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Comment by garciansmith | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I had tons of Sony games across the first three Playstation consoles. I was a grad student with a PS3 at the time and I actually used Yellow Dog Linux on it as a computer to write papers when my laptop broke. Then the update came and I chose to ignore it, but that meant I couldn't play online games. Soon new games required a firmware update (still remember putting in the Dark Souls disc and being stunned I wasn't allowed to play it!).

And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)

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Kinda. On Steam I can still play games I bought 18 years ago.

Still walled garden, but they act way better.

True, but Steam still controls Steam and they can change their terms whenever they want. But for now it's ok, at least. And their hardware is happily open: I've played a bunch of games I got on GOG, DRM-free, on my Steam Deck, for example.

I don't disagree with you, but open hardware DOES make a difference, in the worst case scenario I can turn the hardware into a GOG machine, or into a PC. Also if they ever lock my library, I am turning to piracy (I have 1000+ games)

Agreed, for sure. Open hardware is the only way forward honestly. As someone who has traditionally played mostly on consoles, it does make me sad, partially because consoles are so much less finicky. But the control is worth it (and work on things like Proton has made playing older games so much smoother).

Now if the RAM companies make it so you won't ever be able to afford your own hardware and every game company pushes cloud-only gaming... Well, we aren't there yet thankfully, but I fear it'll happen.

SteamOS got me to migrate from a Nintendo.

There's a lot that I love about it, but "choose which of these thousand settings permutations to get the game to look good without crashing" is a major chore.

One nice thing about Valve/Steam leading with hardware is that it gives console-esque performance targets. If you know your device is a bit better than a Steam Deck, you can probably start at the Steam Deck preset and adjust accordingly.

They're always good until they aren't. They can only be trusted if they don't have a way to be bad. Steam could lock down tomorrow and you couldn't do anything about it.

Valve is in a funny position now. They lived long enough to see every one of Sony and XBOX's moats dry up by being pro-consumer where possible, but with Steam as the leader of a fungible game distribution market it may no longer make good business sense to continue to act so benevolently.

We've reached a sort of gaming singularity where nearly every video game can be run on any hardware you choose or be streamed over the network to a thin client. PlayStation and XBOX consoles are basically dedicated gaming PCs that can only run Sony or Microsoft's version of Steam. DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan, so Microsoft won't have the last laugh there either. If Valve controls the store you purchase games from, the software which runs the games, and the operating system running the software, they are an ODM contract away from becoming Sony's PlayStation division, and look where they are now.

Steam still has to deal with Epic being willing to throw billions at trying to dethrone Steam, and Gog being alive and well and being in the perfect position to say "we told you all along that you shouldn't have to trust Steam, buy your DRM free games here". Also every big publisher wanting to pull their own games to their own storefront and only being forced to crawl back because gamers refuse to leave Steam

And even if they somehow arrived in a market position where being less benevolent would make more money: Valve isn't publicly traded, nobody is forcing them to make the most profitable move. As long as Gabe and the other owners prefer being benevolent they can continue doing it

(not that they are all around benevolent. "consistent" and "usually choosing the side of the customer over the side of the publisher" is maybe the better framing)

> As long as Gabe and the other owners prefer being benevolent they can continue doing i

I think Gabe prefers hanging out on his yacht nowadays looking at fish, his son is the one running Valve?

One point in Steam's favor (not to suggest that Valve is above reproach) is that it doesn't impose any DRM. If games have DRM, that's the publisher's decision.

Valve does make its own DRM, and they could certainly find reason to improve its efficacy and roll back their current policy without upsetting the applecart

> DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan

[citation needed]

My understanding is that Proton is effectively a distribution of WINE + DXVK, which does for DirectX what WINE does for Win32. Valve is even on record saying "make one good copy of your game and trust our compatibility tools to port to other platforms" which is effectively saying "use DirectX if you want - Proton will run it just as well."

I think I could have bolstered this point by claiming "Windows and DirectX are losing ground", but I stand by my argument that Microsoft's gatekeeper status is eroding thanks to the growth [1] of Proton and Vulkan. Now native Vulkan implementations are not growing the way Proton is, but one could argue that Valve has done more to grow Vulkan support than Google's Stadia team ever did by removing the onus to write for it from game developers. Either way you slice it, Microsoft is now competing with Valve for OS installs. _____________

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-May-2026]

Till Gabe dies and valve is bought out by private equity

Imagine if Gabe went the Yvon Chouinard way? (founder of Patagonia refused to IPO, never sold controlling stake, recently left the entire company to an environmental conservation trust - certified LEGEND)

Gabe seems like the kinda guy who is in the Game for the love of games.

It would be a legendary legacy indeed to commit Valve and it's profits to a trust which defends digital rights and freedom.

Gabe's son is apparently the one steering the ship now. He's hanging out on his yacht looking at fish.

I’m wondering what happens when Gabe dies?

It's been discussed a long time. Nobody knows, but apparently he had been preparing his son for it. Don't quote me on that, it's what I heard

That's still a terribly small bus factor.

Indeed the danger is there, but their hardware is open, so there is always the option to switch.

Also piracy will go rampant if Steam stops being a good actor.

That being said, what alternatives you have? GOG lacks support for Linux, Sony cares doesn't care for you, Nintendo likes to s** all over you and their most passionate fans, Microsoft killed itself.

There is just no other option

I joined the class action lawsuit and got a small check a decade later. My proof that I had OtherOS ended up being timestamped whinging on the ars technica forums. My ps3 stopped working shortly after receiving the check due to bad solder, which was I guess fitting.

I got my $10 too. I remember laughing at the amount when I got the check. Thankfully after the OtherOS issue people worked to crack open the PS3, so by the time I got that check I had long since installed custom firmware on it.

Nintendo outright ships incomplete games on carts sometimes, requiring a day 1 patch to have the game in a non-buggy state (one of the recent pokemon games was like this)

And "gamers" refuse to listen to reason and assume physical copy = they can play it for eternity, when in reality, in 5 or 10 years when a server is inevitably shut down, they're forced to pirate. Nintendo does not allow offline patches.

> the Switch 2 takes carts

I believe the switch 2 carts don't contain the actual game, just a license key. The game is downloaded on first run.

Many Switch 2 carts contain the entire game. A larger portion just act as a license key.

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