Steam Keeps on Winning | Hacker News Reader

Steam Keeps on Winning

pcgamer.com

My Steam Deck arrived in the summmer of 2022 after years of not having a PC but occasionally dual-booting an Intel Mac for games, and doing the whole Steam Sale thing of filling my boots with games that would barely get played.

Well. That pile of games is getting eaten through and more are being added as I and the family are loving the Steam Deck, despite having a Switch with dozens of games.

I’m currently 90 hours into my new favourite game, Witcher 3, having racked up similar on Forza Horizon, with Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, Skyrim, and a load more, await.

Valve have done an amazing job. The store UI still sucks balls, but who cares when I can replay HL2 in my hands.

I’m shy about the deck because I love my switch and the deck looks so big and heavy. How do you find the comfort and ergonomics?

It is a bit heavy, but it's so, so much more comfortable to hold than the switch. Valve really did an excellent job with the ergonomics.

My only complaints are that it gets super hot, and the controls are a little cramped for my big hands. But I'll happily play it for hours handheld. I couldn't do that with the switch, I always had to put it in tabletop mode.

One thing that doesn't seem nearly as important is the USB port on the top. You can actually use it while it's plugged in. I think Nintendo made a bad call on the switch there.

I don't own a deck, only tried a friend's. I find the Switch to be small and cramped, but a deck is way too big and had a hard time reaching the sticks comfortably

To preface, I'm within a standard deviation of normal on the bell curve of human size, which usually means American products built for giants correlated with the most disposable income don't fit me. ymmv.

The Steam Deck feels better in my hands than a Nintendo Switch. Its grip is different, but as soon as you get comfortable holding it with your whole hand, including ring and pinky fingers, it feels very natural.

It was bigger than I imagined, but not too big, and it felt lighter and more balanced than expected. It's easy to pick up and hold, even one handed.

I think they did a great job on the ergonomics. The size was clearly a design decision, and while I don't tend to play games on it for more than 45 minutes at a time, I recently held it up to watch a feature length movie without as much fatigue or difficulty as trying to balance my smartphone.

For me the switch is not ergonomic and frequently causes my hands to fall asleep when using it. The steam deck has no such issue and is nice to hold comparatively

If you like Witcher 3, then definitely check Baldur’s Gate 3 out. Just be careful as you won’t be able to get any work done afterwards.

It’s in the queue but luckily I’ve run out of money

I think a huge reason Steam can pursue the strategy it has is because it's privately owned. Without the pressures of anonymous shareholder returns and 'cutting edge' new CEO ideas aka John Riccitiello, Steam can make considered moves more in their long term interests and thus more in the interests of gamers.

Yes, and what is fascinating to me is that any company can choose to stay private or become public. Valve isn't in on any secret, it is just that most companies and founders, facing the question "do I want to follow my vision, or sell out and make a boatload of money?" pretty much always choose the latter.

I would love to know and learn more about companies that stayed private and went on to do great things.

Any company can choose, but investors want to cash out, and by far the easiest way is to have the company go public.

I don’t know how much investment valve received earlier on, but given that Gabe alone still retains >50% of it, I’d say he answers to no one regarding its future.

Years ago, after some poor customer service and with a general dislike of drm, I'd gone off steam and was moving to gog. The steam deck has reversed that. It's a fantastic product, both on the go and sat next to a strange TV for multiplayer gaming when travelling. I acquired a bunch more local multiplayer games from steam over Christmas, and the 8bitdo lite 2 controller was a common Christmas present - it seems perfect for fitting a bunch of them in a bag.

Funny title. I have vivid memories of one of my buddies complaining endlessly about Steam as it replaced WON for CS 1.6 server listings around two decades ago. I loved it and thought that the online game store model was the future. I don't really game anymore but it seems I was wrong only insofar as I had no idea how huge it would end up being.

In his defense, in game server browsers were great back then. Steam, if I recall correctly, would require you to close the game every time you wanted to join a new server.

And game updates and downloads took so God damn long in the first year or so, compared to just downloading them yourself from one of a number of websites. There were memes about how bad it was. Took them like 2 years to sort it all out to get at least parity with download speeds, or maybe that was just because they eventually sunsetted the old systems for all of their games forcing you into the steam ecosystem.

The site is borderline unusable with ads.

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