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Arch Linux and Valve Collaboration (lists.archlinux.org)

submitted 1 month ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.

This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed-up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors. We are incredibly grateful for Valve to make this possible and for their explicit commitment to help and support Arch Linux.

These projects will follow our usual development and consensus-building workflows. [RFCs] will be created for any wide-ranging changes. Discussions on this mailing list as well as issue, milestone and epic planning in our GitLab will provide transparency and insight into the work. We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on this mailing list as work progresses.

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[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Being cautious of a corporation is never a bad thing, but remember: Valve isn't a public company. They don't have the same incentives and fiduciary duties that led to the enshittification of most other companies and services.

Ultimately, yes, everything they do is entirely for their own benefit. But, they're also free to focus on their long-term growth and returns. As long as the leadership doesn't get changed to a bunch of shit-for-brains golden parachute MBAs, they're going to want to keep their customers happy. It's good for them, and it's not terrible for us. Everybody wins.

I would prefer they were a nonprofit, but I'm not going to complain when the mainstream alternatives to Steam are mostly comprised of shitty sales-focused storefronts created by companies beholden to their investors.

[–] index@sh.itjust.works -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'll tell you a secret: you don't need a proprietary launcher to run software

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'll tell you something you missed:

Steam's DRM is notoriously easy to bypass, allowing that. They also don't force DRM on their platform, it's entirely developer/publisher opt-in (and they are also free to add additional DRM on top if they wish), and many many releases on Steam run fine directly from the executable without the launcher running.

Edit: For the record, I pirate before I buy, buy on DRM free platforms (GOG mainly) where possible, and use a third party launcher to unify my collection across multiple storefronts and many many loose executables into one spot.

[+] masterspace@lemmy.ca -6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Ultimately, yes, everything they do is entirely for their own benefit. But, they're also free to focus on their long-term growth and returns. As long as the leadership doesn't get changed to a bunch of shit-for-brains golden parachute MBAs, they're going to want to keep their customers happy. It's good for them, and it's not terrible for us. Everybody wins

No, they don't. Literally every single gamer across the world pays 15% more on every single game purchase, for literally no reason except to make the 1% at Valve even richer.

And they don't have to hire MBAs because gamers dick ride them like Gabe isnt a self serving billionaire and keep forking over an extra 15% and then thanking them for the opportunity to do so.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, they don't. Literally every single gamer across the world pays 15% more on every single game purchase, for literally no reason except to make the 1% at Valve even richer.

Do you seriously believe that if a developer pays 15% less in platform fees to Valve, that savings will be passed on to us? Epic Games tried that. Guess what: games still cost us the same there as every other platform.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It literally either goes back to the consumer or back to the game developer.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Or, more likely, the publisher. But, that's beside the point.

As it has been demonstrated when Epic tried the "developers pay less fees here" approach, the average Joe Gamer doesn't benefit in any way whatsoever. Your premise of the savings being passed down doesn't exactly pan out.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To be fair, Epic Store was marred by exclusives and having way less features back then. Even now, their (Electron) launcher boots up way slower than (CEF) Steam, and their sales are way worse.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is it Electron? Someone elsewhere mentioned it was actually an instance of Unreal Engine running for the webview component. Something about the EGS install directory containing the same UE settings file that games use for initializing Unreal

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

IDK then. spinning up an entire game engine just to do what Electron does seems unbelievably wasteful though.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I just downloaded and installed EGS to a Windows VM.

strings EpicGamesLauncher.exe | select-string "unreal" returns some interesting results:

FCommunityPortalManagerImpl::SetUnrealEnginePortalViewModel
{USER}Unreal Engine/Engine/Config/User{TYPE}.ini
UnrealHeaderTool
Cannot call UnrealScript (%s - %s) while stopped at a breakpoint.
UnrealVersionSelector
Created with FUnrealEngineFileAssociationServiceFactory at D:/build/++Portal/Sync/Portal/Source/Programs/EpicGamesLauncher/Layers/Domain/Private/UserDomain.cpp:866

A search for "electron" only matches the words "Electronic Arts"

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

...wait, what does it say about EA?

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

I already killed the VM, but it was something about an EA account if I recall correctly.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 month ago

As it has been demonstrated when Epic tried the "developers pay less fees here" approach, the average Joe Gamer doesn't benefit in any way whatsoever. Your premise of the savings being passed down doesn't exactly pan out.

Oh really? Please do point me to the study you did where you gave 15% more revenue back to developers and then assessed their output quality.

Claiming that having the store take 15% less cut of revenue will have no effect is a quite frankly flat out absurd claim to make.