Quoting: EikeI can't say either how often this will happen. But most ordinary people to not tinker with their device following some YouTube tips. This might be an impression to get when moving in nerd circles and their websites, but it's not the average Joe and Jane.

Then average Joe and Jane might not even buy deck in this case, usually what brings people to buy a new console is "I want to play this specific game on it".

Let's take the hype of the moment for example: Amazon's New World

If Steam deck was released today and you said to the average users "you can play New world on it" then this might give impulse for people to buy it. (Gave this example as a "hyped" game, let's not enter into the technical specs)

-If you say "This game doesn't work on it" and average people won't buy it, then it'll result in less steam deck sales.

-Less steam deck sales results in less games being bought because of it.

-Less games being bought results in companies not bothering to opt-in / support AC on SteamOS / Linux.

-Companies not supporting AC software on SteamOS / Linux means the situation will remain the same for us as it is today (or worse if Valve suddenly decides to reduce investments on Linux gaming).

The two main point I said before all these people quoting me was
-Valve profit from both Windows and Linux sales, despite deck success or not
-Valve is not support Linux for ideological reasons, but because Linux is a way to make then independent to Microsoft.

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Quoting: ArtenBut they have control over exclusivity. You want to play Mario kart? Buy Switch.

Exactly, which confirms the point I'm trying to say

You said before

Quoting: ArtenSponsoring popular games would not be an effective use of resources, regardless of the reason.

and

Quoting: ArtenBesides, how many people play just popular games?

And then you give yourself an example. The fact people are willing to spend money on a console only to play a popular game / franchise (with exclusivity or not) shows the power of popular games.

You have no idea how many consoles Sony / Microsoft sold just because of people who want to play FIFA with a joystick. :grin:

Quoting: ArtenWell, 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.

If they support it, AC works different from games so those who opt in will have to make sure the AC software is not banning people wrongly, and to do this has costs. So don't be surprised if the situation doesn't change so much after deck release.

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

Old games doesn't generate so much revenue like new games, specially if people already bough it. And if those old games are already working right now them opt-in in the AC support won't be necessary for the companies.

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Quoting: CFWhitmanThey can do this as long as they don't care about missing out on any sales that would go to Steam Deck owners. In that case

It all depends on the math with costs with supporting another platform (yes support, because they have to make sure bugs don't happen like the AC banning people for using proton for example) versus potentially new sales (those who already bough the game / DLC doesn't count)

Quoting: CFWhitmanChanging the operating system to Windows is not something the majority of people will be interested in doing (especially not permanently).

With motivation (like more games / that specific game who doesn't run on steam) and a YouTube tutorial they can.

Quoting: CFWhitmanYes, very much so. Valve making sure Windows will install is in no way the same thing as supporting it.

And what else do they need? Steam already supports Windows since it's conception, and AMD will probably release those drivers for windows too (not doing so would be bad PR for then).

Quoting: CFWhitmanYou seem assured that running Windows on the Steam Deck will be a very common thing.

It will if games that people want to play doesn't work with SteamOS, once people spend money with the device they will do whatever it takes to make sure it works as they intended, and Valve will have profit from that in both ways.

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An apparent planned competitor to Steam named "Vapor"

An apparent planned competitor to Steam named "Steam" lol

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Quoting: ArtenI don't know why they do what they do, and I don't really care. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Spoiler, click me

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It's okay to be ideological about this, I'm only stating that Valve isn't. It's just business.

Quoting: ArtenSponsoring popular games would not be an effective use of resources, regardless of the reason.

On 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.

Quoting: ArtenPorting the game takes some time and you do not know if it will be popular even at the time of completion of the port.

They 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.

Quoting: ArtenBesides, how many people play just popular games?

A 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.

Quoting: ArtenHow many games are you willing to give up just to jump on another platform?

This is the main problem I stated in my first post, the fact that you have to "give up" on something in order to play on Linux. For average consumers (aka the majority of people who give money to game companies) if you have platform A that you can play 1 and 2 and Platform B that you can only play 2, then they tend to choose platform 1 because they don't need to "give up" on anything.

Quoting: ArtenFor this, making Linux a popular gaming platform seems to be the best way.

In a long term? sure we both are aware of it, but talking about the current time "Linux" is the guy holding people to play their favorite games. Yes yes I'm aware this isn't the case, but for most of the people they see the in this way unfortunately.

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Quoting: F.UltraDon't forget that the release of the Deck is a major event, so there will be adds, and promotions and perhaps even parties. As a game dev you want as much publicity / visibility as possible so they should be interested in being included in the upcoming Deck promotions.

This is one of the reasons why the big publishing houses never release a native linux build even though they obviously have one internally (for Stadia) -> that doing so won't get them inclusion on some big event and why they instead release on say the Switch since Nintendo will give them free air time.

So if Valve handles to release of the Deck properly then there should be huge interest to be on the hype train.

Indeed

But if Steam Machines thought us anything is that keeping support is more important that just the initial support.

Of course I'm also expecting game developers to take a ride on the hype train, but we don't want them to get off after the first station :)

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Quoting: CFWhitmanThey really can't do this. They would be ridiculed for telling their customers to install Windows on the Steam Deck

They don't need to say this exactly, they can just keep saying as they says today "Sorry we don't have support for your platform" and let the users do the math.

Quoting: CFWhitmanunless some percentage approaching half of all Steam Deck users were already doing it anyway, and that is very highly unlikely.

I don't think so, specially if this results in "more games being available to my console". Remember that not all Steam Deck buyers are Linux fans (most don't even care about which system they're running) so more games (specially the not support popular ones) are a great motivation for people to change (which was my first comment).

Imagine for example, if there was a (legal) way to run Nintendo games in the play station, where the procedure would involve just tweaking the system's console, even non technical users would have interest in doing this procedure because it would mean "more new games" as result.

Quoting: CFWhitmanThough Valve will not put up any obstacles to installing Windows, they have no intention of supporting Windows on the Steam Deck.

Yep [External Link]

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Quoting: GuestThey would lose the investment made for Proton (hence, the Deck).
I don't think it isn't that much.

A minimal acceptable one, check the analogy I made in my other posts.

They can make this (minimal) risky investment because Proton / Deck are just a sub product for their main revenue (steam games). In other words, their Linux support is just a means (not being Microsoft dependent) to an end (keep their position as the biggest game store)

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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 :)

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Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

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