Wow. It's kinda massively huge when compared against Godot engine's ultra-tiny download. Gonna have to give it a try and see if there's any justification for bein' a 4 gig download.

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I know Windows die-hards who are buying/reserved a Steam Deck with no intent of replacing the built-in operating system, so if nothing else maybe it'll push the Linux user count a tad higher. Here's hoping… Even if not, the changes it's brought about regarding DRM/Anti-Cheat are/will be a massive benefit.

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Quoting: kuhpunktSteam is getting 20 years old soon. Has Valve ever exploited their situation? Did they ever raise the cut they demand? Did they ever make it worse for customers? No, they improved.

Because they have a philosophy that works and makes sense. They understand that this is a symbiotic relationship... and that's good.

In the vast majority of cases competition is great because in the vast majority of cases people almost always abuse a position of "power" or "dominance". However, I gotta totally agree with you on your assessment of Valve/Steam. I was not a real fan of them at first (way back in the time before…) but they really have in large part just continued to improve.

Sadly, all potential competition has chosen not to even try to compete on merit at all, by creating an equivalent or superior product/service. While Valve earns their 30% cut in a variety of ways that make it more than deserved, companies like Epic take pot shots at them for charging "too much", and play lame exclusivity games with developers and customers, while not offering even a fraction of the functionality, capability, or services Valve has.

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Quoting: randyl

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: GuestIt's an email to Battleye to turn it on. Unless they're really going to "actively" support it, which I question, why all the theater? Just send the damn email.

There's quite a few reasons actually.

For starters, enabling it would require sign-off by different people in the company. This would also need thorough testing, to ensure they're actually happy with the protection it provides. Mechanically simple for them to enable by asking, sure, but big online games have a lot to think about when enabling a new platform.

Asking for people to post in a forum to show support is simply silly. Look at the numbers and the fact that Valve's money did all the porting work for them. I get them not wanting to support us because we're small and it was too much work, but at this point, asking for forum posts is nothing short of pathetic.

You know what's silly? The 1 - 2% asking for any game support or accommodation at all, while feeling entirely entitled to being treated equally. Why is it so much for a company to ask for a little show of public support from their user base? Linux gamers are asking this company to spend time and money on something that most likely will be a financial loss. There is a risk involved with taking this sort of support on and some people could be on the hook for the decision. The safest way out here is for them to just ignore the anti-cheat support request. The question Linux gamers should be asking themselves is why should Ubisoft support the platform and what can they do to encourage them? If it were me and this were important I would start a positive social media campaign, get messages on their forum, and on Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News, Reddit, and other social news/discussion platforms and make our collective voice loud in a friendly way.

It's too much to ask because in the past this same company has actively ignored all requests no matter how polite or friendly, regardless of how many people are in the requesting group. Some of us have zero faith that any amount of posting in their stupid fucking forum is going to have the slightest bit of effect, because this company has traditionally been excessively hostile to Linux users in general. Why would they suddenly change their stripes now?

Quoting: randylLinux Land needs to be a lot less hostile and a lot more welcoming and embracing of change and acceptance if they want to see the adoption it's long been asking for. The buzz around Linux adoption through Proton and the Steam Deck is an opportunity that may not come again for a while and it would be a shame for it to be wasted. If Linux gamers and users keep up their hostile attitude people probably aren't going to adopt the platform and a backlash could occur instead.

"Less hostile" in the way that Windows users have been "less hostile" to people like me? Harassing, trolling, stalking, making endless hateful comments, using every stereotypical insult in the book? That sorta "less hostile"? So sick and tired of being labeled as "toxic" literally just because I use Linux when most of my life I've actively gone out of my way to help people with computer issues regardless of which operating system they chose to use, yet it's literally never labeled as "toxic" to literally stalk me (or other Linux users) across multiple forums to endlessly harass us, because we're "a minority group" among computer users.

Just makes me positively sick that people will endlessly harass a group (or an individual) in the most hateful fashion, but then when some folks in that group finally start to get sick of the abuse enough to speak up about it, they're "toxic" for not just shutting up and accepting their abuse and begging for more. Funny how they're always suddenly all polite and your best friend in the world when their computer's all broken though… Y'know, when they think they can take advantage of you as their "free tech-support guy".

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: STiAT

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: STiATI'd like a competitor to Steam.

What would be the benefit of that?

Less costs for devs/publishers. I know AAAs usually csn easily afford that and still make millions, but indies often can't really afford it.

And besides that?

What has always been the benefit of competition for the consumer? It forces companies to continue to improve, or lose customers to their competition. With little or no competition, a company can basically abuse the hell outta their customers, and nobody can do jack about it. For examples of this behavior, look to Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Xfinity, and many others who abuse the hell out of their monopoly (or near monopoly) positions in the "marketplace" and notice how they get away with some of the shadiest practices simply because the lack of competition for people to switch to gives them that ability.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: win8linuxI've seen the last half of that sentence in particular happen with all kinds of software over the years and there are pretty good chances that it will happen again sometime after this comment.

"I know about computers; of course I should use Arch rather than this 'beginner' distro. 'Remove essential packages'? Do as I say!"

I recently watched a "YouTube famous computer guy" do exactly this thing while trying to install Steam and run a game. Of course many WinTrolls in the comments thread used this as an excuse to point out "See? Linux isn't 'user friendly' at all.", despite the fact that the guy purposely chose to drop to a command shell, force the issue that the GUI warned him about and disallowed, and then actively ignored the huge and obvious warning that this was sure to break things if he proceeds.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYeah, it'll take a while. Good thing this announcement comes with still a couple months before Steam Deck launch. Should give them a bit of time to get ducks in row.

There's also sure to be a fair few "hacks" by creative reverse engineers patching support in for their personal favorites where not otherwise supported, too. All just a matter of time…

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Well, they've pretty much lost me as a customer if that's their stance. I don't buy games with no native Linux build. I **might** if the developer/publisher at least tests on Proton and gives it proper first-class support (bugfixes/patches for game-caused Proton breakage, etc), but they don't, so the only Windows-only games I end up getting are either free, or came as part of a bundle containing Linux games I wanted.

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Shocked that progress on this front came so quickly, but also pleased. I'm still sticking with Godot (eagerly looking forward to the 4.x line), but I'm not gonna complain even a little bit about more competition in the cross-platform open source game engine space. It can only be a good thing.

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I'ma stick with Godot + Blender, since it already works well for me, 4.x is comin' soon, and it's already working on all the major platforms, where this new engine still only has Windows downloads available on their website. Nice to have other open source 3D engine options hitting the scene tho. Surely worth keeping an eye on.

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