Quoting: PenglingAnd I presume that the "Other" category also includes some of the other Ubuntu flavours, as well, unless they roll those in with regular Ubuntu?

I don't know about all the flavours, but Kubuntu has Ubuntu as its LSB name. Other will include those users on older (still supported, generally) LTS releases, or development releases, or Rolling Rhino, and any other version that doesn't meet the usage cutoff to be included in the named list.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CyborgZetaWhat I find interesting is not just how high SteamOS Holo is already, but how Ubuntu is noticeable dethroned from the top. It doesn't feel like that long ago that Ubuntu still topped the list.

It still does: it's at 19.63%. This is just the transition period between 20.04 and 22.04, with 20.04 users not being automatically offered the upgrade to 22.04 until 22.04.1 has been released.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: elmapuli know, but they would still make more money by supporting it than not supporting.

They could have shown that they keep their promises, and actually can develop their way out of a wet paper bag, and got the same positive PR that Microsoft and Epic did ("what a neat device to play our games on!"), but instead they've chosen to get... none of that.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CyborgZetaThe resolution seems high. I think 720p is sufficient for a handheld. Less taxing on the GPU, but still looks good on a display designed for that resolution.

It's a bigger display though. 8" 1920×1200 should look really nice, should be a closer target for existing games, and was what I was hoping for when the Steam Deck was still the Steam Pal. But obviously GPU requirements make it tough to achieve. I wouldn't be tempted by this, though, even if I weren't getting a Steam Deck, because it's got the janky asymmetric sticks. It does appear to come with a kickstand, though, which is nice.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I understand that they're supply constrained, and they don't think it will make a difference... but they didn't think the fan model would make a difference either. Invisible SKUs are bad for consumer confidence, and bad for the one fixed target console model. It's all a bit Amazon Marketplace.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: tfkForget the art. Will it be playable on the deck?

One of the announced platforms is the Switch, so as long as they don't break it from working on Linux it should be fine from an interface and hardware requirements perspective.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

There's some annoying flicker on the collectibles quest giver screens, and the resolution tops out at 2400×1350 for some reason, but otherwise it plays well and is fun. It also picked up my PS4 controller and showed the correct controls, which is sadly unusual.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: EikeI feel it would be something different though, on one hand just selling the game for less somewhere else, and on the other hand explicitly telling the customers "If you you would buy on Steam, you would pay more for our game!" The latter sounds like actively hurting Valve's business.

Of course it would be. But you get way less sympathy with, say, a judge, or the gaming press, if you say "we threatened to piss a business partner off so much that they wouldn't want to do business with us any more" than "big bad Valve is pushing around the little guy." They said

When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game "Overgrowth" at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results. But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam.

This is the don't take the piss provision about Steam keys that Wolfire had already agreed to:

You should use keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don't give Steam customers a worse deal.
It's OK to run a discount on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
Occasionally it may make sense to offer your game in a bundle or subscription, timed at the right point in a game's life cycle. Keep in mind that the perceived price in the bundle/subscription should be a price you are willing to run the game at a standalone price or discount on Steam. Philosophically, you can think about it like any other discount: if you’re making an aggressive offer in one place, make it elsewhere too. We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store, so feel free to reach out to us via the Developer Support tool if you want to talk through a specific scenario.

Wolfire's specific scenario of "I'm going to publicise how I'm giving Steam customers a worse deal" was never gonna fly.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaineYep, that'll be it.

Thankfully, there are sites where you can see the price history for, say, Overgrowth [External Link] and see that there have been plenty of times that the standard price on Humble was lower than the standard price on Steam. And that's using Steam keys, so it's subject to Valve's don't take the piss provision, which games that don't use Steam keys aren't.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GroganI don't see why Valve would delist games for being sold cheaper elsewhere, that wouldn't help them at all. (obviously they'll get zero sales from those games if they don't sell them). That sounds like bollocks to me.

Wolfire's public assertion (which they've rather sanitised for their court filings) was that it was when they were announcing to some customer service person their intention to write a blog post about how they were going to give Steam's costumers a worse deal, that said person said not to do that and that doing that would mean they couldn't be friends any more.

View this comment - View article - View full comments