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Indeed. Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. But they offered a decent service and proved that piracy is a service pro

Indeed. Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. But they offered a decent service and proved that piracy is a service problem. What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Not many people use it yet, but Windows does look less and less like a dependable long term solution, especially with Microsofts other ambitions in that industry.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, but Proton and the Steam Deck are their future insurance policy against Microsoft coming after their profits in the future. The writing was on the wall, they saw how much money Epic was giving to Apple, and how many studios Microsoft owns, and with the direction Windows is going, in 10 years when Windows 12 drops, Microsoft could also push for a 30% cut on all Steam sales on Windows for example, and Valve is preparing themselves for such a scenario by pushing Steam to Linux full throttle. They want to make sure they reap all the profits from the Steam store and not have to share they pie with a middle man like the Epic vs Apple kerfuffle. That's the end-game here. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very grateful for what Valve is doing for Linux, but it's important to be aware of the motivation behind the actions, consider their potential end-game, and not get romantically attached to companies as there is no free lunch and companies are not your friends.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" Well yeah. That's what a company is. Companies are also people, and people make decisions, and those decisions are sometimes influenced by more than the mere bottom line. You can't read their minds, and it's the opposite of charitable to assume the worst. Fully agree about the rest though. It certainly makes business sense. But it took around a decade to maneuver themselves into this position, and it's pretty hard to believe they did it all solely for the green. I used to exchange MSN messenger messages with Zoid, one of their most productive Dota 2 programmers. (Boy that sounds like ancient history.) He didn't strike me as a person who was particularly ruthless and mercantile. Just a driven programmer trying to do good.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I mean, Valve is still privately owned as far as I know, so wherever it’s going is entirely up to the mind of it’s founders. Edit: Tring to do good, and they made Dota 2?
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      1v1 sf mid scrub The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you. It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could ever dream to achieve. It was wonderful to have a front row seat to the steamroller. In hindsight I wish I'd relaxed and enjoyed it more.
      - oblio 5y ago
        I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this: > your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is almost categorically false. I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity. There's almost no comparison between Icefrog's additions to Dota and what came before. The other versions were brilliant in their concept but generally very poor in their execution. Icefrog added more brilliant concepts but primarily greatly cleaned up Dota mechanics and execution. He took an amateurish mod and made it have professional level execution. Maybe he sucks to work with in a team (really hard to believe, to be honest, considering the development and testing team he built around Dota and the changelogs, OMG, the changelogs; I'd rather think he might suck to work in a on-site team, because his online team management was pretty solid), but criticizing his management/design of Dota for so many years is really silly.
        sillysaurusx 5y ago
- thomaslangston 5y ago
  And by extension our future insurance as consumers against Microsoft and X-Box as well.
- Xelbair 5y ago
  I don't care for underlying motives as long as the results are aligned with mine. The end result is that landscape is better for the customer. I seriously do not get why people think that companies do 'good' for any other reason than money.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is implying they did it for any other reason. Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it. Yes, they're clearly doing this to help the Steam Deck and other projects. I'm sure that will make them money and I'm sure someone at the company will do something with that money that people object to. That's just the nature of living in anything beyond a barter economy with humans. I think most people (especially on HN) get that. We don't need 5 people to pop out and remind us of it every time a company does something. Unless it's obvious that there's a clear malicious intent hidden in what the company did, a lot of times it just feels like "How dare these people feel some joy. Capitalism must make everyone feel bad all the time."
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it. That's 100% the reaction here every time Microsoft launches something benefiting devs and consumers. Everything is scrutinized with skepticism. Why should other billion dollar tech companies get a pass? Or why the double standards? How do you think Valve would be towards consumers if they were to become a monopoly in the PC gaming sales space? Not knocking them, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and not get romantically attached to these corporations.
      - noirbot 5y ago
        I'm not saying that Valve should be above complaint. I'm also annoyed when people show up in threads about WSL or VS Code or whatever else that Microsoft does just to be like "Stop liking this, Microsoft is evil". I'm just saying that "But they're a company so nothing they do can be good" is a generic response without anything interesting behind it. You can post it on every thread about every action done by every company and it will be true. I'm not saying not to be paranoid, but unless the point is just "people can't enjoy things made by companies" maybe save the actual paranoia for cases where it's clear that the action is going to be a big downside. There's no call to action except "don't talk about this" or "why are you buying things from a corporation?" So much of it just feels mean-spirited to me. That there's literally no possible thing any company could do that wouldn't be spun as "well this is just good PR to cover up X evil thing they're doing." And that's maybe true, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage them to do good things and recognize them when they do them. It feels like a perverse joy in stomping on other people's happiness, even if it's justified. It's like showing up at someone's birthday and reminding them they're a year closer to death and debilitating old age diseases. It's true, but what does anyone gain by doing that. Are people on this forum A. unaware of corporate malfeasance or B. able to be persuaded from their current position on its dangers? I'd say that's almost never the case here.
- mastax 5y ago
  > Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, GOOD! That means our incentives are aligned, and the arrangement is much more likely to survive long-term.
- yucky 5y ago
  >Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts Something tells me Kroger doesn't sell me food out of the goodness of their hearts either, and I'm ok with that too.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  Valve depends on indie devs and atm Valve's Steam is by far the best platform to release, distribute and manage your indie game.
- ranguna 5y ago
  They could've choose to go proprietary with all their software, locked down proton, locked down their OS, locked down their hardware, locked down everything. But instead, proton is open source, their OS is based on one of the most open distros out there and they published a tear down guide (not the best guide, mind you, but it's trillions of year ahead any competition on their space). So yeah, they are doing it for the money, but they are one of the very few companies that understands that money come from users, and they seem to be doing very good for users. So don't kid yourself, it's not only for the money.
nimajneb 5y ago
I remember how difficult it was to setup Wine and to play a game, Valve made it much easier. I remember some games even with Wine, wouldn't run with complete compatibility or wouldn't work. Installing Steam on Linux is pretty easy.
kristofferR 5y ago
The Steam DRM is a joke, Steamless cracks it in seconds. It's about the level of the DVD CSS DRM.
- sph 5y ago
  Steam is successful not because it's hard to bypass, but because it's so fucking convenient. "Piracy is a service problem." — Gabe Newell
  - gbersac 5y ago
    100% true. I don't pirate game because it's easier to just click buy on steam.
    - foxyv 5y ago
      Not to mention 99% of the cracked games out there come with fun little friends that will encrypt your hard drive for you and charge you a nominal fee.
      - bool3max 5y ago
        Absolutely not true, as much as you'd want it to be.
      - antifa 5y ago
        I've gotten a virus only twice in my life. Both times, it was an ad on the cyanide and happiness website. The worst thing that's ever happened to me from pirating games is the keygen having loud unexpected music.
        account42 5y ago
        > The worst thing that's ever happened to me from pirating games is the keygen having loud unexpected music. You mean the best thing, right? <3 chiptunes
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. Not sure what you mean by this. Steam offers DRM, but its use is not enforced. There are many Steam games that can simply be copied to another computer and run even without Steam.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>What they did for Linux as a gaming platform is spectacular. Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, but Proton and the Steam Deck are their future insurance policy against Microsoft coming after their profits in the future. The writing was on the wall, they saw how much money Epic was giving to Apple, and how many studios Microsoft owns, and with the direction Windows is going, in 10 years when Windows 12 drops, Microsoft could also push for a 30% cut on all Steam sales on Windows for example, and Valve is preparing themselves for such a scenario by pushing Steam to Linux full throttle. They want to make sure they reap all the profits from the Steam store and not have to share they pie with a middle man like the Epic vs Apple kerfuffle. That's the end-game here. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very grateful for what Valve is doing for Linux, but it's important to be aware of the motivation behind the actions, consider their potential end-game, and not get romantically attached to companies as there is no free lunch and companies are not your friends.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" Well yeah. That's what a company is. Companies are also people, and people make decisions, and those decisions are sometimes influenced by more than the mere bottom line. You can't read their minds, and it's the opposite of charitable to assume the worst. Fully agree about the rest though. It certainly makes business sense. But it took around a decade to maneuver themselves into this position, and it's pretty hard to believe they did it all solely for the green. I used to exchange MSN messenger messages with Zoid, one of their most productive Dota 2 programmers. (Boy that sounds like ancient history.) He didn't strike me as a person who was particularly ruthless and mercantile. Just a driven programmer trying to do good.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I mean, Valve is still privately owned as far as I know, so wherever it’s going is entirely up to the mind of it’s founders. Edit: Tring to do good, and they made Dota 2?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    1v1 sf mid scrub The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you. It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could ever dream to achieve. It was wonderful to have a front row seat to the steamroller. In hindsight I wish I'd relaxed and enjoyed it more.
    - oblio 5y ago
      I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this: > your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is almost categorically false. I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity. There's almost no comparison between Icefrog's additions to Dota and what came before. The other versions were brilliant in their concept but generally very poor in their execution. Icefrog added more brilliant concepts but primarily greatly cleaned up Dota mechanics and execution. He took an amateurish mod and made it have professional level execution. Maybe he sucks to work with in a team (really hard to believe, to be honest, considering the development and testing team he built around Dota and the changelogs, OMG, the changelogs; I'd rather think he might suck to work in a on-site team, because his online team management was pretty solid), but criticizing his management/design of Dota for so many years is really silly.
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
thomaslangston 5y ago
And by extension our future insurance as consumers against Microsoft and X-Box as well.
Xelbair 5y ago
I don't care for underlying motives as long as the results are aligned with mine. The end result is that landscape is better for the customer. I seriously do not get why people think that companies do 'good' for any other reason than money.
- noirbot 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is implying they did it for any other reason. Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it. Yes, they're clearly doing this to help the Steam Deck and other projects. I'm sure that will make them money and I'm sure someone at the company will do something with that money that people object to. That's just the nature of living in anything beyond a barter economy with humans. I think most people (especially on HN) get that. We don't need 5 people to pop out and remind us of it every time a company does something. Unless it's obvious that there's a clear malicious intent hidden in what the company did, a lot of times it just feels like "How dare these people feel some joy. Capitalism must make everyone feel bad all the time."
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it. That's 100% the reaction here every time Microsoft launches something benefiting devs and consumers. Everything is scrutinized with skepticism. Why should other billion dollar tech companies get a pass? Or why the double standards? How do you think Valve would be towards consumers if they were to become a monopoly in the PC gaming sales space? Not knocking them, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and not get romantically attached to these corporations.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      I'm not saying that Valve should be above complaint. I'm also annoyed when people show up in threads about WSL or VS Code or whatever else that Microsoft does just to be like "Stop liking this, Microsoft is evil". I'm just saying that "But they're a company so nothing they do can be good" is a generic response without anything interesting behind it. You can post it on every thread about every action done by every company and it will be true. I'm not saying not to be paranoid, but unless the point is just "people can't enjoy things made by companies" maybe save the actual paranoia for cases where it's clear that the action is going to be a big downside. There's no call to action except "don't talk about this" or "why are you buying things from a corporation?" So much of it just feels mean-spirited to me. That there's literally no possible thing any company could do that wouldn't be spun as "well this is just good PR to cover up X evil thing they're doing." And that's maybe true, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage them to do good things and recognize them when they do them. It feels like a perverse joy in stomping on other people's happiness, even if it's justified. It's like showing up at someone's birthday and reminding them they're a year closer to death and debilitating old age diseases. It's true, but what does anyone gain by doing that. Are people on this forum A. unaware of corporate malfeasance or B. able to be persuaded from their current position on its dangers? I'd say that's almost never the case here.
mastax 5y ago
> Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts or love for the Linux community, or the gaming community, GOOD! That means our incentives are aligned, and the arrangement is much more likely to survive long-term.
yucky 5y ago
>Definitely yes, but let's not kid ourselves. Valve is not doing this from the generosity of their hearts Something tells me Kroger doesn't sell me food out of the goodness of their hearts either, and I'm ok with that too.
mrkramer 5y ago
Valve depends on indie devs and atm Valve's Steam is by far the best platform to release, distribute and manage your indie game.
ranguna 5y ago
They could've choose to go proprietary with all their software, locked down proton, locked down their OS, locked down their hardware, locked down everything. But instead, proton is open source, their OS is based on one of the most open distros out there and they published a tear down guide (not the best guide, mind you, but it's trillions of year ahead any competition on their space). So yeah, they are doing it for the money, but they are one of the very few companies that understands that money come from users, and they seem to be doing very good for users. So don't kid yourself, it's not only for the money.

nimajneb 5y ago

I remember how difficult it was to setup Wine and to play a game, Valve made it much easier. I remember some games even with Wine, wouldn't run with complete compatibility or wouldn't work. Installing Steam on Linux is pretty easy.

kristofferR 5y ago

The Steam DRM is a joke, Steamless cracks it in seconds. It's about the level of the DVD CSS DRM.

sph 5y ago
Steam is successful not because it's hard to bypass, but because it's so fucking convenient. "Piracy is a service problem." — Gabe Newell
- gbersac 5y ago
  100% true. I don't pirate game because it's easier to just click buy on steam.
  - foxyv 5y ago
    Not to mention 99% of the cracked games out there come with fun little friends that will encrypt your hard drive for you and charge you a nominal fee.
    - bool3max 5y ago
      Absolutely not true, as much as you'd want it to be.
    - antifa 5y ago
      I've gotten a virus only twice in my life. Both times, it was an ad on the cyanide and happiness website. The worst thing that's ever happened to me from pirating games is the keygen having loud unexpected music.
      - account42 5y ago
        > The worst thing that's ever happened to me from pirating games is the keygen having loud unexpected music. You mean the best thing, right? <3 chiptunes

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> Valve established DRM to a degree many previously hoped it would get rejected. Not sure what you mean by this. Steam offers DRM, but its use is not enforced. There are many Steam games that can simply be copied to another computer and run even without Steam.