on DRM company can become the
| "good guy" by staying the same level of asshole they've
| always been, while every other company became much worse
| assholes.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Steam isn't always-on DRM. For instance Valve's own games
| don't have any.
|
| Their worst failure is allowing games with Denuvo on
| their store.
| jakeec wrote:
| Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just
| purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides.
| It only sounds like you're making a good point when you
| frame "provides the best shopping and library experience
| in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The
| Valve hate-boner is so weird.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| There are disadvantages. e.g. if you don't want to update
| a program (maybe the new version breaks your modded
| setup), too bad. Or if you need Windows still for
| compatibility, it no longer supports Windows 7, so you
| have to go hunting for old versions of the client and
| fiddle with it to prevent updates (if that still even
| works), at which point you'd might as well just mod it to
| remove the DRM instead.
|
| Basically, it creates a failure point for setups that
| should otherwise last and be stable several more decades.
| immibis wrote:
| > always-on DRM is actually just purely an advantage for
| the consumer
|
| Look me in the eyes and read this quote to me again. Then
| think about how yourself from 20 years ago would feel
| about reading this quote from someone else. You've gone
| so far down the rabbit hole but you don't realize you're
| in one.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Their DRM seems to be okay, but they do have some weird
| bugs.
|
| My biggest gripe with Valve right now is that I bought a
| copy of No Man's Sky on GOG, and then I also had a copy
| on Steam. And so I let my son play my Steam copy through
| Steam Library sharing so we can play co-op while I play
| my GOG copy. Unfortunately, because I launched my GOG
| game through Steam, Steam's DRM won't let him play at the
| same time as me because they think we're playing the same
| copy.
|
| It seems to be that they simply look at the title of the
| game and or the executable name to figure out what game
| it is, but they don't check to see what storefront it was
| bought from. I'm not sure about this though, I have to do
| more investigation.
| chungy wrote:
| Have you considered exiting Steam before starting the
| game? Or installing your GOG copy on the other computer?
| vee-kay wrote:
| You don't need to launch your GOG game via Steam, you can
| just remove its shortcut from Steam and launch it
| separately. Then your son can launch and play the Steam
| game in parallel, so both of you can play coop.
| npteljes wrote:
| In case you launch the GOG game because of Proton, then I
| suggest using Heroic launcher to start it instead. You
| can use Proton there too, automatically downloads and
| everything, same as Steam. And there will be no clashes
| with Steam.
| npteljes wrote:
| DRM is optional on Steam, many games don't have it (or
| roll their own). In many cases of Steam DRM, activation
| is only one-time, after that, granted the hardware
| doesn't change significantly, the player can be offline
| indefinitely.
|
| I'm no fan or DRM, but the current implementation is far
| from "always-on".
| jakeec wrote:
| > They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc.
|
| You listed one thing. What's the "etc."?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| On a personal level I just don't give a shit about the loot
| crates or cosmetic stuff because I don't buy them, they
| hold no interest for me, and they typically don't impact
| gameplay.
|
| I acknowledge that there's a legitimate ethical concern
| there the same way there is for, say, Magic the Gathering
| or other card games. But much like MtG, I can't bring
| myself to be all that upset about it.
| Perepiska wrote:
| > They invented loot crates
|
| It looks like false without sources.
| gmanley wrote:
| Does it really matter if they take these consumer friendly
| actions because they know it will get them good press and
| dedicated consumers? The end result is the same.
|
| Like you touched on, for whatever reason, most large enough
| companies haven't seemed to figure out this obvious truth. I
| tend to believe it's because it's harder than it looks, once
| a company reaches a certain size. Now sure, they are by no
| means perfect, but I'd like to at least give them credit for
| being far better than any of the competition, no matter the
| rational behind it.
| torginus wrote:
| You can install your own store or games on the devices if you
| want to without Steam. You could also take their work and
| build a custom distro or even a device without any trace of
| Steam whatsover.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| They did the thing. Let's judge their actions (which they
| have plenty of good and bad)
| rustystump wrote:
| Valve is private right? One of the reasons they are not pure
| evil is because they have the luxury of not needing to chase
| the magic dragon of inf growth. They can focus on product.
| Bet your ass if they were public u would see the slimiest
| shit coming out to eek every possible percent so bonuses are
| made.
|
| I wish more companies were private for profit but not inf
| growth.
| kubafu wrote:
| Came here to write exactly this. IMO it is the big reason
| what Valve is as a company.
| safety1st wrote:
| No one is hiding anything. No one is pretending to be
| something they're not. Life is not a Saturday morning
| cartoon. There are no good guys vs bad guys. There are just
| businesses trying to earn more profits.
|
| Valve is a business. When Microsoft introduced a Store they
| threatened Steam's market share. In theory Microsoft could
| one day update Windows so that it's hard to buy games through
| non Microsoft stores. Valve responded by investing in open
| source OS stuff. Their goal is to commoditize Windows, so
| that Microsoft doesn't wrest control of video game sales away
| from them. Commoditize your complement is a strategy as old
| as the software industry itself.
|
| We've known all this for years, it's been discussed publicly
| and no one is hiding it. It always annoys me when people
| think we're in Lord of the Rings and one company is Sauron or
| another is Gandalf. It's all just business. To everyone who
| makes decisions, it all boils down to numbers on a
| spreadsheet. They want their number to go up.
|
| What you SHOULD care about is competition. Valve would never
| have invested in all these OSS technologies if Microsoft
| hadn't tried to compete with them. They wouldn't be consumer
| friendly and they wouldn't make investments if they thought
| they could sit on their ass. They would just coast and
| enshittify (like Microsoft has in the OS space with its
| Windows monopoly).
|
| We don't need good guy companies, we need strong pro-
| competition laws and strong enforcers of those laws. You can
| vote accordingly at the ballot box, and you can also vote
| accordingly with your wallet, buy stuff from the little guys.
| afiori wrote:
| The discourse is not valve good others bad, rather it is
| consumer/product focused good and next-quarter/short-term-
| profit focused bad.
|
| With the context that a lot of modern enshittification,
| outsourcing, layoffs, anti-consumer practises follow from
| these short term approaches
| pksebben wrote:
| The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the
| company. Valve is flat. Employees have 100% control over
| their time. By not centralizing decision making, you create
| the conditions for good ideas to form and connect with the
| problems they are going to be best suited for.
|
| The dynamics at work here are very well understood (see
| Ackoff / Sycara / Gharajedaghi, and yes I had to look the
| spelling up). Hierarchies and centralization cause fragility
| and maladaptive behavior, autonomous cellular networks are
| robust and highly adaptive.
|
| For another look at similar principles in action, look up
| gore-tex and their corporate fragmenting. It's not flat like
| Valve but it's still kind of genius.
|
| I wish there were more discussion about this stuff in general
| - society could benefit from having better systems literacy.
| inejge wrote:
| > The "more to the secret sauce" is the structure of the
| company. Valve is flat.
|
| I'm too lazy to dig up references, but there have been
| semi-exposes over the years by ex-employees stating that
| Valve's flatness was anything but. Namely, in the absence
| of formal hierarchy an informal one will inevitably arise,
| and can be equally constraining and pathological, without
| the benefit of having known avenues for redress. To be
| sure, formal procedures can also be window-dressing: it's a
| balancing act, and not an easy one. I'm just skeptical of
| ascribing too much benefit to lack of structure.
| rixed wrote:
| My understanding is that the emergence of informal
| hierarchy can actualy be the feature; The problem being
| addressed being the rigdity of formal hierarchies in a
| changing environment. As long as informal hierarchies
| emerge and die according to circumstances, that can be a
| win.
| Philpax wrote:
| See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Str
| ucturelessne....
| pksebben wrote:
| The point being that the informality arises organically.
| People are capital-b Bad at risk assessment and planning;
| we are much, much better at responding to current
| stimuli.
|
| Also, flat _is_ a structure (albeit a simple one). To use
| an abstraction, think of a house. When you move in, the
| house is flat (organizationally speaking). There are
| floors, and that 's it. This means you can place things
| anywhere they make sense to. Sure, it's inconvenient to
| have to add a dresser here or a shelf there when one
| doesn't already exist, but you can adapt the space to
| your current problems. Over time, you add things and
| change stuff to be less flat, which means that if you've
| been living there a long time there is more friction to
| implement things that you may not have known you were
| going to need at first. Your fridge is insufficient, but
| instead of getting one that works for what you need you
| now need to move all the things between the fridge and
| the door, move out the old fridge, and only _then_ can
| you move the new one in.
|
| With a 'flat' org - you start each project with this
| fresh slate. Each project can adapt it's policies and org
| chart to match what's important for that project. This
| way, you don't end up using an organization that is
| primarily suited for content distribution to make a game
| (a win that i think is obvious in Valve already) or using
| an org built around an advertising platform for a browser
| (a deficiency blatantly obvious in Google).
| immibis wrote:
| The tyranny of structurelessness
|
| https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
|
| This isn't about valve specifically
| rixed wrote:
| Thank you for the references; Is there any article/blog
| describing that secret sauce from the insde for the curious
| outsider that you would recommand?
|
| I've always been interrested in organisations, but not so
| much by the theory that I've always found too dry.
| port11 wrote:
| Also: GitHub before the Microsoft acquisition, as
| supposedly the teams could self-assemble to work on
| whatever they wanted.
| nialv7 wrote:
| and that's why Gabe's wealth is "only" 10 billion not 100
| billion. The problem is many CEOs will look at what Gabe has
| and think "I want more than him".
| msy wrote:
| The real secret sauce is that Valve is private and doesn't
| have external investors. As soon as you're owners are
| primarily interested in short term capital extraction
| everything else is inevitable.
| fooblaster wrote:
| yeah this is essentially everything and all this other
| discussion of corporate structure is irrelevant
| roody15 wrote:
| I think you are correct here. If you want to look at the
| decline of the US ... this is perhaps a good place to
| start. Short term capital extraction little long term
| strategic planning. Maybe Cisco is a good example.. lets
| move all of our switch hardware production to China and
| still charge the consumer 3500$ per switch. Equals short
| term gain, makes lots of millinaires... and then just a few
| years later.. now Huawei makes excellent switches that are
| mostly on par with Cisco at a better price point.
| xzjis wrote:
| In reality, Valve is doing all this work on GNU+Linux because
| they've been afraid of Microsoft ever since Windows 8 and the
| introduction of the Windows Store. For now, Microsoft is
| remaining open and isn't restricting installations to its own
| store; we even see that with the full-screen gaming version
| of Windows for handhelds, they display games from other
| stores, including Steam. But Microsoft also has a history of
| abusing its dominant position and monopoly to push its own
| products (Internet Explorer, Edge, OneDrive, etc.). Gaben
| made the only possible decision to protect Valve from that:
| having their own OS.
| usrusr wrote:
| Other CEOs are not owner-CEOs. They may be founder-CEOs, but
| at the end of the day those aren't really more powerful than
| a CEO hired off the street by owners. For publicly traded
| companies, even a majority stake only makes them powerful on
| paper, because the 49% selling would shatter their paper net
| worth.
| graemep wrote:
| The other difference (and I think a more important one) is
| that they take a longer term view of the business, rather
| than next year's bonus and options vesting. A hired CEO
| will probably not still be there in a few years time.
|
| > or publicly traded companies, even a majority stake only
| makes them powerful on paper, because the 49% selling would
| shatter their paper net worth.
|
| That threat is limited because the other shareholders do
| not want to reduce the value of their investment either.
| Look at what a firm of Musk has on Tesla with something
| like a 15% stake.
| javier2 wrote:
| I dont really know what has happened, but many forces have
| had to improve Linux kernel incrementally. 15 years ago,
| linux was terrible at suspend-to-ram, wifi drivers a
| nightmare. Power efficiency was lagging far behind on most
| architectures. Everyone from intel, to amd, router vendors,
| server datacenters and android manufacturers have gradually
| improved these parts over years and years and now, there
| seems to be enough vested interest that linux compatibility
| is not a third afterthought, but having good linux support
| early means you can launch on a android phone, in the
| datacenter, or build for a custom SoC.
| rpdillon wrote:
| To modulate your cynical take somewhat, it's remarkable to me
| that all the devices are completely open. You can install
| anything you want on them, which makes them more than a
| storefront. It makes them a device that works for the user,
| which, to your final point, does create loyalty in people
| like me.
| afiori wrote:
| Many CEOs are either paid by mythical "shareholder value" or
| beholden to it in the shape of a board, if they tried to go
| the valve route they would likely get replaced too soon for
| the benefits to materialize
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| I also just love that in open source you can call something
| "Turnip" because you're not marketing it to anyone.
| Melonai wrote:
| I don't know, Turnip's a cute name and I wouldn't think twice
| before buying a product which is branded that way (as long as
| the actual product is cool of course!).
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| There isn't a single mention of AI in the article.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised
| Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for
| <AAA Engine>, have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the
| drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low
| expectations.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Qualcomm is by a lot of accounts on HN a law firm with a side
| hustle of selling chips.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Worked there for 9 years, can confirm. I wish that our
| drivers had been open sources, because we poured our souls
| into them and took pride in the result.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> I work with mobile GPUs for <AAA Engine>, have direct
| contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to
| disappoint even with my low expectations._
|
| Often when people run into problems with a GPU they blame
| "the drivers". How confident are you that the problems you
| ran into originated from the drivers, and not from other
| sources, such as the hardware itself? Just because an issue
| goes away with a driver update it doesn't mean that the
| problem originated in the driver -- most of the time what
| happens is that they found a hardware bug and implemented yet
| another software workaround.
|
| I am not throwing the HW folks under the bus, either. The
| hardware is immensely complex and it's not that they can
| release a new revision every month.
|
| One of the main responsibilities of GPU drivers is working
| around the bugs that are found after hardware is released.
| That, and getting all the blame.
| altfredd wrote:
| Android has entire API for handling driver failures:
|
| https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/Wi
| f...
|
| Hardware can have issues, but firmware and drivers usually
| work around those issues. When firmware and drivers crash,
| you get "masterpieces" like the one above.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I used to write drivers for Qualcomm GPUs. I am speaking
| from years of experience here.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| I suppose from the outside I cant meaningfully distinguish
| from hardware or software bugs except in a few cases.
| Doesn't change the outcome for us either, it's not like we
| can rely on driver updates to be shipped on Android. Many
| extensions are broken like extended dynamic state to the
| point of being unusable. We've hit plenty of issues in the
| driver shader compiler too, even in Vulkan 1.0 features
| like relaxed precision.
|
| We've hit a ton of bugs on the adreno 830, with even basic
| stuff like barriers being broken.
|
| The problem isn't exclusive to Qualcomm fwiw, we've run
| into plenty of bugs in ARM's driver. Apple's too
| smolder wrote:
| It's actually very easy for skilled people to deliver good
| products when they aren't just tasked with sucking off
| shareholders. Public trade of companies makes them worse every
| time.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Every major company open sources software that is not part of
| its core competitive advantages. It's part of "commoditizing
| your complements"
| david-gpu wrote:
| Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open
| source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are
| the risks?
|
| OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people
| sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.
| stavros wrote:
| I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the
| products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts.
| They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather
| than locking it down.
| zem wrote:
| I had barely played games for years, and got a steam deck just
| because it seemed like a cool linux device I could use both for
| gaming and tinkering. it has definitely gotten me back into
| gaming in a big way, the experience really is very nice.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes! The Deck is the closest I've gotten to getting into
| gaming. I especially loved the "press the power button and
| your game is immediately right there" aspect of it.
|
| I ended up selling it to a friend because I enjoy making
| things much more, but the Deck is such a fantastic device.
| pipes wrote:
| It's a great device, I mainly use it for emulation. The fact
| that it's properly an open platform is amazing.
| palata wrote:
| Same here! I actually stopped playing when I moved entirely
| to Linux, and have been running on laptops without a good GPU
| solution since then.
|
| I bought the SteamDeck because it looked like a cool product
| and I liked the openness ("it's just running Linux"), and I
| love it. And it got me back into gaming :-).
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I just wish my hands wouldn't cramp on hand-held devices.
| I've never been able to use handhelds for longer than thirty
| minutes.
|
| Goes for console controllers too.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Maybe you need larger controllers ?
|
| Also possible the touchpads are better for fatigue than
| joysticks
| soiltype wrote:
| Apologies if you've already ruled this out, but hand pain
| is very often caused by strain/injury from further up the
| arms, the shoulders, or even the neck. You _may_ find that
| pulling your shoulders back or relaxing them, or adjusting
| your arm posture, or straightening /relaxingyour neck gives
| you less pain while playing.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is my experience. I played some Xbox here and there and
| every once in a while fell down the Factorio hole but I
| wasn't gaming a ton. I got the steam deck somewhat cause it
| was cool, and somewhat as retail therapy but now I play it
| almost every night. I love playing smaller indie games on it,
| it's a great device. Compare that to my Switch 2 and I've
| played it about 1/100th of the time I've played on the Deck.
| The Switch 2 is nice and all, just the Deck is way more
| flexible.
|
| Replaying my favorite GBA/DS/etc games again on the Deck was
| so much fun. Huge screen for my (older) eyes, ability to
| speed up/rewind/save slots, and other tweaks if I wanted were
| all a blast. I played back through some of my favorites as a
| kid and enjoyment and nostalgia were both off the charts.
| huseyinkeles wrote:
| That's what happens when you don't need to please the
| shareholders.
| stavros wrote:
| That's very true, and I didn't realize it until you just said
| it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Google has contributed more to open source than Valve while
| being a public company. It's not just Valve who sponsor open
| source work.
| sabellito wrote:
| I'd like to see that comparison tracking the number of devs
| and how much open source software each company uses.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| They seem to be skimping out on their contributions to
| FFmpeg.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Google has contributed many patches to ffmpeg. Valve has
| contributed 0 as far as I am aware.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They aren't. Sometimes headlines are misleading.
| ozarkerD wrote:
| Valve employs like <400 people
| Zambyte wrote:
| But what percentage of what Google has produced has been
| Free Software vs what percentage of what Valve has
| produced? Google may have produced more Free Software, but
| Google also produces way more things.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't think this very practical or relevant here, but I
| expect Google to have a higher percentage. Valve
| employees are focused on Valve's proprietary software:
| Steam, SteamVR, their games, etc. Valve more often pays
| contractorsto work on open source software than work on
| it themselves.
|
| My comment was more to prove that it possible to do open
| source while having share holders. My claim that Google
| does more is auxiliary to it.
| bityard wrote:
| If you think publicly-held companies are bad, wait until you
| see what private equity gets up to.
| fragmede wrote:
| Okay, but have you heard about the monarchy?
| layer8 wrote:
| There's probably a better way to sponsor Valve than to buy
| physical products you won't use. That has pretty low monetary
| efficiency for the purpose.
| stavros wrote:
| But maybe I'll use them!
| layer8 wrote:
| Well, you did state "just to support their OSS efforts". ;)
| stavros wrote:
| The pleasurable after the useful!
| downrightmike wrote:
| Steam gift cards
| righthand wrote:
| I'd wait to see if they open source the Machine, Controller,
| and Frame before assuming buying their products supports open
| source that matters for everyone. Right now the Steam Deck is
| the only product that open source and supports that vision.
|
| Even this article it is not clear how beneficial some of their
| open source work is for everyone except Valve.
| TingPing wrote:
| What do you mean by "open source the Machine"? Valve has
| stated its a regular open PC. The whole driver stack is open.
| righthand wrote:
| The hardware, like they did with the Steam Deck.
| TingPing wrote:
| I guess you mean the CAD files for the shell? I'm not
| sure that is the most important part but it would be
| nice.
| righthand wrote:
| Sorry my point is that the Steam Deck is the only product
| of theirs that really supports beneficial open source in
| software and hardware. If you don't think fossing the
| case is enough then you're making my point for me that
| buying the machine, frame, or controller doesn't do
| anything for foss.
|
| It'd be like donating to Mozilla and expecting the money
| to go to Firefox development.
| 8676456497096 wrote:
| Valve paying for the development of KDE, Wine and
| adjacent projects is beneficial for FOSS.
| righthand wrote:
| Adjacent projects to those have if anything only eroded
| the credit is where credits due. Ask any non-technically
| inclined Steam Deck owner who contributed to Linux to
| make it desktop useable and people will tell you desktop
| computing wasn't possible until Valve did something.
| Valve does a very good job scrubbing the OS to look like
| Steam OS and not Wine, KDE, or Arch.
|
| So while their adjacent projects have moved users to
| Linux, it is not the reason the desktop is a good
| experience.
|
| Again Valve's contributions have been mainly beneficial
| for Valve. They are perfectly comfortable taking money
| from Windows and Linux users and claiming to fight some
| sort of freedom of technology war, but the benefits for
| wider non-entertainment computing remain to be seen.
| kaoD wrote:
| Steam Deck is not free software, is it?
|
| The repo[0] is basically an issue tracker and the hardware is
| not open either (but they're repair-friendly which is already
| an improvement over... everything else.)
|
| [0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS
| robhlt wrote:
| They run their own Gitlab instance with many more steamos
| projects:
|
| https://gitlab.steamos.cloud
| saghm wrote:
| For a few years before I eventually got a Steam Deck, I
| played a lot of games that I bought outside of Steam, and
| over the past decade, the experience of doing this on Linux
| has _massively_ improved. Plenty of their improvements get
| upstreamed to Wine, and there 's nothing stopping you from
| obtain proton (or even one of the various unofficial tweaks
| of it) to run games that you don't buy through Steam to get
| the benefits that aren't upstreamed (or haven't been yet).
| The article itself mentions that they've implemented a driver
| for Mesa that has equal or better performance on ARM than the
| proprietary one from Qualcomm.
|
| It's not clear to me what you're attempting to convey by
| saying the Steam Deck being the only product they have that
| supports the open source vision. The Steam Deck is the only
| new hardware product they've had since 2019, when they
| released their original first party VR headset that
| presumably is being replaced by the new one. Other than that,
| the only other hardware products they've ever worked on were
| earlier headsets made by other manufacturers or the previous
| iterations of the other two products announced alongside the
| new headset. From that standpoint, you could make a credible
| argument that the only product they even have right now that
| benefits from the open source work they've done in the past
| six years they did is the exact one you say supports this
| vision.
| righthand wrote:
| Exactly they have no track record so the benefits remain to
| be seen how gaming improvements to Linux are advantageous
| to people who use FOSS beyond paying Valve for Steam DRM'd
| games without requiring a Windows license.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The steam deck, especially the low-spec variant, was sold at
| very low, likely negative margins. They make huge profit on
| their games, but if you don't buy the games...
|
| They've implied that they're not going to sell the Steam
| Machine at a low margin because they're worried about people
| buying the Steam Machine for general purpose computer use
| without buying games. I'm not sure that's a rational fear. If
| you subtract the GPU, you can get an comparable Beelink for
| ~$350. ~$500 would be the zero-margin price for a Steam
| Machine. It seems to me that the only people willing to pay an
| extra $150 for a mid-range GPU that's not good for AI would be
| gamers.
|
| Not to mention that the Beelink comes with a Windows license,
| and the Steam Machine doesn't.
| stavros wrote:
| I do buy quite a few games, which usually end up unplayed. A
| few times I do binge one, so it's generally worth it for me.
| I'd like the Steam Machine for playing games in my living
| room with friends etc, even though it might end up unused,
| but the OSS support really swings the scale towards "take my
| money".
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > They've implied that they're not going to sell the Steam
| Machine at a low margin because they're worried about people
| buying the Steam Machine for general purpose computer use
| without buying games. I'm not sure that's a rational fear.
|
| I can understand that, OTOH I have a $1500 gaming PC
| (probably worth far less now--I built it over a year ago) for
| explicitly that purpose. What I don't have is a modern, low-
| power living room HTPC with _native_ /first-class Linux
| support on which to run Kodi (I have a custom one that's
| quite long in the tooth). If I could dock a steam deck in my
| living room and use it for Kodi 80% of the time with games
| for the remaining 20%, why should Valve care? I have already
| given Valve hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in game
| sales.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Anybody who has a gaming PC isn't the target market for the
| Steam Machine. They're going after the console market with
| the value add of "also it's a real computer that can do
| real computer stuff".
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I assume Value is happy if you buy just 1 or 2 games for
| your Steam Deck or Steam Machine. It's the people that buy
| exactly 0 games that they claim to be worried about. IOW,
| not consumers, but companies buying work PC's.
| pwdisswordfishs wrote:
| Valve-Roku merger. Someone buys a Steam Machine that they
| keep in the living room for both general purpose
| computering and as an HTPC that never, ever runs a game
| purchased from the Steam store, but they still make
| money. Easy peasy.
| yojat661 wrote:
| They could offer a $X steam credits with their steam hardware
| for a win win.
| internetter wrote:
| they're already effectively doing this by selling the deck
| at a loss
| soiltype wrote:
| > Not to mention that the Beelink comes with a Windows
| license, and the Steam Machine doesn't.
|
| That's a mark against the Beelink for many :)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I was looking at buying a Beelink NAS and paying for a
| Windows license when I'm just going to install proxmox on
| it (I think) definitely counts against it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about it. The cost OEMs pay for those
| Windows licenses is negligible for a "low-end" device
| like a simple NAS box.
| torginus wrote:
| It's a somewhat justified fear - the box screams 'home
| server' to me. Then again a Mac Mini is just $600
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The steam machine is a $350 server + a $300 GPU + a $200
| controller. A good deal for $500-$700, but only if you want
| the GPU and controller.
| stavros wrote:
| The Steam Machine doesn't come with the Steam controller,
| though, as far as I know.
| koolala wrote:
| Two options with controller and without. Two options for
| memory 512gb and 2tb. 4 skews.
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh OK, thanks.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Something else worth considering in comparison to
| consoles is that the games you buy on the Steam machine
| can be played on other devices and they'll be available
| long after the games you bought on console this
| generation EOL.
|
| I've wasted $1000+ on console games over the years that I
| don't have access to anymore, yet I can still install the
| first Steam game I bought decades ago.
| bauble wrote:
| I'm staring at the EOL of Windows 10, which I use on my game
| machine. I'll happily get one of the cubes for my next box. I'd
| like this to be the end of my Windows usage.
| stavros wrote:
| I game exclusively on my Linux desktop (for the few games I
| play). Everything works flawlessly with Proton.
| technofiend wrote:
| You did say "I'd like this to be the end of my Windows
| usage." Even so, if you're not ready to move tomorrow, you
| can give up some privacy for the next year and continue to
| get patches by logging in to Microsoft. Windows 10 LTSC is a
| possibility if you somehow qualify for a license, although
| there's no guarantee the latest Nvidia drivers will work on
| it, some version of them will, or you can punt and run Linux
| on your current PC until the steam cube comes out. Pick a
| Linux distribution you like and run Steam, or go down the
| rabbit hole of running native Steam OS.
|
| I personally preferred Fedora for this but mostly because my
| employer is a redhat shop. It's not otherwise (as far as I
| know) any better or worse than any other distro for gaming.
| troupo wrote:
| Igalia is a superhero company doing a lot of great work with
| surprisingly little fanfare.
|
| Everytime their name pops up it's inevitably "oh some thankless
| extremely technical low level work leading to impressive/long-
| awaited features"
| amazari wrote:
| Indeed, their work on WebKit, Servo, Mesa drivers, the kernel,
| and more is seriously impressive!
|
| Their customers, Valve, in this case, deserve credit for being
| good FLOSS citizens (even if they are building a DRM walled
| garden on top of it :/), but the actual workers are the real
| unsung heroes. Them, Codethink, Collabora, and other open-
| source consultancies I might have missed are doing the
| community a huge service."
| atrus wrote:
| Steam DRM is entirely optional. Blame the publishers for DRM.
| Uvix wrote:
| Valve doesn't disclose ahead of purchase whether a title
| has Steam DRM or not. So even if publishers don't take the
| option, I have no way to know that. Which means the option
| effectively doesn't exist.
| chmod775 wrote:
| You can ship DRM-free games on it just fine. It's up to the
| dev/publisher.
|
| Additionally you can get a lot of the benefits of Steam
| (Proton etc.) even for titles you didn't acquire through
| Steam - you can add and launch third party executables
| through the Steam client.
|
| Steam is not exactly a walled garden save for some rather
| light curation of their own store.
| pabs3 wrote:
| They are more of a co-op than a company btw.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| Nothing to contribute other than to say that article was an
| awesome read and now I wish I had the specific skills needed to
| work at Igalia. :)
| robotnikman wrote:
| Same feeling here! I never really dug much into the low level
| graphics side of thing.
| archon810 wrote:
| Not just that, but the whole concept of an open source
| consultancy is fascinating. I love that this exists and is a
| career for some people.
| jorvi wrote:
| Really cool stuff! Especially nice to see the groundwork being
| laid for what could become very efficient handhelds, considering
| how much performance Apple's M-series and Qualcomm's Elite series
| with relatively few watts. Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia.
|
| One nit: it's too bad Valve / Igalia choose to completely ignore
| the lessons from Bazzite.
|
| Bazzite already runs a scheduler like LAVD, called BORE[0]. It
| would have saved them a lot of work to extend and improve that
| rather than invent the wheel again. I'm not sure if Valve and
| Igalia are unaware of Bazzite and BORE or if this is a case of
| NIH.
|
| [0]https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler
| Maxious wrote:
| Igalia benchmarked against EEVDF
| https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353
|
| Also bazzite uses LAVD by default for steam deck hardware
| https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/379...
| jorvi wrote:
| EEVDF is not BORE. Well, technically BORE is something
| wrapped around either CFS or EEVDF. Interestingly enough,
| specifically for high sustained load situations (which
| handhelds are likely to hit given their limited power
| budget), the CFS version of BORE actually performs better
| than the EEVDF version.
|
| And Bazzite used to use BORE, they just like tracking
| upstream as much as possible.
|
| Anywho who is to say, maybe LAVD is indeed better. We don't
| know.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia.
|
| My impression is that Nvidia still leads in power-efficiency
| when compared node-for-node. The Switch 2 is a miracle beyond
| anything Apple or AMD ever did with 8nm silicon.
|
| Everyone else is shipping less power-efficient raster hardware
| unless you're _super_ pedantic about idle draw.
| rpmisms wrote:
| It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2
| ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for.
|
| This is gonna be fantastic.
| sbarre wrote:
| Huh, I had not connected those (hypothetical) dots, but I could
| see it..
|
| Or maybe there's 2 next-gen Steam Decks, an ultra-portable ARM-
| based one that's as small as can be, and a more performant x86
| one with AMD's next-gen APU...
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah, there's a real gap in the market for a relatively
| compact handheld which can play low-spec PC games. The AMD-
| based handheld PCs available today are all pretty chunky.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There's plenty of "relatively compact" ARM-based handhelds
| targeting the retro market already, but many of them are
| shipping with a pitiful amount of RAM (1GB or so) making
| them an absolute non-starter, while others (selling for
| significantly higher prices) run crappy Android-based OS's
| that will never be updated. There is a gap in the market
| for a good-quality retro-like handheld shipping with a
| Linux-native OS (or even just enabling one to be installed
| _trivially_ after-the-fact, with everything working and no
| reliance on downstream hacked-together support packages).
| andrepd wrote:
| Retroid Pocket 5 supports Android and Linux dual boot.
| andrepd wrote:
| Well, apparently there's this project I learned about
| literally yesterday! https://portmaster.games/games.html
|
| There are handhelds for less than 200$ with very good
| screens and controls that can play all of these. Not to
| mention stream (via Steam or other software) from your PC!
| kawsper wrote:
| AYN Thor looks quite promising in that category
| https://www.ayntec.com/products/ayn-thor
|
| It's an ARM machine running SteamOS.
| jsheard wrote:
| Your link says it runs Android?
| kawsper wrote:
| You're right, I was mistaken, I've seen some Youtubers
| playing games on it, but they use GameHub to run Steam
| games, somehow I thought it was running Steam OS.
|
| Sorry for the confusion.
| ant6n wrote:
| Like an IPad mini?
| Spivak wrote:
| Why not just make a performant ARM device? Apple demonstrated
| to the world that it can be extremely fast and sip power.
| jsheard wrote:
| Sure, but Apple isn't selling their silicon to anyone else
| and Valve, successful as they are, don't have Apples money
| and economy-of-scale to throw at designing their own state-
| of-the-art CPU/GPU cores and building them on TSMCs state-
| of-the-art processes. Valve will have to roll with whatever
| is available on the open market, and if that happens to
| suck compared to Apples stuff then tough shit.
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| I'm definitely dreaming but I think it could be a win-win
| situation if Apple decided to licence its chips to Valve:
| the resulting handheld and VR headsets would be
| power/efficiency monsters and PC devs would finally have
| a good reason to target ARM, which could finally bring
| native PC gaming to MACs.
| jsheard wrote:
| The Nintendo Switch already provides >160 million reasons
| for gamedevs to care about native ARM support, but that
| hasn't moved the needle for the Mac. Being ARM-based is
| the least of its problems, the problem is that it's a
| relatively tiny potential market owned by a company which
| is actively hostile to the needs of game developers.
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| The switch is underpowered to the point that most A(AA)
| games cannot run on it without a ton of effort and
| compromise, an M chip powered device would be a different
| story. But anyway it's never going to happen, just
| daydreaming about a perfect gaming setup...
| toast0 wrote:
| This doesn't feel like anything Apple has done in modern
| times. The last thing I remember them licensing was the
| iPod+HP from 2004-2005. Apple barely does enterprise
| support; they're very focused on selling their products
| to consumers and I don't think they're at all interested
| in selling CPUs to others.
|
| Apple waffles and sometimes talks about gaming on Macs,
| but they lack the commitment that is needed. A lot of
| people like to buy a game and continue playing it for
| years, even after the developer went on to something
| else; or to buy years old games on sale. But you can't
| expect to run a mac os app compiled three to five years
| ago that is media and gpu heavy intensive on today's mac
| os. There will have been mandatory developer updates and
| it won't work.
|
| Win32 is the only stable desktop ABI... and games need a
| stable ABI.
| mort96 wrote:
| Valve isn't in the position to make their own best-in-class
| ARM chips like Apple is. They'd have to find a vendor which
| can sell them the chip they need.
|
| Which SoC on the market do you think fits the bill?
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > Apple demonstrated to the world that it can be extremely
| fast and sip power.
|
| Kinda. Apple silicon sips power when it isn't being used,
| but under a heavy gaming load it's pretty comparable to
| AMD. People report 2 hours of battery life playing
| cyberpunk on Macs, which matches the steam deck. It's only
| in lighter games where Apple pulls ahead significantly, and
| that really has nothing to do with it being ARM.
| Melatonic wrote:
| If they did an AMD CPU using the same TSMC node that Apple
| uses for Arm CPUs it wouldn't be that much less power
| efficient and have much great compatibility.
|
| They would realistically gain the most efficiency by getting
| Nvidia to design a modern super power efficient GPU like what
| was used in the original switch and Nvidia Shield. AMD GPUs
| can be great for desktop gaming but in terms of power
| efficiency to performance ratio Nvidia is way ahead
|
| An AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU might be a hard thing to actually
| negotiate however given that AMD is big in the GPU space as
| well. As far as I know most "APU" aren't really that special
| and just a combo of GPU and CPU
| hurricanepootis wrote:
| APUs have the GPU and CPU on the same package, or sometimes
| even the same die (with tiling). If there was to be an
| Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU type system, they would have to be
| separate packages.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Just my thinking, they'll release a "Steam Deck Mini" that's
| more in line with other current ARM based gaming handhelds
| like the Ayn Odin.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| You already have one, it's your phone. Winlator can run x86
| games, you only need to attach a controller grip.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I wouldn't go that far but they are clearly poised for that,
| should it be adventageous.
|
| The Frame is essentially there already, with what should be the
| top mobile arm setup.
|
| If an x86 chipset dropped that fit their needs better, I don't
| think Valve would hesitate. I think it's just a matter of Valve
| trying to enable the best options down the road, whatever they
| may be.
| l11r wrote:
| There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many
| times that they are not interested in minor performance
| improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite
| chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share
| their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with
| their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).
| MBCook wrote:
| I agree they won't do a Steam Deck 2 that's ARM. Maybe in the
| future?
|
| BUT, what about a "Steam Deck Mini"? Something at/above the
| current Steam Deck, maybe a little closer to Switch 2, but
| smaller/thinner/maybe a little cheaper?
|
| Yeah you're not going to run Cyberpunk 2087: Johnny's Rent Is
| Due. But older games, less demanding indie games, and many
| emulators would still work great. Plus remote play of your
| big desktop if you have one.
|
| I'm not saying they will, but I could see it as a
| possibility.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Do you mean there's no ARM chips that they can buy? Surely
| the ARM chips in Apple's devices are powerful enough aren't
| they?
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| You can't buy an M3 chip on its own
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Why can't someone else make one?
| sitharus wrote:
| Because it's a proprietary design? You'd have to reverse-
| engineer the whole chip, which is really hard to do on
| that process node
| jayd16 wrote:
| Giving them some credit, I think they're asking "why
| isn't there a close competitor" and that takes a much
| more involved answer.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| That's very much the trick. Apple is actually
| exceptionally good at making CPUs. Look at these single-
| thread benchmarks: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-
| thread/ Similarly, if you look for the M4 in this list
| and then look for other ARM chips, you'll have to look
| quite a ways down the list:
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/multithread/mobile
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's baffling to me that no one else (Qualcomm) has not
| been able to come close.
|
| My guess is that CPU design is existential for Apple, and
| no one else cares enough to be dedicated enough to do
| what Apple has done.
| l11r wrote:
| This is exactly what happens when you invest billions and
| hire the best industry specialists for decades. M-series
| processors did not magically appear out of nowhere. Apple
| perfected them for years in iPhones, but people didn't
| have the ability to compare since Apple doesn't share
| their processors with anyone.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Apple not sharing their chips extends to Apple keeping their
| grip on the higher density nodes.
|
| I wonder if it's still the case, but for a while Apple was
| buying the totality of TSMC's capacity for 3nm nodes, leaving
| the rest of the world with only 4nm+ chips to grab.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| You don't need to wonder. Top of the lines Snapdragon,
| Dimensity and Exinos SoC all use 3nm.
|
| Amusingly, it's the second time in two days I have this
| discussion here and I have noticed that a lot of people,
| who I think are American and using Apple phones by default,
| are completely unaware of what the mobile SoC landscape
| looks like nowadays. Apple lead doesn't exist anymore as of
| this generation.
| l11r wrote:
| Apple still leads in raw performance. Their M5 is far
| ahead of basically everything in single-core performance.
| AFAIK it's because their architecture prioritizes IPC
| over frequency, and they can spend the entire silicon
| budget on a very large monolithic chip.
| 15155 wrote:
| Bitmain is quite often first on new nodes, ahead of Apple,
| even.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on
| mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will
| be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games
| as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs
| either don't have, or that run very slowly.
|
| Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs
| is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not
| get peak throughput for workloads designed for Nvidia and AMD
| GPUs.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Isn't the GPU on Apple Silicon machines a tile-based
| "mobile" GPU design? Many of the hardware features that
| traditional GPU's have and mobile GPU's lack can be easily
| "faked" with GPU-side general compute.
| jcelerier wrote:
| But even the most powerful apple silicon GPU is terrible
| compared to an average Nvidia chip
| swiftcoder wrote:
| While I agree with the general point, this statement is
| factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU
| punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX
| 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a
| 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the
| average.
| Rohansi wrote:
| And it will consume almost as much power as the Nvidia
| GPU to do so.
| Rapzid wrote:
| There is no world where Apple silicone is competing with
| a 5070ti on modern workloads. Not the hardware and
| certainly not the software where Nvidia DLSS is in it's
| own air with AMD just barely having gotten AI upscaling
| out and started approximating ray reconstruction.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Apple's MetalFX upscaler is pretty similar to DLSS (and I
| think well ahead of AMD's efforts on this front).
|
| Ray tracing outside of Nvidia is a disaster all round, so
| yeah, nobody is competing on that front.
| rxyz wrote:
| Ray tracing support on the newest AMD chips is getting
| good enough. They are still behind Nvidia but definitely
| not a disaster anymore
| michaelt wrote:
| Certainly, nobody would buy an Apple hoping to run
| triple-A PC games.
|
| But among people running LLMs outside of the data centre,
| Apple's unified memory together with a good-enough GPU
| has attracted quite a bit of attention. If you've got the
| cash, you can get a Mac Studio with 512GB of unified
| memory. So there's _one_ workload where apple silicon
| gives nvidia a run for their money.
| gehsty wrote:
| Only in the size of model it can run, not speed of token
| generation.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Are there real world game benchmarks for this or are
| these synthetic tests?
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| That simply isn't true. I have an RTX 4070 gaming PC and
| an M4 MacBook Pro w/ 36GB shared memory. When models fit
| in VRAM, the RTX 4070 still runs much faster. Maybe the
| next generation M5 chips are faster but they can't be
| 2-4x faster.
| koolala wrote:
| You don't have to use tile-based rendering on these chips
| anymore. They can directly draw to the entire screen.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| You can, but the immediate mode path is slower and uses
| significantly more power. Mobile GPUs are not good at
| modern desktop game workflows where significant portions
| of the frame are compute shaders. They're generally very
| memory bandwidth starved, and general compute sidesteps
| most of the optimizations the hardware has made to work
| around this.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Snapdragon doesn't do tile based deferred rendering the way
| Apple does (or did). Snapdragon does (or did) a form of
| tile-based rendering, but it is a completely different
| design, with completely different performance tradeoffs.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What about the Switch 2 (nVidia's Tegra) line? The one in
| the Swich 2 is using Ampere architecture.
|
| That should be feasible, no?
| Rohansi wrote:
| Linux support is in a terrible state for Nvidia chips.
| Not going to happen.
| p1necone wrote:
| Current gen ARM is pretty strong - for an example, the switch
| 2 runs on ARM and it's decently more powerful than the
| current steam deck.
| Rohansi wrote:
| Yes, the Nvidia GPU in the Switch 2 is more powerful. But
| not the ARM CPU.
|
| The existence of Nvidia DLSS (upscaling and frame
| generation) alone is a huge advantage over the Steam Deck,
| too. The Deck can't use DLSS because it's Nvidia only, AMD
| FSR isn't as good, and the latest FSR isn't even supported
| (officially) on the SoC.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > There are no ARM chips with enough power.
|
| Disagree.
|
| Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have mobile SoC which are more
| performant than the M2 and the X2 Elite is in the ballpark of
| Apple top SoC.
|
| Considering how I currently use my Steam Deck, there is
| nothing my current phone couldn't do. Sure, you won't get PS5
| performance but I'm personally completely happy with Switch 2
| level performance.
| lonjil wrote:
| > Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have mobile SoC which are more
| performant than the M2 and the X2 Elite is in the ballpark
| of Apple top SoC.
|
| At what power consumption? And is that both CPU and GPU, or
| just GPU?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Why couldn't they have an AMD GPU and an ARM CPU?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Does something like that exist on the AMD side?
|
| You're basically describing nVidia's Tegra line. The latest
| is in the Switch 2 I believe.
| someNameIG wrote:
| Samsungs newer Exynos are somewhat like this, their GPUs
| are based on AMDs RNA2.
| Rohansi wrote:
| What would that do? Power consumption would mainly come
| from the GPU because these devices are for gaming.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Maybe, but I think it's more about the millions of ARM devices
| already deployed: android phones
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| That would make no sense, translation would use more power than
| the architecture difference
| javier2 wrote:
| I have seen no signs there are any real GPU alternatives for
| ARM
| uejfiweun wrote:
| The Steam Frame shows a lot of promise in terms of letting people
| play games on a massive virtual screen. But with the hardware,
| even more is possible. I hope they are working on a compatibility
| layer that allows 2D games to be rendered in 3D, like the 3D TV
| of the 2010s. In my opinion that would be a killer app.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| You mean like VorpX?
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I mean like an official Valve fork of VorpX that works just
| as well as Proton. I have not had the best experiences with
| VorpX. But it becomes a much easier problem if you have
| standardized hardware and software.
| koolala wrote:
| VorpX is closed source so not a fork. Seems like they could
| do things at the driver level.
| FiddlerClamp wrote:
| VITURE's Immersive 3D already offers this for several platforms
| (for VITURE glasses).
| Philpax wrote:
| There are rumours that they are working on this, but I assume
| they've chosen to keep the exact software experience of the
| Frame under wraps for now. It would certainly make the
| experience of gaming on a giant virtual screen even better!
| ncr100 wrote:
| Not sure if this is what you had in mind: Projected 2D views
| into a 3D "movie screen" environment is a feature of the Frame,
| per my understanding of their marketing, and of early
| reviewers' experiences.
|
| If you meant, "do they take 2D render frames from videogames
| and convert them into pseudo-3d or actual 3d where the user can
| tilt their head to see a different view INTO the 2D game's
| universe, e.g. see behind bushes just by tilting head", then
| "no".
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I mean, you don't need to go THAT far, regular 3DTVs didn't
| have that capability. But the possibility is there for fixed-
| position 3D.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Stereoscopy is definitely possible, but it would be hard to
| hack it in without developer cooperation. I don't really
| see it happening for most flatscreen titles.
|
| FWIW though, SteamVR already supports playing non-VR games
| on a "projected" display using any regular headset. It's
| not exclusive to the Frame, nor a future feature!
| asmor wrote:
| The Winlator-releated ecosystem already works pretty well, there
| just isn't a good frontend or integration for it yet. That's what
| is really exciting here.
|
| Gamehub is a proprietary app by a Chinese controller manufacturer
| with some suspicious behavior and several LGPL violations that
| unfortunately works much better then the alternatives. Funnily
| enough their CDN endpoint is called "bigeyes", which when
| researching a bit was apparently their (failed) effort to bring
| x86 VR to ARM almost 10 years ago. Some people have "debloated"
| the app, but it seems very amateur hour to me and the process
| isn't very transparent (the GitHub repo is just a readme)
|
| There's also GameNative, which seems promising, but is very
| buggy.
|
| And Winlator itself, which is a mess of tons of tunables and
| different forks that I really don't have the patience for when PC
| handhelds exist today and have a much better ecosystem.
| systematizeD wrote:
| I wonder if they(valve) sponsor servo
| TingPing wrote:
| I don't see why that would interest them.
| torginus wrote:
| Considering all this work is open-source, could some third party
| make a Qualcomm Snapdragon based handheld console, if Valve
| decides not to make a Steam Deck Mini?
|
| I really loved the idea of the Steam Deck, but I'd prefer to play
| something that's more like the size of a PSP or a Switch Lite at
| most.
| jsheard wrote:
| There's already a ton of Snapdragon based handheld consoles,
| they're mainly marketed for retro system emulation but you can
| do whatever you want on them. They usually run Android out of
| the box though, not plain Linux.
| crims0n wrote:
| And in fact, are able to play Windows games already with
| Winlator or GameHub. Performance is getting impressive as
| well, with newer chips like the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
| torginus wrote:
| Not sure where they are now, but a year or two ago
| compatibility with all but the most basic games was quite
| bad (because of the GPU).
| robbiet480 wrote:
| GTA V is running at high preset locked 60fps via GameHub
| on the Ayn Thor which has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIPlwoAt58#t=14m41s
| ga2mer wrote:
| Some powerful retro handhelds support Linux loading, such as:
| Retroid Pocket 5, Mini, and Flip 2 on the five-year-old SD865,
| and more recently, Ayn Odin 2 (original, Mini, and Portal) on
| the three-year-old SD8 Gen 2 (which is one version lower than
| the SoC in Steam Frame (SD8 Gen 3)).
|
| So if we get a native arm version of Steam and Proton ARM64EC,
| we will essentially already have mini Steam Deck(s), and since
| you want something similar to a PSP, you can check out the Ayn
| Odin 2 Mini, it's similar to the PS Vita, but I'm not sure if
| it's still available for sale, or you can order the Retroid
| Pocket 6 (available in a few months), which has the same chip,
| but a better screen and is also small in size.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Steam states that you can
| simply run the x86-64 Steam client under emulation, in FEX-
| Emu or Box64. Results on existing mobile hardware seem
| promising already.
| saborineko wrote:
| Cool!
| koolala wrote:
| Wonder if later they will get to do WebXR Browser work for Linux
| / this hardware too.
| dmix wrote:
| > "If you love video games, like I do, working on FEX with Valve
| is a dream come true," said Paulo Matos, an engineer with
| Igalia's Compilers Team
|
| Life is great sometimes. Particularly when your nerd hobbies like
| contributing to open source connects you with important
| industries so you get justly rewarded
| sandGorgon wrote:
| the Qualcomm Adreno 750 GPU is a Snapdragon Gen 3 device. This is
| basically an android device.
|
| I wonder why Valve is maintaining a separate linux and driver
| fork for this. Snapdragon Gen 3 android game SDK works very
| well...including Windows emulation.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g
|
| not saying what Valve is doing is not spectacular. But i cant
| help but wonder if it isnt a more productive use of their
| resources to mainline this in Android ? Maybe even accelerate the
| Desktop Android merge (which Qualcomm is pushing !
| https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googl...)
|
| Android that is Valve compatible will further Valve's goals of
| open platforms than maintaining their own fork.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If you want to "accelerate the Desktop Android merge" you need
| devices to be properly supported in the mainline kernel and
| Mesa stack, which is what everyone uses on desktop. This is
| what Valve is doing. Google may be merging Android and
| ChromeOS, but even ChromeOS is far from a true "desktop"-class
| OS.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "Desktop Android" is a version of Android
| that runs on laptops, not a version of normal desktop Linux
| that can run Android.
| geokon wrote:
| "much of our work extends back through years of Snapdragon
| hardware, and we regression test it to make sure it stays Vulkan
| conformant"
|
| would have been nice to hear of a specific device that now has
| Vulcan support
|
| id be curious what the ballpark cost and time frame of the work
| was
|
| im honestly surprised the technical expertise to do it (without
| qualcomms help) is even out there bc this is a space that has
| notoriously slow development relative to user interest
| drchaim wrote:
| So proud to see a Spanish company working on this low-level stuff
| pojzon wrote:
| I really hope steam machine and steam deck will plow gaming
| industry monopolies.
|
| I want to move away from Windows completely also for my gaming
| hobby but cant yet fully.
|
| I also want to ravage Nintendo monopoly and unwillingness to let
| me play old games they no longer want to support AND dont want to
| let me play.
|
| I rly rly hope Valve will make it and we can ditch those
| companies with shady practices.
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