I don’t see the Deck as a critical mass device, and if Valve choses to make it one I will probably no longer be interested. The Deck is great because you can tinker to your heart’s content in an open system. That just isn’t going to fly if Valve decides they want to be the next Xbox or Switch.
Everyone is losing their shirt over ARM because Apple is producing some insanely expensive chips on it that have high performance. I’m not saying ARM doesn’t have some advantages, but I think that’s a long way out from going into something like the Deck where compatibility is everything. The switch being ARM has nothing at all to do with this conversation.
The whole point of the Steam Deck for me is playing my older games. Unless they get x86 translation working without a performance hit them I’d rather they stay on x86.
That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn’t sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you’d ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
Yup. Steam is my go-to because of easy game steaming, steam deck integration, etc. But I know what I’m sacrificing for that convenience. Luckily Valve is an incredibly customer focused company and I have a huge amount of (well deserved IMO) faith in. GOG however is definitely still the best way to own your games.
I don’t have a problem with large games if I get the option of what I want to download. Most often these large sizes are because it forces you to get full 4K textures and multiple copies of the audio files for languages you don’t speak.
I would bet half the size of this game is unnecessary for the average player. We really need the ability to download the core game and then these add-ons separately.