Is Valve Letting Third Parties Create SteamOS Hardware? (theverge.com) 48
The Verge thinks Valve "could make a play to dethrone the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft." And it's not just because there's lots of new SteamOS hardware on the way (including a wireless VR headset and a pair of trackable wands, a Steam Controller 2 gamepad, and a living room console.
"Valve has also now seemingly revealed plans for partners to create third-party SteamOS hardware too." It won't be easy to take on Sony, Microsoft, or Meta. Those companies have a lot to lose, and they're deeply entrenched. But the Steam Deck has revealed a massive weakness in each of their businesses that may take them years to correct — the desire to play a huge library of games anytime, anywhere. And while they figure that out, Valve may be building an entire new ecosystem of SteamOS hardware, one that could finally let PC and peripheral makers tap into the huge and growing library of Windows games on all sorts of different hardware without relying on Microsoft or subjecting their customers to the many annoyances of Windows...
Valve has long said it will open up SteamOS to other manufacturers, even recently committing to some direct support for rival handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally — and the other week, Valve quietly updated a document that may reveal its larger overarching strategy. It won't just leave SteamOS sitting around and hope manufacturers build something — it'll hold their hand. Valve now has an explicit label for third parties to create "Powered by SteamOS" devices, which it explicitly defines as "hardware running the SteamOS operating system, implemented in close collaboration with Valve." It additionally lets companies create "Steam Compatible" hardware that ships with "Valve approved controller inputs," as well as SteamVR hardware and Steam Link hardware that lets you stream games from one device to another...
When Valve asked PC manufacturers to sign onto its Steam Machines initiative over a decade ago, with the idea of building living room PC consoles, it asked for a leap of faith with very little to show and a tiny chance of success. It took years for Valve to even build the oddball living room controller for its Steam Machines, and it didn't get far in convincing Windows game developers to port their games to Linux. But by the time it announced the Steam Deck, Valve had hammered out a Proton software compatibility layer so good that many Windows games now run better on Linux, and created the most customizable yet familiar set of controls ever made. If manufacturers could build their own Steam Machines rather than equivalent Windows machines, they could offer better gaming products than they do today. Maybe they'd even want to release a VR headset that isn't tied to Microsoft or Meta if it doubled as a Steam Deck, portably playing decades of flatscreen games.
It's not clear any of this will pan out; Valve is an exceedingly small company that tries not to chase too many things at a time. When I speak to PC industry executives about why they pick Windows over SteamOS, some say they're concerned about whether Valve would truly be able to support them. But it's just as intriguing an idea as it was 12 years ago when Gabe Newell explained the initial vision to us, and this time, there's a far better chance it'll work.
"Today, every major PC company is building one or more Steam Deck rivals," the article points out. "But without Valve's blessing and support, they're saddled with a Windows OS that doesn't start, pause, and resume games quickly and seamlessly enough to feel portable and easy..."
"Valve has also now seemingly revealed plans for partners to create third-party SteamOS hardware too." It won't be easy to take on Sony, Microsoft, or Meta. Those companies have a lot to lose, and they're deeply entrenched. But the Steam Deck has revealed a massive weakness in each of their businesses that may take them years to correct — the desire to play a huge library of games anytime, anywhere. And while they figure that out, Valve may be building an entire new ecosystem of SteamOS hardware, one that could finally let PC and peripheral makers tap into the huge and growing library of Windows games on all sorts of different hardware without relying on Microsoft or subjecting their customers to the many annoyances of Windows...
Valve has long said it will open up SteamOS to other manufacturers, even recently committing to some direct support for rival handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally — and the other week, Valve quietly updated a document that may reveal its larger overarching strategy. It won't just leave SteamOS sitting around and hope manufacturers build something — it'll hold their hand. Valve now has an explicit label for third parties to create "Powered by SteamOS" devices, which it explicitly defines as "hardware running the SteamOS operating system, implemented in close collaboration with Valve." It additionally lets companies create "Steam Compatible" hardware that ships with "Valve approved controller inputs," as well as SteamVR hardware and Steam Link hardware that lets you stream games from one device to another...
When Valve asked PC manufacturers to sign onto its Steam Machines initiative over a decade ago, with the idea of building living room PC consoles, it asked for a leap of faith with very little to show and a tiny chance of success. It took years for Valve to even build the oddball living room controller for its Steam Machines, and it didn't get far in convincing Windows game developers to port their games to Linux. But by the time it announced the Steam Deck, Valve had hammered out a Proton software compatibility layer so good that many Windows games now run better on Linux, and created the most customizable yet familiar set of controls ever made. If manufacturers could build their own Steam Machines rather than equivalent Windows machines, they could offer better gaming products than they do today. Maybe they'd even want to release a VR headset that isn't tied to Microsoft or Meta if it doubled as a Steam Deck, portably playing decades of flatscreen games.
It's not clear any of this will pan out; Valve is an exceedingly small company that tries not to chase too many things at a time. When I speak to PC industry executives about why they pick Windows over SteamOS, some say they're concerned about whether Valve would truly be able to support them. But it's just as intriguing an idea as it was 12 years ago when Gabe Newell explained the initial vision to us, and this time, there's a far better chance it'll work.
"Today, every major PC company is building one or more Steam Deck rivals," the article points out. "But without Valve's blessing and support, they're saddled with a Windows OS that doesn't start, pause, and resume games quickly and seamlessly enough to feel portable and easy..."
I'm onboard (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate Valve for the 'you must sign in to play your game' crap, but of all the major players, Valve is probably the one I trust enough to buy their hardware without worrying that they're trying to give me an unsolicited colonoscopy with it.
Re:I'm onboard (Score:4, Interesting)
There are things about them to cheer, and things about them to leer.
I owner most of the hardware they make, and have made, and in that respect, I'm a very happy customer.
I've also got close to ~$30k in Steam purchased since ~2004, and in that respect, I'm a well-treated prisoner- but it has not escaped me that I am still a prisoner, and I don't like it.
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Not all the games on Steam require you to be signed in to work. Maybe most of them, but not all of them. That's something they merely facilitate for publishers but don't actually make it a policy to require.
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Each and every Steam game, without exception, requires Steam DRM to be running.
Steam DRM allows you to "authorize" a game for offline usage, even indefinitely I think, but that authorization must happen- i.e., the first time the game is started, you must be logged in.
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I'm not sure about this. Some executables never check if Steam is running or not and can be freely moved outside of their install directory. Of course you need the client to download it - this is a technically a restriction but it's understandable - but apart from that there are virtually unrestricted. They are rare but they exist: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w... [pcgamingwiki.com]
Or you maybe actually meant what I just said and I misunderstood.
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I knew there were many that you could "disable" the DRM for easily enough (even with support from the developers/producers), but I hadn't encountered any that didn't at least require you to run them under Steam once, or auto-start Steam if you tried to run them independently.
Quickly browsing the Steamworks docs, there may be an explanation for that, though.
It's recommended that programs call SteamAPI_RestartAppIfNecessary before SteamAPI_Init, which will start Steam if it's installed. The
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To be honest a lot of these games on the list are released in "special" circumstances. It's either DosBox or ScummVM wrappers, indie titles or games also released on GOG. A lot of them need workarounds like creating a "steam_appid.txt" file in the same directory as the executable - funnily enough this is how Steamworks API is tested during development : https://partner.steamgames.com... [steamgames.com] - or passing command line options.
It seems mostly dependent on the publisher policies. Europa Universalis IV and Roller Co
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No, really, that's false. Most of them, but not all of them. Starbound and World of Goo both come to mind as counter examples. Now, granted there's as lot of games on there that have Steam community features so deeply integrated into the UI you might find them nearly useless without being logged in, but even that's not literally all of the catalog.
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No, really, that's false.
Ya, it appears it is.
Discussion further up made it clear that sometimes it's hard to tell if it's actually DRM or not, as Valve's official guidance for using Steamworks is to call a function that will restart the app from Steam if Steam is installed, but beyond even those, there is a pretty tiny minority that have absolutely no integration whatsoever.
SteamWorks DRM is optional (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of indie games on Steam that don't use SteamWorks DRM at all. You can copy the files to another system that doesn't even have Steam installed and run them. I've done this with stuff like Yume Nikki and Cosmic Osmo. Speaking of which, all the Cyan games have the content unprotected and you can point ScummVM at ones like Myst III: Exile to play without even using the supplied executable.
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Valve for me atm is the new Apple, every few years they come out with amazin hardware which is a work of love of the people behind it!
The steam controller was good, the steam deck amazing, their VR headset as well, it just now is surpassed!
what about stoping anit linux anit cheat and drm i (Score:1)
what about stopping anti cheat that ban linux and drm in games that flags linux.
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Recent Proton updates have actually addressed some of them.
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EA has just blocked EA anticheat running in VMs! Someone who was playing Battlefront in a Windows VM in Linux with GPU passthrough posted a screenshot [reddit.com].
(also from same post, list of games affected or to be affected soon [steamdb.info])
die, EA, die
Yet another flailing atempt (Score:2)
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Steam's DRM (Steamguard) isn't particularly onerous outside of the fact that it's DRM. Be more worried about Denuvo.
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So far it is one of the better DRM's (if there is such a thing), but I have been burnt by it more than once with its fucked buggy offline mode where I was unable to play a game due to their offline mode bugging out leaving me stuck with nothing to play for a weekend where I am stuck somewhere with no internet.
Agreed.
If they gained more market control you can bet your arse their DRM will get even worse.
lolwut?
Steam controls 75-80% of the world PC games market.
They effectively have no competition.
DRM sucks balls, but it's been their entire schtick to try to make theirs not suck, and as a privately owned corporation rather than a publicly owned one, it'll probably stay that way- at least as long as Newell is alive. Which btw- get that fucker some Ozempic. I need him to hang around a bit longer. I have way too much money tied up in that shit to see it evaporate under some corporate buyer when he k
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btw- get that fucker some Ozempic. I need him to hang around a bit longer.
He's way ahead of you on that [metro.co.uk].
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and while some of the hardware is good the execution is balls
Errr in what way? Steam is a perfectly fine system for managing games. Compared to other stores / game library platforms it's feature rich, performs well, and provides the user with a lot of flexibility.
But you used plural so let's use plural:
Steam VR API is one of the most open and available APIs to any VR user. Literally any headset can make use of it, and it even allows interacting with other APIs to allow things such as Steam Remote Link on a headset to be used with a Vive or Oculus API.
Steam OS for its
Good for them (Score:2)
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You can get a relatively similar experience to SteamOS by installing the native KDE and Steam packages from any of the major Linux distros and just setting Steam to auto-start in "Big-Picture Mode."
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Good to know. I have been holding out so far (Steam deck not available here outside of grey imports), but I may give this a try soon. I have been looking to replace Windows on my gaming PC or relegate it for some special cases only for a while and certainly when win10 becomes EoL.
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Well, when I say similar experience of course I mean excepting the initial hardware setup part. The nice thing about a Steam Deck is you don't have to do silly stuff like make sure the right video driver is loading... but once you have that part down, the Steam user experience is pretty much the same past the login panel. For playing those Windows games through their Proton emulation layer, Proton DB [protondb.com] can be very useful when you run into compatibility problems.
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I understand that. But I assume Proton comes pre-configured for all their Windows games and I generally do not have to do any per-game things, right? A few exceptions would not really be a factor.
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Eh, for the stuff that's explicitly marked in the store as "Steam Deck Verified" I have personally had 100% success rate on my Steam Deck. For running older titles, unverified titles, or just running any of them on my regular Linux Desktop built of ad-hoc hardware, it's kinda hit and miss, and ProtonDB has been essential, even if just for checking what version of Proton was current the last time anyone reported a particular game working so that I can set Steam to use that version for that game instead of th
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(TL;DR: I'd recommend going to ProtonDB [protondb.com] first before you do anything drastic to your Windows install and just search up all your current Windows games to get an idea of what their reported support status is. Your chances of success could vary wildly depending on particular hardware and game selections.)
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Thanks. I will probably dual-boot my gamine PC for a while anyways. I am not a Linux zealot. It just works better for almost everything I do and it is wayyyy easier to understand and administrate.
The stuff I am playing right now is mostly platinum, some gold, but not even all listed. Looks like parts of the game producer side still needs some incentives.
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It works a lot better if you run it in a gamescope session [github.com] than inside a regular DE.
Once you're in there, you can run nested KDE or GNOME [github.com], and freely switch between the desktop and full-screen games in gamescope.
Demonize the PC much? (Score:3)
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SteamOS is only locked down if you let it be and it's only tied to dedicated hardware if you let it be ... Deck is far less distinct from Linux gaming than xbox is from Windows gaming.
I agree with you though, the openness of PCs has value, it is the reason Linux exists in the first place. In the age of Apple, the downsides of that openness (poor integration and QA) have become too much of a liability though. Microsoft should find a way to better combine openness and foolproof hardware, xbox and Surface are
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The Steam deck is just a controller-shaped PC. You can install Windows on it [steampowered.com] if you want to for some reason. None of the objections to consoles apply to the Steam Deck.
This might better have been a response to the GP comment, but it didn't fit perfectly in either location so I put my comment here.
Valve is currently working on making their Linux distribution install and work gracefully on the similar devices currently on the market from other vendors, which come with Windows. It's already possible to install
I doubt they have the balls to do it right (Score:2)
Google with Chromebooks has shown them how to do Steam Machines right. Valve certainly has the money to do it right. Doing it right is certainly the most profitable way of doing it.
I don't think they have the balls to do it right though.
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In what way does Google's Chromebook demonstrate how to do a video game console correctly?
Re:I doubt they have the balls to do it right (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chromebook development model shows how to best use third parties to create hardware for Just Werks systems (much better than the Android development model in fact, the Chromebook model is what the Android model should have been ... but it's now too hard to turn that ship around for Google).
It divides the incentives correctly. The hardware manufacturer is incentivized to sell and run, it has very little care for long term impact of decisions. The platform developer makes his money from long term (store sales in case of Valve, mostly advertising in case of Google). The certification allows the platform developer to force the hardware developer to be correctly design for the long term and gives them the control they need to provide long term software support (a burden the hardware developer is glad to be rid of and which they only ever do halfheartedly).
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Chromebooks are an unmitigated disaster, they're obscenely underpowered defective by design pieces of e-waste.
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I don't see how any of what you said is different from Android. The device maker benefits most from the initial sale. The platform developer, which is the same entity in both cases, makes their money from the long term in both cases. What's the difference? I've never owned a Chromebook, only used one for a while, so perhaps it would be more obvious to me if I had been maintaining the system? But I've had Android devices back to 1.6 and they seem to work based on the same incentives since Google put so much
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Google's lack of control over Android firmware makes long term software support a complete PITA. Updates are a three way dance between the hardware manufacturer, the carriers and Google. If they followed the Chromebook development model, it would just be Google and the carriers.
Also the hardware manufacturer's ability to ship adware and bloat with Android hurts Google's ability to build a brand. Of course in Google's case the fact they make their money with advertising in the first place hurts that in the f
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If they followed the Chromebook development model, it would just be Google and the carriers.
I don't want the carrier involved in my software at all. That's why I buy unlocked phones. My carrier has absolutely zip and squat to do with my updates. They provide me with a connection and they control nothing in my device after their SIM and what my system decides to pick up from it. When you buy an unlocked Moto phone it comes with a couple of unwanted apps including Facebook, but they are on the user side, so you can remove them.
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Any significant changes in the modem are made in cooperation with the carriers.
Profit centers (Score:2)
The impact on MS, Sony et al will depend on the cut of each sale they get on their platform vs on Valve's; along with their ability to keep popular games exclusive to their own platform. If gamers can't get the hot new games on Steam, more hardware won't help.
I guess it will come down to what does SteamOS offer that you don't get with existing consoles/game systems? Will that be good enough to convince hardware manufacturers to build exclusive main stream devices? Or will SteamOS remain a niche product?
Steam Box 2.0 (Score:2)
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Isn't this just Steam Box all over again?
It is and isn't.
Steam Box was a low design cost project which taught Valve what they needed to make the far more custom Steam Deck successful. At the time it didn't run many games. Valve identified that as a show stopper and put their effort into Proton so that they could reasonably sell Deck. This has worked very well for them, and been hugely beneficial for people who don't even use Steam, but obviously also for people who do but don't have a Deck (like me.)
Now that Proton is good, Valve can reasonably se