Quoting: Guppy

Quoting: TheRiddick

Quoting: whizse"ESD strap should make skin contact! Oops."

Still haven't ESD kill any device I believe in my whole life of electronic bga repairs. I think you need to spend 1hr charging up on carpet first! :)

Simply discharging by touching the grounded chassi of a computer before you start touching electric components is enough to keep it from happening unless your shuffling your woolen socks on gradma carpet while your doing it, in this case that isn't an option though (so discharge on a nearby doorknob and wait for until your fingers stop being numb ;) ).

But having said that it clear that the trained professional have never used a ESD strap before, also I suspect his gloves would form an ESD barrier all on their own so it's kind of redundant anyway.

LTT has video about this :-) It's hard to destroy something with static electricity, but I'd rather be paranoid than unlucky and really destroy it. [External Link]

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Quoting: BielFPsOn the contrary, popular games can separate a company from being a big profitable one to bankruptcy. Take Nintendo for example, a multi millionaire multinational company which holds in 3 specific franchises: Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. It doesn't matter if they have less games that other platforms, or if the competition have more capable performance, because people are willing to buy their products in order to play those popular ones. And if for some reason they launch an console without those games, then it would fail for sure.

But they have control over exclusivity. You want to play Mario kart? Buy Switch. There's zero chance valve would convince other developers on Linux exclusivity to make this work. They could only make their games so exclusive, but what have they released lately? Alyx? It is already trying to take this approach with VR. Exclusivity for both Linux and VR would kill it.

Quoting: BielFPsThey still could do it by sponsoring already consolidated games (like the ones in this article for example). If Linux was the only platform that steam supported, then Valve would need to do this (like consoles do for example). Since Valve profits from both systems they don't have any reason to heavily push one of them.

Well, they can achieve the same result with a proton. Moreover, it is possible that the approach of sponsoring development was what convinced Anticheat to support proton.

Quoting: BielFPsA whole lot, and this article is the illustration of it. When you're a big company selling something quantities of sales matter (sometimes over quality unfortunately), 1 game played by thousands matter more than 100 games played by 10 people, you may don't agree with it but it's the reality.

Almost everyone has an old game that they think they'll play sometimes even if they're not playing it at the moment.

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Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: ArtenYou've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

Again, my point is some people (don't know if it's your case too) are thinking Valve is doing all of this in a "holy crusade of pushing Linux game for the greater good"

Let's pretend this was true, a very effective way would be for them to subsidize the development of Linux versions of the most popular games at the moment for example, but this wouldn't make them (Valve) profit more with sales than they already do with those games being windows only (again they profit in both cases)

Quoting: BeamboomSPEAK... With the ghosts?! 😮

It's a feature of the game :)

I don't know why they do what they do, and I don't really care. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. In fact, even if they're only doing it for profit, I don't have the slightest problem with it. I'm just saying, there's no way to rule out other options.

Sponsoring popular games would not be an effective use of resources, regardless of the reason. Porting the game takes some time and you do not know if it will be popular even at the time of completion of the port. Besides, how many people play just popular games? How many games are you willing to give up just to jump on another platform? For this, making Linux a popular gaming platform seems to be the best way.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

i certainly never wasted billion of dollars into something not expecting profits in return.

Do you have billion of dollars?

You think all the billionaires giving away their assets to charity are doing it for profit? Some of them do it for taxes, but part of it gives away so much that it doesn't make tax sense. They're doing it for something other than monetary gain. Some do it for a good feeling, someone else to be accepted back into the human race (Gates). Nobel, for example, created the Nobel Prize because he wanted to improve his reputation.

I keep saying valve can do it for profit (which I personally don't think is a bad thing), but they doesn't have to. They can count on losses to be acceptable or they can even guess that they might be profitable, but we don't have the information to say they're doing it for profit. Even that profit may end up being a side benefit of their efforts to do it for a different purpose.

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Quoting: BielFPsYes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

I didn't say they didn't want to profit from it. I wrote that we can't be sure why they're doing it, and I listed profit as one option.

You've never done anything for any reason other than profit? Or are Valve shareholders of a different species than you? Maybe you'd be right if they were Ferengi.

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Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: AussieEeveeIt's more than just an opinion.

I don't doubt that he truly thinks Linux it's better (even Microsoft knows this), my main point is that Valve in the end of the day it's a company, and their main goal is to make money, so it's different to us (as users) who truly wants to support Linux for personal preferences.

Valve is contributing a lot to Linux and this is a fact, it's just that they're not doing this for ideological reasons like some people in the Linux community thinks so.

Don't forget valve is not a publicly traded company. It's not a company with a million anonymous shareholders, but with a limited number that knows each other.
For a publicly traded company, the sole common goal of shareholders is a desire for profit. This may not apply to a private company. In principle, Valve's goal is whatever shareholders make up their mind about.
- It could just be profit.
- It could be revenge on MS if they've ever had a fight with them.
- They can just be really big Linux fans.
- It could also be an effort to make the world a better place.
...

And from the beginning of the effort to port Steam to Linux, they could move from any category to another.
I acknowledge that profit is represented in the operation of Steam itself. As far as linux efforts go, it can be a profit, but I'm not sure.

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Quoting: DerpFox

Quoting: CatKillerSo now all Valve need to do is keep this device highly desirable, and sell enough units that it represents a significant number of users rather than a potentially significant number of potential users.

EZ.

That will be a big problem if Valve keep selling their hardware exclusively on Steam and not in the usual store circuit. Particularly for the Deck, whatever people say it's not just an ultra-mobile gaming computer it's a handheld console. And console sell way better when you can found them everywhere.

They're sold out for six months. If they start selling it outside of steam, it'll be when they meet all the demand from Steam. If you look at index, you will find that constantly some variant of is out of stock. From this I conclude that even the Index is not yet able to produce in sufficient quantities.

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So, it's opt-in for developers. It's new, there are possible bugs in it and developers can fear army of linux cheaters if there are some corner cases. I hope they remove opt-in, or change it into opt-out in future, but right now it is understandable solution.

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Quoting: SalvatosIf it works anything like the shader pre-caching, I’m not looking forward to it. 2+ hours of processing for no noticeable gains and it has to do it again every time the client is updated (or whatever the actual trigger is)? No thanks.

Though to be fair, that last part seems to have gotten better with the implementation of their new Downloads page.

I think pre-caching is triggered everytime when are shaders updated. Probably its when are updated GPU drivers or if game update changed shaders.

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Quoting: skinnyrafDo we like software patents now, because Valve submits them and they serve Linux gaming community? :whistle:

We still don't like patents, but what can be achived with this patent look promising.

Another think is, if somebody else submit this and Valve begin use it, they can be sued for patent infringement. So we don't know why they have this patent. They can have this only for protection and for bargaining if somebody else sue them for another patent infringement. That is valid use from my perspective. I'm not ok with this, if they have it for attacking others.

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