If I'm ever tempted by any of these modifications I'm definitely just going to go to my local phone repair place and point them at the ifixit guides; let them have the stress.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThis is the one thing you've said I can't argue with--partly because it's true, growth is there but not that high yet, and partly because what kind of numbers are exciting is pretty subjective. I can't tell you what you should be excited by.

I can tell you what I'll be pleased with (although I wouldn't go as far as "excited") - and it should happen quite soon - the Linux share being higher than "Windows earlier than Windows 10." That they're completely unsupported and yet have higher marketshare than Linux is a real drag. Passing that will be nice.

Passing Mac OS to be the biggest non-Windows PC gaming market will take a bit longer, and won't make too much practical difference IMO; Linux is already an easier target than Mac OS for those that are interested in a multiplatform PC release, so it also being bigger won't swing the needle much more.

Passing 5% would get me quite excited, and passing 10% would make a big practical difference, I think, to the amount of game developer attention we can command.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: adolsonIt's still early days, but so far, we're seeing the opposite effect due to Proton.

No, we aren't. The release of Proton had no effect whatsoever on the proportion of Linux-native games that are released. The growth in the Linux market has since caused an increase in the proportion of Linux-native games that are released.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: mylkayes. and where do they get their survey? on the go WITHOUT internet, or maybe at home on their windows PC?

They don't get "their" survey at all. The hardware is what's being sampled. All the hardware.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: MohandevirHad the surey on mine, this week. It was just a notification? I tried clicking on it and nothing happened.

You get the notification and then you can go into Notifications to confirm that you're OK with being included in the survey.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd yet the point stands--in a random sampling of machines, a machine used full time has twice the chance of being polled as a machine used half of the time.

The machine just needs to be logged into Steam during the month that's at least a year since the last time it was surveyed.

The Deck does come with a (random?) delay "SurveyDateSteamDeckDelay" before it gets included in the survey - I had my Deck nine or ten months before it got the survey popup. I expect that Valve don't want everyone's unboxing experience to be full of "would you like to fill out this survey?" spam.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: mylkajust because someone has a steam deck, does not mean, that they are not playing on WINDOWS PC anymore
so a lot of deck owners count as windows PC

It's a hardware survey, not a user survey. The Deck counts as a Deck, a Windows PC counts as a Windows PC and a Linux PC counts as a Linux PC.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: RC2225

Quoting: TheRiddickAt this point it's obvious Valve is deliberately avoiding the AU/NZ market.

Or it's for tax reason. As an example, it's not available in Switzerland.

I bought one in the store in Osaka recently, and got of course a defect one. Unfortunately, my holiday was too short to get a replacement and since it was tax-free, I could not get a refund. :neutral:

It's neither of those things; it's just a tiny market and Valve can't be arsed.

The US has loads of money, and it's where Valve are based, so they've got to sell it there. Canada is just a few miles away from Valve HQ, and they can reuse the US distribution, so that's easy enough. The EU is a 450 million person single market, so it would be silly not to sell it there. The UK has 70 million people, is a hugely influential gaming market, had harmonised all its laws with the EU so that part's easy, and you can reuse your EU distribution if you remember to put a different plug in the box, so you might as well. And... that's it: that's everywhere that Valve can be bothered to sell it. The Asian countries it's being sold in are because a logistics partner is doing all the actual work of selling there. Australia (and Switzerland, and Norway) are too tiny to be worth taking it all on just for them, so you're waiting on having a logistics partner. Good luck!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: SeegrasBasically, Dolphin shared a 16byte secret key, which Nintendo dislikes. Nothing that DeCSS hasn't done also.

In the end, it's a quarrel over some DMCA provisions, and you can argue either way whether this is legal or not in the US. In most of the world there is no DMCA, and what they're doing is legal anyway.

Emulation isn't copyright infringement in the US. Including specific names, numbers, or incantations in your software that are the same as those in other software to allow interoperability isn't copyright infringement in the US. The particular quirk of the DMCA is that it prohibits "circumventing a technical measure" to bypass DRM even if the use isn't copyright infringement (and no matter how trivial the "technical measure" is); the Library of Congress has to regularly issue short-term (two or three years, IIRC) exemptions for particular applications.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hopefully Nvidia & Intel won't drag their feet so we can have a vendor-neutral solution.

View this comment - View article - View full comments