Quoting: EikeAs far as I know you have to have a Steam account to order, right?

For now, but they'll have to rely on third party distribution if they're planning to sell worldwide.

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Quoting: CFWhitmanTrue enough, and that is the trick. Valve have to be able to make it clear what currently works well on the Steam Deck without it seeming to mean anything more than that about the game. An Opt-in program may or may not be the best way to accomplish that.

A way Valve can make it work is to put a warning on the label of steam deck saying something like:

"Dear costumer, please access https://store.steampowered.com [External Link] to check which games are compatible with this device"

And make this information available to all the visitors (even the ones without a steam account for example). This would make Valve get rid of the responsibility for people being misleading like this case for example, but could give the idea for other people that something is "broken" for some games, like I've said here

Possibly leading to this situation which won't be possible as Catkiller already informed and that could result in a backlash from some developers as I also said here

Summing up my point: Opt-in this information could be bad for Valve, and the opposite could be bad for some developers :smile:

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Quoting: CFWhitmanThis is not really a proper evaluation of the "Opt-in" situation. If the majority of users don't activate it, it (at least in theory) will be because the majority of users don't care whether it works on the Steam Deck or not.

You don't have to opt-in in order to buy the device, so "motivation" doesn't really matter in this case.

Quoting: CFWhitmanAs long as Valve makes it clear enough (by opt-in or another method) that the evaluation is in regards to the Steam Deck and the Steam Deck alone*

Make it clear means easily display this information to general public

Quoting: CFWhitmanit shouldn't be a problem, and calling it a 'mark of shame' would be a fairly substantial exaggeration.

"The mark of shame" is just a term we're using here to simplify (while I vote to make it official :tongue:), but it could be considered bad PR as I described on my early post.

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Quoting: EikeNo.

What hasn't been promised doesn't have to work.

The "promised" part in this case is the "Deck verified" part, which is why this information must be accessible (public, not opt-in)

The only "promised" part by Valve that is implied is "you can play steam games on it", anything else is technical detail and can be used as a legal argument if the information is not easily displayed for the consumer.

Have you wonder why some products have some stupid advises in the product label, like a bottle of bleach with the warning "do not drink it" for example? Because all of this can be used as a argument in the legal court in case of problems. Just some details of the legal system that may vary worldwide :grin:

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Quoting: EikeWant to know what runs before buying the Deck? Activate the option, have a look.

Since we are discussing this in a Linux focused community, it's safe to assume that most people here are at least in the "power user" level of knowledge of how computer works, so I understand that sometime it's easy for us to forget that this kind of information is not accessible for a majority of people.

You have to consider that: While this is obvious to people like us, there's also people who don't know how to check this before and will be buying Deck only based on the marketing made by the internet.

Imagine this hypothetical case:
-A kid likes to play PUBG (example) and see on the internet that there's this "new console" that can run steam games (driven only by marketing) and asks their parents to buy it intending to just play PUBG on it. The parents them spent money buying this console, only to discover that "the console isn't working" for some reason (remember both the kid and the parents doesn't have the technical knowledge in this case). Them the parents demands refund because because of it claiming that the "video game isn't working properly". In this case, while we (power users or above) know that technically in this case are the parents fault for not checking this information before, and maybe resulting in denial of the refund. This could open a case for a possible lawsuit against Valve / the store that sold it for them claiming that this was false advertised.

You have to think Eike that, different from consoles that people buy the device before buying the games, in the Steam Deck case people already bought the games before buying the device, and "less tech" people may be confused thinking that "any steam game works with steam console", and has to be prepared for those people making this kind of information accessible, in order to avoid possible legal problems (so it better not be opt-in info).

Imagine you buying a play station 5 and your play station game for some reason doesn't working on it, absurd right? that's how a lot of people will see steam deck if it gets popular :smile:

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Quoting: EhvisMaybe that's the reason. Learn with the games that won't have the biggest impact before tackling the big ones.

Portal 2 / Left 4 Dead 2 also have more active players than hl2, and both of them received this update before. So I don't think that's the main reason...

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Quoting: EikeThey could make the display optional. Those who care (and should know what it means) can switch it on.
I don't think they need to, though.

Mostly the same situation:

-Opt-in: The majority of users will never activate it, "defeating" the purpose of putting it in the first place.

-Opt-out: Everyone will see the mark of shame, resulting in possible bad PR

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Funny they prioritized Half Life 2 series before Team Fortress 2, which has way more active players.

Quoting: mphuZAfter adding DXVK (L4D2, P2), the developers did not switch the render in the game itself? Only in the startup parameters? It's so stupid..

I guess it's because they are probably in some kind of "beta" test using DXVK in compilation time, but I agree that this option should be inside the game menu (or in the game launcher). Hopefully they'll include it later.

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Quoting: SolitaryHow can it be "mark of shame" if the publisher releases the game only for Windows and does not care about some other (new/different) platform? Do you expect that they will lose Windows users because of this new platform that the game isn't even running on?

Publisher might take some flak from users, just like they do if users demand controller support, bugfixes or hell... Linux support. Same is going to be with Deck support. But that's all between users and the dev/publisher.

Try to imagine the developer / publisher side situation: You're selling your game in a store which bites 30% of each sale you do, and suddenly your game is now advertised with the mark of shame in the store because of the lack of support for a OS that you didn't intended to support (for whatever reason), and this can give the idea for some customers that there's "something broken" in your product (even if this does not affect you like windows players), because you can't expect every consumer on steam to know what that mark means.

The least developer can expect from a store that takes 30% of your profit is to not officially give "bad publicity" about your game, doesn't matter if it's true or not. (different from users review btw, which are customers opinion)

So I imagine Valve can face the following dilemma:
-They make this information public to every client, and risk to face backlash from some developers / publishers claiming Valve is making "bad PR" of their products

-They make this information available only to steam deck users, and risk people asking for refund (deck) after discover that "games are not working in this console". In my opinion this also defeats the purpose of having all this work to do verification.

Of course I'm not confirming that any of this will happen, but it is all in the realm of possibility.

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Quoting: CatKillerI fully expect that Valve's response would be "good luck with that." Politely, of course.

I second that, but I also expect someone making some noise before.

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