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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

the game pass domination strategy was always going to fail in a world where Steam exists

it must be very frustrating for Microsoft

their usual tactic of buying out the competition isn't an option because Gabe Newell is already a billionare (and a gamer), who won't sell for any price

and their backup strategy of tightening the screws of their competition on Windows can't work either, because he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows

so for once they have to compete on fair terms

and when they do that: they lose

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Yeah, Valve understood MS' position/power a long time ago and worked to mitigate that risk. I remember them shopping around nearly 15 years ago to find a partner to help them work on Linux and improve Steam's abilities there, which resulted in SteamOS[0]. Indeed the plan worked, and now you can even buy a dedicated gaming console[1] that runs ~all the Windows games but completely without reliance on MS.

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck

Of course Newell literally was a Microsoft employee prior to founding Valve.

the risk mitigation hasn't played out yet. if that's what it is. we need to wait until microsoft tries to squeeze Steam out of windows. we have yet to see whether it works to keep valve alive against microsoft. the attack hasn't happened yet. and judging by microsofts actions it looks like they are cancelling themselves. for now at least. the war is not over.

of course as a linux user i am not complaining about linux support, but for now it still looks like valve supports linux from the goodness of their heart, and not as a way to make money. lets hope that this changes.

Not goodness, it's an insurance policy. It takes many years to achieve anything like this, so groundwork needs to be laid early.

of course. my point is that we don't know if it will be enough. and i am not saying linux is a risky bet, because there are no safer bets to make. (other than gabe taking his earnings and keeping them for himself)

if microsoft shuts out Steam, then valve will lose more than 90% of its current revenue. despite the insurance policy that just might kill the company outright.

and, the more revenue valve gets from linux, the more of a threat it becomes to microsoft, which makes microsoft trying to shut out Steam even more likely.

our only hope is that regulators prevent microsoft from even trying...

> we need to wait until microsoft tries to squeeze Steam out of windows.

Steam Machines were a direct result of that: Microsoft announced plans to block non-Microsoft app stores on Windows 8. This was a credible existential threat to Valve, which got off to a rocky start, and they wisely persisted despite Windows 8 (and yhe threat) flopping. Microsoft os no longer in a position to try and squeeze Steam, thanks to Valve's diligence, and Microsoft going half-cocked the first time.

interesting. i was not aware of that. and i would not be surprised if microsoft tries that again, so the threat remains.

Some mainstream gaming channels on youtube are already half recommending linux except for online games. Really doubt microsoft would have the balls to try something like that now

curious, i wonder why not online games? i play a few online games on linux just fine. they are not the newest ones, but that's the thing, any older games work, online or not, and only some of the newest don't, and that's only because wine/codeweaver/valve didn't get around to implement the fixes for wine for those games yet.

microsoft doesn't need courage, they just need a few leaders dumb enough to try again.

Probably various flavours of anti-cheat still being very much hit or miss at the moment.

(Still annoyed that Rockstar added BattlEye to GTA Online one day out of the blue, _and_ refuses to set the flag to allow it to work in Linux)

ok, good point. anti cheat only makes sense for multiplayer, so only online games. didn't think of that.

Their plan did get off to a rough start, initially they wanted game devs to provide native Linux builds despite there being near-zero upside to doing so at the time, which unsurprisingly went nowhere and led to the first generation Steam Machines dying on the vine. Thankfully they realized their mistake and shifted focus to Windows binary compatibility, which has been far more successful. It took a long time and the success of the first-party Steam Deck to convince third-party manufacturers to give Valve another shot after their early SteamOS partners got burned though.

> he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows

Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows.

I've loaded Win64 Unity builds on the machine to test and they run perfectly every time. I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. The machine doesn't even get hot despite my fear that it would doing something like this.

The only part of the SD experience that felt like "linux" was the OOBE wherein I had to arbitrarily restart the first time setup process 3-4 times before it finally worked.

I am at a point where I almost prefer to game on the linux handheld over my windows desktop. It really is a superior package in many ways. Games like Elden Ring, Arkham Knight, Euro Truck Simulator 2, etc., are so much better to play on a machine like this. On keyboard+mouse I struggled to enjoy these titles. I realize I could always connect a controller to my PC, but it never felt right to me in that form factor. Playing ETS2 on the couch is a completely different dimension of relaxation. I'd never touch this game on my PC.

> I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point.

I would have agreed, having played the windows build Baldurs Gate III on the Deck. But a week ago the developer put out a native Deck build that outperforms the windows build, which is very helpful in the later parts of the game.

> Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows.

Really? I haven’t used it, but I’ve mostly heard good things. It really has ads everywhere and needs regular reinstalls and malware scrubbing?

You aren't funny or clever, just juvenile

I thought it was funny :/

Surely not warranting a response like this.

Skill issue on your end. I can’t remember the last time I had to scrub malware or perform a regular reinstall for any of my four windows machines.

I can! And I switched to Linux... *checks wristwatch* ...six years ago.

Be real: Proton is very good, but it is not indistinguishable.

IME it's indistinguishable. Often the performance is slightly better, which is shocking considering it's a translation layer.

Especially in GPU-bound titles, there are endless examples of Proton running better than even native Linux versions. Here is the venerable DF Direct crew comparing Cronos' recent Linux-native build versus Proton: https://youtu.be/Sj5TyrHDspU?t=2951

DXVK is remarkably optimized and I think many people overlook that.

Steam is great, in no small part because Valve isn't beholden to quarterly earnings numbers. But I'm worried what will happen when Gabe Newell retires. Valve has been a pretty good (though at times imperfect) steward for PC gaming and it'll be sad if a change in leadership decides to extract value from 20+ years of goodwill.

I think the biggest problem with Steam is that when you buy a game on Steam, it's tied to your Steam account forever. In theory, Gabe could croak and they get bought by a VC firm that decides that a Steam account costs $45/month. At that point, you either give up all the games you purchased on Steam, or pay the $45/month.

I don't know why anyone would prefer their games tied to a service in that way. Especially when we've seen other digital stores go belly up, resulting in inaccessible collections.

Steam was the OG online store, it grandfathered itself in before a time people started to think that having their gaming library behind such a service might offer some downsides.

Nowadays I mostly buy PC games on GoG for that reason, but I have plenty on Steam. I do worry about it a little.

One of the things that drives me a little crazy about Steam is that there was actually an earlier digital game store (run by Stardock IIRC) that made the launcher and other tie-ins optional. That one didn't take off, though. Steam required a tie-in to the launcher, and it took off.

I would've much rather had the launcher and all that be optional, but I'm guessing that requiring Steam for games like Half-life 2 probably was the smarter move (from a profit perspective) than having it be optional, so that's the way the market went.

Steam, and this concern, is an illustration of why we used to have rules that marketplaces need to be run by the government.

This recent price increase notwithstanding, Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. I suppose it's probably like Netflix at the beginning though, and we'll start seeing more things like this price hike and plan differentiation

If you’re in high school/college (hell your 20’s) and can game 10+ hours a week it was an unbelievable deal. Even $30 isn’t that crazy if you’re really using it. But a lot of people can’t get that kind of value out of it and it doesn’t help that Microsoft keeps cancelling every interesting game and/or lets their best studios languish.

$30 would be 6 AAA titles per year. There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.

> There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.

There were three in the 90s that I know of. Have I missed some since?

At least the two Descent: FreeSpace titles...

Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft

I think it was either a joke or a comment on the "descent" spelling of decent, referring to the Descent (sci-fi space sims) games.

Shamed me there

Gamepass has a lot more than AAA’s (Silk Song for instance) and if you haven’t been sticking with consoles in particular over the last 10-15 years the back catalog of tentpole titles is actually pretty impressive.

I’ve had many conversations with people in their 30s who have not touched video games since the 360/PS3 era. Gamepass, even if just for a few months, makes a ton of sense for them if they have the time.

I say this as somebody who absolutely does not think people should be paying $30 for gamepass generally speaking and I think Microsoft/Xbox is incredibly weak right now. But there are certainly cases where it makes a ton of sense and Sony isn’t exactly offering a better alternative unless you want a Final Fantasy machine that’s library is dominated by PS3/PS4 remasters (which in many ways mimics the value prop of gamepass for those who have not been gaming for years).

I think it's still a good deal even for more casual gamers - I imagine it would feel worse to spend $80 on a game that you may put an hour or two into, if you ever launch it at all. I imagine most casual gamers will simply not buy many games; whereas on Game Pass you can browse, pick up a game (that would otherwise cost you an arm and a leg) for the few hours you've got for gaming.

But like another commenter points out, if you're playing games like Silk Song or other similarly-priced games, it makes more sense to buy the game.

But yeah, you're absolutely right: lots of flaws with it, and I expect it will just get worse, much like Netflix.

Long live Steam, which I still use and love :)

> Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money.

it's a subsidised introductory price to capture market share and kill off the competition with the hope of creating a monopoly ("predatory pricing")

Apparently it was profitable (not subsidized), not sure if true.

https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-pres...

depends entirely how you attribute the game revenue

this price rise was driven by them fearing cannibalisation of game sale revenues for the imminent new call of duty release

last year just on CoD they gave up $300 million (due to gamepass)

https://archive.is/ic79u

And over 82% of the copies sold were on PlayStation.

Seems MS bet on GamePass + all the publishers acquisitions moving lots of units of Xbox hardware but that simply did not happen, so now they pivoted to be the biggest 3rd party publisher and are releasing everything on all the other consoles, even their own original Xbox Studios games like Forza, Flight Simulator, Gears of War, etc.

I thought common wisdom was that console hardware was sold at low profit to generate software-based revenue?

If that's true, then selling software at low profit to sell hardware at low profit to sell software at high profit seems convoluted.

That's specifically Game Pass being profitable. It conveniently leaves out the long-term viability of whole supply chain profitability.

Whether the developers lose money as a result of the deal is extraordinarily hard to calculate and Microsoft doesn't disclose.

I guess that depends on how they measure its profitability.

If it's services costs and 3rd party deals probably. But if you include the costs of all their 1st party games included day and date it's likely not, specially since they acquired Bethesda and Activision Blizzard.

A hint of that is that they are now releasing even their exclusive Xbox games now on PS and Switch 1/2.

Agreed; it has been an incredible deal, especially with the redemption loopholes they originally left open. I think I got nearly three years for less than $150 originally. But it's pretty obvious now that they've been nearly giving it away so they can capture the market and then raise the price.

It's a good deal if you're really really using it, or I guess if you're a blizzard sub (not even sure if this is still a thing).

If you're just playing Silk Song now and then, you can buy it for $20 from Steam. I get you don't fully own it with steam, but it a hell of a lot closer to owning it than having temporary access via GamePass.

IMO the real issues for the more casual gamer (who is not a mobile gamer), is having either a decent console or cloud gaming. There's not a ton of options besides GEForce Now and XBox Cloud, and the Steam consoles are kinda crap and outdated at the moment. Also XBox cloud kinda sucks last I checked and had restrictions on multiplayer etc.

If XBox cloud gets as good as nVidia's cloud AND you get GamePass library access AND you can use a pretty dumbed down / cheap console for cloud gaming... then this might be a win for at least a subset. I think this is where they are headed? Even with all that, it's hard to beat Steam + GEForce Now which is the direct competitor.

I dream of a world where Windows is no longer the dominant OS for gaming.

much to my disappointment, GamePass doesn't give a sub to World of Warcraft.

You happen to know many gamers who do spend a lot of time playing (different) games.

But that's not necessarily the user base of Game Pass, especially when it was cheap. Many don't even play 1 new title per month.

And on the console world, Playstation exists, with plenty of exclusives. Also Nintendo exists. Sony and Nintendo are not exactly companies they can buy (would almost certainly trigger anti monopoly cases everywhere, even if they could pay God knows how much money for one of those).

And honestly, this is great. I shudder to think of a world where fucking Microsoft has a dominant position on gaming.

I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.

I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.)

I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform.

Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there.

And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger.

Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.

GamePass is the worst thing to happen to gaming in the last two decades. It's an unsustainable race-to-the-bottom business model that devalues games and incentives shoveling out crap instead of producing quality titles. Worse yet, it conditions players to dismiss challenging, innovative, or unusual game mechanics due to the siren song of a functionally infinite catalog tempting them to just load up another title at the first sign of struggle.

Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.

There was also a time where no videogames were available on pc because publishers didn't want to sell there anymore.

I think proton is such a huge thing,given what's happening with all OSes, that Valve should be considered great.

Also, we never had a portable pc gaming device ever,until now.

When you finish paying Steam, you have a games library. When you finish paying for Gamepass, you have nothing. That's why some people root for Steam.

But tou don't have to pick one, you can have both. I pay for gamepass and most of the games I play I'm fine not owning them ever. But when any is worth it, I purchase is on steam and can have it forever. And I really don't mind "paying twice" because the game is worth it.

> I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.

> I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on.

My very uneducated guess is that 90% of Game Pass subscribers don't play nearly that many indie games. They probably don't even play 1 new title per month.

> I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.

Because no way in hell I would support any Microsoft initiative in gaming? Or anywhere else for that matter.

Say what you will of Steam, but they made gaming on Linux not only viable, but in many ways better than on Microsoft. For thatbI will forever be grateful.

I don’t like subscribing to things, let me just buy it for some amount of money.

I really really doubt many people on this site have any problems paying fair amount of money to buy their entertainment. Real cost is when the platform tries cutting some part of service or you have a problem renewing the subscription or you move to another country and it causes problems etc.

It is just better to actually own it and steam is really well trusted compared to a company like Microsoft which is bottom of the barrel. GoG model is better though like some other people wrote already.

Agree and there are too many games coming out right now, indies and AAA. If you wait just a few months most of them go on sale too.

I don't think the Netflix model is a good fit for gaming. The games require a greater time commitment than your random TV show or movie.

Because steam provides the best UX

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