Steam On Windows 10 Will Get 'Progressively Worse': Gears of War Developer (ndtv.com) 412
Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform, or UWP, approach isn't sitting well with many game developers. Four months after criticising UWP ecosystem for being a walled-garden, curtailing "users' freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers," Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games, the studio behind the Gears of War and Unreal franchises has once again lashed out at the Redmond-based company. He alleges that Microsoft plans to make Steam -- the world's largest PC gaming platform, "progressively worse and more broken." in a move to bolster people's reliance on the Windows Store. From a Gadgets 360 report: "Slowly, over the next five years, they will force-patch Windows 10 to make Steam progressively worse and more broken. They'll never completely break it, but will continue to break it until, in five years, people are so fed up that Steam is buggy that the Windows Store seem like an ideal alternative. That's exactly what they did to their previous competitors in other areas. Now they're doing it to Steam. It's only just starting to become visible. Microsoft might not be competent enough to succeed with their plan but they are certainly trying," Sweeney said. He adds the outcome of this would be forcing every app and game to be sold through the Windows Store alone. "If they can succeed in doing that then it's a small leap to forcing all apps and games to be distributed through the Windows store. Once we reach that point, the PC has become a closed platform. It won't be that one day they flip a switch that will break your Steam library -- what they're trying to do is a series of sneaky manoeuvres. They make it more and more inconvenient to use the old apps, and, simultaneously, they try to become the only source for the new ones," he claims.
EEE (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess he forgot about the old Microsoft motto: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It's still alive today, albeit a bit more subtle than it used to be.
Re:EEE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EEE (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see this as EEE per se, but it's another example of MS being a poor imitation of Apple.
MS is jealous of Apple's business model, which controls the entire platform end to end and monetizes it. As a result they have been aggressively pushing people to Windows 10 and will continue to sever links between users and (anyone but MS).
MS wants the walled garden and wants the App Store. They want to control music and software and movies and everything, as Apple does for most users.
The difference is that Apple users opted in to that ecosystem by buying Apple products. MS just wants to throw a bag over your head and have you wake up in their walled garden.
They're trying to Retcon the past decade that Apple's been eating their lunch.
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The difference is that Apple users opted in to that ecosystem by buying Apple products.
As did Microsoft users by buying Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One products.
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Yes, but those are a small minority of Windows users. That's roughly akin to Apple doing something to all their users just because the ones who bought Apple TV are Ok with it.
Re:EEE (Score:5, Interesting)
I think MS forgot that some of us (like myself) have hundreds of games in Steam. Unless MS plan to do what GoG did and let me have my games on whichever service I use, then I'll keep using Steam because that's where my games are. I have seen nothing in the windows store I want to buy and so I don't own any games there. Maybe they should keep looking at making compelling products that make me want to buy them and not making the largest competing service, where I do own stuff, worse?
Re:EEE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:EEE (Score:5, Insightful)
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How are they "dead"? What are users going to do if MS makes Steam completely inoperable on Windows? Whine and complain? Users have already proven they're completely unwilling to leave the Windows platform, so MS has every incentive to screw them over as much as they want.
They're not going to be able to get users excited about their products like with Apple, but they have a huge userbase that just isn't going anywhere, ever, so they might as well come up with any method they can of milking these people fo
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Clearly you never supported the Netware clients for Windows when they were engaged in destroying Novell. They are experts in this operation and have done it multiple times, each time obvious to everyone paying attention. They can and will pull this off, unless they are sued in such a way that the plot is laid bare in public. People will have to be called to testify about off the record conversations. I don't know of any private or corporate entity who could sue Microsoft in such a way. They are simply
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A digital signature tells only who signed a program. It doesn't tell whether the behavior of the signed program meets platform guidelines.
Re:EEE (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see how MS can just patch out Steam until it's too buggy to use, then shuffle in the windows store. This is exactly what they did with Netscape and IE back in the day, and that worked gangbusters.
Netscape vs IE
WordPerfect Office vs MS Office
DOS vs Dr. DOS/CPM-DOS/etc
POSIX vs Win32
Xenix vs UNIX
It's the oldest play in MS's playbook.
Re:EEE (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. It's too late for Microsoft to defeat Steam with their Windows Store. People will switch to SteamOS before giving up Steam in favor of Windows.
Re:EEE (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly, I keep my windows desktop for 1 reason and one reason only. If you ruin my large collection of games I will have no reason to keep my windows PC around anymore. I"ll just go back to what I used before, linux.
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The trick is to fool newcomers. Ie, new to PC gaming, they think Steam is the way to go for getting mods, the location for "official" forums, etc, while all the old timers say "no!" and try to correct them. But over time the focus starts shifting. So MS thinks they can do the same thing: Supply something that they claim is easier and lure in newcomers who don't know any different. After awhile they say "Steam? Can't I just use the Windows Store? Why go with the extra complication?", and Steam ends up
Re:EEE (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that much more subtle. I watched as Microsoft crushed a long list of companies using exactly this strategy across the 80's and early 90's. Borland was easy -- it's so easy to break a compiler with an OS upgrade. Lotus. Word Perfect. Wordstar. Various games. They certainly tried it with their browser and it took a decade long billion dollar court case to stop them. Every operating system update, everybody else's software would break, a bit, while Microsoft's clone -- often a clone of a startlingly original and brilliant idea -- did not. Add in their marketing team to convince businesses that if they didn't buy Microsoft's house product, they would break their... um... not arms, not legs, what's the word, "interface" if the competing product didn't perfectly comply with the new specs (and of course, they never did).
Microsoft simply made it impossible to buy a PC without their operating system pre-installed in any store that sells systems WITH their operating system pre-installed with punitive pricing agreements that dropped the margins below any possibility of profit if you tried selling a naked system or a system preinstalled with some other OS. They then convinced freelance software developers that they could get rich, quick, writing for their platform (and at first, it was true!) But gradually it has become clear that if you have a brilliant software concept, write the next killer application, and do so for Windows, Microsoft will let you run wild for a few years to build up the market and use their enormous software foundry to write their clone, then they will jerk around the OS so that your product breaks but theirs doesn't until they have the lions share of the market IF you don't sell out to them when they politely knock on your door and make you an offer you can't refuse. Five years later you will wish you hadn't.
I have to admit that I'm a tiny bit surprised that they are doing this with Steam as it could backfire. I'm guessing that part of this is punitive. They WANT game developers to be in a Microsoft cage, with huge cross-platform development barriers, and Valve is the company that has seriously broken out of that mold and made Linux gaming with native libraries and code possible for games that run on Windows as well. Since they are preparing to make users lease Windows for eternity and ensure a perpetual cash flow for every Windows computer purchased, and since software sales through "app stores" run by the company are now a major profit center for companies that have successfully built them, they hope to retake world domination while they still have control of congress and the unions and all those companies with 401 and 403 plans heavily invested in Microsoft.
Unless and until the government actually enforces anti-trust laws across the board, we'll have to put up with this shit. The "free" market doesn't, and won't, have a chance as long as the company that makes and sells the OS, with a virtual lock on third party PC sales in spite of much lower priced and viable alternatives, also writes software for their own OS with an insuperable advantage over independent developers, no matter how large or powerful. Software store selling "certification" (still the same company) make it even worse.
Face it. Microsoft is in the protection racket, and has been for nearly 30 years now. FUD is their stock and trade. They represent everything that is wrong with capitalism that isn't restrained by strong anti-trust controls and limits on things like sales agreements so that they do not and cannot become long term monopolies. They have so much money that they could CONTINUE to be mismanaged for another decade and STILL would be huge. And who has the guts to tackle them (again) in the US courts? They can spend a billion dollars a year in defense, stretch an antitrust case out for a decade, lose it, and still come out a total winner. They've done so in the past and will do so again in the future.
rgb
EEE is not dead; look at systemd (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess he forgot about the old Microsoft motto: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It's still alive today, albeit a bit more subtle than it used to be.
The industry as a whole seems to have forgotten the events of 15-20 years ago (as is common in human society).
If it hadn't, we wouldn't have let systemd do the exact same thing with regards to compatibility with non-systemd distributions, let alone other Unices.
"Sure, all you have to do is add a hard dependency on our library!"
"They way you've been doing for 30 years is incorrect, here make a chance that will force mindshare onto your entire userbase."
"Distributions CAN use something other than the defaults, but we want them to use the defaults and there's no guarantee that not using the defaults will ever continue to work."
Now is the time to sue them (Score:5, Interesting)
If he really believes that is the intent, now is the time to sue them, claiming they are abusing their monopoly position. That is the heart of his claim.
Yes, most likely he will lose the lawsuit - now.
But in doing so, he will force Microsoft to make an argument about how what they are doing 'now' is not abusive. This will limit their possible actions in the future, as they won't be able to stop doing that without incriminating themselves.
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It's not a matter of whose legal team is bigger. It's only a matter of whether your legal team, budget, and will-power is big enough to sweat through the motion practice, discovery process, travel to different venues, and other inconveniences that tend to squash little people. Epic certainly has enough, as well as enough to solicit help from other affected parties, and even consider a class action.
I think they'd also have enough cash to take a prosecutor for the E.U. out for a nice lunch and round of golf
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Claims construction, research into case law, deposition, discovery/disclosure, and review of testimony and evidence all take place outside of the courtroom.
All of those tasks are performed and reviewed by peers prior to court appearance.
The actual court appearance is a miniscule fraction of the total billable hours for complex legal matters.
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If he really believes that is the intent, now is the time to sue them, claiming they are abusing their monopoly position. That is the heart of his claim.
Well I'm getting my popcorn over the entire thing. Then again, a lot of gamers said "Fuck you" to Epic when they decided to dump the PC for consoles. A keen reminder that it was PC's that made their company, and now he's there whining because consoles are on the decline while gaming PC's are climbing. Lot of people see this as him trying to rebuild his credibility because he decided to bet on the wrong horse in this race.
Sue for what? (Score:4, Interesting)
So... did anybody actually RTFA? (Yeah, yeah, not new here, whatever.) You need some kind of grounds to sue. I checked TFA; it contains exactly one more concrete claim, and exactly as much evidence to support the allegations, as TFS.
Concrete claim:
Leaving aside the fact that you can (fully supported) sideload UWP apps, I don't even see what this has to do with Steam. Adding new features to a platform that Steam doesn't use will not impact Steam at all! The author doesn't ever even imply, much less actually claim, that Microsoft is specifically removing or modifying anything that will impact Steam.
Evidence to support the allegation: Nothing at all. I mean, maybe the author has some (in which case it would presumably come out at trial), but TFA doesn't even claim to have evidence, much less present any. Not one single point. This entire article is no more credible than idle speculation!
As far as I can tell, Steam runs about as well as it ever has (which is to say, much better than it used to in the Win7 days) on Win10, Look at that: I just made a more-concrete claim about Steam on Win10 than anything in the entire article.
Monopolistic abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want PC gaming to survive, make sure you only buy games that have Linux/macOS support. As the alternatives' market share increases, NVIDIA, Intel and AMD will be compelled to spend more money on their hardware support for non-Windows OSs, and game developers will be wont to make their ports better.
Ummm... no (Score:3)
For one, they haven't done anything yet. This is Tim Sweeny doomsaying. Now maybe his predictions will be accurate but they are false right now. Presently, Steam works excellent in Windows 10. You download it, install it, and it just works as it does on any other platform. They have done nothing to stop it from working.
You can't scream about "abuse" when nothing has happened. That is like claiming someone robbed you when they didn't actually take anything from you or even say anything to you they just "look
Re:Monopolistic abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
The only reason they have a monopoly on gaming is because other platforms need to show up and compete, if game support on Linux was up to snuff I wouldn't run Windows at home outside a VM
That's true, but it's a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Developers and AMD/Intel/NVIDIA don't support Linux as well as Windows because few people use Linux for gaming, and there are few Linux gamers because Windows support is better for most games.
If we want to live in a world that's not locked down by Microsoft, we need to collectively make some sacrifices and buy Linux games now, while the support's not quite as good. That's the only way it'll get better.
year of the linux desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
2021, year of the linux desktop confirmed.
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Yeah, if Steam ceases to function, that will be the end of my last motivation to use Windows. Maybe they should take that into account, because Steam is ready to make the switch.
Although Mint is my primary OS, I bought a SSD + Win10 last year for Steam games. Most of them run on Linux, but a few are Win-only, and even some of the Linux-capable ones run a little better on Windows. The last version of Windows I purchased was XP, and Steam games are literally the only reason I bought a newer version. If Microsoft breaks Steam, I'm gone.
Gaben Ain't Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Valve is not stupid. They have received a lot of flack for StreamOS and pushing linux as the future platform, particularly since, today, it only offers negatives (specifically, library support is small compared to winblows). But, clearly, Valve has been anticipating this from Microsoft for a long time. Any decent company knows that it isn't terribly wise to be so dependent on a competitor. Microsoft is a competitor of Valve's and the platforms look increasingly similar now that internet distribution is the norm. Vulkan [khronos.org] is starting to look very promising. Soon, the only reason I'll need to run windows is for work and to fire up the occasional retro game like GTA San Andreas. Hear, hear, Valve!
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No, the biggest problem with SteamOS is that it does not perform as fast as Windows. My GPU becomes less valuable in Linux. The games thing is dumb, SteamOS has more games than either console. If you look at it solely as a console with all their limitations, it has a hell of a library.
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Yeah Sony is well reknown for how much it likes open source, rather paying people money than giving them the ability to install the OS they want on hardware they own. Or requiring developers to sign an NDA if they want to develop for their platform.
Re:Gaben Ain't Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Valve IS stupid. Gaben used to go on and on about how open source was the future, but kept his focus on Windows...
How exactly is his direction to port the source engine and most of their games (including ALL their popular ones) to Linux, not to mention encouraging other software developers to release linux versions, focusing on Windows?
I'd argue without Gaben's push, we wouldn't see Witcher, Borderlands and many other titles released in Linux. Yes, there's still some publishers that focus on the larger Windows market share, but that's not Gaben's fault.
... when another company was ALREADY using open source with their gaming hardware.
MacOS is based on BSD. He could have pursued Apple too.
That company was Sony. If Gabe Newell dislikes MIcrosoft so much, why didn't he form a joint venture with Sony, which has been using open source software longer than Valve has!
Steam Machines are a console take on PC gaming, that would put Steam in direct competition with the Playstation store. Sony already has hundreds, if not thousands, of games in their back library... many of which have PC versions as well. They get their monthly money from their subscribers to play online. Why would Sony kill that cash cow?
He could have also teamed up with Apple, who has been using BSD for over a decade now with their OS. That may have made an Apple/Steam console actually worth a crap... though I doubt Valve would be okay with Apple taking a 30% (or whatever) cut to each sale.
Essentially, the PS3/PS4 OS's are what SteamOS wants to be.
The reason is that while Gabe rants against walled gardens, the truth is he just wants gamers to use his OWN walled garden.
The truth is he wanted to Console-ize the PC gaming environment, to make it more of a one-size-fits-most for games. That's why Steam has Big Picture Mode, why steam machines exist, and why Steam Link was created. Yes the start wasn't as awesome as it could have been, but they are certainly making strides in the home theater gaming pc market. The Steam controller already makes life easier for many keyboard + mouse games.
no references (Score:5, Insightful)
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it's that guy opinion, not based on anything. windows store has a fraction of the market, with steam, origin, uplay, etc around. the best way of running windows 10 is to use the LTSB version which doesn't have all that UWP crap.
shhhhh. Don't interrupt the circle jerk with logic and facts.
Steam should stop modifying perms (Score:3, Insightful)
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One of the things which turned me off to Steam was how they overwrote secure directory perms, to make it so that all users could modify folder, which only Administrators should be able to modify. Sorry Steam, you're insecure.
This. I want to cheer Steam as much as the next person but the Steam app is a fucking security disaster. I love Gabe but the dude is a crappy CEO. The flat management style at Steam means nothing gets done or things get half done because no one has the authority to power things through to completion.
Gabe saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and started SteamOS as a response but where is the follow through? It's stagnating and dying on the vine.
Re: Steam should stop modifying perms (Score:2)
Steam asks the user to elevate so it can finish setup. It doesn't do it as a regular user. Of course it also doesn't work properly if you don't let it do what it wants.
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The reason for doing this should be obvious... many older games are broken when they are installed under Program Files "secure" folders. As I've been running SSDs for my system drives, my Steam libraries are usually hosted on my data drives, which solved the problem when it first cropped up.
Basically, it's a compatibility issue that arose from Microsoft tightening up security. Hard to blame Steam (or Microsoft) for this one.
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IIRC, recent versions of Windows have a mechanism to make applications *think* they are writing to that applications directory but are instead writing to an overlay layer (VirtualStore).
This should mean a user need not have permission to modify it, but older applications (and only older applications *should* be messing with it, like 15 years old at newest) should be none the wiser.
Steam however acts in many ways like a mid 90s windows application. Providing it's own concepts of user directories and divorci
GoG, too? (Score:2)
What about GoG? Does it rely on violating security to install/run games, or do they do something different?
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How exactly will they break steam? (Score:3)
How will Microsoft pull this off? Steam downloads and installs applications. Is MS going to make downloading things outside of the Win Store difficult? Make installing applications difficult? I don't see either of things things flying with anyone who sells software meant to run on windows.
Re:How exactly will they break steam? (Score:5, Insightful)
How will Microsoft pull this off? Steam downloads and installs applications. Is MS going to make downloading things outside of the Win Store difficult? Make installing applications difficult? I don't see either of things things flying with anyone who sells software meant to run on windows.
Read the Halloween Documents [wikipedia.org] to see how Microsoft operates. For example, a program competing with Microsoft's will have lots of nonsensical pop-up errors, so the user will be wont to switch to Microsoft's. In Windows 10, the OS will automatically uninstall Chrome or Firefox and switch the default browser to Edge instead based off of a "detected incompatibility". Things like that.
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Nope, but it does reset the browser default to Edge.
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Read the Halloween Documents to see how Microsoft killed my Pappy!
That shit was 18 years ago now, give it a rest. Hanlon's Razor applies here as always: never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. If Steam games are starting to have issues on WIn10, it seems far more likely that MS can't find its ass with both hands these days, than that it has some nefarious master scheme.
Re:How exactly will they break steam? (Score:4, Insightful)
Evidence, or it didn't happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to know what evidence there is to support this, rather than words on a page ranting about perception. Not that I don't agree caution, it's one thing to make big noise and proclaim persecution when none exists. Show the evidence and remove doubt about Microsoft's intention.
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I'd like to know what evidence there is to support this, rather than words on a page ranting about perception. Not that I don't agree caution, it's one thing to make big noise and proclaim persecution when none exists. Show the evidence and remove doubt about Microsoft's intention.
This. It's a pretty big accusation, and as a regular gamer who uses Steam pretty much every day, I haven't seen any brokenness. Microsoft does have a history of doing that sort of thing to competitors, but I haven't seen anything yet.
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Problem is that even if this is fake, just by putting it out there someone at Microsoft will find out and think "hey thats a good idea...".
There is no, it is doomsaying (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it'll end up being true, but so far there is zero evidence. The only thing so far they've done that would in any way limit Steam is that their universal applications (what used to be called Metro) are Windows Store only. So you can't sell those on Steam. Ok, except nobody but MS makes those because nobody gives a shit. The "universal" part doesn't matter, MS's phones and tablets are in their final dying moments so there's no need to make something that runs both on real Windows and Windows RT/Phone.
At this point Win32/64 programs run better and have less limitations, and also have the advantage of running on all versions of Windows not just 10, so that is what people keep making. MS themselves are releasing their games using their new UWP format, of course, but nobody else seems to give a shit.
So it is a meaningless limitation for now. Programs using an API nobody uses won't work with Steam. Who cares? Other than that, nothing has changed or been limited. Steam runs great on Windows 10.
Will something change in the future? We'll have to wait and see. There's no evidence now though, because it hasn't happened. This is a doomsday prediction, and like most doomsday predictions it is based on what the predictor feels to be true, not actual evidence.
Is there a windows store for desktop windows 10?? (Score:2)
Is there a windows store for the desktop version of windows 10?? I did not even know that. Does it also Work with Windows 7/8?
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You lucky, lucky SOB.
Do yourself a favor and stay ignorant of this DOA train wreck. Seriously, even EA's Origin is more usable, and that's saying a lot.
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Is there a windows store for the desktop version of windows 10?
Yes.
I did not even know that. Does it also Work with Windows 7/8?
It was released with Windows 8.
It only carries the new 'modern ui' apps. There are a variety of technologies in place to make the apps more self contained (more sandboxed); as well as let you potentially deliver the same app to Windows Desktop, tablet, and phone, (and xbox) consumers in one transaction.
Its not all bad. The original 'metro' was far too "phone/tablet" and lousy for desktop. The only one I personally use is Netflix.
Its gotten better, the apps will run in windows now ("small w" windows ie n
Good. (Score:3)
Maybe Microsoft actively pushing Steam away is what it takes for to encourage Valve to push on with SteamOS, and games developers to finally get a clue about the need to also make Linux versions of their games.
Only Steam? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was under the impression that a lot of things on Windows 10 would get progressively worse, especially after the end of the free upgrade period.
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Yeah, but you won't notice it as much because the OS itself comes apart at the seams, so everything else doesn't look so bad in comparison. At least unless you have a real OS to compare it to.
Yet another reason... (Score:2)
.
Microsoft needs a Windows10-only world in order for its strategy to succeed.
Microsoft knows it will not succeed through competing, so it has to try to succeed through control
Epic Games what the Mega-Fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games, the studio behind the Gears of War and Unreal franchises has once again lashed out at the Redmond-based company. "
I've been an Unreal fan since the original Unreal Tournament.
WTF?
Unreal stared out Linux friendly. I got GOTY working with Linux, I got the original Unreal working with some patches, 2003 was Linux compatible from the start as was 2004, then Microsoft made some maps for 2004. Unreal 2 wasn't Linux compatible, UT3 was GOING to be Linux compatible, I even bought my copy under the belief a patch/installer would happen, and it never did (you owe me a refund fucker). To top it off all the OLD Unreal games that came out as Linux compatible are only available for WIndows on Steam and other game distribution networks. I have a Mac OSX version of 2004 and it still works on modern OSX, but you don't even offer Mac versions on those networks, just WIndows.
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HELPING THE ENEMY?
Your company, of all the companies around, have one of the best track records of working with cross platform compatibility until UT2004, then you pull the plug and even shit all over your old games by making them Microsoft only to newcomers despite the fact you're pissed at Microsoft?
It's like walking into a dark alley, have some guy try to mug you with his fist and saying "Right oh, that will never do, if you wanna mug someone you gotta have a weapon, here take this knife so you can rob me propper!" You're a living Monty Python skit, saying one thing and doing another.
They have a LONG road ahead (Score:2)
If they really want to make the Microsoft store a better choice than Steam (or, hell, ANYTHING), they really have a lot of hard work ahead of them.
Hell, at this point, even buying a Mac and swallowing the Apple store instead is a more viable alternative for any gamer than to accept the train wreck the MS store is.
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No you don't get it.
Microsoft don't ever waste time/money on making their products actually any good. They just sell stuff by forcing it down peoples throats. Either to people who are already so locked-in to their walled garden that they can't get out, or by razzle-dazzle marketing to clueless sheep who dont ever do any research before they buy anything. Thats Microsofts entire business plan right there.
What new features? (Score:2)
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If I were an evil Microsoft manager, I'd go for the next DirectX version. Games need that, especially as DirectX is sure to eventually have features for handling VR.
Idiots (Score:2)
The only reason to game on a PC is abundance of choices of indie games and places to get them from. The only reason remaining to buy a PC is gaming. If consoles remain locked down, they will eventually be eaten by Android boxes/sticks because of low entry price point. Microsoft is killing the very reason why Windows was dominant for a long time.
I only play 1 game, and it's through Steam (Score:2)
Age of Empires, which is a Microsoft game no longer in distribution. My old CD's for it are long gone. I've noticed over the past few month's that running the game has become problematic. Being that the machine is a Win10 I created from components, I suspect the premise of the article to be correct - MSFT is compelling my machine to not run Steam well. It might be time to convert the whole thing to Ubuntu or Fedora.
They did the same thing for dual booting Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Ten years ago, it was relatively straightforward to install Linux in one bootable partition, install Windows in another, and share data partitions between them.
Try that now, and you'll be forced to wait somewhere between 20 seconds and a week every time you boot into Windows after writing to a NTFS partition. Every. Single. Goddamn. Time.
It's gotten so bad, I know people who've set up a NAS just to keep Linux and Windows from directly touching each other's files.
The fucked up licensing for exFAT is another example of Microsoft making it intentionally hard for Linux and Windows to directly share hard drives. It's damn near impossible to get proper exFAT support under Linux, using ext2fsd under Windows is slightly brittle, FAT32's inability to deal with large files has gotten too annoying, and Windows goes full-on psychotic whenever it notices that someone else has been touching a NTFS filesystem it regards as its sole property.
The NTFS problem is particularly frustrating, because it's the only modern filesystem we have LEFT that works under both Linux and Windows. Unfortunately, Windows enforces limits on NTFS filesystems that go above and beyond the limits imposed by NTFS itself. It's absolutely possible to get a NTFS filesystem into a state that's completely legit as far as NTFS is concerned, but Windows won't touch with a 40 foot pole.
I've personally been living dangerously and using ext2 via ext2fsd, but when you do that, it's REALLY easy to accidentally mangle or delete files by mistake... especially if you go a step further and try to selectively move certain special directories, like "my documents" and "my pictures", to the ext2 volume. Moving personal special directories is semi-undocumented black magic to begin with, and it doesn't take much to end up in Windows Permissions Hell (where not even a user with admin rights can touch a file, and attempts to recursively take ownership of files in a directory STILL fails because Microsoft decided to treat unknown ownership GUIDs and permissions as "deny everyone, INCLUDING administrator".
God, I miss the days when being a local admin was as good as being root under Linux. Under recent versions of Windows, admins are more like Orwellian "outer party" members who can do slightly more than proles, at the cost of having their every move watched and second-guessed by the inner party. Microsoft needs to add a third option to their "access denied, contact your administrator" that says "I *am* the Administrator!"
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Just install onto separate physical drives.
If you want to share data between the two, use FAT or NTFS with no trickery on a third drive or, as you pointed out, you can use a network drive.
You could also do this on 2 drives in RAID 0. That's my standard config anyway. Just present two separate devices to the OSs.
Horse Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate Windows 10 more than most (look at my post history), but they're not fucking up Steam or any other general program and they're not going to.
What, specifically, is Windows 10 doing now that supports these claims? Steam (the client) is a buggy all on its own, and it has been since its inception. It's no longer worthy of the "Steaming piece of shit" nickname, but it's still pretty sloppy, ugly, and slow and if you ever have problems with the client not properly downloading/verifying game files, not properly syncing your library, crashing, or just not working, good fucking luck. Valve's "support" is 2 rounds of automatic responses from a robot and then silence.
Further, Tim Sweeney is an ass. Why should we listening to him? And why is he moaning about this shit now? Valve stopped crying about it years ago. They were afraid that Windows 8 would result in people using the MS store so they cried and whinged to anyone who would listen about MS is locking down the PC, how the Windows store will be the only store, etc. Oh, and Steam just so happened to have a half-baked plan to stop them - SteamOS with big picture mode! And Steam-branded PCs that make PC gaming as easy as console gaming, at triple the price!! And a half-baked controller was coming soon!!!
I don't know if Valve stopped crying about Windows because it's been years and no one left Steam to use the Windows Store, or if they are quietly giving up on the push for Steam OS after realizing how much work maintaining an OS is and how few games are going to use OpenGL or Vulkan, or if people stopped listening to their FUD after years of 8/8.1/10 with zero lockdown.
Re:Horse Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Valve quit crying because they got bored with SteamOS. A major problem with Valve's "flat" model of no bosses and no structure is that they only work on something if they find it interesting. Once they get bored, it languishes. Half Life 3 is a great example. There was clearly more story to tell, they left it unfinished, and there is clearly market demand for a sequel to the point it would be virtually assured to make money. So why hasn't it happened? Because they aren't interested in it right now. It's not a business or creative decision, it is that people are playing with other shit.
Valve is now fascinated with VR and eSports so that is where most of their energy is going. They are the shiny new toys they like, until they change their mind and chase something else. So SteamOS is in the same general boat as Steam itself in that they work on it a bit and maintain it, but there isn't a lot going on because there are few people interested in it.
Also I think they thought that SteamOS and Steam Machines would be like Steam itself: minimal effort on their part and people would just flock to them and use them in droves. Instead the market has responded with a resounding "meh". They'd need to put in a lot more effort to have a chance of making it happen and they don't want to do that.
F**k steam and all the rest of them (Score:2)
For starters f**k steam. They have the exact same goal Microsoft dreams of.
And f**k Microsoft with it's perpetual bullshit. Developers and end users are sick of being prevented from using the latest version of Direct X just because not everyone runs the latest version of Windows. As a result Microsoft's stack is on track to be ignored and left behind. Vulkan is going to win over DX12 leaving future Direct X a moot point.
Regardless it shouldn't be hard to sell software directly with numerous ecommerce pa
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Yep GOG is where it's at.
Steam+Linux = Problem Solved.. (Score:3)
Let me start out with a hearty "FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!"... Sounds like Valve needs to speed up Steam/Linux development.. I supported/used Windows from 1991 to 2010, and when I retired in 2010, I decided I was sick and tired of MS's stupidity.. So all of my systems are happy on Linux, and for the Steam games I play, the Linux Steam client works 100%.. Oh sure, theres a couple of newer games on Steam I'd love to play BUT there is NO WAY in HELL I'd go back to Windows just to be able to play them....
There's a far easier way for MS to do this. (Score:3)
DirectX 13, Windows 10 and UWP apps only. Easy. Just devote no resources to the win32 api, declare it 'legacy' for gaming and unsupported. Now every games publisher will have to develop using the new API, which also means no running the game on Windows 7 so MS can kill off their stubbonly-refuses-to-die OS. It won't hurt Steam directly, but once you have publishers having to use UWP anyway you are half-way to getting them to sell in the Microsoft store.
I've been using Steam on OS X for some time now... (Score:3)
...and I didn't realize that Microsoft's war on Steam was so thorough and insidious that it was affecting the Mac version since version one.
...or that it crippled Valve's ability to make a useful, reliable interface for its Steam controller in Windows.
...or that it sabotaged SteamOS right out of the gate.
...or... well, you're getting the idea.
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Steam should be sponsoring WINE project, and start getting it stabilized for STEAM. I've long proposed that WINE could be the final nail in the coffin of Microsoft, if it becomes the full replacement to Windows. Imagine all the Specialized Windows Software, that is dependent and only available on Windows, being tweaked enough to run in WINE. It is a way to wrest some of the control of Windows APIs from Microsoft.
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Bug for bug comparability with Windows is HARD and even worse is that Windows and Unix have fundamental differences in the way they structure resources. Native and cross platform apps are the only way that Linux will not be a second class platform when it comes to games.
Re: My Fingers Have An Alternative... (Score:2)
But what WINE can do is convince publishers they don't need to work on native ports for anything but Windows. If a 'good enough' approximate Windows application runs on WINE there is less motivation to produce anything more.
They learned this lesson the hard way at OS/2. It had great Windows 16 bit interoperability, in fact it was the "better Windows than Windows." So nobody published native OS/2 versions of their products. Then 32 bit Windows happened along and OS/2 users found themselves marooned with onl
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You realize that the exact same argument was made against Linux and Apache among other software products, right?
Re: My Fingers Have An Alternative... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that running mission-critical software in an emulated and/or virtual environments happens at EVERY SINGLE FORTUNE500 company that has existed for more than a couple of decades.
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Do you have an example of mission critical software emulation going on?
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Banks still primarily use an emulated COBOL-based backend.
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Wait, would this be the same as emulating any of the Office Suite software? I mean, I worked at a company that emulated Office and Photoshop through Wine. It was a awful.
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I love the idea of somehow moving off of Windows, but in the workplace, it is what people use.
And we are talking about A LOT of software that will run only on Windows.
A LOT.
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Steam on Linux is not the only thing that will be a problem for Microsoft :
1) many people didn't upgrade to Windows 10... and it's not now that upgrade is not free anymore that they'll do it... Including people who did the upgrade then downgraded because of the issues with Windows 10. These people keeping old versions of windows will keep a good game performance and that can ba used against Microsoft to prove their malicious intent
2) Steam is also present on the MacOS/X platform... Although PC are the mos
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I love some M$ hate as much as the next person but I have noticed zero issues with Steam on Windows 10 and have seen no evidence whatsoever of Microsoft making a move to lock down the platform. In fact if anything they keep opening it up. I mean for fucks sakes they just allowed the use of linux binaries, that is hardly the move of a company on track to restrict what software can be installed.
How is giving support for Linux binaries proof that they're not trying to clamp down on their competitors?
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Yes UEFI is a blatant attempt by Microsoft to make Windows and PC's more open.
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I'll admit that 7 is better than XP, but not by enough that I would have bothered to upgrade if they hadn't discontinued support. It makes me wonder if one of these Windows clone operating systems won't eventually get good enough that I won't bother running Windows proper at all. If there was an OS that was feature-compatible with, say, Windows 2000 and also supported modern hardware, why would we bother with this proprietary crap?
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Well, that's why I mentioned supporting modern hardware. Certainly 64 bit processors, USB3, etc. would be on that list.
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The reasons most people moved off of XP were 64-bit support and a proper security model. If you have those 2 things, you're a clone of Win7, not WinXP or 2000.
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I hate having to deal with all the sneaky updates.
If all you use your machine for is games, just turn off Windows Update once you've got SP1 installed on Windows 7. IF (and it's a big IF) your machine gets compromised - who cares. It's a games machine. Wipe. Reinstall. No data to worry about. Heck Steam even keeps most of your save games in the cloud nowadays anyway.
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That was a downright 'friendly' approach. MS could start shipping in a mode that forbids anything but UWP by default, under some claim of improving the security of the platform.
They can (credibly) point to both Apple and Android as examples of platforms that have locked application delivery to their respective platform by default. Yes in Android you can enable sideloading (but you get shown a very 'scary' dialog about how risky it is and you really shouldn't do it), but as an application developer, you r
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Microsoft desperately wants to become a services-based company. It's been on their game-plan since the early 90s (at least!) and they have been incrementally moving the company - and their customers - in that direction ever since. For a long time, everyone - including Microsoft - assumed that the ultimate goal was to charge a yearly - or monthly! - fee for the use of their software, be it their Office productivity suite or Windows itself. Initially they were hamstrung both by the lack of infrastructure (e.
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That Steam works. As a player, it does exactly what you expect. It handles the deals with the companies that want to push their stuff on their platform, they have a decent return policy that pretty much ensures whoever sells through them has to deliver a working product, they do have a very well working installation tool that (at least so far) didn't cause any problems for me (if a game worked AT ALL on a platform I chose, it did install without a problem), in a nutshell, Steam "just works".
I can't really s
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Now try with Sim City 3000 but if at all possible without installing the ancient version of Shockwave that has more holes than even contemporary Adobe products.