Really good news!

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Unfortunately of no use to me.
Whenever Wadjet Eye releases a new game, my wallet just magically gets lighter and a game appears in my library on Steam.

Truly mysterious.

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This is probably the first time I have seen or heard the word "poncle".

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Sorry, can't hear you, cause I'm striking the earth so hard!

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Quoting: PublicNuisanceI'd trade Proton for more native games.

Are you unwell?

With Proton, I can play every game (well, almost). At almost identical performance (benchmarks showing a 3-10% loss compared to native Windows).
With a few more native games, I still couldn't play the majority of games I'd like to play.
And the native ones have no guarantee whatsoever to actually have good performance (sometimes, the ports are just straight worse than the Proton version).

A game having a native Linux version is a nice bonus at this point. But no longer a necessity, and that's quite amazing.

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Ah, once again showing why these lists are sometimes really weird depending on what the candidates and categories are.
Still WAY better than the ones hosted by a tightly knit clique of friends with aligning interests a select number of professional journalists weighing all options and striving for objectivity and not just their fancy.

Public votes such as these at least give you a better overall picture of what people liked (and how much) - but you sometimes completely lose any meaning of the categories. And then it all just comes down to a competition in popularity.

I'm honestly surprised by how many winners actually fit the category, but a few are head scratchers:
CP 2077 for "labor of love" - uh... fixing your released mess to be on the status it should have been from the get-go is a "labor of love" now? That says more about gamers' acceptance of terrible standards than it does about CD Project, really...
Especially compared to pearls like Deep Rock Galactic, which has been uniquely awesome and indeed full of love since its first day of early access.

Spider-Man for outstanding visual style is weird, too. Sure, it looks great, but its STYLE is just the standard "make it look realistic".

Stray for "Most Innovative Gameplay" is just outright insulting.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very cute game with great atmosphere and an interesting world, but the category is "Innovative Gameplay". And Stray is a walking sim with very mild platforming - with the only thing special about its gameplay being the controlled character being a cat.
Yeah, yeah, the internet loves cats. I am aware - but what a punch to the face of the titles that would have been way more deserving of that particular award.
Most likely this one just came down to "what game is known by more people".

Of course, some of the contenders are head scratchers as well - Mount & Blade II, for example. I love it, great game!
But it's pretty much a carbon copy of M&B I with updated graphics, interface, very few mechanics, etc.
I have a feeling people didn't quite know what to vote into the candidates for that category. It's rather difficult to tell what is innovative if you do not have a very broad knowledge of games.

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Quoting: EikeAs it's a developer site, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been the case years ago already. I'm at a big conservative company, and even we started to use Linux. (After 25 years of Linux usage at home and Windows usage at work, I finally get some bits of Linux at the company! )

So what you're saying is that it took you 25 years of nagging? :P

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Quoting: BeamboomI'm not an evangelist for exclusives but This is a MASSIVE argument for, though. Not only in regards to screen Resolution and gamepad support, but even more importantly the chipsets and processing power.

When software is tailor made for one specific hardware, it enables the developers to write a lot more effective code. This is why the consoles can perform as good as they do. Just look at the PlayStation and the incredibly smooth and visually stunning experiences they can deliver there year after year on hardware that's nothing compared to a modern pc. The difference is staggering and a very strong demonstration of how exclusive code CAN perform.
And who doesn't want the most out of the hardware they have purchased?

Again, it's easy to argue against exclusivity, but there's also weighty arguments FOR.

Not really.

In order for any of this to be even remotely helpful or useful, Steam Deck would need a development environment for it that could rival the one for Switch, Xbox and PS. Everything from specific libraries over debug dev kits to platform-owner-side-quality-control.
That environment doesn't exist.

Existing engines would need specific optimizations for the Deck.
That optimization doesn't exist.

Oh, and exclusives that people would actually want to play.
On a handheld device that does not have any existing customer base with many years of "trust" and "loyalty" unlike other console platforms.
Good luck with that.

In other words, Valve would have to spend a ton of money to provide an environment even remotely comparable to that of Microsoft's, Sony's or Nintendo's.
And then spend another ton on developers so that they actually develop the exclusives.
Just to have a fraction of a chance at that strategy.
Sounds like a horrible idea to me.

It also has to be said that the "smooth and visually stunning experience" on consoles is bought by severely limiting framerates on most such titles. I find 60+ fps a lot more important for the experience than visual detail.

It's not that I couldn't imagine some dev that is in love with the Deck for some reason creating a game specifically made for the Deck's somewhat unique input system.
Or that Valve would fund such a thing.
Might be fun, but if that ever happens, it'll be a gigantic rarity and the dev will get a lot of flak if they don't also enable it on normal PC platforms.

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Do a barrel roll!

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Given the wild inflation in some areas, increasing the prices there is just good business sense.

Still kinda funny how expensive some of their "complete" game versions with all DLC are.

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