Quoting: BielFPsGood point, this could open the possibility of developers requesting to "opt-out" the review process, claiming that this will give "bad PR" to their games, or making Valve to only show this evaluation system for those running the client on deck / linux (and hiding completely from windows users for example).

Valve have already said that developers can't opt out.

I believe my game isn't a good fit for Deck. Can I stop my game from showing up in the Deck store and library?

Removing products available on Steam from the Deck store or library isn't a supported feature. The Deck is an extension of Steam onto a new portable PC form factor, and so customers both expect and have access to the same store and library that they would on any other PC.

While it's possible for players to hook up a keyboard or a monitor, we believe most customers will be treating the Deck like a handheld appliance, most of the time. Because of this, one of the goals of the Verified badge Verified on Deck badge is helping customers easily understand how well any game plays with just the standard Deck hardware configuration and no peripherals.

Though this may be the most common customer use case, it isn't the only one. As with Steam in general, rather than completely restricting access to some products, we want to enable customers to find the right products given their specific goals and desires.

All Steam games are going to be visible from the Deck, and all (once they've been tested) will show how well Valve thinks they'll work on the Deck, with those that work well getting additional visibility.

They haven't said (AFAIK) that the "mark of shame" is coming to the desktop client, but they have said that they want it to all be different views of the same data (rather than BPM which was an entirely different product), and they really want every game that's at all possible to run well on Linux so there's no incentive for them to shy away from chivvying along those devs that are dragging their heels.

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Quoting: SalvatosDue to "appropriate controller input icons" alone, I feel like a lot of games will fall short of Verified. I rarely see the right icons for my DualShock.

"Appropriate" is "appropriate to the Steam Deck," and they accept Xbox prompts as a suitable substitute for those.

However, if developers start using Steam's Input API to pick up glyphs - which they're strongly encouraged to do by Valve - and Valve implement PlayStation prompt glyphs - which they have, as you can see in BPM - then PlayStation prompts will start automagically working in games.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI must be out of the loop. What's an NFT? I'd look it up, but acronyms are notoriously bad for searching.

Non-fungible token [External Link].

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Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI'm still waiting the 470.74 version for Ubuntu ¬¬

That's weird. I've been on 470.74 for, like, a week or so, I guess? on Kubuntu 20.04.

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Quoting: GuestI got a weird vibe from the video.

It seemed to me to be mostly full of nerd warm & fuzzies. I dug it a lot.

Why make a video for this tutorial at all?

People kept hassling them about what it was like inside and what could be replaced, and they felt that the answer needed more than a soundbite, so they said they'd make a video about it. This is that video.

They explain how it all fits together, and what the downsides and pitfalls are, and confirm that, yes, it is your device to do with as you wish. That's exactly what I'd want, and what I'd get from ifixit, too.

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Quoting: MohandevirI get your point, but I see a "flaw" (might be too strong a word)... No other company will be able to challenge Steam Deck's pricing ranges. Valve was able to offer agressive pricing because they mainly sell games. Those that could challenge them are Sony or Microsoft, who knows how to undersale consoles and get the money invested back on game sales. DELL's potential UFO will never be able to challenge the Steam Deck on this aspect... Just like any other PC handheld that we've seen up to this date. The Steam Machines suffered from too high prices in the same way.

I'm quite sure that the Steam Deck will stay relevant for years, in this market and will be the leader of the segment. Let's hope Valve is aware of that and ready to face the challenge.

It's that they're willing to let other companies make similar devices that shows that they aren't going for the sell loads of hardware to get locked in ecosystem sales console play. I agree (and have said in comments elsewhere previously) that other companies aren't really going to be able to.

Hardware companies don't have Steam to lean on, so they need to make profit on the hardware itself, and at the low end the aggressive pricing of the Deck shuts that out. At the premium end there could be profit, but for current and near-future technology the Deck has hit the optimum compromises so that a more expensive device would be a worse device: higher resolution screen means worse performance and worse battery life, a better battery means a heavier device, and so on. Maybe in a couple of tech generations there'll be space. I think it's naïve, maybe, certainly optimistic, for Valve to think that everyone's going to leap in and make SteamOS devices and solve their worldwide logistics things for them.

Microsoft, of course, does have a gaming software ecosystem to lean on for profits, and releasing an Xbox-branded handheld that plays Windows games could really put a spoke in the wheels of the Steam Deck.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: CatKillerBut it's definitely not primarily a hardware play (they aren't making anywhere near enough units, by several orders of magnitude)

Why so? I always tought it was a matter of offer and demand, in the hardware market... You want to have enough inventory to meet the demand, but not too much of it so as not to get stuck with it. If there is a demand, why wouldn' Valve try to ramp up the production of Steam Decks?

To make a credible console, you need to be aiming at sales of around 100 million units, and you need everyone to know that you're aiming for that kind of audience for your platform so that everyone buys in. Low sales breaks the entire model. Valve aren't making anything like that many. Nowhere near. You need to sell worldwide to normal people in normal shops. Valve aren't doing that, either.

As a demonstration device for Linux gaming, you only need to sell a few million devices; the important thing is to get people talking about it. That's perfectly in line with what we've seen about Valve's production capacity. As a demonstration device for Linux gaming, your primary audience is PC gamers. You need to already have a Steam account to buy a Steam Deck. For a console, having competitors making similar devices running the same OS and the same games would mean that you'd lost, and badly; as a demonstration device for Linux gaming, having competitors making similar devices running the same OS and the same games means that you've won, and someone else is doing your work for you. Valve have said that they want other companies to make similar devices.

I'm sure that Valve are very satisfied that there's lots of demand, and they'll scale up production to make as big a splash as they can. It's just not at the scale of a console and isn't doing console things. They've said themselves that it's an experiment, to gauge their assumptions about where they've got to.

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Quoting: Liam DaweDon't forget it's also partly jealousy. Gabe Newell previously said he was jealous of Nintendo with them making hardware and software together. There's many reasons for Valve doing all this, I wouldn't say any one specific reason any more.

Sure, there are plenty of things that are great about the Deck from Valve's perspective.

People buying PC games on Steam that would never want to deal with a PC? Awesome.

People buying their PC games on Steam rather than elsewhere because it's the easiest way to play them on the Deck? Awesome.

Developers using standardised Steam APIs rather than This One Weird Trick? Awesome.

People buying all those crazy unique indie games, so the big publishers can't dictate terms simply by being big? Awesome.

Every media outlet and YouTuber talking about Steam for months on end? Awesome.

But it's definitely not primarily a hardware play (they aren't making anywhere near enough units, by several orders of magnitude), and it's not the reason for the Linux investment but an extension of it.

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Quoting: GuestIf we assume that the enormous effort Valve made for Linux gaming was finalized to the Steam machines first and the Deck now

It wasn't. They aren't making anywhere near enough units for the Steam Deck to be a console platform, and they're (still) perfectly happy for other OEMs to make gaming machines with Linux on. The Steam Deck is a demonstration device, not an end point.

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It's no secret why Valve push Linux. They're aware of how crucial an open platform is to having a healthy software ecosystem, and then - with Windows 8 - Microsoft showed that they wanted to close it all up so that they were in control. Whether would succeed or not isn't as important as the fact that they wanted to. And if they did that, that would kill Steam.

So Gabe Newell said [External Link]

We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.

They need an exit strategy from Windows in case they get locked out of it, and they need to visibly have an exit strategy as a deterrent from being locked out in the first place. And they feel qualified to hold the doors open because "people don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior."

They need a way for all the Windows Steam users, should Microsoft go nuclear, to still be Steam users not on Windows, rather than Windows users not on Steam. They made their own games and client work on Linux. They tried to get OEMs to sell machines with Linux pre-installed (which didn't work). They made it pretty easy for game developers to make their games for Linux (which only kinda worked). So they brute-forced all those Windows games to work on Linux regardless of anyone else helping or not, with Proton.

Having done that, they still need everyone (particularly gamers, and particularly Microsoft) to know that they've done it. That locking Steam out of Windows isn't a viable plan, because gamers can go somewhere else. They need, say [External Link] "new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements." Which is what the Steam Deck is for. So that everyone can say, "you know what, gaming on Linux is perfectly fine. I wouldn't miss Windows because I can play all my games on Linux."

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