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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see a world were game devs program to a subset of Win32 that's known to run great on Linux and Windows. Then MSFT can be as hostile as they like, but no one will use it if it means abandoning the (in my fantasy) 10% of Linux gamers.

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That's basically already happening with Unity and Unreal's domination of the game engines. They seem dominate 80% of new titles and 60% of sales on Steam [1], so WINE/Valve can just focus on them. Most incompatible titles I come across are rolling their own engine.

[1] PDF: https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/assets/reports/The_Big_Game_...

Same with Godot. I'm writing a desktop app, and I get cross-platform support out-of-the-box. I don't even have to recompile or write platform-specific code, and doesn't even need Win32 APIs.

One aspect I wonder about is the move of graphics API from DX11 (or OpenGL) to DX12/Vulkan, while there have been benefits and it's where the majority of effort is from vendors they are (were?) notoriously harder to use. What strikes me about gaming is how broad it is, and how many could make a competent engine at a lower tech level, but fits their needs well because their requirements are more modest.

I also wonder about the developer availability. If you're capable of handling the more advanced APIs and probably modern hardware and their features, it seems likely you're going to aim at a big studio producing something that big experience, or even an engineer at the big engine makers themselves. If you're using the less demanding tech it will be more approachable for a wider range of developers and manageable in-house.

I believe it's already happening to a minor degree. There is value in getting that "steam deck certified" badge on your store, so devs will tweak their game to get it, if it isn't a big lift.

I am seeing that number increasing soon with The SteamDeck and SteamMachine (and clones/home builds). Even the VR headset although niche, is linux.

The support in this space from Valve has been amazing, I can almost forgive them for not releasing Half Life 3. Almost.

There are strong indications that Half Life 3 (or at least a Half Life game) is coming soon. Of course, Valve might decide to pan the project, but I wouldn't be surprised seeing an announcement for 2026.

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