Valve's Steam Deck Makes a Brilliant Case Against Walled Gardens (fastcompany.com) 57
"Unlike practically every major game console that's come before it, the Steam Deck, from PC gaming giant Valve, doesn't lock users into one ecosystem," writes Fast Company's Jared Newman. "While Valve's own Steam store is the default way to buy and play games, the Steam Deck also lets users install whatever software they want on the device's Linux-based operating system. The experience has been liberating..." From the report: In recent weeks, I've gorged on weird indie creations from itch.io, classic games from GOG.com, and free games from the Epic Games Store. I've used Plexamp to stream my personal music collection in place of in-game soundtracks, and I've used Vivaldi to browse the web in the Steam Deck's desktop mode. You don't have to use your Steam Deck this way, but just being knowing that it's an option makes the device more capable and personal. The tech industry is filled with companies that seem deathly afraid of this model, either because they don't trust their users or don't want to risk weakening their own ecosystems. By taking the opposite approach, Valve is proving that open platforms aren't so catastrophic, and it elevates the Steam Deck from yet another gadget into the most exciting consumer electronics device in years. [...]
Valve could have easily used the Steam Deck to lock players into its own ecosystem. It could have opted not to include a desktop mode and withheld instructions on how to lift its read-only restrictions. It could have discouraged users from installing different operating systems and made its recovery tools unavailable to the public. Console makers have long insisted that such restrictions are necessary for the good of their platforms. In 2020, for instance, Microsoft argued that because console makers sell their hardware at or below cost to create a market for their software, they shouldn't have to accommodate third-party app stores or sideloading.
Similar arguments have spilled out into the broader mobile app business as well. In response to a lawsuit from Epic Games, Apple has claimed that its investments in the App Store wouldn't be feasible if it couldn't force developers to use its in-app purchase mechanisms. Some defenders of Apple's viewpoint, such as Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have argued that iOS is more like a game console than a PC platform. So, it's all the more remarkable that Valve ignored all this hand-wringing and made the Steam Deck a haven for tinkerers. Instead of trying to shut out competitors, the company is betting that its own store will prevail on quality. If the Steam Deck successful -- as it appears to be so far -- it could upend years of conventional wisdom around walled gardens and become a threat to other consoles in more ways than one.
Valve could have easily used the Steam Deck to lock players into its own ecosystem. It could have opted not to include a desktop mode and withheld instructions on how to lift its read-only restrictions. It could have discouraged users from installing different operating systems and made its recovery tools unavailable to the public. Console makers have long insisted that such restrictions are necessary for the good of their platforms. In 2020, for instance, Microsoft argued that because console makers sell their hardware at or below cost to create a market for their software, they shouldn't have to accommodate third-party app stores or sideloading.
Similar arguments have spilled out into the broader mobile app business as well. In response to a lawsuit from Epic Games, Apple has claimed that its investments in the App Store wouldn't be feasible if it couldn't force developers to use its in-app purchase mechanisms. Some defenders of Apple's viewpoint, such as Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have argued that iOS is more like a game console than a PC platform. So, it's all the more remarkable that Valve ignored all this hand-wringing and made the Steam Deck a haven for tinkerers. Instead of trying to shut out competitors, the company is betting that its own store will prevail on quality. If the Steam Deck successful -- as it appears to be so far -- it could upend years of conventional wisdom around walled gardens and become a threat to other consoles in more ways than one.
Re:One does not make friends by lying (Score:5, Insightful)
You're an idiot if you think half of that 30% cut is spent on processing. The transaction fees are no greater than 3%, likely much less than that as Apple and Google both are big enough that they have huge room for negotiation with the banks. The bandwidth and infrastructure costs are so negligible that you could easily argue they make up less than 1% of the overall costs. Think about it: Cloud based photo and video storage is inevitably more expensive by a long shot than what it costs to store and distribute apps, and yet both of them give that away for free.
Though you probably think that Apple's app review process is expensive...but you'd be dead wrong there. In case you haven't noticed, they let scammy apps through all the time. The only ones they ever block are ones that are high profile and/or can disrupt their business model.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/... [theverge.com]
Gift cards (Score:3, Informative)
The transaction fees are no greater than 3%
This is true of credit cards. However, unlike Itch.io, Steam can use gift cards sold in Walmart and other brick-and-mortar stores. I imagine that the typical overall transaction fee for these is much greater. The bank issuing the gift card gets its cut, the retailer gets its cut, and if the gift card was paid for with credit, the bank issuing the credit card used to pay for the gift card gets its cut.
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People like you who claim to know what things cost clearly have never run a business. “Cost” is more than just the raw cost of storage and bandwidth. You also have to include at a minimum all of these things:
1. The engineering staff required to architect, build, and manage infrastructure. (salaries, benefits, training, etc.)
2. Power and cooling costs.
3. Maintenance of physical infrastructure.
4. Insurance.
5. Additional administrative costs and overhead.
In Apple’s case you must also consider
Re: One does not make friends by lying (Score:2)
You're way overestimating that. Again, consider that they give away photo and video storage services for free. Those are a lot more complicated and demanding on hardware resources than app stores.
Just to give you an idea, epic takes a 12% cut on its game store for PC, meaning 88% goes to the developer. I'd wager only half of THAT amount represents the actual cost, certainly not half of 30%.
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Apple gives away a paltry 5GB of iCloud storage away for free. The fact that you think the costs of building and maintaining a massive global content delivery platform is “negligible” illustrates your ignorance about a great many things.
Re: One does not make friends by lying (Score:2)
I don't think you realize how much 5gb worth of enterprise grade storage actually costs, especially when you need on-demand, low latency access. Besides, that's not all that's involved. Remember, you have people constantly uploading and downloading content to it. Compare that to how often just one person might install a new app, which is a download only affair.
But let's assume you're right for a second. How do you explain Epic's low commission fee? They have to deal with even more than apple does. Where a t
Re:One does not make friends by lying (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is completely different from Apple and Google who provide a level, if expensive, playing field for everyone."
Apple certainly does not, with terms in their licenses forbidding you from making apps that compete with their native built-in apps (last I checked, back on iPhone 4-6.)
Year of Linux on the laptop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Year of Linux on the laptop? (Score:4, Informative)
The steam deck is a very good handheld console, but not a very good tablet. The Linux productivity apps are not really tailored towards touch input and the touchscreen is not that good to begin with. It works but not that well that I want to use it permanently, but I prefer to use the touchpads and mouse. Add on top that the screen while good for games is too small for a tablet use.
Re:Year of Linux on the laptop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, without keyboard it's not so practical as a tablet, but if you're consuming something you can just unplug it and take it to the couch. Otherwise it can be a fine desktop, considering the hardware.
Well that changes things (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd always assumed the Steam Deck was going to be a device with a Nintendo- and Sony-like experience of "lockdowns all the way down."
Now I might actually buy one of these just to replay the Mass Effect trilogy.
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The dark side of an open device being that because you can use Steam to launch Origin to launch Mass Effect, they force you to do it.
(The first 2 do appear to launch directly from Steam, but the finale and the recent 4K remaster require an additional account and hoop)
Too bad they won't sell them (Score:3, Interesting)
Too bad they won't sell them to you.
Right now, they're "pre-order" only, where you have to spend $5 to enter a queue to be allowed to actually buy one. Apparently they're so far behind on these "pre-orders" that if you did not place a pre-order within the first hour of them opening, you still won't have gotten a chance to place an actual order.
If you place a "pre-order" today, when might you be allowed to buy one for real? No one knows, and Valve won't say. Right now orders are split into three buckets: Q2,
Re:Too bad they won't sell them (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in the first hour of orders, and got mine in April, a different approach atm is not possible, due to hardware shortages which will persist for the at least next 1-2 years. Valve probably will roll out 1 Mio of those units this year.
Also Valves approach stopped mass scalping upfroint, the first week of orders, only accounts with an order history dating at least 2 months back were allowed to order exactly one unit. This stopped mass scalping upfront. They lifted the history restrictions I think after one week or so but still it is only one unit per account.
Problem is that people who knew about the device ordered them and are now queuing up at least until q3 maybe end of the year, and after the device came out the hype got even more momentum, because it is a very good device and now people are trying to jump on the train which has been full already until q3. But literally everyone who has ordered had to wait for 10 months to get theirs unless they bought it overpriced on ebay (some people were scalping their devices or selling them off again, but no mass scalping), but in the end you will pay the same or more for a Deck on ebay as for a similar device like the Aya Neo!
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I'd always assumed the Steam Deck was going to be a device with a Nintendo- and Sony-like experience of "lockdowns all the way down."
Why assume that? It would be a complete deviation from Valve's other hardware and API offerings all which have to date been completely open, e.g. SteamVR which supports any headsets from any manufacturer, unlike say the Oculus API.
Case Against Walled Gardens? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this a "case against walled gardens" simply because it's not a walled garden. The market is big enough for the existence of both walled gardens and open platforms. We don't have to have either/or. Consumer choice means the ability to choose between a walled garden device or an open platform, not only having open platforms available.
The openness of the PC has been a security and configuration nightmare for the technologically illiterate for decades. For some creatives, they would be happy as clams if Adobe sold a "Creative Cloud machine" that just ran their products and e-mail. Maybe add some Adobe equivalent of Slack and a web browser.
Re:Case Against Walled Gardens? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this a "case against walled gardens" simply because it's not a walled garden.
Walled gardens only exist because of weak individuals who can't fathom the benefits of choice. You can have security and choice but the moment you buy a device that doesn't allow you to choose an app store, you've given up any right to complain about your device.
If you've never tried a Linux distribution, you've missed out on a singular experience you might not even notice if you weren't paying attention. For most Linux distributions, the apps aren't installed from the developers site but from a repository maintained by users who care about the apps they maintain. You don't see many apps available that are spyware unless they're in high demand (think browsers). The apps are usually well tested to make sure they at least run.
The typical Linux distribution is not a walled garden but if you install from official sources, you can depend on security, openness and choice.
Re: Case Against Walled Gardens? (Score:2)
I use an iPhone, BSD for servers, Linux for my home machines and work servers, and macOS for my work machines. Your post seems to assume that I do not understand the benefits of one system over the other.
I want my phone to be a walled garden because I do not want it to be another device I maintain. I want it to be an appliance. Likewise, I want the iPads I have for my children to be walled gardens.
This is the most infuriating thing about the uncompromising freedom people like Stallman. You assume that I cou
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“Walled gardens exist because users who choose this model want the freedom of not having to spend copious amounts of time maintaining their devices.”
Fixed that for ya. I’m sure a freedom lover like you can agree.
Re:Case Against Walled Gardens? (Score:4, Interesting)
The classic case of the walled garden was Apple's computing strategy in regard to the OS. That walled garden did two things.
(1) It prevented anyone from running the OS on any other than Apple hardware
(2) It prevented anyone from running any other OS on the Apple hardware.
It was to varying extents extended to applications. So you could only run Hypercard on Apple hardware running an Apple OS. On the other hand, Claris products, Filemaker and I think Works, would run on Windows. Similarly MS Office ran and runs on Apple OS and thus on Apple hardware.
Subsequently we have had two variants of what is usually called a walled garden for apps. In the hard version there is an app store and you can only install applications from it. In the soft version there is an app store, but you can bypass it selectively. The hard version seems to be the version iPhone uses. The soft version is in place for Macs.
The problem is the clash of incentives. If you are the product manager of the hardware, you would like to sell as much of it as you can. This means getting the costs down, and being as open as possible to whatever uses the market asks for. So it means the most common standards and greatest compatibility with all OSs.
This is sometimes called a race to the bottom and commoditization by Mac enthusiasts. It is true that makers of generic PC hardware have much lower margins than Apple, but the terms conceal more than they reveal, the real situation is that the basis of competition has changed as compared to the walled garden approach. Hardware now competes on its own merits on reliability, cost, usability and so on. Apple and its enthusiasts have always denigrated this, but quite wrongly. Its the price of having a huge available market.
If you are the product manager of the OS, you have a different incentive. You want to sell it to as many people as possible, which hardware and who makes it is immaterial.
So you have two incentives, one the OS manager not wanting to be restricted by hardware which is maybe not all that competitive and in any case is limited in supply. The other the hardware manager who wants to sell as much as possible regardless of whether the buyer wants one or another OS, so he can move down the experience curve as fast as possible.
The choice Apple made, applauded by its followers, was to restrict itself to the small market segment that would buy into a combination of Apple hardware running Apple software. Most of them were buying hardware which was inferior in order to get the OS.
You can see the tradeoff. Essentially it was to restrict the target market, which in turn had consequences for cost position and ability to get a full software application offering.
This is basically the choice when it comes to walled gardens. Experience in the Apple case shows you can do it, you can maintain decent margins, at least for a while. But you get reduced to niche market share. Is that sustainable? Well, it led to the late 20c crisis and it led Apple to move to commodity hardware with some lockin addons.
Niche market share is a strategy. But you have to be offering something different, in a way which appeals to your niche. Differentiation with value from it, is the jargon.
I am skeptical. I think over time unbundling is the way to go, I think markets will force it. That said, there is the example of the bundled iPhone against this argument. We shall see.
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The "case" for walled gardens is "it's too hard to do this without a wall"
Everything "else" about a walled garden environment is inferior, so they make their own case against. All you have to do to win the argument therefore is to eliminate any cases for.
This device proves that you don't need a walled garden to make a device with an app store. If the user chooses to install outside software then the ramifications are theirs to deal with.
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Ultimately, it goes back to 1985 when, after having seen what a flood of low-quality software for an open platform did to the North American video game market in 1983 and 1984, both Atari and Nintendo concluded "it's too hard to restore consumers' faith in the medium of video games itself without a wall."
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They might have been right then, but now, not so much. These days people understand that there is a difference between licensed and non-licensed titles, even if they don't understand what the differences really are.
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This is specious as hell. You can’t go to Walmart or Target and buy unlicensed games for consoles anymore. You can only download and install unlicensed software unless you jailbreak the console. 99% of people won’t and can’t do that.
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People are used to seeing the special packaging and whatnot. Just like they noticed Tengen's different carts and knew what they meant (even as a kid at the time I knew they were unlicensed software) they will notice the missing trade dress of an unlicensed title.
AAA gaming on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: AAA gaming on Linux (Score:3)
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Which is fine if you're happy to play multiplayer games.
Problem is cheating is rampant in PC gaming - it's so bad that many game streamers get caught out for running cheats while streaming games online. Usually because their desktop flashes briefly on the stream and there's the cheat program icon right there, or the cheat window briefly shows up.
There are more than a few games that h
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It's certainly not ideal that they've stopped selling some things but, at least, in the case of the Steam Link they've given them very good support. In fact, the Steam Link, which hasn't been sold for years, it's still receiving firmware updates from Valve from time to time.
A reporter says it, so it must be true (Score:1)
It's funny that technical people, who sometimes are all about data, would base decisions on shit that one reporter experienced.
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When a product is subject to a shortage, as described in _xeno_'s comment [slashdot.org], there is less available data to weigh against one reporter's anecdote.
Also runs Windoze - the drivers are out (Score:3)
Ain't that Windows? (Score:1)
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It's a handheld PC (Score:1)
Steam didn't lock it down, because a good portion of the Steam library isn't 100% playable on the Steam Deck. They're counting on free labor from the user community to shake out the glitches and bugs, because Valve doesn't have enough internal resources to do it themselves. The fallout from this strategy is that gaming compatibility on Linux will be improved, and Steam won't have to worry about being caught with their pants down in a future where Microsoft pulls an Apple and refuses to sign third party ap
Interesting experiment, if if gets wildly popular. (Score:2)
Right now, as with most Valve hardware, they are rare as hens teeth, the soonest I can get my hands on one, is October.
If Valve truly have a hit on their hands that can shift the same amount of units as, for example, a Nintendo Switch, we have a very interesting experiment on our hands.
With a no-holds barred open ecosystem, here's two aspects to this:
1. Support from Valve - e.g. someone installs some third party app that bricks the device
2. Third party apps that are malicious
I totally support the fact you _
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Right now, as with most Valve hardware, they are rare as hens teeth, the soonest I can get my hands on one, is October.
They're not that rare. I have 2 (had a friend order one on my behalf), and one of my coworkers have one. Another friend is still waiting on his.
They're certainly not widely available, but they are shipping.
If Valve truly have a hit on their hands that can shift the same amount of units as, for example, a Nintendo Switch, we have a very interesting experiment on our hands.
I don't really think they're comparable devices. I own both.
It's true that from a far enough distance, the market they compete in is the same: "handheld gaming", but the similarity ends there.
1. Support from Valve - e.g. someone installs some third party app that bricks the device
You can't.
It's got a BIOS like any PC. Wreck your installation? Flash a USB stick or microSD and boot from it
I have a Steam Deck since April (Score:5, Informative)
and yes it absolutely is brilliant.
The point, given the article is, that it is not a wallet garden, but Valve simply follows the same approach as it did with tackling piracy 10 years ago, when Gaben stated that piracy is a service problem nothing else and he was right.
Wallet gardens simply are also mostly a service problem caused by greed and not thinking far enough but trying to rake in the quick buck. The deck is not wallet gardened, but you simply will get the best experience if you stick with Valves stack (which is open btw in a sense that third party stores could hook into it, some oss programs do btw.)
It is dead easy to download and play a game from steam, the linux based ui is tailored to the inputs and brilliant. Other stores while being able to hook into it seem to be perfectly fine trying to ignore this new market. GOG stated that you should install windows to play on the deck. Epic as usuall in their ass in the head manner outright stated they will not support any Valve hardware, so much for being the good guys fighting the good fight (hint they never were they just were jealous that Valve earns billions in a market they declared dead when Valve came out with Steam) etc...
So the task of getting those games on the deck now is in the hand of a handful of opensource projects which you can install as flatpacks (the only restriction you have on the deck is mostly that for convenience reasons the applications should reside in user space, since the core installation is readonly, but can be officially rooted, but the next updated might overwrite your changes, you can install anything on it though so once you opt out of SteamOS you are fully open even in that regard)
But back to the opensource projects like Heroic, they are good but not perfect so often you have to fiddle with the games themselves to get them running on the deck. So once you are out of the Steam ecosystem you are back to the usual Linux hoops you have to face with proton and wine, the experience is basically then the same as you would get on a desktop Linux getting those games up and running. But on the other hand the Steam ecosystem is so well integrated that you do not really have that much of an incentive to move out, even installing windows and then opening the console for literally every game has major downsides compared to sticking with SteamOS (which has reduced compatibility due to the proton layer) like power management worse ui for the inputs etc...
So in the end, it is not a wallet garden but sticking with what Valve provides simply gives you the best experience by miles, despite having probably a handful of games not working on it (while most games are not verified most games work)
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and yes it absolutely is brilliant.
So the task of getting those games on the deck now is in the hand of a handful of opensource projects which you can install as flatpacks (the only restriction you have on the deck is mostly that for convenience reasons the applications should reside in user space, since the core installation is readonly, but can be officially rooted, but the next updated might overwrite your changes, you can install anything on it though so once you opt out of SteamOS you are fully open even in that regard)
Is it just me or describing a consumer game console in which you need to go through arcane installations in order to play some games the complete opposite of "brilliant"? To me this sounds like the same old story that it's always been trying to game on Linux...
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No I am describing a consumer games console which is open, but operates exactly like a consumer games console as long as you stick with the valve ecosystem outside of it it allows you to do everything but then you are on your own. Thats all there is to it.
The entire experience is about stick with us you will get comfort, dont stick with us do as you please. That Epic GOG and other stores do not have decent clients is hardly the fault of of Valve who did their job and have an open interface to their own fron
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You just need to see it the other way: it's for SOME (officially unsupported) games, and you have the POSSIBILITY to play them. On a walled garden, you wouldn't be able to play them at all.
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Pesky Terms and Conditions (Score:1)
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I'm not aware of any other major PC manufacturer serving the United States market that doesn't have an arbitration clause for direct sales through its website.