Quoting: Guest

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: GuestValve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next [External Link] festival

Sorry, but is there some point you're trying to make?

Yes, in response to your "Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers" which I have demonstrated is just not true. There are also other mechanisms within Steam that are constantly being developed like recommendation systems, etc.

Well Steam doesn't. The developer/publisher still has to make it happen. Steam is a marketplace - it provides the infrastructure, but don't confuse that with actively marketing someone's game for them. And those other mechanisms all rely on gobbling up existing user data, moving it through some algorithms, and feeding the output back to the users; it's the typical case of Valve having the customer base do such work without Valve needing to put much effort in. Is there some kind of problem with that I'm not aware of?
If Valve put a title up front & centre on their store, then that won't come out of the 30% cut. That's from something extra.

Valve specifically puts on sales for certain games. They are for example planing a "Games from Germany" event that will happen in a few months.

It's their incentive to do that... to sell more games. To sell more games you gotta put them in front of people.

Valve has a sale != Valve will market my games for me.

It's putting the games right on the storefront with a popup. What more do you want?

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: GuestValve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next [External Link] festival

Sorry, but is there some point you're trying to make?

Yes, in response to your "Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers" which I have demonstrated is just not true. There are also other mechanisms within Steam that are constantly being developed like recommendation systems, etc.

Well Steam doesn't. The developer/publisher still has to make it happen. Steam is a marketplace - it provides the infrastructure, but don't confuse that with actively marketing someone's game for them. And those other mechanisms all rely on gobbling up existing user data, moving it through some algorithms, and feeding the output back to the users; it's the typical case of Valve having the customer base do such work without Valve needing to put much effort in. Is there some kind of problem with that I'm not aware of?
If Valve put a title up front & centre on their store, then that won't come out of the 30% cut. That's from something extra.

Valve specifically puts on sales for certain games. They are for example planing a "Games from Germany" event that will happen in a few months.

It's their incentive to do that... to sell more games. To sell more games you gotta put them in front of people.

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Quoting: CatKillerThe $100 that developers pay is minimalistic gatekeeping, it doesn't fund anything.

The $100 go to charity.

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Quoting: berarmaMaybe Valve doesn't care but users should. Proton games come without support, that means the user doesn't have any rights regarding their purchase. In case of issues the developer can answer with "no Linux, play it on Windows" and they're right. Native games are supported, you're entitled to have the game working on Linux as the developer promised and they shouldn't do anything to prevent it.

To date, no Proton game is supported. What does Valve have to say about this?

I guess that's why Valve have the "verified" thing they are now working on.

If they verify it...

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Quoting: GuestIt's quite a non-committal answer, the sort you get from politicians.

Judging from investment and effort, it very much looks like Valve prefer "Proton". Just easier for them, makes complete sense. Supposedly however the Deck isn't as closed up as consoles, so it shouldn't matter what Valve want - it should matter what the community wants, what developers want.

How is it non-committal? And how is Proton easier for Valve? The constantly have to update it and work on it to make new games working. Native games would be easier for them.

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Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: kuhpunktA lot of games relatively speaking isn't enough when you can't play most of the modern games.

You can just install Windows, which is what people do with custom built PCs.

Which has nothing to do with the entire discussion? We're talking about Linux.

On a minor point, I really think "most of the modern games" is not a good phrase. Linux has more native games than any current-gen console, and a large part of those games are "modern" - developed recently, with current tools, current themes, current genres, some with innovative ideas that had not been seen before. It's not like they are all emulated old games (and there are extremely few old native games), or even retro-styled games. What Linux didn't have was most of the AAA games, most of the popular big names with large budgets, which is completely different. Or, if you compare only with Windows and not with console, "most of the games" in general. But implying that small games and indie games aren't "modern" is a very narrow view.

Yeah and those native games are mostly from smaller teams etc... where is Witcher 3 as a native for Linux? You didn't have it back then.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: kuhpunktA lot of games relatively speaking isn't enough when you can't play most of the modern games.

Well, it was (and still is) enough for me.
Not enough to make lots of people change system though.

And that's the problem. If you can't just click and play GTA5, Fifa, Call of Duty, Dark Souls and all the other stuff, you won't reach the mass market. That just was not possible back then and a few AA games like Metro were just not enough.

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Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: kuhpunktSteam Machines didn't work, because there was no software to play - because devs didn't want to port. That's the whole reason why Valve put so much effort into Proton.

I can argue the opposite. Devs didn't want to port becasue Steam Machines didn't work. Software stack wasn't ready. Marketing was non existent, potential sales didn't look promising and so on. It was too early. Proton isn't the main point here even though it helps of course.

Even more so, a number of devs actually did port, we got a lot of games (relatively speaking) from that time in particular. Only afterwards, because Steam Machines flopped, some of those were disappointed and didn't make subsequent ports. Not all, though, it worked out for many. Steam machines failed devs, not the opposite.

The Steam Machines just weren't very compelling. It was a prebuilt PC at normal value with the Steam brand. SteamOS was certainly a disadvantage for most people, but I don't think "have to manually install Windows" was the one big problem for the audience.

A lot of games relatively speaking isn't enough when you can't play most of the modern games.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: kuhpunktSteam Machines didn't work, because there was no software to play - because devs didn't want to port. That's the whole reason why Valve put so much effort into Proton.

I can argue the opposite. Devs didn't want to port becasue Steam Machines didn't work. Software stack wasn't ready. Marketing was non existent, potential sales didn't look promising and so on. It was too early. Proton isn't the main point here even though it helps of course.

Steam Machines were overpriced hardware with no incentive to buy, when you could just download the OS and install it. I have a Steam Machine here - didn't pay a single cent for it.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: kuhpunktBecause it's not a priority. It clearly didn't work in the past.

That worked just fine. Steam Machines didn't work. That's not the same as teaching games developers to release for Linux.

Steam Machines didn't work, because there was no software to play - because devs didn't want to port. That's the whole reason why Valve put so much effort into Proton.

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