As a happy owner of an LCD Steam Deck and using it every night for gaming, to me that's an absolute bargain, if I didn't own one right now, I'd snap that up in a heart beat.

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It's really frustrating how everyone calls it a blanket '30%' when in reality it's a 20% to 30% commission that varies depending on sales revenue. Which immediately makes Valve one of the best platforms for publishers. I can't think of any other hardware producing platform that offers a deal that good. Sony sure don't, neither does Nintendo, or Microsoft on their Xbox console, Apple charges 30% for everything, so does Google..

But aside from that, the stipulation that publishers must not offer customers on other platforms a better deal than what they get on Steam (does not imply there can't be sales or discounts on other platforms, just that Steam customers need to be offered comparatively good deals at some point before or after or during those sales), is actually warranted in Valve's case.

Unlike say for example Nintendo or Sony's stores, Steam allows developers to freely generate keys and sell them through external platforms and pay absolutely no revenue split to Valve. Something which again, makes them immediately fairer than Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo and so on ...

This means, if Valve was FORCED to allow developers to sell those keys at cheaper prices elsewhere, those developers could offer say, a 5% discount by selling those keys on their own websites, gamers could go there and buy the game for slightly cheaper, then activate the game on their Steam account.

The developer walks away with more money because they paid no revenue split, gamers walk away with a cheaper game, and Valve is left holding the bag paying for the hosting of the game's files, cloud saves, screenshots, discussion forums, workshop files, matchmaking, and so on... 'forever', or at least, as long as Valve, and PC gaming, and Steam, all exist, without a cent of revenue to pay for it. How is that 'fair'?

The only way this restriction could be lifted, is if Valve also eliminated the ability to sell a Steam key outside of Steam with no revenue split applied to it. How would that be 'better' for developers?

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Let the good times roll!

Next up, 3%! Lets go, lets do it!

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Very nice changes! I like that Valve are still improving SteamOS and making it more useful over time. All these little changes add up over time and make me love my Steam Deck more and more every month.

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Big fat NOPE from me thanks. If I'm ever forced by the universe's cruel twists of fate to use Windows 11, 'Recall' will be the first thing I disable.

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> the majority of it is all based on open source and Valve fund contributions to so many projects I've lost count that improve things for everyone.

Stuff like this is why I will forever be unapologetic in supporting Valve and adore the Steam Deck and everything it is, but also everything that has gone into it. Even if Valve were to vanish into a puff of smoke tomorrow, their contributions up to this point alone would have a lasting impact for years to come and have genuinely made the world of tech a better place for it.

Keep on being you Valve, you made me into a loyal customer.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Fixed startup delays when running in flatpak environments.

Interesting that Valve cares that much about the Flatpak package, but don't want to officially adopt it.

True, and I'd say it mostly comes down to just the fact that Valve is a business and cares about customer service.

Realistically a lot of people are choosing to use Steam via Flatpak these days, rightly or wrongly.

If those people have a bad experience then that's "a bad Steam experience". Even if it's not officially supported. Sure Valve could say "We told you that's not officially supported" but it doesn't matter. Bad experience is bad experience, and if the bad experience happens while in Steam, that's "a bad Steam experience". Bad Steam experiences means less sales.

It's one of those "The customer is always right" situations. Doesn't matter if officially you don't support something, if that's where your users are, gotta try to make it the best experience possible. Good businesses are always bending over backwards trying to give customers good experiences.

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> Fixed an issue where after playing a game it would require extra B button presses to back out of the game's library page.

Yay! I experienced that again last night. Was thinking 'Jeez they need to fix that'. Bam there it is fixed, thanks Volvo!

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Why on Earth would you close down the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush?

WHY?

What is with companies like Microsoft, Sony, Epic, Ubisoft, EA, etc. Are they just opposed to the concept of 'good things in gaming'?

I hope all the talent from those studios were shifted into other studios and not just lost.

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If I could make any wish as far as game and software preservation goes, I'd wish for:

1. The source code of all software based products are automatically made open source and public domain 25 years from initial release.*

2. Each and every version of a software based product, along with it's source code, is submitted to a registry, stored for safe keeping by the government and released after the specified time frame has elapsed for the public release.

(*Does not apply to later versions of the software, each individual version of the software is treated as a separate entity. Trademarks and copyright over content in the software (such as logos or character designs) can remain protected, but the digital assets themselves in the original game would not be protected any more.)

Because lets be real, NO software product is still being sold in it's original form after 25 years. No one is still actively selling an unaltered version of software that was initially released 25 years ago in part because the operating systems and devices that required to run the software back then are mostly extinct now. So there's very little reason not to have that source code made publicly available under a permissive public domain license that allows people to freely modify, distribute, compile and use the code.

If such a law was in place, we would have just seen the public domain release of the source code for Unreal Tournament 99. A game Epic has delisted basically from everywhere, they treat it like it doesn't even exist, like abandonware. 25 years would be an acceptable time frame for a public domain release of that game's source code to ensure future generations can play and enjoy it.

Photoshop 5.5 [External Link] would be just released into public domain under such a law. Aside from being an interesting point in the history of Photoshop, it would serve no purpose for modern image editing, probably would not even run on modern OSes, and would offer no competition what so ever to Adobe with their existing products.

Windows 98 would be released under such laws as public domain. Again, it serves very little useful practical purpose for modern times to use Windows 98, would offer no competition to Microsoft currently today, but it would be useful for software preservation purposes.

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