The DOTA trademark [External Link] is also listed as International Code 41 (the "entertainment services" one).

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Quoting: grigiAs someone that never had a game console, I was completely stumped when God of War said I should press "RS".
Nothing was labeled "RS" physically on the device or even in the steam input configurator.

Turns out it was pressing the right stick down.

These kinds of things may be taken for granted by someone that's used to a controller, but it certainly caused me a lot of grief.

Ironically enough, for a Sony title played on the Steam Deck, that's Xbox labelling. Both the PlayStation and Deck call that R3.

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The triggers work as clicks in the gaming UI, and in games, and in lizard mode if Steam isn't running in desktop mode... but it's mysteriously clicking the trackpads to click by default in desktop mode. Changing that so that it's consistent with everything else is an essential improvement for using desktop mode; it would be much better if Valve did that so that users didn't have to. (Scroll wheel on left trackpad is also very useful, but that might be personal preference).

The "English QWERTY" is the US layout. You can't make have the symbols in the right place as a user of non-US keyboard layouts. Arrow keys are missing from the keyboard, which makes text entry unnecessarily arduous.

Making it possible to have a Piper flatpak that can use a system libratbag so that those users who use a mouse can configure it well would be a big boon.

The audio stuff can get into a janky confused state with the virtual "echo cancellation" outputs, which has led some users to complain that they can't adjust the volume any more. That needs to be tidied up.

Having the default view when selecting a game in your library be Game Info would be much more useful than Activity. At least having a preference to control it would be a huge upgrade.

Having the Remote Install actually work would be good. Having the act of purchasing directly on the Deck not be broken would also be good.

Being able to have a Bluetooth widget on the top panel (like the WiFi one) to quickly adjust that without having to dig into the settings menu would be helpful.

They do really need to tighten up the whole Verified regime; it's absolutely essential that customers can trust those ratings. Some of that will happen once there have been enough unit sales that game devs are taking the time to ensure that they don't break their own games.

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Quoting: GeeksOnHugsSo why is it more difficult on Rust then other games?

Because the developers of those other games actually want their games to run on the Deck.

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Quoting: no_information_hereWhile I agree with your sentiment, this doesn't seem to be realistic in the current day and age. They already share all kinds of data on what games people are buying and their daily active players. I haven't combed through the TOU agreements, but I suspect there is some kind of thing that says "we will use your anonymized aggregated data and you will shut up and buy our games."

"The current day and age" has the GDPR.

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Quoting: MayeulCNot really. Accounts are selected randomly for the steam survey. If you are, a popup will appear on all of your devices. You'll be counted only one time, I'm not sure on which device. I usually try to answer on my main gaming rig.

Nope. My desktop gets surveyed in May and my laptop gets surveyed in August.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyOK, just near-instinctive reaction, haven't crunched recent numbers, but . . . if more than a million have shipped, shouldn't that have had a bigger impact on the Steam hardware survey? I thought the existing Linux user base on Steam was just over a million before the Deck. So like, shouldn't the Deck have pretty much doubled our numbers, shoving us up to the 2% range, rather than just nudging us up to 1.23?

It's fuzzy numbers. We don't know total numbers at all. The data we have are for Monthly Active Users - the number of unique users that have signed into Steam in a particular month - and we don't know if that was the peak for all months in 2021, or just in December 2021, or just in February 2022. But during at least one month prior to March 2022, 132 M users logged into Steam.

The number of active users is obviously counting users, and the hardware survey is only interested in hardware; if I happen to get the survey on both a desktop and a Deck in a particular month (I haven't had the survey on my Deck in the 2½ months I've had it, btw) then I'll get counted twice in the hardware survey (because that's two pieces of hardware) but I'll only count as one active user (because there's only one of me). The back-of-the-envelope estimate on the Steam Tracker page assumes that every piece of hardware tallied represents one user, because to do otherwise leads to insanity, but it's not strictly accurate: just the best we can do.

To give some estimate of how huge Steam is, in each month of 2021, 2.6 M people bought their very first Steam game.

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Quoting: elmapulim not worried about the lack of games, but i want to see more developers supporting it nativelly and more app developers starting caring about it.

You've got no users, so you don't get games, so you don't get users. That's where the failed consoles sit (and, realistically, where native Linux gaming sits without something radical like widespread hardware coming with Linux pre-installed), which is why selling huge numbers is so critical for consoles. Valve have sidestepped that by making as much as humanly possible of the existing and future library of Windows games, which will be made regardless, work on their Linux PC, so they don't need to achieve the critical mass that consoles need. The Deck needs to achieve two things to be a success from Valve's perspective (bearing in mind that they also don't particularly need to make money from it like console makers do: if people are buying PC games to play on their Deck, or buying PC games to play on their desktop or laptop, Valve gets the money regardless): it needs to let their customers know that Linux is a viable gaming platform, and it needs to persuade game developers that Linux is a valuable enough target that they test their games on Linux. Not necessarily make their games for Linux: Valve don't have to care whether a game is native or running through Proton. Customers like you and I might care, and, once they're already testing, developers might care, but Valve don't need to; as long as their Windows-using customers can still be customers without Windows, that's the important thing for them. Selling 100 M units would be nice, sure, but it's not essential to Valve's survival like it would be for a console maker, or like having a viable alternative to Windows is for Valve.

otherwise, microsoft entering the umpc market could reverse this trend, or maybe xcloud.

Well, both. An Xbox-branded handheld, and (especially ActiBlizzard) games locked into the Windows Store, with gamers already conditioned to having a Microsoft account (from Windows and Minecraft) and a Microsoft subscription (from Game Pass) would be a potent threat for Valve. Microsoft managed to get developers hooked on DirectX with their huge sums of money sunk into Xbox, and Valve have neutralised that, but they're not out of the woods. Whether Microsoft would eventually get smacked by regulators or not, Valve would have still taken the damage. That's why they need their customers to know that they can be Steam users that don't use Windows rather than Windows users that don't use Steam.

dont get me wrong, things are looking nice, we already have more games than most consoles.
more than all sega consoles combined, and more than xbox series, wich has retro compatibility with other xbox generations.
more games than any nintendo console, and more than a lot of playstations. (im counting only verified+playable not even mentioning untested games, unsuported ones that do work, games outside of steam or emulators)
but the public dont have this perception yet, things are still reversible, lets not forget that we used to have native support for some triple a games recently and lose it, not get updates for the games, have updates from the OS breaking the game and the port houses no longer being able to distribute/fix it , among other issues.
i hope we can keep the current momentum forever, i will feel more calm when our install base grow large enough to prove its here to stay.

Yep. More market share is the only thing that can keep us safe: when we're too big of a market to ignore. But all the Deck users that are saying "I didn't know Linux was this good," the developers that are proud of getting their green tick, and the climb on the marketshare graph are all promising signs.

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Quoting: elmapuli know he said over 1 million and not 1 million, but that isnt impressive if we compare to any other console.

Consoles need to shift enough units to convince developers to make games for that console. The Deck doesn't need that: game developers already make games for the PC.

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Quoting: mr-victoryI stopped caring because seriously, we are talking about %0.0x changes overall. Notify me when changes are %0.1x:grin:

March-April was a 0.14 rise. But, yeah, in general that's what the trend line is for: to see the signal amongst the noise.

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