This looks like it could be my kind of game. Definitely interested. Love me some interesting turn-based combat, and if it has a good story then all the better.

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That's weird about Itch. Something happening there?

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The Steam Linux Runtime solves some of the previous issue, but if you require Steam, what's the difference at that point to using Proton practically speaking.

I don't think it requires Steam. I mean sure, the way it's normally distributed currently is via Steam, but the impression I'd always gotten was that it's just a group of open source libraries that games might depend on in a particular configuration, and so anyone could package it if they felt like.
Come to that, Proton doesn't require Steam either. It's open source too. My understanding is people can and do use Proton outside of Steam.

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On the other hand, it has completely obliterated any chance we'd ever have native ports ever again

No it hasn't. E.G. Hollow Knight: Silksong. People are still doing a surprising number of native versions. And I think as Godot keeps growing, that may increase. There are still reasons for developers to want to do native Linux. And as Linux market share increases, those reasons will get more compelling.

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This conversation is making me want to lay out a few of the pros and cons now as compared to back when.
So. When the Steam Machine came out, it had a number of cons:
--UI was by many accounts fairly clunky
--Did not offer a good solution for watching Netflix and such
--SteamOS was not well maintained
--Did not have a truly big sales channel, just selling on Steam
--Publicity wasn't good enough
--Plan for everyone else to make them was doomed to failure
--The big one: Compared to a Windows version, had far fewer games. Wine was not up to the task.
--Related: Figuring out which games would really work was not hard exactly, but not transparent enough not to be annoying.

Main pro: Compared to an Xbox or Playstation, still had in effect many more games, including a fair amount of your current Steam library if you had one.
Arguable pro: Steam Controller.

What would a Steam Machine's pros and cons look like now?
--UI has been honed by the Steam Deck; it's pretty good now. So that penalty is gone.
--I'm not sure about the Netflix etc. situation
--SteamOS is well maintained now as far as I know. That penalty gone too.
--Sales channel is still the same, except in the sense that Steam itself has grown considerably in the years since so it's just a somewhat bigger channel.
--How well they'd do the publicity is unknown
--Games situation is much better thanks to Proton and continued Wine development. Unfortunately the anti-cheat situation means there are still some prominent games missing, and they're the kind of game you might well want to play on a Steam Machine kind of setup. Just lack of Fortnite and Roblox is a harsh hit. If Valve could pay off the Roblox people somehow and get solid Roblox support, that would make the difference in a lot of cases between "Get this for my kids" and "No point getting this for my kids".
--The "which games work" problem is largely gone. There are so few that really don't, that people would just try and see. And consider that on Steam Deck, the "unsupported" category is often stuff that doesn't work with the form factor, or sometimes that just really needs beefier hardware. A Steam Machine wouldn't have those problems, so a lot of "unsupported" goes away right there.

On the plus side:
The games advantage vs. Playstation or Xbox has gone from sizable to ridiculous.
The UI is good enough that it seems to be significantly better for the purpose than an equivalent box running Windows.
I expect that a Steam Controller II would be very good.
Probably they would just do the actual box themselves this time, and they now have the hardware experience that they'd probably do it well.

Is all this good enough for a smashing success? Dunno. Most of the really key problems with the original Steam Machines are gone or at least much reduced. But some remain, and the up side . . . I dunno. Probably worth having for a moderate number of people. But one thing is, if they just do it in house, it doesn't have to be such an instant smashing success. As long as it does fairly well, it's a positive and they can build on it.

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None of that silly sending of your id to the more seedy corners of the internet.

Well, c'mon, you wouldn't want to send your superego to the more seedy corners of the internet! :grin:

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Still wondering what heinous crime I'd have to commit to get my hands on some bungee cords or something to tie down the load.

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Well, so do I but that's neither here nor there. Would you prefer if a game just didn't work on Linux at all? At ~1%, this was not a situation where we got to pick "Works natively on Linux" or "Works via Proton translation". It was a situation where we got to pick "Ignored but it works anyway thanks to Proton" or "Ignored so it doesn't work". Even at 3%, which is fundamentally because of Proton, we are still mostly in that situation. Everyone writing for native Linux is the endgame, it's what happens after World Domination. And World Domination isn't happening without Proton.

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I respect Surviving Mars, but after one run-through I didn't really feel like playing it a bunch more. I find I replay Terraformers quite a bit, though. It's just more comfortable.

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One advantage of doing it now is, they're already maintaining an OS and Proton for the Deck, so it's not much more work to put that same OS and Proton on something else.

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