Valve officially confirm a new version of 'Steam Play' which includes a modified version of Wine

Quoting: Guest....did you just compare Valve Software to a nuclear arsenal? Because they really don't have that kind of power. At all.

90% (or more) of Valve's customer base is on Windows. Windows already dominates. That bulk is more important to Valve than the 1% of GNU/Linux users, but the latter is a good playground for Valve.

I was making an analogy. One which you seem to have spent mental effort avoiding the meaning of rather than trying to assess what I'm actually talking about.

The analogy was about strategic preparedness in an uncertain world where you have identified major potential enemies. The world of international politics is that sort of world, and so makes a good analogy.
Also, no, to be precise, I specifically compared Valve Software to a country that does not have a nuclear arsenal. My point was that countries like Germany and Japan do not acquire nuclear weapons because it would be politically destabilizing and frighten neighbours. Japan doesn't need major confrontations with China, for instance. But they are aware that nuclear weapons are a very potent thing to have, which they might come to need in the future. So they put all the prerequisites in place, none of which prerequisites are particularly controversial or destabilizing in themselves (unless you're Iran), so that if they turn out to need those potent things they can quickly activate them. It's known as "breakout capability" and, again, everyone's very very upset about Iran potentially gaining it, but as long as you're not an official enemy of the US it's much much less politically noticeable than actually building the nukes themselves.

Valve are clearly not thinking just in terms of Windows = 95%, Linux = 1%. They spend a good deal of effort on Linux-related moves. This effort has not so far paid off financially in any direct way and they don't seem disappointed by this in particular. Clearly that's not the point. The point therefore is strategic in some way (or ways). The only question is, what is the strategy? Your objection makes little sense because you're not suggesting an alternate strategy but rather the idea that there simply isn't one, which I really doubt.

What strategy, then? Valve strikes me as backing Linux, putting infrastructure in place to make Linux as good a gaming platform as possible, so that they can "weaponize" Linux, make pushes to grow its market share rapidly with things like Steam Machines and in other ways, if they choose to do so. That is, to gain "breakout capability" for Linux as a market share weapon. They will certainly choose to do so if Microsoft screws with them. They may choose to do so if the platform has become so excellent that the chances of getting away with it and making a profit seem high. In the mean while though, even absent a major push the general improvement could cause gradual increase in Linux share, which would be good for us and Valve wouldn't mind.

But the thing is, since Linux is a potential weapon specifically against Windows, it is a weapon effective in direct proportion to how well it stacks up against Windows as a (gaming) platform. Making Windows better as a gaming platform (like by making Proton work on it so Windows users can play old games), therefore, reduces the potency of the weapon. Which isn't to say they absolutely won't do it if they feel they have more to gain than to lose, but that loss is there.

I don't think they'd gain that much, either--most Windows users would just use Proton to play the back catalogue of games they already bought but can't play any more, rather than spending new money.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 30 August 2018 at 4:31 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy<snip>
Apple have made absolutely no attempt at grabbing some marketshare when it comes to PC gaming, and even their high-end computers are mostly rubbish when it comes to gaming... Not to mention the fact that most of Apple's range is financially out of reach for a significant portion of the population, even if they were (hypothetically) great for PC gaming.

That was more long-winded than I intended...

To get to my point, whatever the reasoning behind "Proton" (and Steam Machines, for that matter!), the PC industry could do with a little more competition because as the old saying goes, "competition breeds innovation".

Half-assed efforts at increasing competition - such as those efforts from GOG.com - do little in the grand scheme of things... Real efforts - such as those from Valve - actually make a difference when you look at the big picture.

Yeah people have been saying it's "the year of the Linux desktop" for as long as I can remember and realistically, that's probably a long way off... But when it happens - and there's a good chance it might - I guarantee Valve Software will be a part of the reason why it has happened.

If GNU/Linux desktop becomes more widespread, then it would be very, very bad if Steam holds dominance on gaming for the same reasons - and actually worse, because a core concept of GNU/Linux is to be open.

But, while Valve can play a part, I always point out that Valve never did so much alone, but are standing on the backs of giants: wine, AMD (opening up drivers, donating Mantle to Khronos, and more), radv, Intel (their drivers always were open), nvidia (drivers and long time OpenGL support), Unity3D (engine support before Steam was even thought to be on GNU/Linux), and of course TTimo and iD Software. And more.

And yes, Valve has been heavily involved in Vulkan from the start, and has contributions to Mesa, X, and porting their own games across. Valve definitely help improve - but the foundations were already laid out.

Now this I agree with. In general, I like Valve better than I like almost all other big companies--but that really isn't saying very much, because almost all other big companies I actively despise. Too much dominance by any player is not a good thing. Although, imagining a scenario in which Windows desktop dominance was broken, Linux became a major proportion of the world's desktop and gaming computers, but Steam dominated Linux gaming . . . no, I don't think that would actually be worse than the current situation. But better still would be if there were multiple significant players, best of all would be if there was some kind of open game portal infrastructure although I don't know just how that would work.

And it's certainly true that Valve by no means built all this stuff all by themselves. They took advantage of stuff which was and still is being built and improved by lots of other people. I have no quarrel with this point being made. "Proton" is a name that can readily obscure the nature of all the components rolled into it.

Quoting: GuestIt's a subtle point that your own post misses: we most definitely would have reached here without Valve.

It's missing because I don't think it's true. I'd argue that we weren't at this point two weeks ago and that we wouldn't be for a long, long time. I have 6k games in my steam library, over half of them only have Windows version (I got them through bundles etc.). Over the last five years I played maybe three or four (sic!) of these games. All the tools were there: wine, crossover (which I bought and only ever used to play gog version of The Witcher), lutris, recently dxvk etc. etc. - but it was immensely impractical and thus for me too much of a bother. Not to mention that I'm mostly gaming on SteamOS with my kids and there was literally no way to play Windows games on SteamOS. Now? For the last week+ I've been playing dozens of Windows games which I've been long wanting to play - nothing spectacular, mostly puzzle games that were reportedly working fine with wine, but required starting a "wined" version of steam. Kids have been playing the LEGO and Sonic games, with controllers, out of the box... *This* is huge. The simple fact that one of the biggest players in the gaming market came, took all the existing tools and put them to a proper use. Yes, all these tools were there and lots of people put great effort into making them work - and for that they deserve full credit. But tools are always only tools, they don't make great things by themselves.


Last edited by pb on 30 August 2018 at 4:58 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestIt's a subtle point that your own post misses: we most definitely would have reached here without Valve.

Possibly, but when? Valve accelerated OpenGL and Vulkan support in Wine a lot (for D3D translation). They also poured a lot of resources into Mesa making features arrive quickly. Sooner is better.


Last edited by Shmerl on 30 August 2018 at 4:58 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestBesides, if proton was only a hedge against Microsoft they would probably announce plans to port it on Mac too.

MacOS is really dead weight for gaming, so no surprise it's not a priority. For Valve to move away from Windows it's not an option.

Quoting: GuestIf GNU/Linux desktop becomes more widespread, then it would be very, very bad if Steam holds dominance on gaming for the same reasons - and actually worse, because a core concept of GNU/Linux is to be open.

Being open has nothing to do with monopoly. You can have one without the other, both or none.

On his part Valve is playing nice on both sides though. It contributes and started open projects and it made literally nothing to wall his garden off (one could argue it even encouraged competition at its own expenses by providing free keys to devs to sell on whatever venue they want even if, ultimately, Valve pays the bills of the Steam infrastructure these key leverage).

In doing that it showed that it sports the exact opposite of Apple core values. Its business model is more similar to what Google did with early Android, create and improve the infrastructure for free to increase the value of the platform in exchange of having its own market on the devices of the final users.

Personally I think too that SteamOs would benefit as a project from having other markets integrated as well. But as long as the competition is to stingy to re invest part of their revenues in the project (or the linux infrastructure in general) it's hard to make this a Valve fault.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut the thing is, since Linux is a potential weapon specifically against Windows, it is a weapon effective in direct proportion to how well it stacks up against Windows as a (gaming) platform. Making Windows better as a gaming platform (like by making Proton work on it so Windows users can play old games), therefore, reduces the potency of the weapon. Which isn't to say they absolutely won't do it if they feel they have more to gain than to lose, but that loss is there.

I don't think they'd gain that much, either--most Windows users would just use Proton to play the back catalogue of games they already bought but can't play any more, rather than spending new money.

I see Valve as mostly a "good guy" when it comes to companies, so I would generally expect them to extend the tool to Windows just because they can and it's good for their users. Even if commercially the only benefit is goodwill. You do bring an excellent point with that last remark, though. Proton on Linux is quite likely to drive sales, whereas on Windows the impact will likely be much less noticeable. Although, I reckon even a much smaller percentage of increased sales on Windows would easily outshine Linux sales in absolute value no matter how much the latter grow. I guess it could go both ways depending on how hard Valve wants to push Linux.

Quoting: pb

Quoting: GuestIt's a subtle point that your own post misses: we most definitely would have reached here without Valve.

It's missing because I don't think it's true. I'd argue that we weren't at this point two weeks ago and that we wouldn't be for a long, long time. I have 6k games in my steam library, over half of them only have Windows version (I got them through bundles etc.). Over the last five years I played maybe three or four (sic!) of these games. All the tools were there: wine, crossover (which I bought and only ever used to play gog version of The Witcher), lutris, recently dxvk etc. etc. - but it was immensely impractical and thus for me too much of a bother. Not to mention that I'm mostly gaming on SteamOS with my kids and there was literally no way to play Windows games on SteamOS. Now? For the last week+ I've been playing dozens of Windows games which I've been long wanting to play - nothing spectacular, mostly puzzle games that were reportedly working fine with wine, but required starting a "wined" version of steam. Kids have been playing the LEGO and Sonic games, with controllers, out of the box... *This* is huge. The simple fact that one of the biggest players in the gaming market came, took all the existing tools and put them to a proper use. Yes, all these tools were there and lots of people put great effort into making them work - and for that they deserve full credit. But tools are always only tools, they don't make great things by themselves.

I don't think this was as far out of reach as you think. Lutris has already made great strides in being a game client that automated installs for WINE based games. Obviously, Lutris can't have as tight an experience as Steam can for Steam games, but it's still quite good. Lutris had already given me that same experience you've just had, where you start playing games you wanted to play, because it's suddenly easy to play them.

Don't get me wrong, I think SteamPlay + Proton is a complete game changer, but I agree with mirv, we'd have got pretty close to the same experience eventually without Valve.

Quoting: GuestIt's a subtle point that your own post misses: we most definitely would have reached here without Valve.

Once I spoke a wise person, former CEO, that told me that every role in a prospering company is as equally important as another role, no matter if it's the technical team, sales and support or the cleaning people. Everybody contributes in their own way and a company as a whole wouldn't work if you leave one out. Same here in my opinion. Sure, the technical groundwork was done by wine, dxvk and other teams, but to _really_ get of the ground you'll also need the people that put the things together, promote* and channel it to the masses, provide support etc etc. Its a combined effort of the development teams, Valve and the Linux community, all ingredients are equally important in the hopefully great success story that proton can be. It won't work if you skip one.

*not just to users but also to developers/publishers since proton games do count as Linux purchases


Last edited by jens on 31 August 2018 at 6:44 am UTC

Quoting: hummer010I don't think this was as far out of reach as you think. Lutris has already made great strides in being a game client that automated installs for WINE based games. Obviously, Lutris can't have as tight an experience as Steam can for Steam games, but it's still quite good. Lutris had already given me that same experience you've just had, where you start playing games you wanted to play, because it's suddenly easy to play them.

Don't get me wrong, I think SteamPlay + Proton is a complete game changer, but I agree with mirv, we'd have got pretty close to the same experience eventually without Valve.

Having never used the former, how does Lutris differ from PlayOnLinux? Although PoL was supposed to simplify Wine, relying on a small team to prepare and update packages for every program out there still meant that a lot of the time what you were looking for wasn't in the library of preconfs or didn't work anymore. Proton being run by Valve/on Steam has the advantage of more dedicated support and a much larger audience to report issues and suggest fixes; and already it seems to run a lot of games very well out of the box, instead of holding your hand while you jump through hoops but not actually removing the hoops (like PoL).