Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS - Ars Technica
vithigar@lemmy.ca 8 months agoGaming has been literally the only thing keeping me on windows for at least a decade now, and with SteamOS/Proton reaching their current levels of compatibility I finally feel like I can make the switch with my next PC and not have to worry about it.
I could put linux on my current gaming tower, but I’ll fully admit that it’s just easier not to. It’s a comfortable shoe at this point that I can’t be bothered to change while I already have it. Though if my hand was forced and I had some kind of catastrophic drive failure and lost my OS volume linux is probably what would go there in its place.
There are two other “PCs” in my home that I own, my Steam Deck and a NUC that I use as a home server. Both run linux.
I’m fortunate in that basically nothing I play uses invasive anti-cheat garbage, which is still a huge compatibility problem. It has skeeved me out on windows for a long time, and I’ve avoided games that use many of them. I had many friends disappointed that I wouldn’t join them in Star Wars: The Old Republic back when that first came out precisely because I wouldn’t tolerate how invasive the anti-cheat was.
But there are lots of gamers for whom Proton still isn’t enough. A single game they want to play that won’t run is a dealbreaker. Or the only game they want to play won’t run. An OS that won’t run the game(s) they want to play isn’t fit for purpose for them, and those people are a huge proportion of gamers.
vexikron@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Well, honestly at this point, generally speaking, the kinds of games that currently are hugely popular and only work on Windows?
They usually have very toxic communities.
They usually are expensive.
They are often addicting and they are often designed to coax players into more and more microtransactions and are thus unethical.
They are nearly always a kind of gameplay that is actually not very original, or engaging or challenging for anyone who has a good amount of experience with a wide variety of games, but draw people in due to featuring a popular IP characters/setting/world.
There are nearly always alternative games that take aforementioned extremely unoriginal at this point game mechanics and actually improve on them, but are less popular due to being a less recognizable IP.
Do you see where I am going with this?
You are talking about the most stereotyoically gamer type people that give basically all people who enjoy games but also have a personality outside of that a hugely bad rap.
These are, generally speaking, the idiots that keep shelling out money to hugely exploitative game studios that consistently release buggy unfinished garbage, or are widely known to have horrible working conditions for their employees, or both.
These are the people who I was talking about, the ones that just need whats comfortable, need that latest version of their favorite IP game, number 7 or 9 in the series.
Now, I am being hyperbolic and I realize that there are exceptions to this, there are actually good games that are still basically currently Windows only because they dont have a large enough staff to keep updating their games and also make multiplayer work on linux.
But, if you look into the technicals of that situation… in many cases the technical fix for this is actually so easy that I have seen people literally submit all of the code for this directly to the devs, or if its closed source a comprehensive overview of how to implement something… and they just do not notice it or say that nobody plays on linux so who cares.
But they are likely to change that stance when they see more and more SteamDeck and Linux Desktop users.
I will be completely fine if all of the COD 386 players are still using Windows in 5 years when someone has figured out how to do a more fun, less bullshit, less toxicity inducing shooter on Linux, or something analogous to that.
Let them keep paying for their own suffering while others move on and… you know. Have fun. Playing games. Remember when games were fun, and engaging instead of soul crushing addictions that ruin you and your life?
vithigar@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Kind of? I agree that leaving those games and their communities behind isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they make up an enormous portion of the gaming market. I can’t speak for you, but I’m not going to write off literally millions of people as unsalvageable losses just because they play a game or participate in a community I don’t like. I’m sure lots of them don’t really like their communities either.
And there’s the problem. They’re right. Even now after all the progress Valve has made it just doesn’t make economic sense to invest the time to fix these things. Opening the doors for the players of these toxic and addicting games to at least have the option of using linux is another step in alleviating that.
A rising tide raises all ships, whether you like the source of that tide or not.
vexikron@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Well I think its fair to agree to disagree, or hold different stances on that first point.
Yep, I just dont care about such people, in terms say wanting to make a game any of them would want to play.
I acknowledge thats just me personally and of course other people in other situations would be valid in caring about that demographic.
As to the second point, you may be right, and I may be wrong. I would say there are far too many variables to forecast how everything will evolve accurately, but I guess I can say that I am confident that the share of linux gamers will grow, and that it will almost certainly spawn analagous, linux games to the current Windows Exclusive ecosystem, but i grant that many other forces at play may impede or prevent certain existing games from doing the work to allow online linux capability, or for bigger established studios heavily influenced or outright funded by MSFT to develop new games or compatibilize existing games in that manner.