Valve Takes Another Step Toward Making SteamOS a True Windows Competitor (arstechnica.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We've known for months now that Valve is expanding its Linux-based SteamOS operating system beyond the Steam Deck to other handheld PCs, starting with some versions of the Asus ROG Ally. This week, Valve began making some changes to its Steam storefront to prepare for a future when the Deck isn't the only hardware running SteamOS. A new "SteamOS Compatible" label will begin rolling out "over the next few weeks" to denote "whether a game and all of its middleware is supported on SteamOS," including "game functionality, launcher functionality, and anti-cheat support." Games that don't meet this requirement will be marked as "SteamOS Unsupported." As with current games and the Steam Deck, this label doesn't mean these games won't run, but it does mean there may be some serious compatibility issues that keep the game from running as intended.
Valve says that "over 18,000 titles on Steam [will] be marked SteamOS compatible out of the gate," and that game developers won't need to do anything extra to earn the label if their titles already support the Steam Deck. SteamOS uses a collection of app translation technologies called Proton to make unmodified Windows applications run on SteamOS. This technology has dramatically improved SteamOS's game compatibility, compared to older SteamOS versions that required games to support Linux natively, but it still can't support every single game that Windows does. Valve says that the "SteamOS Compatible" label isn't meant to imply how well a game will run on the Steam Deck or any other SteamOS handheld but that this label is "just the first step." The company is "continuing to work on ways for people to have a better understanding of how games will run on their specific devices."
Valve says that "over 18,000 titles on Steam [will] be marked SteamOS compatible out of the gate," and that game developers won't need to do anything extra to earn the label if their titles already support the Steam Deck. SteamOS uses a collection of app translation technologies called Proton to make unmodified Windows applications run on SteamOS. This technology has dramatically improved SteamOS's game compatibility, compared to older SteamOS versions that required games to support Linux natively, but it still can't support every single game that Windows does. Valve says that the "SteamOS Compatible" label isn't meant to imply how well a game will run on the Steam Deck or any other SteamOS handheld but that this label is "just the first step." The company is "continuing to work on ways for people to have a better understanding of how games will run on their specific devices."
Is Gabe the hero of prophesy? (Score:2)
The one who will free us from Windows? Please Gabe. Save us.
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I realize it's just Linux under the hood, but I have a really hard time seeing an OS maintained by the company that basically monopolized the PC gaming software market as an improvement over Microsoft.
Besides, isn't Microsoft's desktop dominance mostly due to the stranglehold it has on the business segment of the PC industry? Although, with all the stories about layoffs lately, maybe some people on the business side of the market are about to find themselves with a lot more free time to play games.
Re:Is Gabe the hero of prophesy? (Score:4, Insightful)
basically monopolized the PC gaming software market
In what way has Valve "monopolized" the PC gaming software market? Be very careful with words and definitions. Being a monopoly and becoming a monopoly is not the same thing as monopolization. The first two are a state of being, while the last one is an illegal action. What have Valve done that you think they should be found guilty under the anti-trust laws for? Be specific.
And no, providing a good service is not monopolization.
Besides, isn't Microsoft's desktop dominance mostly due to the stranglehold it has on the business segment of the PC industry?
Microsoft's desktop dominance is in part due to them monopolizing the market through very specific anti-competitive action.
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It is, ultimately, a pretty complicated topic.
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Unlike other game launchers/stores, Steam (even in handheld mode) is very easy-going on setting up and using alternatives.
See for instance, Heroic Game Launcher, which can very painlessly integrate games from Amazon, Epic, and GOG into a steamdeck's library.
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Has Heroic made it possible to paste a password into the store login yet? Last time I tried it on my Deck, a couple months back, it was a non-starter, since I couldn't be arsed to transcribe the 32-character random string from Bitwarden on the on-screen keyboard.
There was a github issue open for a while, but it seemed to be being ignored.
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What have Valve done that you think they should be found guilty under the anti-trust laws for? Be specific.
I was merely pointing out that they've sucked up all the oxygen in the PC gaming sphere, and you're more-or-less locked out of the bulk of AAA PC gaming titles unless you install Valve's DRM-ware on your PC. We pretty much accept that as business as usual over on the console side of things, so I wasn't necessarily implying any specific anti-trust laws were broken, just that the situation certainly has the outward appearance of being monopolistic.
Of course, since you asked, you can just Google (or ask ChatG
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And my point is your false attribution. They haven't sucked up anything. In fact their terms are completely open. There are games available on multiple platforms, and several AAA titles were available from alternative ones. Let's just pick some at random.
I just searched AAA games released in 2025 on Google and let's look at the list:
- Monster Hunter Wilds - Available on the Microsoft store and Steam
- Assassins Creed Shadows - Epic, Ubisoft store, Steam
- Dynasty Warrior - Steam only
- Borderlands 4 - Epic, Mi
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In what way has Valve "monopolized" the PC gaming software market? Be very careful with words and definitions.
Right, it's a ridiculous claim. Like calling Amazon a monopoly. Nobody is forced to buy from Amazon or on Steam. There are stores selling games other then Valve's just like you can buy from places other than Amazon. Obviously, controlling 74% of market share is well short of the 100% that is required by some definitions of monopoly.
And no, providing a good service is not monopolization.
And here I thought monopoly was primarily about identifying anti-competitive behavior. Learn something new every day.
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You misread what I said. Steam *has* a monopoly. Your ability to by something somewhere else is not relevant to whether someone has an incredible amount of market power and can dictate the direction of the industry. They overwhelmingly dominate sales in on PC, and publishers are findout out it is very difficult to make profit if you don't work with them. That is a monopoly by definition. But monopolies are *not* illegal and depending on how they are weilded may not even be bad.
And here I thought monopoly was primarily about identifying anti-competitive behavior. Learn something new every day.
Nouns vs verbs! A monopoly is
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A recent interview with Epic's Tim Sweeney [youtu.be] touches on, what to me feels like a very anti competitive practice, Steam (and other parties) employee to prevent other stores from competing with them on price.
One of the key exhibits in the Epic-Google trial was its opening exhibit, which was trying to point out to the jury in the trial the benefits of exclusives. Imagine a new store popping up. The store has a big sign outside of it, “We’re the new store. We have everything that the other store has, and it’s at the same price.
Are you going to go to the new store? No. Nobody’s going to switch from Steam if Steam has all of the same games as the competing store and everything’s priced in just the same. And so, we looked at initially two ways of competing with Steam strongly. We wanted to sell games at a better price than Steam by agreeing on the amount of money we pay each game developer. If we’re going to If the game’s going to sell for $50 and we take 12%, we’d actually lower the price and potentially even lose some money to offer a better deal.
Well, we tried to pursue this, but very quickly, every developer told us that they wouldn’t agree to better pricing because if they did, then Steam would stop giving them marketing featuring and benefits, and the console makers would be mad, and all their relationships would be harmed. And so there’s an undercurrent of powerful platforms and ecosystems encouraging developers not to compete on price. So, not being able to compete on price, we decided to compete on by doing exclusive deals
Re: Is Gabe the hero of prophesy? (Score:2)
He says that to justify Epic's exclusive deals. But exclusive deals are anti-competitive and morally not defensible. They go against the interests of consumers.
In the end, Epic is trying to get a foot in a market by being a parasite that provides no value. The market is that of selling dematerialised versions of other people's video games. Steam has provided value and this is why it has succeeded : they made it easy to purchase games online, with some guarantees, when it was previously not possible. Then th
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One of the problems with Sweeney is that he has no fucking clue and seems to lie every time he opens his mouth and your quote is just another case.
Starting here: "We’re the new store. We have everything that the other store has" - except they don't. Even now multiple years later Steam provides a world more features than the competition both to end users as well as developers. Even if Epic has something cheaper why would I use a store*** that has a history of deleting save files, screwing up cloud sync
Re: Is Gabe the hero of prophesy? (Score:2)
Words have multiple meanings. You picked the meaning of "monopolization" in the US legal system. While that meaning is valid, it is not the only one.
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No, monopolization has the same meaning even when you spell it with an "s". It's a distinct and willful act of attempting to gain market power, and it's a definition that is accepted across much of the world.
If you're going to borrow a legal term you can't just redefine it for shits and giggles.
Re: Is Gabe the hero of prophesy? (Score:2)
This dictionary disagrees with you [cambridge.org].
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In what way has Valve "monopolized" the PC gaming software market? Be very careful with words and definitions. Being a monopoly and becoming a monopoly is not the same thing as monopolization. The first two are a state of being, while the last one is an illegal action. What have Valve done that you think they should be found guilty under the anti-trust laws for? Be specific.
And no, providing a good service is not monopolization.
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.... [thomsonreuters.com]
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basically monopolized the PC gaming software market
In what way has Valve "monopolized" the PC gaming software market? Be very careful with words and definitions. Being a monopoly and becoming a monopoly is not the same thing as monopolization. The first two are a state of being, while the last one is an illegal action. What have Valve done that you think they should be found guilty under the anti-trust laws for? Be specific.
And no, providing a good service is not monopolization.
Besides, isn't Microsoft's desktop dominance mostly due to the stranglehold it has on the business segment of the PC industry?
Microsoft's desktop dominance is in part due to them monopolizing the market through very specific anti-competitive action.
I largely agree with your point but Valve and Steam are the 800 pound gorilla (if you would excuse the Americanism) in the PC gaming room. You're right that they got there by good service to their customers and the clients (as in the publishers and developers) however they still ended up with a monopoly, they just haven't abused it like Microsoft. Similar to how Google gained it's monopoly by being better than everyone else however unlike Google, Steam has not yet been enshitified.
Valve having this monop
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I realize it's just Linux under the hood, but I have a really hard time seeing an OS maintained by the company that basically monopolized the PC gaming software market as an improvement over Microsoft.
It's more than just being Linux under the hood. The tools are open source. While it looks like Valve is only going to officially support SteamOS, you're able to get similar results from other distros.
Besides, isn't Microsoft's desktop dominance mostly due to the stranglehold it has on the business segment of the PC industry? Although, with all the stories about layoffs lately, maybe some people on the business side of the market are about to find themselves with a lot more free time to play games.
SteamOS compatible will give Valve a little more control over the direction of the PC game market than before. However, that has little to do with SteamOS itself. Valve mostly cares that games are able to run on Linux, which allows them to sell games to Linux users. SteamOS just gives them an official avenue to
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I'm echoing what others have said, but Valve did not monopolize the PC gaming software market. They just outcompete everyone else by providing a storefront as a service that people don't hate.
Just look at what happened with EA Origin for example. EA pulled their titles from Steam and said "Nuts to that, we'll make our own awesome storefront! With blackjack and hookers!" Only they forgot the awesome and the hookers. It's telling that after a few years all of EAs games were back on Steam- but what's important
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I'm echoing what others have said, but Valve did not monopolize the PC gaming software market. They just outcompete everyone else by providing a storefront as a service that people don't hate.
I'm old enough to remember when games came on physical media and you could actually still exercise first-sale doctrine rights. Steam played a pivotal role in normalizing the concept that you're buying only the rights to use a game, which can be revoked at any time, when "buying" a game on a PC.
The fact that they did it in a way that most people find innocuous doesn't change the fact that it didn't have to be this way. The transition to all-digital software sales could've been implemented with the means to
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Digital goods are always going to have to try and erect artificial scarcity because duplication basically costs nothing. I'm not sure if there is a solution that allows the video game companies to make money without restrictions on distribution. Even in the days of physical media they would try to use license keys and whatnot to prevent bootlegging.
I don't think it makes sense to compare Steam to Apple's iTunes. Apple didn't care at the time if they made money on music—they wanted music to be plentifu
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While your concerns are valid, they have nothing to do with market share or market monopolization. At no point did Steam push or force this onto anyone. Rather people flocked to the concept.
And honestly (unpopular opinion here), I don't care. Games are entertainment. There's literally close to 1000 games released every year, if tomorrow a game I play doesn't work I'll just move onto another because ultimately I buy games for the entertainment they provide, not for some asset ownership stake, and entertainme
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Then you dont know how Valve operates as a company.
Valve Corporation has a unique flat, non-hierarchical structure
where employees have significant autonomy and self-direction.
And as far as i know, unlike microsoft they are not serial anti-trust violators.
I know its hard to accept change when zealotry gets in the way , but Valve and Steam
are using their position to free democratize game development and the platform/s we use
to run.
It make no sense to have 3,4,5,6 different build to support all the different p
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Then you dont know how Valve operates as a company.
Valve Corporation has a unique flat, non-hierarchical structure
where employees have significant autonomy and self-direction.
What is the relevance to the topic at hand?
I know its hard to accept change when zealotry gets in the way
Same question, what is the relevance of this unfalsifiable statement?
but Valve and Steam are using their position to free democratize game development and the platform/s we use to run.
In what way is the imposition of a completely unnecessary monoculuture in game software distribution "democratizing"? Steams monopolization extends even to hardware with many VR HMDs requiring steam to work at all and software dependencies on steams OVR where that isn't the case.
It make no sense to have 3,4,5,6 different build to support all the different platforms.
It is not clear what is being referred to here. Are you saying there is some kind of magical steam binary that runs na
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Hopefully... (Score:2)
Hopefully, the first title available will be Half Life 3.
Valve needs to take advantage of Windows EOL (Score:4, Funny)
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bah, if they had done this as a response to Microsoft sabotage and EOL win7 that would have ment something, instead they did the opposite and helped kill win7.
They didn't have to take away steam access on win7, but they did.
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For your information, and contrary to what is still displayed on the Steam client, as of today Steam still works on Windows 7.
I'm playing everyday.
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Imagine a campaign saying "Windows no longer supported? Upgrade to SteamOS and never have to buy a new computer again!". It would make Microsoft really butthurt, but I know they don't have the guts to do it.
As a PC gamer... we all know that's never going to happen. Hell, the reason I buy a new computer is because the hardware won't run the games, not the OS. My last two gaming laptops still work (despite being 8 and 13 years old respectively) but couldn't hope to play anything remotely modern. Like many gamers, my gaming desktop is a Frankenboxen, every 5 years or so I get a new CPU and mobo and reuse bits from my current gaming PC to make a new one, GPUs are as and when I can justify the expense (see: Man Ma
Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally a move that promotes Linux compatibility. I know, "SteamOS" and all but between the lines is that it works on a Linux system. Sure, it's probably because it's run on Proton (a WINE fork) but it still runs. The chief complaint i hear now is that "games" don't work on Linux. What they really mean is that the high-end triple-A titles don't work. If this can push more companies to ensure it runs on a Linux system then it's a huge win for everyone. It may not be immediate but the effect will be more than negligible.
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Steam in Handheld mode (which is basically what SteamOS is) already supports native mode for games that have it.
For everything else, there is Proton.
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DirectX won't die because Microsoft continues to buy up any game studio they can.
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That's what we were saying 25+ years ago and guess what... never happened.
Even in the days of several modern consoles with differing hardware, different architectures, a myriad of CPU/GPU combinations... developers don't care enough to bother even though it could just be a compile option in their development environment.
You aren't going to change an entire industry for a niche usage (and no matter what you think, gaming on Linux is a niche usage, even with the Steam Deck).
I love Linux, I love gaming, I had
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None of us want Windows compatibility. Let DirectX die already.
Literally everyone who plays games wants Windows compatibility since that is required to play most games on the market. You as the user don't get to decide whether a developer uses DirectX, you only get to decide what system to play their games on.
I could see a day that SteamOS runs natively ... (Score:2)
I could see a day that SteamOS runs natively on PCs. Linux under the hood, Proton on top to run Windows games.
---
Path of Exile 2 is a boring, tedious, Ruthless Souls-lite grindfest.
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I see that pathway of potential futures as a likely option, or I am probably being hopeful.
What I really see as inevitable (if not already here) is that Windows will annoy me so much (maybe with a touch of computer hardware locking itself down into integrated SoCs with little to no user customisation of the hardware) that I'll ditch Windows and go GNU/Linux. If future PC hardware essentially goes the Apple Silicone route, which would kill a lot of the fun my building/owning a gaming PC, I'd probably stay on
Bazzite with fewer options (Score:4, Interesting)
SteamOS and Bazzite are "Functionally the same thing".
They are not exactly the same thing, but close enough that Steam itself does not give 2 shits about the difference.
(SteamOS is a customized Arch distro, and Bazzite is a customized Fedora distro. Both are set up with a read only binary filesystem, both use btrfs by default, and both use KDE for the desktop mode.)
I run Bazzite on my GPDWin 4 (2024 version), and it works just fine.
Valve does not officially support GPD handhelds with SteamOS at this time, and is focusing on the ROG Ally instead.
Other than a somewhat screwy accelerometer, the Win4 is actually a better offering than the official steamdeck. (More RAM, better processor, hardware keyboard, etc.)
I am able to run modern and retro titles on it just fine.
The *ISSUE* is going to be the tinkering steps needed for some very retro titles, which may need things like DGVoodoo2 (Old DirectDraw based games that dont play well without extra love and care, or that need Glide emulation), or Joy2Key (Keyboard+Mouse only titles being hamfisted to work on a gamepad, like STALKER), or need a DINPUT filter in the pipeline to work right (Heretic II / Quake for windows, Need4Speed titles, etc, but also modern things that are officially "broken" on steamdeck, like Dragon Age: Inquisition, which work absolutely fine with the filter DLL present.)
This is in addition to the dreaded "But OUR WONDERFUL ANTICHEAT software wants to make indecent liberties that only windows lets us doooooooooo!" many modern game developers are so high on. (Which SteamOS/Proton has problems with. SteamOS has a native version of EasyAntiCheat, but a lot of publishers want to do bespoke dumbassery instead, and brick/ban people that do the "Unforgivable Sin!" of playing on *DREADED LINUX*.)
This is because SteamOS, in its attempt to be Safe_For_Idiots (and please, I am not trying to be elitist or rude, just pointing out that "Highly curated, to the point where all control is removed, because it's scary for users, and they 'get easily confused' and 'set the wrong things'" results in a systemic lack of understanding, coupled with a platform that does everything possible to slap your hands even when you DO understand, and NEED to do something) makes it much more difficult to set up such things to make them work. Bazzite tries to cut both ways, in that it too wants the root filesystem to be a curated read-only thing, with any and all linux userspace things being handled by flatpak, but it *DOES* let you override that and make local patches to it as well (So that you can create a symlink for /snap for instance, for those things that only ever get released in that cursed, unholy manner.)
In both cases, this kind of lockdown stops you from installing useful system functionality, like NFS, or from changing the default compression level options (Both use BTRFS with zst compression, at level 2. Changing this to something tighter, requires editing /etc/fstab which is on the root filesystem, and--- IS READ ONLY.) Naturally, by design, it prevents you from using native distro-curated binaries from the package manager as well.
Again, Bazzite lets you local-patch this, if you jump through all the right byzantine hoops. Actual SteamOS is less forgiving, and just says no.
If Valve goes ahead with this, I hope they offer 2 channels. The first one for the fully curated experience, and the other for "Tinkerer" mode.
Sadly, I feel that the "But our sacred and special anticheat!!!!!" hysterionics will result in any such split channel distro having the latter completely blacklisted by everything, even though the people using it just want to set some quality of life settings. (like the compression level)
The "Users are easily confused and dont understand!" philosophy precludes making these things into easily set GUI options.
To get around this "We applied mittens with duct tape!" curation, and actually manage the system library registrations, and individually tailor proton container instances so that such things as DGVoodoo2 and pals can work, you need to use things like ProtonTricks. This *IS* available as a Flatpak, but it will go against the "Users are easily confused!" mantra.
DirectX (Score:1)
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DX12 only games work very well with VKD3D, and Vulkan.
Proton supports this out of the gate on SteamOS. DX12-only is a nothingburger, on hardware that has suitable vulkan drivers.
In a surprising number of cases, they work *Better* than native DX12 on the same hardware.
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If you want a start-menu interface, though, you dont really want steamOS.
You want normal linux with LXDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, Mate, or KDE.
That, and Heroic Game Launcher, and Proton Tricks. (So you can set up D3DVK on the containers in question. Heroic does not use VKD3D by default, because it wants to be able to run on devices without vulkan. DXVK support is fail-safeable behind wineD3D modes, but D3DVK is not. The latter *ONLY* does DX12 libraries, but shares the same infra/backend as DXVK.)
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If you want a start-menu interface, though, you dont really want steamOS.
Literally two buttons switch SteamOS to desktop mode and drop you onto a KDE screen. It's all there for you.
HL2:E3 (Score:2)
Any updates on Half-Life 2: Episode Three?
More accurate ratings are good. (Score:2)
Honestly, this is a small but pretty welcome change. I exclusively game on Linux now, and honestly it's been great, I haven't come across a game that hasn't run yet. One time I had to install MSVCR and that's it, and yes I stay away from kernel level anticheat games. That's all to say that I don't even check the Steam Deck compatibility because everything works. When I checked more often, I was conditioned to view a "partially supported" as fully supported. Whenever it's partially supported, clicking on the
Maybe it's a good thing (Score:2)
Kernel level anti-cheat is a bit much. This might start curbing its use.