I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
In all honesty, I think it might be overall better if games like Fortnite, CoD or Fifa never get patched for Linux. The vast majority of their players are just addicts who fell victim to the predatory mechanisms. One of the few effective solutions is to cut them off this stuff.
Ideally, these games shouldn’t exist, at least not in their current form. But it’s not like billionaire sociopaths will stop feeding on the weak and poor anytime soon.
they are not games they are slop that normies consume.
That’s the only thing I worry about personally, not the users so much, but the capitalists who see “opportunity” once Linux gains a hold, and start figuring out how to make it disgusting like everything else they touch with their greedy little slop mitts.
It won’t be “Well, Linux doesn’t permit anticheat”, it will be
“Okay how do we create some centralized power structure that makes invasive DRM and anticheat that runs on Linux?”
And they’ll move to colonize.
There are already anti cheat options on Linux. They just don’t put any dev time into them because it’s a small market currently.
Embrace, Expand, Extinguish.
While I don’t like these games either, I think it would be better for them to support Linux, so all users can enjoy the games they want.
Remember when Linux was about freedom? If the OS lets me delete root recursively, it can also let me play slop. It’s not my mom.
Linux isn’t stopping you from playing that slop, it’s just to sloppy to work on Linux.
Let’s not forget the whole Counter-Strike economy is based on gambling, which I think is also not good, especially because there’s a lot of young kids picking that up and becoming gambling addicts, which I think is a net negative for people.
Edit: People make games did a deep dive on this, as did Coffeezilla did a series on the whole ecosystem.
Oh wow I haven’t played since the original Source. I thought you were just talking about how you had to manage an equipment budget in a match. But no, legit gambling scheme with real time and money for what amounts to NFTs that can only be used within Steam’s ecosystem.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a black mark on valve however I imagine it prints a lot of money and they seem reticent to put an end to it.
The vast majority of their players are just addicts who fell victim to the predatory mechanisms.
I don’t play Fortnite, but the only players I know are kids, and they just play it because that’s what everyone else is playing and they want to play with their friends. I’m not excusing the company for monetizing the shit out of it, but (anecdotally) the players’ behaviour just reminds me of me and my friends playing Dooms, UTs, or Quakes back in the day.
I am honestly curious how do Sony and Microsoft react internally to Valve deciding to get their part of cake. Nintendo shouldn’t care, their cake is a separate cupcake at the top anyway, but Sony and Microsoft are directly in the line of fire.
Nintendo will always care, especially since you can easily currently install emulators on stem deck, and I seriously doubt it would be impossible to install those on steam machine. Now aside from the emulation stuff, having another contender in the console market may always affect each of the companies simply because not everyone can afford all the consoles. Growing up the parents who raised me didn’t buy us a single console, so my first consoles were from the parent who only visited (divorce), in lieu of child support payments, and we generally only had one at a time until we started buying them ourselves.
If you’re on a limited budget, even with kids, you may only choose 1 or two consoles, and your choice may be the most “comprehensive”. While Nintendo makes excellent games for kids, it’s not like the PC market doesn’t have anything for kids. Plus new consoles in a market could convince publishers to expand that way too.
While true overall, I was more going for the fact that people buy Ninendo because they want to buy Nintendo rather than because they want any random console. Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are fighting for the same consumer - someone who wants an alternative to PC gaming. Which is also what Steam Machine is.
I don’t think the Steam Machine is going to be placed in the market as a competitor for consoles. It’s probably not gonna be sold at a loss. The Steam Machine is a competitor to Windows. It’s Valve’s solution to show hardware makers and publishers that a PC gaming market without Microsoft is possible. At the moment Valve’s business is way too dependent on Microsoft. With the direction Win11 is going, Microsoft is a serious threat to Valve’s survival. The more anti-consumer Windows becomes the more likely it will push PC gamers to consoles.
Remember the first Steam Machines came out when Microsoft tried to force their Windows Store on developers in Win8.
Don’t be surprised when one or both of them starts doing some shady shit to sabotage things if Valve starts eating a larger market share.
I doubt the Steam Machine will affect their bottom line in any meaningful way, and that’s not Valve’s goal, anyway. Most people aren’t like me, who got a Steam Deck right after the terrible Switch 2 reveal.
On one hand, maybe. On the other tho, a lot of parents are gamers themselves with big steam libraries. That can be really good argument for steam machine, and also Valve has brand loyalty on par with Sony or Microsoft, just not in consoles (yet).
I’d be (pleasantly) shocked if Valve made significant inroads with lifelong console gamers. Fortunately, we benefit from having an open console-like experience from them either way.
Boycott the Call of Duty mines.
It makes no sense to me not allowing anticheat on unmotivated steamOS…
I mean, valve could even build something in, like secure mode, where you have a secure little linux root system for each anticheat game together with a online hash to check against this hole separated file system
Like when you start the game, steamOS boots in this separate root system
Unmotivated? Its a literal checkbox in the anticheats that games package to enable running in Proton. This is not Valve’s responsibility, but idiot or lazy game companies/devs.
Secure boot is what I think you’re thinking of because of Battlefield 6. But as I understand from just skimming it, its handled a bit differently in Linux than Windows, so unsure of how that could be handled or adapted for native Windows games.
Anti-cheat, even kernel level anti-cheat has worked on Linux for a very long time. Some of the most popular products used by AAA have been available for years. They just intentionally refuse to make their products work on Linux.
Remember Genshin Impact, for example. It literally has an internal flag that instantly closes the game if it detects it is running on Linux. There’s no technical limitation for any of those big multiplayer titles from working, they just don’t want them to.
I wish laws represented the interests of the 99%
Wish granted, laws represent the owners of 99% of all wealth.
That monkey better not dare curl one of his fingers up for that “wish”! Nothing was changed. 😂
Just don’t turn it on?
Until 6 months from now when they turn it on by default, forcing you to apply a registry hack to disable it after every update from now on.
But that’s only if Microsoft decides to continue consistent behavior going on for decades. Yeah, you’re right. Totally nothing to worry about.
The only thing I have to fuck around with like that is the setting for Windows Update itself. It’s pretty annoying but also pretty different from an AI feature (because the modification I want to make delays updates, which is less secure). Maybe you’re thinking of something specific?
Anyway, yes, if they add an AI agent that you can’t turn off without hacks, that would be bad. But given that they haven’t done that, complaining about the law (without saying what the law is lacking) is silly. What would the law say - “don’t add features to software if any user doesn’t want it?” there is no way to make what the commenter above said make sense.
There’s a plethora of settings that Microsoft reverts on updates. That’s well known.
Guess you agree that this isn’t something the law should be involved with. Cool chat.
No specific policy was mentioned. I certainly think Microsoft should be subject to many, many more laws than they are currently, and I wouldn’t mind if they were prevented from circumventing user preference repeatedly. But you don’t even believe that this insanely well known thing happens and that sort of prevents a further conversation anyhow, so yes, cool chat.
The “Linux has no games” argument in a nutshell.
Valve is putting serious money behind Linux and has a lot of pull with game devs. They will fall in line soon.
Yep. No way Activision’s going to leave an addressable market as big as SteamOS is trying to be just sitting on the table. Especially if Valve puts some incentives behind it.
I can dual boot my Steam Deck with an external Windows 11 SSD. I expect I can do the same with the Steam Machine.
But why would you?
Maybe to play games that you can’t play on Linux.
A) to see if it could be done.
B) I wanted to see if/how Destiny 2 runs on Steam Deck and it requires Windows. Running it in a compatability later gets you banned.
The thing is this is a legitimate problem for the overall success of this. And the success of Linux as a general gaming OS. If people can’t play their staples like CoD or fortnite or anything else with this problem, then that’ll be enough to decide not to get this. Most people here probably don’t care, but we’re not the majority. And a lot of us probably aren’t in the market for this anyway.
This is the general sentiment I’ve been hearing, though surprisingly a lot of people belive that these games will eventually reach steam machine anyway because it seems stupid to them that it never happens.
I didn’t expect it, but a lot of Xbox players I know are considering saving up for the steam machine because it replaces their need for a console + PC for games, and they are aware that Xbox has been pretty open to putting their games on PC anyway. Some even considered Nintendo emulation which is defnitley something I didn’t expect to see from Xbox only players.
Halo Infinite and MCC run just fine on Linux. If they were comfortable letting their core IP on steam, it would be easy and probably beneficial for MSFT to do the same for CoD.
I think the main holdout will be Epic Games, simply because they want to be a competitor to steam and they seem to hate the idea of giving valve any leverage in the gaming industry.
I have to keep using the megacorporate OS because the other megacorporation won’t let me play their slop game unless they can install a virus on my computer!
It’s Activision-Blizzard. It’s the same megacorporation
Man I remember when both those names were something to get excited about.
ActiBlizzcroSoft
Macroshaft
Honestly more trustworthy.
MicroVisZard
Ah right, I forgot MS bought them.
I don’t think I need it, but I’m super glad it’s going to exist.
If it came with a native DVD reader and my PS4 suddenly died, I’d have some choices to make, however.
I’m 1000℅ certain you could attach a Blu-Ray drive via USB without internet telemetry, unlike Sony’s policies ;)
The idea did occur to me a minute after I’d commented. After my PS4 gives up, I’ll have choices to make.
Wow, I just realized that’s the default key on GrapheneOS lol, I should file a bug report.
The DRM measures of blurays make a hassle to play any legitimately purchased movie, especially 4k ones, a big hassle on any operating system. Not as plug and play like with DVDs…
I don’t want to rip them before watching them or search hours in obscure forums for a leaked description key…
This would be more useful for game ripping - did that for a lot of my PS3 games due to the large filesizes.
I wonder if it could support an external DVD/BD drive via its USB ports. I assume yes, but that would be an extra purchase for you.
My Steam Deck feels about on par with PS4 in terms of power, and they say Steam Machine will be more like a PS5, so it sounds like it would be an upgrade over your PS4. Just more expensive, especially if you’re buying a disc drive.
I think that this thing coming out will only be beneficial to PC gamers, especially Linux users. This will encourage further development and standardization.
Kinda yeah. Like I said I’m happy it’ll exist, it’s just that I don’t like to spend money on upgrades for the sake of upgrades.
You can literally install windows on it if you want
They could sell it as a machine that protects your privacy and prevents any privacy invasive software from running in it
Sounds like an Activision-Blizzard problem to me.
