Valve is also a privately held company, unlike most (all?) of the other big players. Therefore they don’t have the ever present drive and threat of “the line must always go up” to contend with. Valve can do whatever the fuck they feel like, however the fuck they feel like, and as long as they’re bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on and keep Gabe Newell in Acapulco shirts and Cheetos, or whatever his jam is, there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
They can gamble and release a VR headset or two, and if it’s not a huge success, who cares? There are no shareholders breathing down their necks. They can support the Linux community and if it pisses of Microsoft, or whoever, so what? They want to wait 16+ years before getting around to releasing the sequel to their flagship franchise? There is no boardroom pushing them to slap it together and shove it out the door before Christmas, so they can just do that. Etc.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
As a Linux user, nothing else comes even close. I can read on ProtonDB if I can expect a Windows game to just work, and more often than not, it does.
GOG is also a great concept, and somewhat Linux friendly, but it doesn’t have the Steam “click and play” convenience.
Epic Game Store however, has been decidedly Linux hostile for some reason??? As I see it, Steam and GOG are for gamers, Epic Game Store is for business. It would be a dark day for gamers, if Epic ever became dominant.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
The contributions Valve has made to Linux really, really can’t be understated.
It’s been 20 years of the joke “It’s finally the year of the Linux Desktop” and Valve took the desktop for a miss and made 2023 “the year of the Linux Portable PC Gaming Handheld.”
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Epic is Linux adverse mainly because of its Chinese investors. They don’t want to open source their spyware.
hips_and_nips@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why would they have to open source anything? Just because it’s running on Linux doesn’t mean it’s OSS or even F(L)OSS. Steam isn’t open source either.
Rose@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Not to mention that open source software can and sometimes does contain spyware.
nix@merv.news 6 months ago
That makes literally zero sense. If anything Chinese investors would want the open source operating system to be the most popular since the US is becoming more hostile and banning them from stuff more and more. Its why they’re investing in RISC-V development and the US is considering being hostile towards it for “national security reasons”
Buffalox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I would think China would be eager to get out of western (USA) dominated Operating Systems.
I know Russia has attempted it as couple of times, but with very little success.
drasticpotatoes@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Tim Sweeney can eat my asshole.
DingoBilly@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Steam and GoG are not just free services for gamers either. At their core they are businesses, and they invest significantly to try and make people spend more/get addicted to their services.
I hate this whole idea that some companies are your friend. That just shows their marketing and branding is working on people and blinding people.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s not a matter of them being your friend or not, it’s a matter of them respecting their customers, and giving their customers what they want, generating a win-win.
These days most corporations are very happy with the win-lose scenarios, as it maximizes their profits.