17 ms·

Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

148 points by ee64a4a 9mo ago

CuriouslyC 9mo ago
Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.
- kemayo 9mo ago
  I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus. Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet. EDIT: rather, Apple cares a lot about phone gaming, but that's an area that Valve has shown few signs of moving in on.
  - CuriouslyC 9mo ago
    They've shown signs of moving on phone gaming if you know what to look for. https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-has-quietly-backed-projects-to-bring-windows-games-to-arm https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-has-quietly-backed-projects...
    - deltoidmaximus 9mo ago
      I feel like this was more in support of their new VR headset which has an ARM processor. I actually doubt we'll see a Steam Phone even if the idea is interesting to me (since it would be a linux phone). At least, I don't think we'll see it any time soon.
      - bigyabai 9mo ago
        > since it would be a linux phone It doesn't have to be. Proton runs fine on Android.
        entropicdrifter 9mo ago
        On the other hand, Valve has built a compatibility layer for ARM Linux to run Android APKs, so if anyone could make a jank-free Linux phone it would be them
        bigyabai 9mo ago
        Sure, but so did Jolla and Waydroid. I think the consensus is that AOSP > Linux for the average Joe's mobile handset.
  - phantasmish 9mo ago
    They’d need to improve desktop Linux a lot to threaten Apple. It’s far more tolerable on their relatively tightly-controlled and stable hardware platforms than it is elsewhere, but it’s still a features-weak jankfest compared to macOS. I mean user facing features relevant to any desktop user, not “docker is native on it” or other developer-only stuff—and for the record Linux was my main desktop OS for about a decade, so I’m far from unfamiliar with it, and I do own a Steam Deck and have used it extensively in desktop mode (and in console-alike mode). I’d love someone to actually compete with Apple at the specific kind of thing they do, but I don’t see it in the cards for Valve. Too much distance, with things they don’t have to solve to hit other (apparent) targets of theirs. As for Microsoft, what is Valve threatening? Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point, and the latter… I guess maybe, yeah, they could threaten that. [edit] to soften this somewhat, I do love what Valve is doing and their micro-PC thing they’re releasing next year is likely going to be an instant purchase for me, provided supply issues don’t drive the price insanely high or otherwise mess with the release. I happen to be in the exact niche of people who are thrilled to have a good low-tinkering option that lets me ditch my last Windows machine, so this stuff’s my jam.
    - yrtrrbl 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - fragmede 9mo ago
      > Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point With the broader job market being not-great, and everyone trying some sort of side hustle with the aims of making it big, it's definitely the bubble I'm in, but the "home" case has a lot of Google free office suite business looking usage, and even if there isn't a side hustle, maybe my friends are super weird but they use Google sheets to organize things even for non-business life things when things get complicated. Eg planning a wedding. That's Google and not Valve, but if customers get Steamboxes to access that vs Windows laptops (or Chromebooks), it looks like a threat to Microsoft to me. (But it's been the year for Linux on the desktop for decades now, so I'm not holding my breath.)
  - CharlesW 9mo ago
    > I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. And yet, Apple controls the world's largest gaming economy (~$78B in 2025), dwarfing Sony's (~$31B) and Microsoft's (~$24B).
    - kemayo 9mo ago
      I could amend to "Apple is thoroughly not-invested in the kind of gaming that Valve is invested in".
    - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
      Phone games are an entirely different thing from console or PC games. They aren't comparable.
      - CharlesW 9mo ago
        Okay, so you draw a line in the sand between a Steam Deck and an iPad. Others would characterize your lumping together of console and PC games as equally silly. But all of these gaming platforms are fighting for the same dollars and attention, and every gaming exec understands this.
      - lwkl 9mo ago
        While Apple probably makes most of their gaming revenue from gacha they fund a surprising number of non gambling games for their Apple Arcade subscription.
  - jijijijij 9mo ago
    > because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming Is Apple invested in anything at all right now? Seems like they are only ever iterating over the same products in their idiotically domain separated legacy zoo of devices. Lately even fucking that up with UI "innovation" literally everyone hates. I mean, who's talking about Apple VR anymore? Apple AI is a meme. What are they cooking with all that cash? I don't think Valve has to even consider Apple.
  - codeflo 9mo ago
    > Apple cares a lot about phone gaming The kind of gacha games that dominate the in-app sales charts, sure. Actual gaming, they don't care about or even understand.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    If Android had half as supported SDK game stuff like Swift and Objective-C have on Apple platforms. Apple cares about gaming on their iDevices and related Apple store profits, macOS not so much.
- dartharva 9mo ago
  How are Google and Apple in its crosshairs (article's framing notwithstanding)? From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offerings indicating that they've lost interest in the consumer market as a whole.
  - CuriouslyC 9mo ago
    Valve is clearly using games as a wedge, the Steam Machine is (and will continue to be) pushed as a capable general purpose computing device, and as the Linux desktop experience improves they will lean harder into that angle, until they're selling sexy general purpose devices with a user experience comparable to Apple's. This includes phones, though the timeline for that will lag a few years.
    - vablings 9mo ago
      Outside of speculation do you have any source or evidence that valve plans to expand the hardware ecosystem outside of gaming?
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    The games console yes, however people forget that Xbox is also a brand under Microsoft Games Studios, which happens to be one of the biggest publishers due to the amount of studios that are owned by Microsoft.
- lwkl 9mo ago
  The work on Proton ends up in wine which is available for macOS and is part of Apples game porting toolkit. So part of the work Valve is doing to make games run on Linux helps games run better on macOS.
modeless 9mo ago
Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardware products, aside from being awesome and setting a standard that others have to match, are really an insurance policy. They ensure Valve cannot be locked out of their own market by platform owners like Microsoft or Meta using their leverage to either take a cut of their revenue or outright ban Steam in favor of their own stores (as it looked like MS might try to do in the Win8 days). By owning a platform of their own Valve always has a fallback option.
- dartharva 9mo ago
  > They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with store purchases I mean.. it's pretty obvious such a thing would be immediately suicidal for them. If Steam stops being an open platform, it stops being a PC platform.
  - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
    The Steam you download from steampowered.com can be an open platform at the same time that the Steam that comes preinstalled on the Steam Machine is a closed platform. Seems unlikely because we believe Valve has integrity. But it's possible they have less integrity than we think, and they pursue this strategy to make some of those games with kernel-level anti-cheat available on the Steam Machine.
    - rangestransform 9mo ago
      Kernel-level anticheat doesn't necessarily need to be on a fully closed platform, it could be implemented like SafetyNet on the Pixel series to check for system integrity but still allow for bootloader unlock and arbitrary user software
ZeroConcerns 9mo ago
Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than in the PS2 era? I sort-of doubt it, but, yeah, alternate universes and everything...
- hnuser123456 9mo ago
  I'm impressed they even managed to create a game subscription that works on both PC and Xbox. It felt too much like Xbox was made by a different company than Windows for a long time. Remember Games for Windows Live?
- sand500 9mo ago
  Not just usable, better performant than Windows too. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-steamos-than-windows-11-ars-testing-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...
  - agoodusername63 9mo ago
    It really depends on your GPU drivers. If you're using nvidia like 75% of Steam's hardware survey reports, it's a mixed bag and 1% lows are fucking abysmal compared to windows. But try getting nvidia to care about Linux beyond CUDA. They'd rather just stop selling GPUs to normal people before they do that.
    - pxc 9mo ago
      They're in the gradual process of open-sourcing their driver stack by moving the bits they want to keep proprietary into the firmware and hardware, much like AMD did many years ago. It takes a long time to become mature, but it's a good strategy. NVIDIA GPUs will probably have pretty usable open-source community drivers in 5 years or so.
glenstein 9mo ago
>that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped. I find this framing to be beyond maddening. Sure, it wasn't an iPod, and if you measure it against that kind of expectation, of course it's a flop, because it wasn't an overnight success. But I think it's more appropriately understood as a soft launch of an ecosystem, to strategically rebalance Valve away from the potential risk of being locked into Windows. It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors, so they weren't shipping hundreds of thousands of units to Walmart shelves was just sat there and lost them tens of millions of dollars, which is also what I think of when something's considered a flop. But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem that bore fruit in large part due to the credible long-term commitment as the library of steamos compatible games grew and set up the Steam Deck for success. And now it looks like the wind is at their back with the new line of hardware, but I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago. I think it reflects a kind of intelligence and long-term thinking that Google is pathologically incapable of, by contrast.
- ee64a4a 9mo ago
  >> that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped. > I find this framing to be beyond maddening [...] > It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors As numerous post-mortems (some of which I quoted in the article) recount, the hardware partners themselves largely consider their experiment back then a flop as well. > But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem With respect, I think you're overselling it. It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move. If you read some of those linked post-mortems, I think you might agree as well. > I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago I think there's nuance here, which is that Valve made lemonade from the lemon that was the flop of the Steam Box. They turned that failed move into an initial investment through diligence and effort. In a sense, that's part of what I'm trying to bring attention to -- Valve didn't just write off the failure and abandon the market, but took signal from it and tried again.
  - 9mo ago
PeterHolzwarth 9mo ago
It will be interesting to see if they can answer a question better now than with the original Steam Machines ten years ago: what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer. I guess that same question needs to be asked again here: are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Are those real problems experienced by the broader market of people, or are those just tangential issues cared about by a more vocal few?
- coldpie 9mo ago
  Speaking only for myself, I'm very excited for the Steam Machine. A console I can plug into my TV and it just works and gives me access to all* of the Steam library is an amazing proposition. A Windows 11 box doesn't do that**. * Almost. Anti-cheat remains a big hole. ** No, I'm not going to use a keyboard or do Windows admin crap from my couch.
- pelotron 9mo ago
  A system that plays the vast majority of the Steam library with an operating system that isn't full of ad/spy/bloatware out of the box would be a good one. I think mass awareness of Win11 shittiness does exist.
  - PeterHolzwarth 9mo ago
    I understand what you mean, but that is more of a "Hacker News user" problem than a "young guy who does drywall for a living in Lawrence, Kansas" problem.
- littlecranky67 9mo ago
  > what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? It fixes a lot of issues for me (I will buy a steam machine upon release): I used to prefer consoles for the living room - put the disk in, and go. But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads, patches, tweaking GUI settings and fear of not getting the best performance (PS5 Pro variants, Xbox S/X etc., performance vs. quality mode settings). PC games are now not only more price competetive through the sales, but consoles use now downloads at high prices to undermine the second hand market, or account-lock your game even when purchased as disk. Plus, I need a subscription to play online. Game controller support has become superb on ALL OSes (I use a PS5 controller on macOS as well as Linux, and it is pretty much flawless. Windows is annoying. I used Windows 10 for a long time as a glorified bootloader into Steam (on a dualboot Linux machine), but it become full annoyances and win11 worsens that ("You need a Onedrive account" - "oh, did you try Edge yet?" - "Your computer is at risk" - "We installed copilot for you!" etc.). I basically want a computer that boots into steam BigPicture and is quiet the rest of the time. Can I build my own living room PC? Yes, but then without proper SteamOS installation, or finicky linux setups. With the Steam Machine I just buy the package, put it next to my TV and lets go. I will re-use my PS5 dualshock controller and be done with it.
cHaOs667 9mo ago
"ProtonDB tracks compatibility, and counts 7000+ games that are verified to work as well or almost as well as on Windows" - I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example as the reality is something different. I have a ~1500 games big Steam Library and I'm also a Linux User for 20+ years - yes, I do use Windows only for gaming and on my work pc. When I fire up my linux workstation or steam deck and browse my library, there are countless games, marked as "platinum" in ProtonDB, but do not work OOTB. Sometimes it's a later Proton version that broke the compatibility, sometimes you still need to tinker in the settings in addition to choose the correct proton version. All in all, I've spent quite some time getting games to run I just wanted to play a single afternoon as nostaliga hitted hard. As long as issues like this are not resolved, I don't believe in Steam Machines as alternatives for consoles in the living room space. And yes, I'm still considering a steam machine for my living room, even though I will need to support my wife and kids in getting games to run on the TV.
- deltoidmaximus 9mo ago
  ProtonDB is a great resource for tweaks like you suggested and I find proton works OOTB quite often. But I agree, they seem to be operating under an alternate definition of what "platinum" means which is setting everyone's expectations to high.
  - ee64a4a 9mo ago
    I'm happy to edit to correct, but my own experience on Steam Deck has been that anything that's platinum (or native, but that goes without saying) basically just works, minor UI issues and the like notwithstanding. Considering that even Windows versions can have those kinds of issues depending on drivers and hardware, I figured it was a fair comparison.
- wetpaws 9mo ago
  [dead]
- k4rli 9mo ago
  gamer!==gamer. These are your own choices. For me Assetto Corsa + other racing games + CS2 work perfectly. And with sway/i3, unlike in Windows, I can throw the game around in whichever way I wish. No laggy alt-tab or random crashes that my Windows user friends often have.
bargainbin 9mo ago
If they used the learning of the Steam Machines ARM translation layer to ship a Steam Phone, I’d jump on it day one even if all it had was basic phone apps and games.
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  You can do that right now on almost any Android handset with Vulkan 1.2 compliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflIp1rBJgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflIp1rBJgw
  - __aru 9mo ago
    caveat being that GPU drivers on Android are kind of a mess. Open source Mesa Turnip drivers fixes a lot of problems with Snapdragon GPUs, but the drivers don't cover every available chipset from Qualcomm. The GPU driver issues leads to situations like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (released in 2022) + Mesa drivers often getting better gaming compatibility/performance than the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite (released in 2025)
teddyh 9mo ago
> (2011, proxied quote from The Cambridge Student via The Escapist; the link in that article is dead, and a search on the site for “Newell” turns up no results) Here’s the latest copy of the original article in The Cambridge Student: <https://web.archive.org/web/20220924191721/https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/interview-gabe-newell/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220924191721/https://www.tcs.c...>
- ee64a4a 9mo ago
  Thanks for turning that up; edited into the article with credit to you!
potatolicious 9mo ago
Are they actually running the Apple playbook in reverse? It seems to me that they're actually running Apple's playbook pretty squarely, just in another domain. First-gen product that seemed to not know where it's going? Check. Continued quiet iteration behind closed doors despite first-gen being a flop? Check. Sticking with the product line over many years, where most other companies would have written off and thrown in the towel? Check. Multi-pronged GTM strategy where other products prove out key bits of next product? Check. (see: SteamOS and Proton setting the stage for Steam Deck, which in turn sets the stage for Steam Machine 2) Deep software-hardware integration in ways that are highly salient to users? Check (see: foviated streaming for Steam Frame, Steam Deck "just works")
- ee64a4a 9mo ago
  The "in reverse" framing was largely in reference to the fact that Apple built the software ecosystem after getting loyal hardware consumers, whereas Valve got loyal software users first and is now selling hardware to them. Otherwise, I do think a lot of what you say is true, and some of it is in the article (e.g. the software "just works").
  - thenthenthen 9mo ago
    Thanks for the in reverse explainer, i did not really get this from the article. That said I havent had my coffee yet.
mschuster91 9mo ago
> Competition is difficult once a big aggregator has emerged, even for deep-pocketed incumbents. And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor. With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No big deal, in fact it is required for Steam Remote Play - the only thing that keeps annoying us is that you can only have one Steam client open on one machine which is annoying on a multi-user machine. But Origin? That piece of shit software doesn't just log you out on one machine when you log in on another - no, it opens a fucking modal window telling you "you're in offline mode". Yeah no shit, my wife knows that, she just turned on the other machine! That's utterly fucking basic user experience stuff and yet EA doesn't seem to be able to fathom that people might want to own more than one machine. As long as they can be sold FIFA lootboxes, eh?!
- throwaway314155 9mo ago
  Playing two Steam games simultaneously typically results in a logout from the second (offending) PC.
bryanlarsen 9mo ago
> with current-gen consoles (which are sold at a loss, and so would be expected to be cheaper) This is not true. It was true in 2019 when the PS5 was initially announced, but PS5 has been sold at a (slim) profit since 2021. Xbox probably sold at a loss for longer, but it definitely isn't sold at a loss in 2025. The Switch & Switch 2 have always been profitable. The BOM cost of the Steam Machine has been estimated at $450. They could sell for $500 and still be nominally profitable and still undercut XBox & PS5. (That BOM cost estimate was before RAM price silliness so you have to adjust upwards a little bit).
- ee64a4a 9mo ago
  Hi, thanks for pointing this out! Two questions: 1. Do you think that inaccuracy undercuts the point? If so, I'll correct the article; if not, I'll include it as a note in my planned follow-up. 2. Do you have the link(s) handy for those figures? If not, I can try to find them myself, but I figured it would be easier to ask first.
  - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
    If you Google you'll find links of varying quality. Direct statements from Sony, but Nintendo and Microsoft not so much. It's all third party analysis which I find compelling. Does your analysis still hold if the Steam Box base model sells for $600? Analysts estimated the BOM at $425 - $450. Add a little bit for RAM inflation, and Valve can still sell for $600 and technically be selling without subsidies as promised. They also promised to price it "like a PC". Lots of PC's sell for $300, so that also doesn't really constrain them. I don't think your analysis depends on the Steam Box selling for higher than $600, but you're a better judge of that than I am.
deadbabe 9mo ago
Valve should really make something like a Steamphone. No iOS, no Android, just raw SteamOS with gaming and privacy focus, and fully customizable by users if they want. Make it look really sleek and cool, and dockable.
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  Valve will not do this. First off, there's zero value proposition. Steam Deck, Frame and Machine all make sense as complimentary products to the Steam Storefront. Smartphones are not complimentary to Steam, Steam is complimentary to smartphones. Secondly, the AOSP already ticks all these boxes while also supporting the apps users expect. Valve is not going to waste money tailoring SteamOS to fill a gap that an APK file could do equally as well. I understand the general disappointment with Google and Apple as smartphone vendors, but you're ignoring Valve's strategy if you're convinced that a Steam Phone is in the cards.
  - deadbabe 9mo ago
    A company as rich and as private as Valve could literally just make whatever it wants, for no reason. They made a VR headset, a phone is not too far off.
    - bigyabai 9mo ago
      Valve made two headsets. Nonetheless, they will not make their own branded phone because of the reasons I just outlined.
- lunar_rover 9mo ago
  I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future. Making competitive phones is even harder than making a desktop, and they aren't investing in Linux desktop itself either, just the components they need. SteamOS works by not running a desktop in its default mode.
  - everforward 9mo ago
gorfian_robot 9mo ago
in 10 years it will be Steam and Nintendo. everything else will be a dim memory.
RunSet 9mo ago
> Steam came in 2003, created for easy management of updates for their games over the Internet (what today would be called a “proprietary launcher”). I call it that today and I also called it one in 2003, when it suddenly demanded to be installed and kept running to continue playing Half-Life (what today would be called "vendor lock-in").
- denimnerd42 9mo ago
  people on the internet were pissed about steam in 2003
  - gverrilla 9mo ago
    not cs playerbase, which was it's foundation.
- vablings 9mo ago
  Its even better now! Launch a steam game to open another game launcher platform that you then create an account for and play on that game. A launcher launcher!
MassEffect5784 9mo ago
Valve is one of the good companies out there. Love my steam deck. It just works.
etempleton 9mo ago
It has always been curious to me that Apple hasn’t put more effort into gaming. The AppleTV could easily be positioned as a game console if they put more effort into supporting developers and providing more dedicated infrastructure for games.
petterroea 9mo ago
Contrary to what the article claims, the market being open and sloppy isn't enshittification. Jacking up prices and removing features users were using in the name of extracting profit is. But what I strongly agree with the author about is the uncertainty of Valve's fate after GabeN. Any company is able to enshittify, we are just one change of owners away. It's almost like potential energy vs kinetic energy - a company like Valve has saved up a _lot_ of enshittification potential waiting for the "right" condition to be realized. I'd love to believe Steam will keep being the market leader because they haven't really enshittified yet. I'd love to believe that Tim Sweeney and Epic games are so unable to read the room and so blinded by being a public company that consumers just aren't interested. But considering their biggest game is Fortnite, they are practically selling to kids, who lack any sort of market opinion of that regard. Regardless, consumers don't really buy with their wallet unless there are immediate, solvable problems in front of them. Regarding metaverse, I believe anyone who has been on VRChat instinctively understands why metaverse was doomed to fail from the get-go. I wrote some notes about my experiences which I released while doing winter-cleaning of my notes recently: https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vrchat.html https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.
mrandish 9mo ago
> Unlike Apple hardware, the Steam Deck does not need to be jailbroken in any way, and Valve explicitly provides a guide for how to go outside their ecosystem And this is why I'll always trust and prefer Valve over Apple.
deafpolygon 9mo ago
So Valve started out rich and now is getting poorer with each passing year?!
dzonga 9mo ago
more telling is how zuck fucked up the metaverse initiative. they could've totally owned the casual gaming market -- but if all you're used to is ads / engagement. you miss the rest.
Bluescreenbuddy 9mo ago
This article is peak “acksheully”.
ranger207 9mo ago
IMO Apple and Valve are taking the opposite approaches but on a different axis than the article discusses: Apple is continuing to increase their lock in and remove choice, while Valve continues to add choice. You can argue that Steam being a nigh-monopoly means there isn't a lot of choice, but I'd argue that's not correct. For one, Steam rarely censors games (it does happen! A notable case happened this month! But it happens rarely) and doesn't have requirements for games to use Steam's platform technology to be on the market. In fact, you're allowed to offer direct competitors to Steam features in your game without penalty (some games I play have both Steam Workshop support and the game dev's own mod platform support). For another Steam doesn't try to nudge you towards their solutions constantly either (eg like in the recent article on passkeys where the user had to click half a dozen times to not use Touch ID with the Touch ID option being on every page of those clicks). And of course, there's the "Add a non-Steam game or app" button in Steam that just asks you "where's the executable" and then it gets all the non-platform features Steam offers, like the overlay, screenshots, Steam Input (I think it even supports community input profiles for non-Steam games; I'm pretty sure I've seen community profiles for Primehack on my Steam Deck), etc. Of course the Steam Deck (and now Steam Machine and Steam Frame) are constantly advertised as "it's just a PC and you can do whatever you want with it". There's no lock in; you can install competitors' stores on those devices easily. The reverse playbook then is that Apple is trying to make every option other than staying in the Apple ecosystem a bad choice, while Valve is trying to make Steam the best option in every scenario. The difference in base philosophy is the important part. (Of course as a profit-seeking corporation there's no guarantee they'll stay this way, particularly after gaben leaves, but I'll appreciate it while it's here at least.)
johndoh42 9mo ago
They are just better at exploiting developers. All hail to Gabe, god of the game developer slave market.

148 points by ee64a4a 9mo ago

Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.

kemayo 9mo ago
I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus. Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet. EDIT: rather, Apple cares a lot about phone gaming, but that's an area that Valve has shown few signs of moving in on.
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  They've shown signs of moving on phone gaming if you know what to look for. https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-has-quietly-backed-projects-to-bring-windows-games-to-arm https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-has-quietly-backed-projects...
  - deltoidmaximus 9mo ago
    I feel like this was more in support of their new VR headset which has an ARM processor. I actually doubt we'll see a Steam Phone even if the idea is interesting to me (since it would be a linux phone). At least, I don't think we'll see it any time soon.
    - bigyabai 9mo ago
      > since it would be a linux phone It doesn't have to be. Proton runs fine on Android.
      - entropicdrifter 9mo ago
        On the other hand, Valve has built a compatibility layer for ARM Linux to run Android APKs, so if anyone could make a jank-free Linux phone it would be them
        bigyabai 9mo ago
        Sure, but so did Jolla and Waydroid. I think the consensus is that AOSP > Linux for the average Joe's mobile handset.
- phantasmish 9mo ago
  They’d need to improve desktop Linux a lot to threaten Apple. It’s far more tolerable on their relatively tightly-controlled and stable hardware platforms than it is elsewhere, but it’s still a features-weak jankfest compared to macOS. I mean user facing features relevant to any desktop user, not “docker is native on it” or other developer-only stuff—and for the record Linux was my main desktop OS for about a decade, so I’m far from unfamiliar with it, and I do own a Steam Deck and have used it extensively in desktop mode (and in console-alike mode). I’d love someone to actually compete with Apple at the specific kind of thing they do, but I don’t see it in the cards for Valve. Too much distance, with things they don’t have to solve to hit other (apparent) targets of theirs. As for Microsoft, what is Valve threatening? Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point, and the latter… I guess maybe, yeah, they could threaten that. [edit] to soften this somewhat, I do love what Valve is doing and their micro-PC thing they’re releasing next year is likely going to be an instant purchase for me, provided supply issues don’t drive the price insanely high or otherwise mess with the release. I happen to be in the exact niche of people who are thrilled to have a good low-tinkering option that lets me ditch my last Windows machine, so this stuff’s my jam.
  - yrtrrbl 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - fragmede 9mo ago
    > Home no-business-use-case (mostly gaming and maybe light web browsing) PC owners, and I suppose x-box? The former has got to be negligible at this point With the broader job market being not-great, and everyone trying some sort of side hustle with the aims of making it big, it's definitely the bubble I'm in, but the "home" case has a lot of Google free office suite business looking usage, and even if there isn't a side hustle, maybe my friends are super weird but they use Google sheets to organize things even for non-business life things when things get complicated. Eg planning a wedding. That's Google and not Valve, but if customers get Steamboxes to access that vs Windows laptops (or Chromebooks), it looks like a threat to Microsoft to me. (But it's been the year for Linux on the desktop for decades now, so I'm not holding my breath.)
- CharlesW 9mo ago
  > I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. And yet, Apple controls the world's largest gaming economy (~$78B in 2025), dwarfing Sony's (~$31B) and Microsoft's (~$24B).
  - kemayo 9mo ago
    I could amend to "Apple is thoroughly not-invested in the kind of gaming that Valve is invested in".
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    Phone games are an entirely different thing from console or PC games. They aren't comparable.
    - CharlesW 9mo ago
      Okay, so you draw a line in the sand between a Steam Deck and an iPad. Others would characterize your lumping together of console and PC games as equally silly. But all of these gaming platforms are fighting for the same dollars and attention, and every gaming exec understands this.
    - lwkl 9mo ago
      While Apple probably makes most of their gaming revenue from gacha they fund a surprising number of non gambling games for their Apple Arcade subscription.
- jijijijij 9mo ago
  > because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming Is Apple invested in anything at all right now? Seems like they are only ever iterating over the same products in their idiotically domain separated legacy zoo of devices. Lately even fucking that up with UI "innovation" literally everyone hates. I mean, who's talking about Apple VR anymore? Apple AI is a meme. What are they cooking with all that cash? I don't think Valve has to even consider Apple.
- codeflo 9mo ago
  > Apple cares a lot about phone gaming The kind of gacha games that dominate the in-app sales charts, sure. Actual gaming, they don't care about or even understand.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  If Android had half as supported SDK game stuff like Swift and Objective-C have on Apple platforms. Apple cares about gaming on their iDevices and related Apple store profits, macOS not so much.
dartharva 9mo ago
How are Google and Apple in its crosshairs (article's framing notwithstanding)? From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offerings indicating that they've lost interest in the consumer market as a whole.
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  Valve is clearly using games as a wedge, the Steam Machine is (and will continue to be) pushed as a capable general purpose computing device, and as the Linux desktop experience improves they will lean harder into that angle, until they're selling sexy general purpose devices with a user experience comparable to Apple's. This includes phones, though the timeline for that will lag a few years.
  - vablings 9mo ago
    Outside of speculation do you have any source or evidence that valve plans to expand the hardware ecosystem outside of gaming?
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  The games console yes, however people forget that Xbox is also a brand under Microsoft Games Studios, which happens to be one of the biggest publishers due to the amount of studios that are owned by Microsoft.
lwkl 9mo ago
The work on Proton ends up in wine which is available for macOS and is part of Apples game porting toolkit. So part of the work Valve is doing to make games run on Linux helps games run better on macOS.

modeless 9mo ago

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardware products, aside from being awesome and setting a standard that others have to match, are really an insurance policy. They ensure Valve cannot be locked out of their own market by platform owners like Microsoft or Meta using their leverage to either take a cut of their revenue or outright ban Steam in favor of their own stores (as it looked like MS might try to do in the Win8 days). By owning a platform of their own Valve always has a fallback option.

dartharva 9mo ago
> They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with store purchases I mean.. it's pretty obvious such a thing would be immediately suicidal for them. If Steam stops being an open platform, it stops being a PC platform.
- bryanlarsen 9mo ago
  The Steam you download from steampowered.com can be an open platform at the same time that the Steam that comes preinstalled on the Steam Machine is a closed platform. Seems unlikely because we believe Valve has integrity. But it's possible they have less integrity than we think, and they pursue this strategy to make some of those games with kernel-level anti-cheat available on the Steam Machine.
  - rangestransform 9mo ago
    Kernel-level anticheat doesn't necessarily need to be on a fully closed platform, it could be implemented like SafetyNet on the Pixel series to check for system integrity but still allow for bootloader unlock and arbitrary user software

ZeroConcerns 9mo ago

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than in the PS2 era? I sort-of doubt it, but, yeah, alternate universes and everything...

hnuser123456 9mo ago
I'm impressed they even managed to create a game subscription that works on both PC and Xbox. It felt too much like Xbox was made by a different company than Windows for a long time. Remember Games for Windows Live?
sand500 9mo ago
Not just usable, better performant than Windows too. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-steamos-than-windows-11-ars-testing-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...
- agoodusername63 9mo ago
  It really depends on your GPU drivers. If you're using nvidia like 75% of Steam's hardware survey reports, it's a mixed bag and 1% lows are fucking abysmal compared to windows. But try getting nvidia to care about Linux beyond CUDA. They'd rather just stop selling GPUs to normal people before they do that.
  - pxc 9mo ago
    They're in the gradual process of open-sourcing their driver stack by moving the bits they want to keep proprietary into the firmware and hardware, much like AMD did many years ago. It takes a long time to become mature, but it's a good strategy. NVIDIA GPUs will probably have pretty usable open-source community drivers in 5 years or so.

glenstein 9mo ago

>that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped. I find this framing to be beyond maddening. Sure, it wasn't an iPod, and if you measure it against that kind of expectation, of course it's a flop, because it wasn't an overnight success. But I think it's more appropriately understood as a soft launch of an ecosystem, to strategically rebalance Valve away from the potential risk of being locked into Windows. It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors, so they weren't shipping hundreds of thousands of units to Walmart shelves was just sat there and lost them tens of millions of dollars, which is also what I think of when something's considered a flop. But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem that bore fruit in large part due to the credible long-term commitment as the library of steamos compatible games grew and set up the Steam Deck for success. And now it looks like the wind is at their back with the new line of hardware, but I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago. I think it reflects a kind of intelligence and long-term thinking that Google is pathologically incapable of, by contrast.

ee64a4a 9mo ago
>> that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped. > I find this framing to be beyond maddening [...] > It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors As numerous post-mortems (some of which I quoted in the article) recount, the hardware partners themselves largely consider their experiment back then a flop as well. > But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem With respect, I think you're overselling it. It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move. If you read some of those linked post-mortems, I think you might agree as well. > I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago I think there's nuance here, which is that Valve made lemonade from the lemon that was the flop of the Steam Box. They turned that failed move into an initial investment through diligence and effort. In a sense, that's part of what I'm trying to bring attention to -- Valve didn't just write off the failure and abandon the market, but took signal from it and tried again.
- 9mo ago

PeterHolzwarth 9mo ago

It will be interesting to see if they can answer a question better now than with the original Steam Machines ten years ago: what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer. I guess that same question needs to be asked again here: are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Are those real problems experienced by the broader market of people, or are those just tangential issues cared about by a more vocal few?

coldpie 9mo ago
Speaking only for myself, I'm very excited for the Steam Machine. A console I can plug into my TV and it just works and gives me access to all* of the Steam library is an amazing proposition. A Windows 11 box doesn't do that**. * Almost. Anti-cheat remains a big hole. ** No, I'm not going to use a keyboard or do Windows admin crap from my couch.
pelotron 9mo ago
A system that plays the vast majority of the Steam library with an operating system that isn't full of ad/spy/bloatware out of the box would be a good one. I think mass awareness of Win11 shittiness does exist.
- PeterHolzwarth 9mo ago
  I understand what you mean, but that is more of a "Hacker News user" problem than a "young guy who does drywall for a living in Lawrence, Kansas" problem.
littlecranky67 9mo ago
> what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? It fixes a lot of issues for me (I will buy a steam machine upon release): I used to prefer consoles for the living room - put the disk in, and go. But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads, patches, tweaking GUI settings and fear of not getting the best performance (PS5 Pro variants, Xbox S/X etc., performance vs. quality mode settings). PC games are now not only more price competetive through the sales, but consoles use now downloads at high prices to undermine the second hand market, or account-lock your game even when purchased as disk. Plus, I need a subscription to play online. Game controller support has become superb on ALL OSes (I use a PS5 controller on macOS as well as Linux, and it is pretty much flawless. Windows is annoying. I used Windows 10 for a long time as a glorified bootloader into Steam (on a dualboot Linux machine), but it become full annoyances and win11 worsens that ("You need a Onedrive account" - "oh, did you try Edge yet?" - "Your computer is at risk" - "We installed copilot for you!" etc.). I basically want a computer that boots into steam BigPicture and is quiet the rest of the time. Can I build my own living room PC? Yes, but then without proper SteamOS installation, or finicky linux setups. With the Steam Machine I just buy the package, put it next to my TV and lets go. I will re-use my PS5 dualshock controller and be done with it.

cHaOs667 9mo ago

"ProtonDB tracks compatibility, and counts 7000+ games that are verified to work as well or almost as well as on Windows" - I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example as the reality is something different. I have a ~1500 games big Steam Library and I'm also a Linux User for 20+ years - yes, I do use Windows only for gaming and on my work pc. When I fire up my linux workstation or steam deck and browse my library, there are countless games, marked as "platinum" in ProtonDB, but do not work OOTB. Sometimes it's a later Proton version that broke the compatibility, sometimes you still need to tinker in the settings in addition to choose the correct proton version. All in all, I've spent quite some time getting games to run I just wanted to play a single afternoon as nostaliga hitted hard. As long as issues like this are not resolved, I don't believe in Steam Machines as alternatives for consoles in the living room space. And yes, I'm still considering a steam machine for my living room, even though I will need to support my wife and kids in getting games to run on the TV.

deltoidmaximus 9mo ago
ProtonDB is a great resource for tweaks like you suggested and I find proton works OOTB quite often. But I agree, they seem to be operating under an alternate definition of what "platinum" means which is setting everyone's expectations to high.
- ee64a4a 9mo ago
  I'm happy to edit to correct, but my own experience on Steam Deck has been that anything that's platinum (or native, but that goes without saying) basically just works, minor UI issues and the like notwithstanding. Considering that even Windows versions can have those kinds of issues depending on drivers and hardware, I figured it was a fair comparison.
wetpaws 9mo ago
[dead]
k4rli 9mo ago
gamer!==gamer. These are your own choices. For me Assetto Corsa + other racing games + CS2 work perfectly. And with sway/i3, unlike in Windows, I can throw the game around in whichever way I wish. No laggy alt-tab or random crashes that my Windows user friends often have.

bargainbin 9mo ago

If they used the learning of the Steam Machines ARM translation layer to ship a Steam Phone, I’d jump on it day one even if all it had was basic phone apps and games.

bigyabai 9mo ago
You can do that right now on almost any Android handset with Vulkan 1.2 compliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflIp1rBJgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflIp1rBJgw
- __aru 9mo ago
  caveat being that GPU drivers on Android are kind of a mess. Open source Mesa Turnip drivers fixes a lot of problems with Snapdragon GPUs, but the drivers don't cover every available chipset from Qualcomm. The GPU driver issues leads to situations like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (released in 2022) + Mesa drivers often getting better gaming compatibility/performance than the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite (released in 2025)

teddyh 9mo ago

> (2011, proxied quote from The Cambridge Student via The Escapist; the link in that article is dead, and a search on the site for “Newell” turns up no results) Here’s the latest copy of the original article in The Cambridge Student: <https://web.archive.org/web/20220924191721/https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/interview-gabe-newell/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220924191721/https://www.tcs.c...>

ee64a4a 9mo ago
Thanks for turning that up; edited into the article with credit to you!

potatolicious 9mo ago

Are they actually running the Apple playbook in reverse? It seems to me that they're actually running Apple's playbook pretty squarely, just in another domain. First-gen product that seemed to not know where it's going? Check. Continued quiet iteration behind closed doors despite first-gen being a flop? Check. Sticking with the product line over many years, where most other companies would have written off and thrown in the towel? Check. Multi-pronged GTM strategy where other products prove out key bits of next product? Check. (see: SteamOS and Proton setting the stage for Steam Deck, which in turn sets the stage for Steam Machine 2) Deep software-hardware integration in ways that are highly salient to users? Check (see: foviated streaming for Steam Frame, Steam Deck "just works")

ee64a4a 9mo ago
The "in reverse" framing was largely in reference to the fact that Apple built the software ecosystem after getting loyal hardware consumers, whereas Valve got loyal software users first and is now selling hardware to them. Otherwise, I do think a lot of what you say is true, and some of it is in the article (e.g. the software "just works").
- thenthenthen 9mo ago
  Thanks for the in reverse explainer, i did not really get this from the article. That said I havent had my coffee yet.

mschuster91 9mo ago

> Competition is difficult once a big aggregator has emerged, even for deep-pocketed incumbents. And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor. With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No big deal, in fact it is required for Steam Remote Play - the only thing that keeps annoying us is that you can only have one Steam client open on one machine which is annoying on a multi-user machine. But Origin? That piece of shit software doesn't just log you out on one machine when you log in on another - no, it opens a fucking modal window telling you "you're in offline mode". Yeah no shit, my wife knows that, she just turned on the other machine! That's utterly fucking basic user experience stuff and yet EA doesn't seem to be able to fathom that people might want to own more than one machine. As long as they can be sold FIFA lootboxes, eh?!

throwaway314155 9mo ago
Playing two Steam games simultaneously typically results in a logout from the second (offending) PC.

bryanlarsen 9mo ago

> with current-gen consoles (which are sold at a loss, and so would be expected to be cheaper) This is not true. It was true in 2019 when the PS5 was initially announced, but PS5 has been sold at a (slim) profit since 2021. Xbox probably sold at a loss for longer, but it definitely isn't sold at a loss in 2025. The Switch & Switch 2 have always been profitable. The BOM cost of the Steam Machine has been estimated at $450. They could sell for $500 and still be nominally profitable and still undercut XBox & PS5. (That BOM cost estimate was before RAM price silliness so you have to adjust upwards a little bit).

ee64a4a 9mo ago
Hi, thanks for pointing this out! Two questions: 1. Do you think that inaccuracy undercuts the point? If so, I'll correct the article; if not, I'll include it as a note in my planned follow-up. 2. Do you have the link(s) handy for those figures? If not, I can try to find them myself, but I figured it would be easier to ask first.
- bryanlarsen 9mo ago
  If you Google you'll find links of varying quality. Direct statements from Sony, but Nintendo and Microsoft not so much. It's all third party analysis which I find compelling. Does your analysis still hold if the Steam Box base model sells for $600? Analysts estimated the BOM at $425 - $450. Add a little bit for RAM inflation, and Valve can still sell for $600 and technically be selling without subsidies as promised. They also promised to price it "like a PC". Lots of PC's sell for $300, so that also doesn't really constrain them. I don't think your analysis depends on the Steam Box selling for higher than $600, but you're a better judge of that than I am.

deadbabe 9mo ago

Valve should really make something like a Steamphone. No iOS, no Android, just raw SteamOS with gaming and privacy focus, and fully customizable by users if they want. Make it look really sleek and cool, and dockable.

bigyabai 9mo ago
Valve will not do this. First off, there's zero value proposition. Steam Deck, Frame and Machine all make sense as complimentary products to the Steam Storefront. Smartphones are not complimentary to Steam, Steam is complimentary to smartphones. Secondly, the AOSP already ticks all these boxes while also supporting the apps users expect. Valve is not going to waste money tailoring SteamOS to fill a gap that an APK file could do equally as well. I understand the general disappointment with Google and Apple as smartphone vendors, but you're ignoring Valve's strategy if you're convinced that a Steam Phone is in the cards.
- deadbabe 9mo ago
  A company as rich and as private as Valve could literally just make whatever it wants, for no reason. They made a VR headset, a phone is not too far off.
  - bigyabai 9mo ago
    Valve made two headsets. Nonetheless, they will not make their own branded phone because of the reasons I just outlined.
lunar_rover 9mo ago
I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future. Making competitive phones is even harder than making a desktop, and they aren't investing in Linux desktop itself either, just the components they need. SteamOS works by not running a desktop in its default mode.
- everforward 9mo ago

gorfian_robot 9mo ago

in 10 years it will be Steam and Nintendo. everything else will be a dim memory.

RunSet 9mo ago

> Steam came in 2003, created for easy management of updates for their games over the Internet (what today would be called a “proprietary launcher”). I call it that today and I also called it one in 2003, when it suddenly demanded to be installed and kept running to continue playing Half-Life (what today would be called "vendor lock-in").

denimnerd42 9mo ago
people on the internet were pissed about steam in 2003
- gverrilla 9mo ago
  not cs playerbase, which was it's foundation.
vablings 9mo ago
Its even better now! Launch a steam game to open another game launcher platform that you then create an account for and play on that game. A launcher launcher!

MassEffect5784 9mo ago

Valve is one of the good companies out there. Love my steam deck. It just works.

etempleton 9mo ago

It has always been curious to me that Apple hasn’t put more effort into gaming. The AppleTV could easily be positioned as a game console if they put more effort into supporting developers and providing more dedicated infrastructure for games.

petterroea 9mo ago

Contrary to what the article claims, the market being open and sloppy isn't enshittification. Jacking up prices and removing features users were using in the name of extracting profit is. But what I strongly agree with the author about is the uncertainty of Valve's fate after GabeN. Any company is able to enshittify, we are just one change of owners away. It's almost like potential energy vs kinetic energy - a company like Valve has saved up a _lot_ of enshittification potential waiting for the "right" condition to be realized. I'd love to believe Steam will keep being the market leader because they haven't really enshittified yet. I'd love to believe that Tim Sweeney and Epic games are so unable to read the room and so blinded by being a public company that consumers just aren't interested. But considering their biggest game is Fortnite, they are practically selling to kids, who lack any sort of market opinion of that regard. Regardless, consumers don't really buy with their wallet unless there are immediate, solvable problems in front of them. Regarding metaverse, I believe anyone who has been on VRChat instinctively understands why metaverse was doomed to fail from the get-go. I wrote some notes about my experiences which I released while doing winter-cleaning of my notes recently: https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vrchat.html https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.

mrandish 9mo ago

> Unlike Apple hardware, the Steam Deck does not need to be jailbroken in any way, and Valve explicitly provides a guide for how to go outside their ecosystem And this is why I'll always trust and prefer Valve over Apple.

deafpolygon 9mo ago

So Valve started out rich and now is getting poorer with each passing year?!

dzonga 9mo ago

more telling is how zuck fucked up the metaverse initiative. they could've totally owned the casual gaming market -- but if all you're used to is ads / engagement. you miss the rest.

Bluescreenbuddy 9mo ago

This article is peak “acksheully”.

ranger207 9mo ago

IMO Apple and Valve are taking the opposite approaches but on a different axis than the article discusses: Apple is continuing to increase their lock in and remove choice, while Valve continues to add choice. You can argue that Steam being a nigh-monopoly means there isn't a lot of choice, but I'd argue that's not correct. For one, Steam rarely censors games (it does happen! A notable case happened this month! But it happens rarely) and doesn't have requirements for games to use Steam's platform technology to be on the market. In fact, you're allowed to offer direct competitors to Steam features in your game without penalty (some games I play have both Steam Workshop support and the game dev's own mod platform support). For another Steam doesn't try to nudge you towards their solutions constantly either (eg like in the recent article on passkeys where the user had to click half a dozen times to not use Touch ID with the Touch ID option being on every page of those clicks). And of course, there's the "Add a non-Steam game or app" button in Steam that just asks you "where's the executable" and then it gets all the non-platform features Steam offers, like the overlay, screenshots, Steam Input (I think it even supports community input profiles for non-Steam games; I'm pretty sure I've seen community profiles for Primehack on my Steam Deck), etc. Of course the Steam Deck (and now Steam Machine and Steam Frame) are constantly advertised as "it's just a PC and you can do whatever you want with it". There's no lock in; you can install competitors' stores on those devices easily. The reverse playbook then is that Apple is trying to make every option other than staying in the Apple ecosystem a bad choice, while Valve is trying to make Steam the best option in every scenario. The difference in base philosophy is the important part. (Of course as a profit-seeking corporation there's no guarantee they'll stay this way, particularly after gaben leaves, but I'll appreciate it while it's here at least.)

johndoh42 9mo ago

They are just better at exploiting developers. All hail to Gabe, god of the game developer slave market.