Quoting: dirkdierickxMS will gladly make these changes, but probably violate them before those 10 years are up. EU will fine MS, but as usual the fine(s) will be peanuts and MS will be happy to pay.

EU fines does not work the same as US fines, EU fines are increased until you comply.

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Quoting: MohandevirJust speaking about the value of the Ally... From what I read from different sources, I'm totally unconvinced... Like most of the PCGamers, I already have a more powerful PC... That's why I use my Steam Deck in handheld mode 95% of the time. The other 5% is for couch coop gaming and these games are not usually resource huggers. In my case, battery autonomy is make or break. If all this raw power is wasted because you need to cap everything to gain minutes of playtime... What are you getting? A little more powerful Steam Deck with less input options, unreadable 3rd party apps, crapy os interactions and still worse battery autonomy (the Steam Deck's autonomy is already to the limit)?

If it's a handheld as long as your power cord (who first said that? 😉), It kinds of defeat the purpose and makes it feel like a big marketing smokescreen, to me.

If so, I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2, in this case.

I feel guilty :grin: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/asus-rog-ally-gaming-handheld/comment_id=241720

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[quote=PixelDrop]

Quoting: Ardje

Quoting: EikeThe only real in windows progress does not come from Microsoft, but from AMD, NVIDIA and Valve as they keep the gaming on windows alive, and that's about the only thing that keeps windows into households, and with the big amount of lobbying and "I know that OS" keeps it in the offices.

[P/S This is not a rant towards you, just a rant in general to let off some steam.]

And all the other third party software makers. Windows desktop user space software as a whole is vastly more polished, flexible, varied, and accessible than Linux. Every time I try and convert someone to Linux there is 1 to 100 windows programs they use that have no equal on Linux and having to run a ton of things under wine does not leave a good impression.

Linux as a desktop system is an ecosystem of barely functional reinvented tires. 30 programs that do the same thing, and yet someone manage to do it worse than all the windows options that do the same thing, despite having a "better" OS to work with.

In every other sector it's great, but for the actual desktop experience it's a splintered, fragmented mess that may one day focus itself into something different, but honestly I think we have a better chance that macOS will just take over the desktop world. If Apple would ever make officially support hackintosh builds and sell macOS directly I have little doubt it would skyrocket in popularity. The only thing that saves us from that fate is Apple's own greed.

That is basically all down to market share. Aka make a decently useful app for Windows and you can earn enough money to start a business while Linux have too small a market share for more than a few people developing apps on their free time.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: ArdjeThese days any windows server release still can not do network wise what any linux system could already do 25 years ago.

can you be more specific?
it lack support for some api/protocol?

E.g Linux can out of the box perform much more advanced routing than dedicated enterprise routers, now the performance might not be the same since Linux have to use the cpu and the routers uses dedicated hw but this one area where Windows isn't even close.

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: KlaasSo that will lead to native Ubisoft Connect… right? That's something that I've always wanted.

To be honest, I'm not sure this will lead to native anything. I think all they're trying to do here is make their stuff run better on the Deck.

That and Amazons streaming platform and they are also most likely planning ahead in case any one else is going to introduce a new Stadia and they want to be ready when that happens (and knows full well that such a platform will be Linux based).

They could also be interested in having at least internal Linux builds ready for that one day in the future when there might be a market for it (just how ID had a native Linux version of Doom inhouse).

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: EikeBut by the way, if they want to higher 1 (one) Linux developer, and they want to port the game, wouldn't the job description contain knowledge in some Linux graphics API? Or do they already have some of those?

The graphics API part is a different job : https://gamejobs.co/3D-Graphics-Programmer-Snowdrop-at-Ubisoft-3802 [External Link]

Intimately familiar with various graphics APIs (DirectX 11/12, OpenGL, Vulkan) and associated shader languages

But wouldn't I want to have someone knowing Linux and OpenGL/Vulkan?

Not necessarily, game engines like this are huge pieces of software so you might be working on making it work better on say the Switch without ever having to touch the graphics part of the system at all. Or you might work on Vulkan and never once touch parts of the engine that have anything to do with which platform it runs on.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: GuestSo they are trying to hire a developer without being even clear about the job?
It seems more like a promotional thing than a job opportunity.

What's unclear? The careers website and the job description look pretty bog standard to me.

Right. Even if they want to try to make the game for Linux, they would not publicise it yet, and they don't need to for a job offer.

But by the way, if they want to higher 1 (one) Linux developer, and they want to port the game, wouldn't the job description contain knowledge in some Linux graphics API? Or do they already have some of those?

The graphics API part is a different job : https://gamejobs.co/3D-Graphics-Programmer-Snowdrop-at-Ubisoft-3802 [External Link]

Intimately familiar with various graphics APIs (DirectX 11/12, OpenGL, Vulkan) and associated shader languages

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: scainePretty sure that if you risk being arrested for using a product, you tend to be fairly finicky about what that product (Steam in this case) is reporting to some global HQ. So I'm with Ultra on that point.

Well, but it's a global HQ, not a Chinese HQ. And how likely are they to report people for insisting on being their customer and making them profit?

Where your HQ is have zero meaning here, what counts is where you have your offices, where you employ people, where you have financial resources and where you do business. If any of those points exists within say China then China can (and so does many other countries including the US so I'm not singling out China here) put pressure on a company to follow the rules or they loose the rights to all those assets. And in China those rules are that you hand over data if the PRC asks for it just like how it works with the Patriot Act in the US (the main difference being that you have to present a warrant signed by a judge in the US AFAIK but don't take my word on it, I'm no lawyer nor do I play one on TV).

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou are just making stuff up here.
"For a few seconds"? Why would you assume that? Could easily be a lot longer.
I have no clue what time frame is needed for Steam to trigger that popup on your end, or under what conditions it fires, or if it is just random, or...

Could just be a "user X who was selected for survey has come online" trigger, which would be fine with even just some seconds...

The point OP made was "were able to connect for a short time" so I assumed that a short time was in the neighbourhood of seconds. Why? Because I also assume that the PRC keeps a very tight eye on their firewall and that such accidental unblocks are remedied ASAP. My main argument this point is that it sounded more like Steam was able to connect so Steam collected data, when there is a lot more that have to happen for the survey to be both received and sent, which includes the user having to click in a "I agree".

So yes I am making stuff up here, but no more and no less than either OP nor you. None of us sits on any facts, so this is all 100% speculation. I just find this point to be highly improbable.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYes, absolutely.
You radically overestimate how much people care about stuff like that.
We are not talking about some (rightfully) paranoid dissenters, but just a gamer who wants to play a game.

Granted, I just somehow believe that people living under the watchful eye of their government and society does things with a bit more caution than you and me who lives under more or less total freedom (and even if our freedom isn't total there are a lot of people who live like it is without consequences while people in China most likely can see the consequences of people misbehaving).

In the end only Valve (and the PRC) knows, I just got the feeling from OP that this is telemetry that Valve collects just by being connected while it does require a manual step to send in the survey and one can opt out of it completely as well.

The most likely scenario to me is that it is the very same that happened last time, aka that this is Internet Cafe data, people using a rented machine at such a Cafe would have no problems from any of my above mentioned reasons to just click OK on whatever they get since it is not their machine.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: 04ELYNo way Valve and Linux scared Microsoft to put effort, we're going good! :grin:

of course we do.
we kicked their butt in the server, super computer and mobile devices.
consoles are able to reach numbers as big as 150 millions devices and we are doing relatively good , especially if we use as reference the first xbox.

if other companies like google (chromebooks), amazon (luna) start beting on linux, then we will have big capital investing on us, so even if valve isnt the one to bring linux to the masses, if they show its possible others may follow and someone finally break windows monopoly.

valve is proving that is possible WITHOUT exclusives to break into that space, nowadays most of the games people want do work and people seems to be willing to compromise on the others or wait for then to work instead of dualboot/changing to windows on their deck.
not to mention the network effect that is starting to get shappe on everything related, all techs related to gaming like wine,dxvk, drivers, anti cheat, lutris are evolving on our ecosystem faster than ever, if microsoft dont manage to desacelerate it, they might get into serious trouble.

imagine an chromebook with full integration with your phone (transfer calls etc), full support for android apps and the same compatibility of windows games/softwares that steamOS have + a few exclusive apps from google.
imagine luna using linux as their main system instead of windows, and maybe even geforce now with nvidia having an reason to put linux as their first class citizen at least on servers.
(amazon already is looking at techs like wine)

on linux already have more games than any console ever had (counting only verified+playble) more than mac (if we include native+verified+playable), the only pc platform with more games is windows, it also still get more games per day than we do, but that can change.
as for mobile, its another niche but some gamers play both including android emulation for pc and if we count mobile games, then the number skyrockt for an ridiculous high number!
even non steam games are becoming easier than ever to install, im starting to get hope again!

Well to be fair they where never big in either servers or supercomputers. So it was not so much us kicking them out as we simply kept them out so to speak. Mobile devices was a whole other story though. AFAIK the Steam Deck have sold about 1M units which is nothing compared with the amount of Xbox series X that MS have sold so I don't think that they actually see it as any form of competition, at least not yet.

And then it also looks like this whole thing was just something that a single MS developer tried to sell in house and failed to do so.

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