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Comment by solarkraft | Hacker News Reader

What I find most amazing about it is that this has been about a decade in the making - Valve started their Linux compatibility initiative back when Microsoft threatened to hurt Steam with Windows 8 and Microsoft Store requirements.

How dedicated they are to this effort is impressive - they first failed big with the Steam Machines when support was very half baked, but now they'll try again with the Deck just as compatibility is coming along much better.

I guess Linux gamers can largely thank Microsoft for this one!

As a Mac user I'm a bit disappointed they stopped their efforts on that front, since the new processors are quite capable.

View on HN

mac left the ship once they refused to embrace standards like Vulkan and let OpenGL rot at the same time.

I wonder how much gaming reduces consumption of music and long-form video.

Can't speak for everyone but I sure struggle to engage as much with long-form non-interactive media these days. If I'm not affecting a narrative in some meaningful way it's really hard to stay interested.

What do you like in terms of "interactive media"? Are you talking strictly games or something?

When you said "interactive media", my mind immediately went to tell tale games, "Wolf Among Us" [0]. It's more of an animated story with limited interactivity, but I really enjoyed it. Would love more of this kinda low key gaming.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_Among_Us

Hmm. It set in back when I was playing WoW and realised that the effort I was putting into gaming the auction house was exactly the same as the effort I'd need to make money flipping items on eBay or something. After a while I couldn't make myself care about the in-game goals because I could just be using the same effort IRL for far more significant reward.

Then a few years later I spent a bunch of time playing Factorio, to similar effect. Downside: Suddenly flipped from "wow this is awesome" to "man this game feels like a job, it's no longer fun" to "uh, my job is basically this game so... yay?"

Now between the two it's really hard to get excited about something that isn't managing a real life business and building useful IP. Am I old? :P

Yeah, I could never get into those games 'cause they felt too much like work.

Instead of factorio I'd rather write some fun code. Instead of WoW, I'd rather go exploring the woods.

But you do need recreation. Games could be fun again, depending on the level of effort, etc

Games include music, so the answer for that part is "not at all". Many games offer music at additional cost, so there is a market for that. Also certainly some games made their music iconic in the same way movies used to do it.

It's not really an accident, Apple strongly dislikes AAA games (note: not AA games like fortnite or .. "games" like candy crush). If they support any kind of game development it's purely indie or puzzle style in nature and not high fidelity.

The reasons are.. well incalculable, there are so many:

To be competitive you must work closely with driver manufacturers; you would likely need to segment your desktop class hardware platforms based on what games they can play, you might bef forced to update hardware on a significantly shorter cadence- probably support for third party upgrades (like graphics cards). Also, Apple strongly dislikes nvidia who have a stranglehold on AAA games. (ever since they sold them a bunch of cards that desoldered themselves)

Apple wants to be a computing platform, and for "creatives". That's the image they're going for.

They can't win on gaming, even if they wanted to, but it's against the brand image to go for that market anyway.

You can't really do AAA gaming on a mac, and that's ok, not everything has to be about playing games.

Apple loves AAA games if they're on the iOS store and bringing in billions USD per year of microtransaction revenue from teens and compulsive gamblers. They can't get that by supporting native APIs for non-App-Store desktop games.

While I was mainly talking about MacOS (the desktop); Does iOS support AAA games?

I haven't been promoted any AAA games on iOS- fortnite is not a AAA game.

Edit: argue your point phantom downvoters.

Fortnite is not AAA; God Of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tom Clancy's the Division are AAA. Find a source that calls fortnite AAA. Find any source of a AAA studio working collaboratively with Apple and I will retract everything I said.

Can you define AAA in a way that excludes Fortnite, and "AAA studio" in a way that excludes Epic Games?

Easy:

Just Dance Now[0] is not a AAA game. It was made by Massive Entertainment, who makes AAA games.

So, a game being produced by a AAA studio does not make it a AAA game.

What "is" and "is not" AAA is debatable, sure, but some things are clear:

1) they're not mobile games.

2) They have a lot of marketing budget

3) They generally push the limits of the platform (lots of LOD)

4) They have large development teams

AAA usually means that a game needs: Lots of time, Lots of Money and Lots of People.

Fortnite is low fidelity, has been in early access since it's inception (many years at this point) and has a relatively small number of people (<100 direct, compared to >1,400 for The Division) making it, even though it's been "in development" for many years, not AAA level.

FWIW I'm not saying AAA is "good", I'm just saying that Apple isn't chasing AAA- and "fortnite" is not a good counter-argument, the better argument might be call of duty or sims, which have mac ports, but they're definitely not first platform and they actually are emulation shims using Wine.

Fortnite itself does not claim to be AAA, and it's totally fine not being AAA, it's actually better to avoid making AAA games and instead go for "AA" with low fidelity because the stakes are lower and you can take more risks in making a more interesting and engaging game.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Dance_Now

><100 direct

What's "direct" and how did you get this number?

https://pokde.net/news/many-epic-games-fortnite-people

Go to game credits, count everyone until they mention a publisher.

Industry convention: Project only: Main studio first, ancillery studios next, outsourcing parties next, then the scope broadens and includes the publisher, HR, office team etc;

But anyway, Tim even says that they shipped with only 25 people. Even if they broaden it now the scope was defined early.

If you really want fortnite to be AAA, I concede, I don't really care.

But then: please give me at least 1 other example.

>It's not really an accident, Apple strongly dislikes AAA games. If they support any kind of game development it's purely indie in nature and not high fidelity.

Except that's not true at all when it comes to iOS. Back when Epic and Apple actually got along, it was common for Epic to be part of iPhone keynotes showcasing the graphical capabilities of the new GPUs.

I think Fortnite was also regularly featured on the App Store back when it was actually available there.

Obviously they have a much larger interest in supporting gaming on iOS since every game sale brings them 30% of the cut, but there's no general AAA game hatred at Apple.

Most AAA studios don't care about GL, it isn't even a thing on most game consoles.

That's certainly true, and for most people making games on PS4; their openGL has a weird DX11-ish 'shim' that you can use to make your code cleaner (at the expense of a bit of performance).

It's used heavily in Snowdrop; but in order to work on Stadia they had to abandon the shim and work on Vulkan. So, even when porting to linux GL was not preferred. (I worked there during this transition).

Well now I'd imagine you could use something like DXVK native.

Apple is a fashion company. I'm not sure how AAA gaming plays into that. Maybe they aren't either.

The biggest rub on desktop GPUs on macOS is Nvidia insisting on full control of the drivers, which doesn’t jive with Apple’s attitude that GPU drivers should ship with the OS due to how deeply integrated they are with the kernel. AMD shares its driver source with Apple which works around this and allows RX 6000 series cards to work under macOS, but Nvidia would never consider doing something like that in a million years because too much of their business model revolves around total control.

It’s actually closely related to Nvidia long being a problem for Linux users, where open source drivers for Nvidia cards are permanently throttled to minimum performance levels thanks to Nvidia enforcing use of their proprietary drivers in its hardware. Incidentally AMD is also better behaved here — the FOSS AMD drivers have been quite decent for a long time now because a few years ago AMD got out of the way and started collaborating with the Linux community.

Most AAA studios don't care about such standards, as proven by game consoles and Metal already being supported by Unreal, Unity, Ogre3D, Xenko/Stride, among others.

Different graphics APIs aren't a reason not to develop for a platform. Game consoles have unique APIs, yet both AAAs and Indies happily develop for those platforms. What matters is whether the prospective income from those platforms outweigh the additional dev costs.

Additionally, most Macs simply aren't gaming machines; they're mostly thin laptops or AIOs with very high resolution screens, meaning the GPU has less cooling headroom and has way more pixels to draw than pretty much all Windows machines that are used for gaming.

That makes the potential pool of users even smaller than it already is, so most of the time it doesn't make sense to develop games for the Mac.

Apple silicon changes this. Macs have plenty of gpu power now for AAA games.

Indeed, and what will keep being even more true as apple silicon evolves and the PS5 and XSX stay the same for 5 years or so.

Likely related to this, I've heard that both Sony and Microsoft have approached apple about getting more games on their platform.

And a much better temperature story

> Different graphics APIs aren't a reason not to develop for a platform.

> What matters is whether the prospective income from those platforms outweigh the additional dev costs.

Different APIs increase costs. If dev costs were lower for porting games, the platform would see more games.

1) Porting costs are not per game but per engine, which can be shared between multiple games.

2) The majority of costs is ongoing support, not writing to a different API.

> 1) Porting costs are not per game but per engine, which can be shared between multiple games.

True but they're still big enough that that cost is significant. Even when diluted across game budgets.

> 2) The majority of costs is ongoing support, not writing to a different API.

Ongoing support is still required for writing to a different API. Ongoing support involves (a) updating in line with API version changes and (b) updating API-integration abstractions in line with game engine API updates. Supporting multiple APIs adds at least some amount of friction to every code-change.

There's also the increase in cost of testing every engine code change across multiple graphics APIs.

Disclaimer: I have done some amateur game development, nothing professional.

> 1) Porting costs are not per game but per engine, which can be shared between multiple games.

That's not true. Majority of the costs maybe, but every platform needs its own tweaks, if for nothing else input often very different in a way engine abstractions are usualy not good enough. And then there is DRM, and anti cheats etc, that are quite platform dependent.

In pretty much any engine there are games that work beautifully and games using same engine that are like trash on fire[1]. There is a reason nvidia and amd often have to release new driver with fixes/optimizations for new games.

[1]: I meant cross platform support (where they work decently on one platform but are trash on others), not that game as a whole itself being trash and or buggy.

I’ve never worked on a game where we didn’t have at least one rendering programmer who would be assigned to a particular platform, even with Unreal or Frostbite or whatever. Major titles will still write their own platform-specific shaders, they’ll still tweak and modify the game middleware, and they still incur a per-platform, per-api costs.

Those different APIs are usually wrapped by game engines like Unreal Engine or Unity. Porting a game to a new platform is almost always a business decision, and the actual porting cost is minimal compared to marketing and (customer) support cost.

> Game consoles have unique APIs

They also bend over backwards to get games on the platform and using those APIs despite that.

Yes, this is the big one. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have dedicated integration teams just for getting your specific game working on their platform. They might even release updates to their platforms to cater to what you want to do

Apple will update it's apple tv with a beefy graphics M chip. And enter the console gaming market well it's already in it but it will really start competing against Xbox and Playstation in the next couple of years.

Not only that, but it has a lot of pain points, including ARM CPUs in a world where a lot of games used to target 32 bit windows.

Proton supported macos at first[1]. I think support is still more or less there, though not integrated with "steam play". Proton "glue" scripts are also mostly python, and macos does not (did not?) support python3.

I think the community could step in and help support it, but valve pretty much stopped efforts on that front (some rationale in [2]), although I think community efforts on wine would be welcomed.

[1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d817...

[2] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1493#issuecom...

Valve is funding a separate effort for an x86-on-ARM emulator: https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX

Python3 is natively installed on MacOS, and it has always "supported" Python3 meaning it could be installed and would work just fine

By far most games on Windows don't run on OpenGL or Vulkan but on Direct3D. Game consoles also don't use OpenGL or Vulkan but have their own APIs. Metal is "just another" platform-specific 3D-API, it's not an exception but the norm.

In reality, "cross-platform" 3D APIs don't matter much (for games). What actually matters are distribution platforms (for instance: Steam), and if a distribution platform promises good business, games will be created for it.

With Valve being founded by a bunch of Microsoft employees, maybe they took a lesson from Microsoft: if you have enough money to keep trying, eventual success is likely. Microsoft did that with many products, most relevant in this context: the Xbox series.

So many counter examples come to mind. Just look at recent Google projects.

Money and nerve to keep trying and not wander off.

Google doesn't "keep trying", it rewrites replacement products frequently. The nearest Microsoft equivalent to Google's (lack of) strategy was Skype being replaced(? Complimented by?) "Skype for Business"

Various XAML UI Platform!

I highly recommend watching their recent docuseries on the history of Xbox. It really seems like the project nearly failed multiple times.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0il2l-B_WwadxfTkK3-N...

As strategists use to say: "Wars are lost". If you can maintain yourself long enough, your enemy will eventually be out of resources to maintain themselves.

Linux is Valve's lifeboat for the case Microsoft starts misbehaving.

Good luck with that, Steam Machine were selling like hot cakes.

The Deck certainly is, it's sold out into 2023. People want PC games on the go, Valve provides it in a now common form factor, at a reasonable price, with a trusted name.

If I only make 5 units of something, I can state it is sold out as well, yet it won't take the market by storm.

Lots of things sold out, what matters is sustainability.

Not really sure why you were downvoted here, production capacity is certainly an issue with Steam Decks.

I will get downvoted for every remark made against Steam and the dream of Linux taking over the world of AAA games (originally written for DirectX/Windows anyway).

God forbid to talk against the Valve mob.

But the case being argued is demand for the Steam Deck which is demonstrably high.

The counter point to that was that production was low, therefore selling out doesn't mean much. However, the Steam Machines didn't sell out at all so at the very least there is more interest in the Steam Deck than Steam Machines.

Sure, it doesn't follow that the Steam Deck will necessarily be a success, but the GP's arguments seem lazy and bad faith, which is presumably why they are being downvoted.

A contrarian and provocative tone like this invites downvotes, I'd prefer to see this discussion remain constructive instead of throwing accusations and hyperboles that derail into a flamewar. Given the low-effort content of these replies, I would consider that trolling.

I do not completely disagree with the parent though. We did not get exact figures, and in my circles, only die-hard geeks have heard of the Steam Deck, even regular gamers who spend a lot of time on Steam didn't know what it was. Granted, I asked them just a little after the announcement.

Anyway, I am not sure valve is trying to rival Nintendo here. They probably want Steam Deck to become profitable, and I think they would welcome competitors who come up with Steam Deck alternatives, especially as SteamOS becomes available.

At least 110 thousand units were preordered on the first day [1]. I agree being sold out is not sufficient evidence of popularity but that is not the only evidence.

1: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/html-holes-provide-a-...

110 units per day? It is going to take the world, how I failed to see that.

Nintendo better watch out,

https://www.statista.com/statistics/687059/nintendo-switch-u...

thousand. 110 thousand. This is a low estimate, that covers the first 90 minutes of preorders. The source that was linked contains details.

> The Deck certainly is, it's sold out into 2023.

The first ones might not drop by then either? Until the first deliveries drop it is just vapourware.

The Steam Machine was very effective at convincing MS not to lock down 3rd-party app marketplaces (as they were threatening to do before it came out). It was really more of a threat than a sincere attempt at a commercial product.

What convinced Microsoft was the failure of UWP apps, not Valve.

Whether or not Steam Machines sold well or not is irrelevant. They were an intermediary step to them not being beholden to an OS vendor. In the last couple of years, they have arrived at their destination -- games run on Linux unless they have anticheat that prevents then from running on Linux.

If they overcome the anticheat hurdle and reach 100% of top games running with decent performance, there are plenty of people who have a computer that they use exclusively for video games and web apps that will gladly forego paying for Windows.

They are relevant as they were released with the same kind of party "we will take Windows down!", lets see how much the people actually learned from history.

> They are relevant as they were released with the same kind of party "we will take Windows down!"

I really don't think that was the case.

This one, OTOH, was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icng5MHp7T4

Here is a refresher, https://www.pcworld.com/article/423973/hands-on-with-alienwa...

Strongest part of the article seems to be "Call it Valve’s middle finger to Windows", which is author's comment. AFAIR, Gabe Newell didn't like MS policies with windows 8, but I never got the feeling of SteamOS release being anything close to "we will take Windows down!".

That is a laughable characterization of the business decision Valve has made, and learning from history isn't worth much when the landscape has changed so much in the last five years. Have you actually tried to run games on Steam on Linux recently? Did you try it five years ago, and have an understanding of what it was like then?

Proton and Steam on Linux _are a deterrent_, and within the last couple of years, it can be said with confidence that the strategy is viable and worth continuing. This was never about selling consoles -- Valve makes their money from their cut on sales and microtransactions.

Proton is just the Windows compatibility layer for OS/2 story revisited, lets see how it will play out.

Could you expand on that? I don't see the situations as being directly comparable at all. Maybe in technology terms, but the situational context is completely different as far as I can see it, especially as it pertains to Linux share of the Gaming market.

Basically Proton allows game studios to focus on Windows and DirectX, just like what OS/2 got were ported Windows applications and only a tiny minority bothered to natively target OS/2.

As the article itself mentions the Linux hardware on the survey is still at 1%.

But Linux market share has increased consistently since Proton was released (0.7% -> 1.3%), and the Steam Deck hasn't even been released yet.

If the stats showed stagnation or decline I would agree with you, but they seem to be suggesting the opposite.

It's true that this can still not go the way Valve wants, but it's like counting on me to do a standing double frontflip because it's not strictly impossible. The only thing in the way of near-100% compatibility is anticheat, and EAC and Battleye both plan on supporting WINE/Proton when Valve releases their hardware. EAC has actually supported WINE for a while now with a little legwork on the part of the developer, so it's not even a question of whether or not it's technically feasible.

Once Valve achieves near-perfect compatibility, Microsoft can't change legendarily backward-compatible APIs for the sake of pissing in Valve's cornflakes. This doesn't mean that there will be a large Linux gaming market share now or in the future, but it does mean that Valve has an option if Windows starts to threaten their cut.

I feel like Microsoft is spending a lot of time shooting themselves in the foot right now, though.

In the days when "DOS/Win31 versus OS/2 with compatyibility" question was asked, OS/2 was the expensive choice, both to license and in terms of hardware requirements.

With the high Win11 hardware requirements, Linux is actually more accessible as a supported platform, both on the low-end (i. e. you could strip it down a lot further for a device with small storage) and for a large number of older enthusiast PCs (6th and 7th generation Core or first-gen Ryzen)

You also have an incredibly weak buzz for WIndows 11 right now. Some people are up in arms about stuff like "requires a Microsoft account on the affordable version" or "we've moved the UI in weird and confusing ways" but nobody is saying "it provides cool features A, B, and C to justify the hassle."

A well packaged Linux launch could provide a compelling message just from the perspective of "here's an OS where all your games work, but it's not also a ticking support timebomb."

TBH, I feel like the old early-2000s Linux style of "let's choose custom window managers and theme the crap out of everything" would also appeal to the gamer crowd, but I feel like that's sort of disappeared in modern desktop Linux.

> If they overcome the anticheat hurdle and reach 100% of top games running with decent performance, there are plenty of people who have a computer that they use exclusively for video games and web apps that will gladly forego paying for Windows.

Windows is essentially free these days. You might have to pay for it once (and I got my Windows key from a grey market site for $15), but each Windows version update has been free after Windows 8.

Any gamer that buys a pre-built computer will end up with Windows by default and isn't likely to wipe it to install Linux. And even the ones that build themselves are still likely to use Windows just because that's what they're used to.

The overlap between PC gaming and Linux enthusiasm isn't as big as you think it is.

Everything you said is definitely true as of right now, but if Microsoft somehow finds a way to extract a cut from every transaction on Windows (fears of this around the release of Windows 8 is what initially spurred Valve's Linux investment), Valve actually would stand a chance in hell of convincing people who use their computer for video games and webapps nearly exclusively to switch over to Linux if games and microtransactions worked and were cheaper.

We're not really talking about the group of people that are into both PC gaming and Linux. We're talking about the group of people that are into PC gaming that would be fine with a Chromebook if they weren't playing games, and would consider Linux if games were cheaper on it.

It's also worth noting that you said 'plenty' which is absolutely true.

A rounding error for Windows install base would be a significant increase in Linux market share, and that is the sorts of levels I would anticipate with complete support and a successful launch of the Steam Deck (increase in market share by 1-2%)

Hi pjmlp!

Please take this as sincere advice: avoid comments that show contempt and disdain. They're disrespectful, distract discussion from main points and are not good for you or anybody else.

It's not the first time I'm a target of such comments from you.

I fail to see any of that on the comment....

> Good luck with that, Steam Machine were selling like hot cakes.

I assume you write "Steam Machine were selling like hot cakes" using irony and sarcasm. At the same time "Good luck with that" is like a recommendation on something you guess will fail or merely derogatory.

So, yes, your comment shows disdain and contempt.

Still see no issue with the comment, irony and sarcasm are part of our world and literature tools used by famous writers.

Irony and sarcasm aren't conducive to healthy discussion, though. Ultimately if I'm going to show respect to you as a participant I would expect to have respect shown in return.

In terms of your actual contribution to discussion it means your points are weak and easy to counter.

Thanks! You said it much better than I could.

Depends, OP could just have ignored and moved on, instead decided to play victim.

End of discussion regarding this, no more comments from me on the matter, blue pencil looms ahead.

I'm not playing victim, this is not the first time. Ignoring would only give you reason to continue with your behavior.

Starting an useless thread also did not help.

Enjoy the season festivities.

“That didn’t happen.

And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.

And if it was, that’s not a big deal.

And if it is, that’s not my fault.

And if it was, I didn’t mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.”

Ah the cleaning culture censorship that is such in vogue nowadays.

You feel that opposition to people being unpleasant assholes is part of a current trend? Have you not considered that you may just be an asshole?

Irony and sarcasm pointed at actual people shows disdain and contempt.

I have not pointed to no one.

The Proton compatibility tool is fantastic.

I game mostly on Linux and I remember just a few years ago having anxiety while purchasing a new Windows game because I wasn't sure that I would get it working.

Since then the support has become so good I have practically no anxiety at all. If the game doesn't launch first try it's usually just a couple settings that need tweaking. Most things just work right out of the box.

Do you have any anxiety around how the games work after launch? I enjoy a lot of older games and sometimes they glitch in some cases. A VM of the original target platform seems the most reliable IME.

Sometimes.

In particular the game Uboat stopped working after an update and I was unable to get it going. To be expected however, as the game is still in Early Access.

Another early access title that I ran into problems with after launch was Postal 4. I found a workaround is to replace the bundled direct X installer with some other silent installer that returns the expected return code.

Other issues tend to crop up around custom launchers. Usually in this instance I will search online for the command line arguments to bypass the launcher or simply launch the game directly.

The last subset of issues I seem to experience revolve around fullscreen/window mode. I find that some combination of ALT+Enter and F11 typically resolves this. If not I usually resort to running the game in a Window and undecorating it. However in some games this does not capture the mouse and can cause the window to lose focus if you click outside of the game window.

gamescope should help with that by running games in their own Xorg server as well as handling the scaling, and gaming on wayland/sway helped me a lot with getting games to behave consistently with other programs. It does have its own issues sometimes, certainly. I hope gamescope will help route around them.

I dont think they will, nothing prevents Apple pulling the same b.s than ms.

They'd see this as an alternate app store and that's a no-no for them.

OTOH, there is no shortage of games in the Mac app store. It just may not be the same titles you have on Steam.

Edit: I think I didn't understand the reason of the complaint.

On macOS, Apple doesn't mind other app stores. Steam is available there right now.

Apple is not even against other operating systems on Macs. Bootcamp has been a thing for a long time (and apparently they're not against ARM Bootcamp were it possible [1]) and recently marcan mentioned how Apple added something that wouldn't be helpful for Apple, but is helpful to the Asahi Linux project.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/20/craig-federighi-on-wind...

[2] https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994

An OS is different from an application for selling, installing and running other applications.

That's pretty much literally what an OS is! An application that lets you install and run other applications.

I never imagined selling software would be a core function of an OS, but here we are.

You keep responding as if Steam is not a thing on MacOS, it is very much a thing and has been since steam launched.

I am aware it is. My comment is about app stores not being an integral part of an operating system. Or, at least, they didn’t use to be.

OTOH, Linux has had package management for decades.

Then I don't understand the complaint. Apple will be upset if the app store doesn't share revenue with them, however.

Steam doesn't share revenue with Apple on macOS. Neither does Fortnite or any Steam Mac games.

I don’t understand the complaint. Steam is available and Apple clearly is playing ball with them, so what’s wrong? Is that the Windows API translation layer isn’t done?

Dealing with Apple isn't something Valve would want. They focus on Vulkan, Mesa and Wine. And Apple are pretty negative about Vulkan for some unknown reason (which seems to be even more than their usual NIH mentality). I.e. like when they were resisting adopting SPIR-V for the Web.

So Apple have no one to blame but themselves for it.

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