this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2022
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Gaming
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Linux gaming would not be exploding the way it is without Valve.
Sometime around the time when Windows 8 came out, Valve realized that Microsoft wanted to take over their business. No more Steam store, all games go through the Windows Appstore. As a result Vale has been suporting open source and Linux to prepare for the inevitable showdown with Microsoft.
Valve is not a charity for the benefit of open source and Linux gaming. It's just business.
This. I didn't even have a Steam account and I used to avoid it. Until they became the first to support Linux nativelly. Then I slowly started to become a supporter.
I personally think that what the gaming community worships too much is companies like Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA.... those big companies are the players, the human brain is their game, they are exploiting the gaming comunity's weaknesses and desires, some even tapping into casino-like psychological incentives to entice people to spend money on them.
Nowadays, except for a few exceptions, AAA games are pretty bad and I much prefer indies.
And Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo want to be the owners of the ecosystem so they can control it all. They actually artificially impose limitations as much as they can to make sure they can keep people buying into their platform.
Personally, I think Steam is the lesser of all those evils. Even though they have a huge marketshare on PC, they keep innovating with interesting features (it feels like many other game stores don't even try) without looking for exclusivity deals or going out of their way to lock anyone in (yes, there's DRM, but it's the game publisher who decides to use it, and it's not even hard to crack). It's the only game store I know (other than itch.io) that has accepted games that are 100% Free and Open Source.
I haven't seen a good AAA game since Witcher 3. All the games I buy are from smaller studios.
Half-Life:Alyx was great.
You have to own a vr headset to play it, though.
There's a group building a mod to makr it playable without VR
I highly doubt that will be fun. Alyx is a VR game through out, which is what makes it good.
It seems like everyone forgot that Proton (aka Steam Play) is forked off of Wine, which is a project that's been around for more than a decade. Proton wouldn't even be possible without Wine. That is not to discount Valve's contributions, but it is a bit tiring to see Valve get all the praise especially combined with corporate worship.
I think Valve's main contribution was to push DXVK as the main driver of Linux graphics. It's a huge game changer.
It's a symbiotic relationship: Valve benefitted from years of accumulated knowledge in the Wine project and now contributes to it. I hope more companies do the same.