OP clearly overestimates how many people would use SteamOS or any other Linux distro for that matter. Most users are casual gamers these days, they are not changing OS just because there is a forced Windows update.
I don’t know, I think you’re clearly underestimating how many people would install Valve’s OS. The number of people with a Steam Deck that don’t know that what it’s running is a Linux distro is pretty high. The other piece to this is that it’s not just a forced Windows update for a huge chunk of users, it’s a forced device upgrade. Valve offering a free upgrade that negates the need to buy new hardware would absolutely capture people’s attention.
Yes and no, people can still use win10, it just won’t receive patches anymore. And in this particular case, my best guess is, that most people would rather use and outdated OS for a long time, rather than changing the OS altogether. Not every game is on steam, also not every non game programm is easily available for Linux. Humans are lazy.
I think that was them drawing a line on eol windows. They cut both 7 and 8.1 at the same time. Could just be the policy now.
Part of me wants them to take the opportunity to push people to switch to Linux, the other part of me thinks that will be perceived no differently from msft’s badgering about win11.
That would be quite the power move, but unfortunately Steam doesn’t hold that much power alone, I think. There are still enough games that are not on Steam. As of today , Microsoft is the biggest games publisher (with Bethesda, Blizzard, Obsidian, ID, Mojang etc. belonging to them) and there are also giants like LoL or Fortnite.
It’s hard to say. I agree, it seems like the MAU data for each of League and Fortnite is roughly the same as MAU for all of Steam (which is nuts). Of course there’s no way to know how much overlap is there. Still, both of these titles would be a hard stop for people deciding whether to switch to Linux.
As for msft themselves though, ironically I don’t know what titles they have that keep players on windows. Battle.net works on Linux, Minecraft Java ed works on Linux (not sure about bedrock ed compatibility or player count, but afaik most of those players are on non-PC platforms), all their zenimax titles are sold through steam and work great on Linux. CoD might be their biggest hold.
I disagree on number of games, but I agree on player count. The number of PC games that are not on steam (or don’t work on linux) is tiny these days. But the number of PC gamers who don’t need steam, or need something that doesn’t run on linux is probably still quite high. Still, even if valve was able to push a few % of PC gamers to Linux, that would be huge. We’re currently at 2% on Linux in steam surveys. I could see a power move by valve around win10 eol bringing that closer to 10%.
Yeah that’s true, I think the biggest hurdle are games that use anticheat that don’t work on Linux, which are afaik usually multiplayer games. So they might be able to pull gamers, that only play Singleplayer games.
No one is trying to play games on those vista machines, though. Valve pulled steam support for win 7 and 8.1 over a year ago because they were EOL. If they also pull support from win 10 once it’s EOL, then people will need to make a change to keep playing their games. If msft refuse to support existing hardware with win11, then many people will be forced to choose between buying a new laptop/PC, or trying Linux.
In addition to the mentions that this isn’t encrypted, doesn’t have video chat, etc, it’s also difficult to set up with little documentation and an enormous tech stack. They also had some recent controversy about open source licensing that gives me a bit of worry. I decided to go with a self-hosted synapse server.
Nintendo games do that a lot. Most Mario games (some of them in Charles Martinet’s voice), StarFox, Metroid (with occasional thumbs-up/waving at player), F-Zero…
I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I’ve been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don’t do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can’t even install a browser extension.
I was thinking about this earlier today for myself. Not specifically about computers, but the same principle. If I have something that bugs me and wastes 10 seconds of my time every single day but I could permanently fix the problem in an hour - logically it’s worth fixing. Even if it eventually saves time, I have to invest an hour of time and brainpower right now. If it’s something I don’t really care about, it’s just not worth it. I don’t need that hassle, I’ll just have a small annoyance every day instead of a big annoyance today. I’ve got better things to do. Like browsing Lemmy apparently
I’m been a Linux power user for more than half of my life, 8 last years spent on NixOS. I self-host my everything. I’ve bootstrapped a toolchain and a Linux distro from scratch^Wtcc for giggles twice, first without a package manager, then without one. For the last five years, I earn a living by working on a Linux distro. I still have my only decent GPU in a Windows 10 box half a continent away I stream games from. Would you be able to convince me to switch?
Just face it, Windows is the gaming console firmware.
I’m talking about normies, not gamers, and not power users like yourself.
Normies touch their pc for less than one hour a day, because everything they could want is in their phone. Many normies don’t even have internet connections in their home because they exclusively engage with the internet through their phone. I’ve talked to normies who don’t have pcs at all because their ipads do everything they could possibly want.
It’s a fact that there are certain games that simply do not run on linux, because of drm or developer stupidity or any number of reasons. As a separate argument, I’d argue that those games are not worth playing. I used to be a hardcore gamer, I’ve gotten old since then and become a casual. I don’t have time nor energy to dedicate to figuring out why game x won’t run on pc y with configuration z. If the big green play button doesn’t work, I refund the damn thing, and in my almost 2 years of linux usage I have yet to need to do that. Another separate argument is my disdain for AAA games, the lack of ethics in their creation, and the abysmal conditions in which they always launch in these days.
So as to your actual question, can I convince you to switch your gaming pc to linux? No, and I’m not even going to try. If you insist on playing the latest AAA slop that the megacorps shovel at you, then you must have windows and you must continue to allow microsoft to continue to rape your digital existence in order to have crappy entertainment that I wouldn’t dignify with the time of day.
such a strange survey. it was all about “exclusive access” and “extra perks”. i just want to support game fixes so that everyone gets access, but that wasn’t part of it.
I mean, if you’re giving them money monthly for a “Preservation Members Tier” then isn’t that exactly what you’d be doing? You’re just getting some perks as well.
Well I’m already giving them money threough purchasing (200+) games through their store. I don’t need or want any cloud features or a “badge” for that. If their calculation does not fit giving me what they promised, tough. As an aside, I recently had to contact their support, and it was a good, competent experience. So the folks they have are good and should be supported, but not through a f* subscription, but through the regular earnings. That said, I’m completely happy with the Heroic launcher and rather donate there than to join a gog club.
I buy games to have a library to pull from when the mood takes me. If I finished them all then I would no longer have that, which seems bad.
The reward for finishing a "backlog" of games is having nothing more to play. That's like trying to finish a meal in a restaurant quickly to get to the after dinner mint.
I despise treating gaming as an obligation like this. I have a collection of games, not a "backlog".
I don’t buy anything I don’t want to play right now (or after the current game, and it’s on sale right now), so don’t have the backlog issue, but I need closure. I can’t leave my games unfinished. I can drop a game if I want, but I need to mentally “finish” it. Either by completing it or by dropping it.
I have something in the region of a thousand games collected over about twenty years. If the price is good and it looks like I might like it (and I can afford to fritter the money away) then I buy it.
That's a thousand (ish) opportunities for entertainment, not a thousand (ish) obligations.
I bought all the rainbow six games in a bundle just to play Vegas, got to Vegas 2 maybe a year ago. I might get through the other 5 over the next 20 years.
Personally, I don’t really go out socially. Like ever.
So once a week or so when my friends go out to the bars and spend $50 on food and beers, I might spend a $20 on a game that’s on sale and get the same or better return on my time and money for it. If I buy a game for $20 and spend five hours on it and never touch it again, that’s about equivalent to a night out with the boys, both in dollars spent and in hours enjoyed.
I’ve built up a collection of indie games on this mindset and I don’t see any of it as wasted. If I get a lower return than $5 per hour enjoyed then I’ll refund the game or not recommend it for others. But I have a ton of games that have kept me well entertained for 3-6 days for the price of a beer and a kebab. I consider that good value.
I’ve never understood people who get bored in retirement. I looked forward to it from the very start of my career, and now that I am retired I’ve gotten so into hobbies and interests that it feels like there still isn’t enough time for everything.
Objectively I know millions of people simply go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV and go to bed. Repeat until dead. I just personally find it hard to relate to that frame of mind. Maybe they fear retirement would be boring because their lives are already boring and the only stimulation they get is at work - but to me that’s sad to imagine.
Oh yeah I forgot, careers were an endlessly fulfilling series of fun exciting tasks. And job interviews were like, “A white male with a college degree? You’re hired!” Everybodty’s ignorant fantasies about the past are staggeringly accurate!
It’s amazing how much energy you get from waking up without the obligation to go somewhere and work on somebody else’s shit all day because you have to. Gives me a big smile every morning!
Exactly. I was lucky to be in a field where I actually enjoyed the work itself (writing software) - it just didn’t leave much time or energy to geek out with my own projects like I can now. But it was worth waiting for.
Nothing, maintaining a library like that would be too much work. 95% of the time I don’t want to play a game more than once and if my chosen store closes I can ethically pirate it. Or maybe the game will be buyable as a $5 retro game 20 years from now.
I have 100+ digital only games on Switch too. That’s going to shut down at some point but in the future you’ll be able to download NS1.zip in ten minutes and it’ll have the entire library. So why worry about it now? Once the switch console batteries all start degrading PC emulation will be the default anyway.
Been loving the game, I’m just wondering if you could add a section to the website/game that explicitly goes over what data is collected and what it’s used for?
We do have the privacy policy on there, which lists what sensitive information we collect. It’s a bit vague, and we could later on edit it to be more specific, but I don’t have the required skills to edit those kinda texts and we can’t afford a lawyer at the moment. The sensitive information we collect are your email, username and step data, and the step data includes device information (phone model & operating system).
Non-sensitive information includes all kinds of gameplay data, like items you got and how many things you’ve crafted etc. which we use for game balancing and when designing new content.
Does step data just mean the number of steps (and timestamp, I assume), or do you actually track the routes walked, which would mean gps coords/ tracks.
Cause the first is much less invasive and problematic than the latter option.
And thank you! I know it’s hard to also trust game devs these days, but we’re doing all we can to protect our users privacy. That’s why there are already privacy settings in the game too - you can hide your steps from other players if you don’t want to share those. And you can also hide your entire user profile so it’s not visible to other players. These settings also protect you if 3rd parties scrape the leaderboards etc.
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