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Comment by intellix | Hacker News Reader

I think it's funny that this is passed around as a great example of how to run a company, but I really don't think Valve are producing much.

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I can play any PC game I want and I don’t have a single windows install anywhere in my life. They made, beyond all the other contributions, Linux gaming a reality.

Wine existed before Valve even if you weren't paying attention.

I've been messing around with Linux for games for over a decade. Proton was a revelation, but in addition to that the Linux desktop system stack has had Valve money pumped into it, seeing a huge amount of improvement. Video drivers, KDE, SDL2 additions to the kernel and much more.

Even Proton is technically managed by Codeweavers under contract by Valve, who are the primary contributors to Wine.

I’ve used wine since its first releases but it was never able to handle most games, Proton really changed things significantly and Valve has dumped megatons of effort into quality and completeness of experience. It’s fairly disingenuous to assert pre-Valve’s investment wine as meaningful comparable to post Proton wine let alone Proton itself.

I use Proton every day, but I'll also shoutout Deadlock - first MOBA since the original DOTA that feels fresh and fun to play.

Valve's efforts with Proton have made it so that gaming on Linux is actually possible.

The only thing that matters is setting up a near monopoly where you have a chokehold. Valve did this with steam. Now it literally does not matter what asinine and silly business practices they do internally as long as they keep the money printer functioning. A lot of people do not understand this and think stupid things like, “if we copy Valve’s flat hierarchy, we’ll be as successful”.

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