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Comment by shrimp_emoji | Hacker News Reader

Valve's been amazing. Without their (ongoing, even after SteamOS pretty much flopped!) support, I don't know if I could've survived on Linux. xP

What's surprising is how many games are native through Steam. It tends to be the types of games I think most Linux nerds (like me) would stereotypically tend to prefer, too (Factorio, Europa Universalis 4, Kerbal Space Program, Cities: Skylines, most roguelikes). That said, I think a varied gaming diet is important. For non-native (especially AAA) games, https://www.protondb.com/ is very handy. Even games that can't run seem to get more runnable over time. Not long ago (a year or two?), Fallout 4 would run hilariously badly -- tons of graphical assets would be missing, and it was unplayable. Today, it runs "okay" (a subset of the sounds don't work unless you use a Proton flag in Steam, and the mouse is pretty sluggish).

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I've seen it theorized that SteamOS was less a flop and more a shot across Microsoft's bow that had the intentional effect. It briefly seemed like a war was brewing over the Windows Store or the Steam Store being the main outlet for PC game purchases, particularly games developed by MS studios. Seems that all but disappeared when the Steam Machine came out.

SteamOS has nothing to do with the Windows Store failing. That was tied to WinRT and Windows Phone. SteamOS and the few Steam Machine designs announced were underwhelming junk that had no market.

But you could be absolutely right that it was intended as a signal to Microsoft. Maybe Valve just got lucky and didn't have to follow through seriously.

No, the Steam for Linux + Hardware effort definitely got Microsoft moving:

https://www.onmsft.com/news/the-story-of-how-valves-move-to-...

It's more like an insurance policy than a serious attempt at building a platform. However, should it come to it, a lot of the problems with desktop Linux really come from a lack of money and direction - Valve have the liquidity, and games are enough of a selling point to justify only supporting one or two distros.

I'll second the "Valve's been amazing" comment. The majority of games I play are native, and all but a few of the rest work fine under Proton. Compared to when I started using Linux on the desktop a decade ago, the gaming situation is night and day.

Regarding Fallout 4, though, I played through it using Proton a while ago. As far as I can tell, the mouse thing is just an issue with the game - I found multiple sets of instructions to fix it that assumed you were using Windows.

With a Bethesda game you can barely assume it's not the game itself being the problem

That's certainly the etiology behind their "why does my game run in fast motion unless I cap it to 60 Hz" problems. :p Poor Gamebryo... U+1F614

At least Factorio is Linux native (and maybe even works better, for instance it has autosave without pausing support, and the headless server is AFAIK Linux-only…) without Steam :

https://factorio.com/download

The only issue is multiplayer, which has regressed with the recently added better compatibility with Steam multiplayer :

the big standalone servers work just fine, but you won't be able to connect to most random people's games, because most of them are going to use Steam, will assume that you are using it too, and will not have configured port forwarding in their routers for other non-Steam using players to be able to join them :

https://wiki.factorio.com/Multiplayer#Setting_Up_a_Multiplay...

(No idea if Factorio's IPv6 support might help with that.)

The problem is that you're then stuck in Steam's walled garden for the overwhelming majority of games.

It's getting harder and harder to get mods or find people to play multiplayer with if you're not using Steam.

Add Poly Bridge 1/2 to the list :)

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