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Comment by CuriouslyC | Hacker News Reader

Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.

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I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus.

Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet.

EDIT: rather, Apple cares a lot about phone gaming, but that's an area that Valve has shown few signs of moving in on.

They've shown signs of moving on phone gaming if you know what to look for. https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-has-quietly-backed-projects...

I feel like this was more in support of their new VR headset which has an ARM processor. I actually doubt we'll see a Steam Phone even if the idea is interesting to me (since it would be a linux phone). At least, I don't think we'll see it any time soon.

> since it would be a linux phone

It doesn't have to be. Proton runs fine on Android.

On the other hand, Valve has built a compatibility layer for ARM Linux to run Android APKs, so if anyone could make a jank-free Linux phone it would be them

Sure, but so did Jolla and Waydroid. I think the consensus is that AOSP > Linux for the average Joe's mobile handset.

They’d need to improve desktop Linux a lot to threaten Apple. It’s far more tolerable on their relatively tightly-controlled and stable hardware platforms than it is elsewhere, but it’s still a features-weak jankfest compared to macOS. I mean user facing features relevant to any desktop user, not “docker is native on it” or other developer-only stuff—and for the record Linux was my main desktop OS for about a decade, so I’m far from unfamiliar with it, and I do own a Steam Deck and have used it extensively in desktop mode (and in console-alike mode).

I’d love someone to actually compete with Apple at the specific kind of thing they do, but I don’t see it in the cards for Valve. Too much distance, with things they don’t have to solve to hit other (apparent) targets of theirs.

As for Microsoft, what is Valve threatening? Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point, and the latter… I guess maybe, yeah, they could threaten that.

[edit] to soften this somewhat, I do love what Valve is doing and their micro-PC thing they’re releasing next year is likely going to be an instant purchase for me, provided supply issues don’t drive the price insanely high or otherwise mess with the release. I happen to be in the exact niche of people who are thrilled to have a good low-tinkering option that lets me ditch my last Windows machine, so this stuff’s my jam.

> Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point

With the broader job market being not-great, and everyone trying some sort of side hustle with the aims of making it big, it's definitely the bubble I'm in, but the "home" case has a lot of Google free office suite business looking usage, and even if there isn't a side hustle, maybe my friends are super weird but they use Google sheets to organize things even for non-business life things when things get complicated. Eg planning a wedding. That's Google and not Valve, but if customers get Steamboxes to access that vs Windows laptops (or Chromebooks), it looks like a threat to Microsoft to me. (But it's been the year for Linux on the desktop for decades now, so I'm not holding my breath.)

You should check out the adoption curve for Linux desktops, it's actually starting to hockey stick, Windows 11 is a dumpster fire, Apple is stagnant and Arch based distros are getting crazy good.

I have a MBP M4 and a Linux desktop, and to be honest other than the Apple ecosystem integration (which is good but doesn't matter to me because I have an android phone) the system software is generally mediocre and annoying.

The third party Mac software is often better, but not always.

It starts that I can buy Apple hardware at any European consumer shop, GNU/Linux hardware hardly, with exception of Raspeberry PIs on the electronics section.

> I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming.

And yet, Apple controls the world's largest gaming economy (~$78B in 2025), dwarfing Sony's (~$31B) and Microsoft's (~$24B).

I could amend to "Apple is thoroughly not-invested in the kind of gaming that Valve is invested in".

Phone games are an entirely different thing from console or PC games. They aren't comparable.

Okay, so you draw a line in the sand between a Steam Deck and an iPad. Others would characterize your lumping together of console and PC games as equally silly. But all of these gaming platforms are fighting for the same dollars and attention, and every gaming exec understands this.

While Apple probably makes most of their gaming revenue from gacha they fund a surprising number of non gambling games for their Apple Arcade subscription.

> because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming

Is Apple invested in anything at all right now? Seems like they are only ever iterating over the same products in their idiotically domain separated legacy zoo of devices. Lately even fucking that up with UI "innovation" literally everyone hates. I mean, who's talking about Apple VR anymore? Apple AI is a meme. What are they cooking with all that cash?

I don't think Valve has to even consider Apple.

> Apple cares a lot about phone gaming

The kind of gacha games that dominate the in-app sales charts, sure. Actual gaming, they don't care about or even understand.

If Android had half as supported SDK game stuff like Swift and Objective-C have on Apple platforms.

Apple cares about gaming on their iDevices and related Apple store profits, macOS not so much.

The work on Proton ends up in wine which is available for macOS and is part of Apples game porting toolkit. So part of the work Valve is doing to make games run on Linux helps games run better on macOS.

How are Google and Apple in its crosshairs (article's framing notwithstanding)?

From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offerings indicating that they've lost interest in the consumer market as a whole.

Valve is clearly using games as a wedge, the Steam Machine is (and will continue to be) pushed as a capable general purpose computing device, and as the Linux desktop experience improves they will lean harder into that angle, until they're selling sexy general purpose devices with a user experience comparable to Apple's. This includes phones, though the timeline for that will lag a few years.

Outside of speculation do you have any source or evidence that valve plans to expand the hardware ecosystem outside of gaming?

The games console yes, however people forget that Xbox is also a brand under Microsoft Games Studios, which happens to be one of the biggest publishers due to the amount of studios that are owned by Microsoft.

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