- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blackeco.com/post/2330473



You can launch any .exe through Steam using Proton… You don’t even need to buy the games if that’s your prerogative.
Where the software is from is entirely irrelevant.
Just walk me through what prevents Valve from following Google’s footsteps in commoditising Linux only to lock it down like they are doing currently.
Linux and proton are open source, and their licenses allow literally anyone to fork it. GE-Proton already exists.
How are they currently locking Linux down? The Steam Deck is literally a desktop PC, and can do anything a desktop Linux PC can do (including using it in desktop mode which is KDE Plasma). You can even install a different Linux distro (or Windows if you’re a freak) on it if you want. There’s literally nothing locked down about it.
Same could be said about Android. Will you be able to install other OS on Steam Machine 3 in 2035? It could have bootloader locked, they could say it’s required for anti-cheat and some even will be happy that they can finally play CoD.
The same cannot be said about Android. I think you need to educate yourself on what Linux and FOSS actually is.
I see AOSP was forgotten very quickly.
You’re right, that’s why there’s countless mature Android distributions to choose from, and they’re all free. Oh wait.
I don’t really know much about AOSP, but isn’t the fact that it doesn’t contain any of the proprietary Google stuff mean that the “sideloading” restrictions likely will not apply? How could it?
So you don’t really know the story of Android, much of it very recent, but you’re going to argue that Valve is not following the same path. What a waste of time.
Steam is a game distribution store, Steam machine and deck are console oriented machines.
Linux as a whole has dominance in the server world, valve is touching the gaming side of desktop Linux. Desktop Linux is tiny compared to Windows. You are comparing it to a phone operating system in a world where they were two-ish, to a potential distro in a world where there are 12 or more, several of those widely used in servers.
Be angry if you want but it’s not the same.
It’s just not even comparable in any way, regardless of how you try to shoehorn it into your analogy. Android was not a mature, stable OS with hundreds of distributions, for several decades, before Android phones came along.