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Comment by baal80spam | Hacker News Reader

Windows gaming is way, WAY bigger than Steam!

"way WAY bigger" is a major overstatement. But even if that were true, SteamOS can handle lots of other non-steam storefronts.

For example, I recently went and played some World of Warcraft for old times sake with some friends on Linux. All I had to do was open Lutris which is available through a Flatpak on the SteamOS discovery tool, and then from Lutris you install the Blizzard Launcher. Opening the Blizzard launcher lets one install and play any of their games.

Steam can install and run the blizzard launcher. Add the blizzard-setup.exe using "add a non-steam game to my library". Set the compatibility mode to Proton. On first run, it will launch the blizzard client installation. The next runs will just open the launcher.

I was able to play Overwatch on an AMD ubuntu laptop flawlessly.

Ah nice, I hadn't tried this but it makes sense!

Is it? A quick search seems to indicate that Steam has 75-80% of the Windows gaming market share.

I'm guessing that's based on official and legal purchases, while I'd wager than "Windows gaming" is a whole lot bigger than just the legal stuff.

Unclear if parent is referring to "Gaming" as a whole or just including boring capitalism numbers like "marketshare" etc.

Older games are usually easier to run on newer versions of linux than windows, in my anecdotal experience. Not sure about cracked AAA titles, I guess that's a bigger part of the "illegal" stuff.

Yeah, that's true. The other week I tried to get Svea Rike II (1998) to run on my desktop. Tried everything with Windows 11 since I thought it would be easier but nope, nothing worked, couldn't even get past the installation. Switching to trying it on Arch with Wine and boom, five minutes later I was up and running.

Hey Gabe, who’s your biggest competitor? Mark Rein? Nah, Peter Sunde.

I doubt that. Looking at a random list of most popular PC games, a lot of the top ones aren't on Steam (Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends, Valorant, Genshin Impact, Rocket League).

Steam is the only place I've ever played Rocket League. Did it move off the platform?

Yes, since 2020 when the developer got bought out.

Minecraft famously runs on anything. Roblox works through Sober. Genshin Impact and Rocket League both run through Proton.

The rest have kernel level anticheat, unfortunately.

Proton launches my non-steam games on linux just fine. Flawless experience

Cite?

"What do you mean personal computers will change the world? Time-sharing is way, WAY bigger than personal computers!"

for now...

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