Steam gets all my gaming budget, as I really try to stick to Linux.
If it ain't on steam, I don't play it, and they don't get my money.
replies(5):
Games don’t need to be on Steam to be good.
There are some other launchers for epic games and gog (heroic game launcher I’ve used). It worked for me for a the couple games I tried (gloomhaven and disco elysium) but I’m using the proton wine I which I think was put out there by valve/steam.
If the developers have a native Linux version that I can buy directly from their site, I might do that as well to show my support (but still buy it on steam since it's just too convenient).
In my experience 99% of the games work out of the box with wine-staging, DXVK and VKD3D-Proton (which works with wine-staging just fine). No need to mess around with anything, just install wine-string, install DXVK and VKD3D-Proton and you are ready to run pretty much everything with "wine installername.exe" or "wine gamebinary.exe".
I never had to use winetricks, lutris or anything of the sort.
I also play games on Steam and even got a Steam Deck (on which i also play games i got outside from Steam), so it isn't like i am Valve-free, but you certainly do not have to tie yourself on Steam if you are gaming on Linux nor your experience will be any worse.
That sounds like a fair bit of domain-specific knowledge driven steps that could quickly got awry and lead a novice deep into frustration.
Compared to... Clicking the Play button in the Steam launcher, ideally from your Steam Deck.
It's miles apart.
It isn't something i'd recommend to some random gamer (though judging from what i've seen people do with their Steam Decks i wouldn't underestimate gamers' technical abilities).
[0] like, say, me :-P. In 2020 i used Windows as my main OS after trying to switch to Linux as my main OS in 2018 but having some issues with games, but then i ended up having some visual glitches in a game that were fixed by throwing in DXVK. At that point i thought that this might actually be a sign that gaming on Linux now works fine - and indeed it did and since then i've being using it as my practically only OS because i can both work and game on it without feeling like i'm missing anything.
I found their customer support appalling.
I lost everything, including the games I used to have on CD but which had migrated to Steam.
To quote Akbar : "it's a trap!"
The game companies need the reform. Not valve.
Also, what do you mean gamers complain about the price of games? Console, sure, with the new standard MSRP. But what does that have to do with Steam? Games are cheaper than they've ever been. One of the arguably best RPGs of recent times launched at 60 Euros with no microtransactions.
What exactly are you expecting? Do you want Valve to be a charity?
I understand their work on Unreal Engine (UE) since Fortnite is built on top of UE, but I don't understand the rest of their ecosystem and why Epic game store even exists.
https://www.protondb.com/explore
Some games on the list are kind of old, sure. But they're the most played nevertheless.
And from the ones that are not native, many of them run well on Proton.
If it is buggy, they play something else. There is a wide enough offer for this strategy to work really well.
Being driven to install tools to get it to run is an exceptional behaviour and a lot of hassle for anyone, windows or Linux. Nearly noone does that.
You had to go to WineHQ, look at the open issues and workarounds, and often troubleshoot issues yourself.
Lutris made the process a bit easier and then Proton made it absurdly easier.
The problem with Proton is that Steam Input is not well implemented.
In what way is he openly hostile to gamers in general?
But the store seems to exist because they don’t want to use steam or anything else cos they won’t want to lose the 30% cut on game sales or in-game micro transactions.
Yet they happily pay Sony and MS…
And if they created their store and opened it up to others and says oh yeah our fees are less. It would be fine. Gamers have choice. Developers have choice.
But buying games already on steam, or paying to get exclusives is bad. Especially when Tim lies so much.
They should compete by having a better product, service, experience. But they lie cheat and steal to grow.
Same with Gabe? Neither are running charities. They made tools that helped enable creators. But always keep in mind that it's money first, and creativity second.
>Epic game store is probably the worst store to exist.
Given all the PC platforms that have come and gone I always find this to be an odd take. EGS makes the grave sin of uhh...
- exclusivity windows which may or may not be permanent (which every store does)
- they don't make features fast enough for the power users
Like... am I missing something here? Or am I just much better versed in what Origin, the Ubi Store, Rockstar's store, and Window's own game store's negative aspects?
based on their webstore and their butting with Apple/Google, they want to be the one stop shop for desktop and mobile. desktop was the obvious first step, but the aspect of a premium mobile game store is an interesting premise. And probably overly optimistic. I'm sure they will simply bend to the f2p GAAS model as much as Apple/Google did and simply want that platform cut.
There's also the matter of its own Unreal ecosystem it's building. It's letting kids use real (but watered down) UE tools to mod fortnite, which leads to future devs that make games in UE, which they can then publish to the EGS. Short of actual hardware, they seem to want full vertical integration of the game development process. And if Fornite money keeps flowing, I can see a 5+ year plan where they cover the hardware aspect as well.
I very quickly gave up and just used Lutris, copied someones settings/versions from Reddit and it worked, but I wasn't too happy. I _really_ wanted to try Diablo4, so I put up with it, but normally my patience for such things is pretty low.
I am not averse to messing around with things, I've got a pretty good idea of how things work in Linux. I've written my own .so files to fix bugs in closed source software using LD_PRELOAD. I just don't want to deal with that when gaming.
There's more to Steam than just the pre-configured proton. Their controller support stuff is top notch and so is the stream link/stream stuff. Not using steam would definitely make my experience worse.
Perhaps it's time to think of Windows as another VM...
Vernor Vinge extrapolated this to layers upon layers of emulation if humanity evolves (survives?) a couple more hundred thousand years.
I didn't know we got to the point where installing 3 packages was domain specific knowledge, especially for Linux users. I guess it explains why I feel s out of touch with people welcoming walled gardens with open arms.
If I have to use some third party launcher to make up for what it lacks, I might as well use steam
And launch the exe directly from Windows desktop or start menu.
There are a few games that allow this, for example Cyberpunk 2077 and Control.
I sometimes refund games if they are obnoxious with letting me launch them from the start menu.
> says that very few of those bugs were specific to Linux, being clear that "This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone."
You're welcome.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...
So you could argue valve cares about gamers more.
This is also evident in the fact that exclusives are often more expensive than games on steam that are available elsewhere because of actual competition.
It's interesting, I hate walled gardens due to their restrictions, but I feel no restrictions regarding Steam. If anything, it enables me to enjoy my purchases more, not less.
I'd never use an iPhone because I hate the restrictiveness of their app store and how you cannot use whatever browser engine you want. I dislike consoles for the same reasons, I hate that I need to buy a switch and play on it (with it's inferior hardware) to enjoy Nintendo exclusives (yes, I am aware I can emulate their games and get a better experience). I hate Discord because they force you to use their client and still use mumble/IRC. There are probably examples of things I avoid because I don't want to support them.
I find Valve a completely different story. They've probably done more for Linux gaming than any other company. I am personally not inconvenienced by any of their restrictions. Like I previously said, in my mind, they add value to my game purchases, not remove it. I will gladly keep giving them my money, it's probably one of the few companies that I have strong positive feelings for.
Granted, I do remember being pissed off when they forced me to install Steam to play Half-life 2 back in 2004. Back then, it was a shit walled garden that provided no value. But since then, things have changed drastically.
They have an actual "Games for Linux" section (https://www.gog.com/en/games/linux). I guess that should mean anything more than just "this may work on Linux if you compile this kernel and use this version of wine with these patches".
In Steam's terms, they make clear that they will do everything they can to maintain your access to your games, even if they close shop. Of course, that may not be much, but I think Valve cares more about the customer than any other company listed above.
experiences are different. I play/read a lot of VN's and Valve's policies for approving those are like throwing darts on a board. I simply got tired of reading one VN and having its sequel mysteriously rejected a few years later. That's frustrating to both me as a gamer and the developers. I don't feel like picking up a pitchfork everytime and simply will avoid Steam whenever possible.
and on a very personal note, I find the Wine workaround as just that. another flimsy point of failure waiting until Microsoft does what it is historically known to do. It doesn't encourage much linux gaming for me nor does it make me feel like I'm supporting linux gaming by using it, because it's at the mercy of yet another conglomerate.
I've seen enough of the dark side of Valve to not trust that notion any more than any of Epic's promise. They haven't won that goodwill of "trust me" from me.
Besides, private companies scare me a tiny bit more in the grand scheme of things. A large company is evil, but boring. It's really hard for any new CEO to radically change the direction of a company in the short term. But Gabe won't live forever, and who knows who/what takes over later. taking action against a private company as a consumer is much harder than a public company that at least needs to care a bit about shareholders when making unpopular moves.
Could you point me to these DRM free Steam games? I have the impression that games from Steam doesnt work without actually Steam.
If you want, you can stick a static page onlinr and hook up stripe, and sell steam keys yourself. Valve offers a service; a marketplace, discovery, and a merchant system. Youre more than welcome to handle that yourself and see whether that "significant tax" is worth it.
Here's a list of some of those games: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
For those games Steam acts as a download/update manager and nothing more. You can run them even without the Steam client.
On the consumer side too, steam makes things pretty frictionless. I can't say literally all of my budget on games is through steam, but it's over 95%. I was also happy that their steam deck I got recently, in addition to helping the linux ecosystem in theory, is actually not a piece of junk like the librem phone I finally got delivered this year and so helps it in reality too. (Though in the librem case that was expected even at pre-order time.)
I don't know what most people do as i am not most people, but i already addressed my expectations and assumptions on the first paragraph of the comment you replied to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney_(game_developer)
Founder and CEO of Epic games.
He has a history of whinging about Windows, and when suggestions of supporting Linux come up, since it's what Valve is doing to ensure they aren't trapped in a mono-system, Tim is argumentative in a bad faith way.
Previous discussions about Epics anti-Linux behaviour, but unfortunately the Tweets have since been deleted.
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