>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.
>> 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.
Fair point on the vendors - surely they hoped to make $$ from it. But I think you're underestimating the significance of standing up Proton and the critical experience working through bugs and getting experience with hardware, and gradually growing the inventory of compatible games. Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine, which says everything about the value of the Steam Machine.
> But I think your underestimating the significance of standing up Proton
I don't think I'm underestimating it at all. Proton and SteamOS were huge, they were extremely well-timed, and they've been a boon for everyone involved (except M$ shareholders, I guess).
However, none of that necessitated whatever the Steam Box release was. It's not like it moved a significant number of units and that's why Valve invested in Proton/SteamOS; Steam Box was long discontinued before the first public release of Proton (2018, IIRC).
> Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine
Agreed, and I call that out in the article, but that doesn't make its original release not a flop. Hence my lemonade comment -- you don't make lemonade from apples; you have to have a lemon first.
I think there is something to be said for companies putting their money where their mouth is. Getting behind Gaming on Linux with a hardware launch is pretty substantial and Valve have been explicit since 2013 that they think it's the way forward.
They also continue to have first class support for BOTH windows and Linux without forcing it down anyone's throat which is not the strategy for literally every tangent related market.
There are no super annoying layers to this strategy
Valve could have done a number of things to force users to use Linux such as.
- Linux game exclusives and Linux discounts.
- Preventing the steam machine from running on a windows machine by dropping certain hardware
- Making windows users second class by not releasing the latest updates and features.
- Making other hardware incompatible with windows e.g. Valve Index, Steam Controller etc
Yeah, it's like the people who say, oh, the iPhone mini was a flop. That was a BILLION DOLLAR product. How many companies would LOVE to have a billion dollar product???
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...
I believe Valve's concerns went(or maybe go?) beyond just the Windows Store, and into "We believe Microsoft may become unable to ship a good Operating System in the future".
In a 2013 interview with Gabe Newell: "Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business. Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC, buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales — it’s like 'holy cow that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like 'oh my god...' I find [Windows 8] unusable." [0]
The Windows Store probably was a part of it, sure, but looking at that quote from 2025, after having your SSD broken, your recovery unusable and your explorer laggy? It's quite bitter-sweet.
Outside of XBox, Minecraft, and journalists trying it out, I don't think I've heard of anyone using the Microsoft store.
The Wikipedia page has quite the description of the view from within Microsoft:
> Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's gaming division, has also opined that Microsoft Store "sucks". As a result, Office was removed as an installable app from the store, and made to redirect to its website.
I actually use the Microsoft store before looking elsewhere for software. It’s basically a package manager with a minimal jank. It’s there on a new install and it works. It sucks that they don’t let you add other sources though.
Having an app from an exe installer sucks because you have to update it manually, or, it uses resources while you’re using it to check for updates. With the windows store I can update everything at once and don’t need a million individual update checks on startup.
Yes. At least in 11 Pro installs, you can just say you'll be joining to a domain, create a local admin account and never actually join it. Then to create other users you can do it via the command line, or probably through the GUI after telling it you don't want one a couple of times
> 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
Microsoft telegraphed its intention to kill Steam. The plan was a hermetically sealed ecosystem where only cryptographically signed code could run on Windows computers, from UEFI boot to application launch. This meant users would only run software Microsoft let them, and there was no room for the Steam store in Microsoft's vision of the future then.
I tried to use Microsoft's Game Pass and the Xbox store on a Windows machine with multiple users.
It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience.
It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still baffles me that companies with tens of thousands of engineers can produce such shitty software experiences.
It's not the engineers at fault here but C-suits. Those who are out of touch or stuck up their arse within their own world. Believing their own delusional vision is it based on that they have a toddler who's four.
I'd say engineers are at fault for bugs and performance issues, as well as poor UX (not counting what's made to sell you something or collect your data)
It can be the engineers issue, sure. Hire the wrong crew and you're sunk. However, while I might be bias, what do you do when the higher-execs don't give you time / space to fix the bugs, performance issues? No one writes genius code from day one of a project.
I've had to aggressively pitch to execs who've totally ignored the fact that $app is vulnerable. Would result in fines and if we optimized it could be pushed to milk further money offering X feature. I was denied because it's a waste of time, cost and "didn't provide anything for the company".
After finally persuading them and getting the classic response of "Oh!, why didn't you say so" three weeks later was fired for making the company waste money. This wasn't a small company in an industrial park.
Ever since I've turned down jobs that smell like toxicity. You can sort of see the companies stink when you enter reception.
> "Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform."
Valve is the one putting in the effort and paying for it at their own expense. If they ever lose interest in paying for it, like GabeN retiring and Ebenezer Scrooge replacing him, then it's game over for Linux gaming (literally).
valve would recoup the cost from a bigger customer base, as well as paying it as insurance against windows/microsoft targeting them as an existential threat.
It's cheap for what they're getting. And iirc, it being open source means the foundation could be built upon by others if they do decide to call it quits.
That would make very little sense business wise. Steam “consoles” are not big break just for linux but also for valve.
What could easily happen though is locking down their consoles once they get profitable.
"Sense business wise" seems to vary quite a bit nowadays, at least every other day there's a headline of a company on here doing something almost exclusively for short-term value at the detriment to long-term health.
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.
And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right? Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility...
And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
The experience on random hardware in 2025 is nowhere close to what is was in 2015. Have you tried it recently? In 2025 I can install pretty much any game from Steam on my Linux desktop with an nvidia gpu and it just works. The experience is identical to Windows.
The 2015 experience was nothing like this, you'd be lucky to get a game running crash-free after lots of manual setup and tweaking. Getting similar performance as Windows was just impossible.
> But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
Far from it... the only area you tend to see much issue with a current Linux distro is a few wifi/bt and ethernet chips that don't have good Linux support. Most hardware works just fine. I've installed Pop on a number of laptops and desktops this past year and only had a couple issues (wifi/bt, and ethernet) in those cases it's either installing a proprietary driver or swapping the card with one that works.
Steam has been pretty great this past year as well, especially since Kernel 6.16, it's just been solid AF. I know people with similar experience with Fedora variants.
I think the Steam Deck's success with Proton and what that means for Linux all around is probably responsible for at least half of those who have tried/converted to Linux the past couple years. By some metrics as much as 3-5% in some markets, which small is still a massive number of people. 3-5 Million regular users of Desktop Linux in the US alone. That's massive potential. And with the groundwork for Flatpak and Proton that has been taken, there's definitely some opportunity for early movers in more productivity software groups, not just open-source.
Gaming on linux in 2015 was a giant pita and most recent games didn't work properly or didn't work at all through wine.
In 2025 I just buy games on steam blindly because I know they'll work, except for a handful of multiplayer titles that use unsupported kernel level anticheat.
>And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right?
the performance difference between SteamOS and Windows did
>Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility...
>And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
the 2025 ars technica benchmark was performed on a Legion Go S, not on a steam deck
I'm all for MS bashing and laughing at their incompetence, but was there really any threat there? I don't know anyone on PC who was interested in buying a game anywhere other than Steam in 2015.
It was specifically the release of Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM) in 2012 that had people nervous that Microsoft wanted to lock Windows down long-term in the manner of iOS and Apple. Windows RT only ran code signed by Microsoft and only installed programs from Microsoft's store. It failed, and Microsoft let off the gas locking down Windows, but that moment was probably the specific impetus for Gabe Newell to set Valve on a decade long course of building support for Steam and the games in its storefront on Linux. Windows being locked down to the degree of iOS was an existential risk to Valve as a company and Steam as a platform in 2012. It isn't anymore.
Windows RT also drew ire from people other than Newell at the time IIRC. It was widely perceived as a trial balloon for closing down Windows almost completely. The first Steam Machines a decade ago were Valve's answering trial balloon. Both failed, but Valve learned and Microsoft largely did not... They haven't locked down Windows 11 to the point of Windows RT, but they're abusing their users to the point of potentially sabotaging their own market dominance for consumer PCs.
This was also closely related to their initial plans with the Xbox One to essentially kill used games, which they were about a decade to fast on rolling out.
Yes. We could have had Windows on Arm ten years previously, but Microsoft tried to use the platform transition as an opportunity for lock in. Fortunately this meant there were no apps and basically zero take up of WinRT.
People feared that MS will make installing things not from the store harder. Like what apple is doing. It posed a serious potential threat. Given that MS had complete control over the Windows, DirectX and many other tools developers were using.
They still can be, Microsoft is one of the biggest publishers, and they can lock everything from their studios into XBox app store or Gamepass, if they feel like it.
I buy games on GoG when I can, Steam when I have to. I have nothing against Steam, but they do have a near monopoly position on PC. Unfortunately the non-GoG alternatives are from even worse actors.
> Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago...
Yeah, I briefly addressed that concern in the article as a comparison to Facebook; probably could've expanded on it, but it was already quite long and didn't feel like it fit naturally into the topic at hand
That wasn't meant as a criticism, more like some additional context. With how irrelevant the Microsoft Store is these days, I can't blame anyone for skipping over it...
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?
They probably mean that with some projects, Microsoft builds something half-assed and then moves on to something else. Instead of sticking with the project, evaluating it critically, and committing to fixing whatever sucks about it until it's high quality.
One could get that impression from the Windows Store/Microsoft Store. And also the state of the Settings UI for at least the past 13 years - Windows 8 moved a small fraction of Settings to Metro design, but 13 years later there are still some pieces of Windows 7 UI left.
Or the Edge browser fiasco - how can a company as large as Microsoft conclude "eh, I guess we just can't have a browser that works well enough for enough of the web to be competitive, let's just give up and do a Chrome branch"
Or the Kin phone: "we launched this 4 weeks ago and I guess it sucks, let's just pull the plug and never mention this again"
Or Windows features like home group, libraries, and Windows Home Server - they're around for a few years, then someone decides "we don't really care about this" and dump them.
"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.
> I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example
I'm not a media outlet! Just some dope who noticed a thing and wanted to get the thought that wouldn't leave out into the world so I could use my brain for other things.
> as the reality is something different
That's fair. My anecdotal experience (as outlined in another comment) is that platinum has generally just worked for me. That's probably because I'm on Steam Deck rather than a "generic" Linux install (I also use Windows for my desktop gaming).
That said, do you think a parenthetical note is necessary for accuracy? I figured it might be getting too into the weeds since the article is primarily about the platform/ecosystem/hardware comparison between Apple and Valve...
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.
Simracing is the only reason my gaming rig runs windows. I never even thought my hardware would work on linux (especially my motion hardware). And stuff like crewchief and race telemetry. How do you deal with all that on linux?
To be honest, I've never had any issues with 'Platinum' games on Proton. But I somewhat agree, starting with 'Gold' and below, it was a hit-or-miss situation.
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.
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.
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.
In 2025 none of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo sell their consoles at a loss. They're sold for very slim margins, which is what I assume Valve will do with the Steam machine. I expect the Steam Machine to be price competitive.
ish. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo likely have contracts locking down RAM prices whereas Valve will have to negotiate theirs based on current prices.
If Valve sold the Steam Machine for any significant cost less than the Dell / HP / Lenovo equivalent, HNers would snap them up by the truckload to repurpose as home or work machines with guaranteed Linux compatibility.
I'm sure Valve would be ecstatic if they were snapped up by the truckload for home use, because home use and gaming use overlap significantly even if not perfectly.
For business use, the Beelink equivalent is about $350, because the GPU in the Steam Machine is useless for business or AI use. The Steam Machine is going to be more than $350.
The comment you're replying to is in a discussion about the possibility that the Steam Machine will be sold at a loss, as they would be able to re-coup the funds in sales on Steam.
In this example, no, Valve would not be ecstatic if they were snapped up for things other than Steam use. Sony tried this with the playstation, and the military bought them out as cheap linux compute, costing Sony thousands
This is why Sony killed the PS2Linux effort, and the PS3 Linux no longer offered graphics acceleration.
They had hoped for a second wave of Yaroze like indie developers, instead the large majority were repurposing their PS2 as MAME like emulators or Linux computers.
> They will not outcompete Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market
I don't follow the console market at all, but don't its players subsidize their hardware by keeping software (game) costs high? I didn't think they had anything like Steam's level of regular discounted sales. "Price is king" can cut both ways.
"Steam" doesn't decide to have discounted sales -- games are heavily discounted because developers compete against one another for attention. Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.
> Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.
The prime Nintendo games (i.e. Animal Crossing, Pokemon and anything Mario related) are rarely discounted, yes - and Nintendo can do this because these games have borderline drooling fanbases and the games aren't available anywhere else.
But everything else? There's constantly something on sale on the Switch store.
Likewise, the PS5 has absolutely dominated the Xbox's current generation in terms of sales in large part due to exclusives. Xbox Series S is far cheaper than a PS5, mind you.
Steam doesn't need to lock down the Steam Machine to subsidize it with store purchases. The casual user could theoretically install another OS, but that doesn't matter because they won't (because they're casual users), and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.
The risk isn't that casual users all spontaneously decide to stop using Steam on their own. The risk is that businesses exploit the subsidy in various ways. For example, businesses could buy the Steam Machine in bulk as a workstation. Or a store competitor could produce an OS of their own that replaces SteamOS and promote it to users.
>and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.
It's also the most convenient by far, and the new Steam Family stuff lets you share all of your games with all of your siblings without any need for password sharing like you'd have to on e.g. GoG or Epic. I have 4 siblings and most of us are married. Our combined Steam library is well over 1000 games
They do need to lock it down if they want to subside it with store purchases, otherwise it's too tempting for non-gaming uses where they don't get any money after the initial sale.
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.
> 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.
i dont think that's possible unless steam choose to go the route of what apple does with iOS and macOS - both essentially are "different" OS's.
But if that's the case, then games would have to be written "twice" (or have engine support directly from engine vendors). I highly doubt this can or will occur, as game developers are short on time as is.
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
Pixels and SafetyNet are different than a console appliance (e.g. Xbox, Playstation) in that Google allows both unlocking and relocking the bootloader, without affecting the integrity of a Pixel's onboard cryptographic hardware and secure enclave. This means you can, for example:
1. Unlock the bootloader and install an alternative OS (e.g. Graphene).
2. Relock the bootloader and still benefit from the Pixel's hardware security.
The above is not possible on modern video game consoles, or other phones, for the most part. Hardware cryptography has historically been used to lock customers out of their own machines for the purposes of profit, but that doesn't mean it has to be.
In the threat environment as it exists today --- a world in which almost everyone has an always on, always networked computer which must continually reveal its location in order to interface with the global network --- something like the Pixel's design ought to be the minimum standard for a computer in your pocket. Sadly, the only other device on the market with similar hardware security features is the iPhone, and it's as locked down as a games console. Samsung's Knox is another secure hardware platform/architecture, but they burn out a fuse on their phones to disable it when you unlock the bootloader.
Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux.
Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible.
If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft.
One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone. One of Meta's biggest mistakes was to give up on their phone (they gave in early due to technical choices, not just lack of user demand).
Owning a "pane of glass" lets you tax and control everything. Apple and Google have unprecedented leverage in two of the biggest markets in the world. Microsoft wants that for gaming, and since most gaming is on Windows, they have a shot at it.
Valve is doing everything they can to make sure developers start targeting other platforms so PC games remain multi-platform. It's healthy for the entire ecosystem.
If we had strong antitrust enforcement (which we haven't had in over 25 years), Apple and Google wouldn't have a stranglehold on mobile, and Microsoft would get real scrutiny for all of their stunts they've pulled with gaming, studio acquisitions, etc.
Antitrust enforcement is good for capitalism. It ensures that stupid at-scale hacks don't let the largest players become gluttons and take over the entire ecosystem. It keeps capitalism fiercely competitive and makes all players nimble.
The government's antitrust actions against Microsoft in the 1990s-2000s was what paved the way for Apple to become what it is today. If we had more of it, one wonders what other magnificent companies and products we might have.
Valve actually encourages devs to only provide Windows builds compatible with Proton, or at least it used to, to the disappointment of some professional porters. Mainly because several devs kept leaving their Linux builds abandoned while still maintaining their Windows ones.
Hopefully developers are being encouraged to target Proton, as it's the subset. Presumably anything that works on Proton will also work on Windows, so it makes sense to target Proton.
If the windows build already performs better than on native windows, why faff around with another build target and all its associated complexities (testing, etc).
Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros, and that's asking for trouble I reckon.
> Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros
Valve actually distributes a runtime (or at least used to), that's based on Ubuntu, and provides a stable target for developers who want to release a Linux port.
But I agree in general with your point; if the Windows build already performs great on Linux through Proton, why go through the effort to release a native Linux build?
They still distribute runtime(s). Proton runs inside one of those runtimes. You're talking about 1.0 version, 2.0 was based on debian 10, and 3.0 is based on debian 11.
It still has some assumptions about host system, though, but that's a problem for those who package steam. For example, my non-FHS NixOS provides everything required, and it works out-of-the-box.
Was antitrust enforcement necessary in this case, if Valve can break the "monopoly" with a superior value proposition for customers? Perhaps Valve would not feel the need to enter such a capital-intensive industry if it weren't for pressure from the behemoths. I happen to like that antitrust doctrine in the US is focused on good for consumers instead of some abstract ideal of a healthy market.
Microsoft and Nvidia (amongst many others) are happy to leave their gaming customers hanging for years in order to inflate the AI bubble further. They don’t care about gaming in any significant capacity. Valve is still a great gaming focused company and they will be successful.
Great point. Exactly. They have undermined the marketplace by hovering up and consolidating studios, scuttling a lot of IP that gamers care about and squeezing money out of properties for quarterly gains. They use their market power to push worse games with abusive, dark patterns. Microsoft has really become even more of a heel than they were in the 2000s.
> One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone.
They had no other choice.
The technical foundation of the prior WP versions (aka, Windows CE) was just too dated and they didn't have a Windows kernel / userland capable of performantly dealing on ARM, x86 performance was and still is utter dogshit on battery powered devices, they didn't have a Windows userland actually usable on anything touch based, and most importantly they did not have developer tooling even close to usable.
At the same time, Apple had a stranglehold over the upper price class devices, Android ate up the low and mid range class - and unlike the old Ballmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" days, Microsoft didn't have tooling that enticed developers, while Apple had Xcode with emulators that people had been used to for years, and Android had a fully functioning Eclipse based toolchain.
As I recall, that is not correct. There was a gargantuan internal effort to refactor Windows 10 to run on everything from mobile devices to servers. Windows Phone 10 was running Windows 10. And the tile UI was well received by those who had WP devices.
As others have said, lack of critical apps and shenanigans from Google is what killed sales which led to the death of Windows Phone.
Apple darn well knew what people want - even the first iPhone, the one that didn't even have an App Store (which got invented as a concept by jailbreakers proving it was possible!), came with YouTube and Maps from the start.
What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
> What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
There's a long backstory here.
Microsoft tried everything to get YouTube on Windows Phone. At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app. That didn't happen.
Microsoft tried to use the proper APIs, but Google kept shutting them off:
"Downloading" the videos was Microsoft trying to work around API limitations and shut offs.
Imagine Microsoft's customers getting angrier and angrier that YouTube kept breaking. For years. This was a deal breaker for lots of people, especially young early adopters.
Microsoft tried really hard here.
What Google did was abuse their market position to cripple Windows Phone. Customers abandoned Windows Phone because it didn't have YouTube.
Google had to play nice with Apple in the early days because Apple had all the patents Google needed to continue with Android. It wasn't until they purchased Motorolla that they had a MAD patent strategy.
> At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app.
MS made that offer to probably every developer on top 100 on ios/android stores. That usually meant some small shop in Eastern Europe will be contracted.
> 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").
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.
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.
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.
I have a MBP M4 and a Linux desktop, and to be honest other than the Apple ecosystem integration (which is good but doesn't matter to me because I have an android phone) the system software is generally mediocre and annoying.
The third party Mac software is often better, but not always.
It starts that I can buy Apple hardware at any European consumer shop, GNU/Linux hardware hardly, with exception of Raspeberry PIs on the electronics section.
> 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.)
You should check out the adoption curve for Linux desktops, it's actually starting to hockey stick, Windows 11 is a dumpster fire, Apple is stagnant and Arch based distros are getting crazy good.
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.
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
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
In modern game development practice you will have to download patches anyway, so whatever there's on disk is irrelevant. Hardware has nothing to do with that.
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.
Convienence. Consoles are popular because you just plop down, hit the on button and play (in theory).
And while people don't care how much spy/adware their computer is, they do care when frequent notifications, popups and updates interfere with what you're doing. Nothing more annoying that having a windows notif steal focus from a game you're playing through steam link in the other room (personal experience).
I'm so glad that they've improved steam and link on linux so much, having to run it on my s/o windows computer was a pain.
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.
> 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.
> (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:
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.
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)
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.
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-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.
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.)
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")
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").
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.
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.
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.
> 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?!
>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.
>> 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.
Fair point on the vendors - surely they hoped to make $$ from it. But I think you're underestimating the significance of standing up Proton and the critical experience working through bugs and getting experience with hardware, and gradually growing the inventory of compatible games. Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine, which says everything about the value of the Steam Machine.
> But I think your underestimating the significance of standing up Proton
I don't think I'm underestimating it at all. Proton and SteamOS were huge, they were extremely well-timed, and they've been a boon for everyone involved (except M$ shareholders, I guess).
However, none of that necessitated whatever the Steam Box release was. It's not like it moved a significant number of units and that's why Valve invested in Proton/SteamOS; Steam Box was long discontinued before the first public release of Proton (2018, IIRC).
> Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine
Agreed, and I call that out in the article, but that doesn't make its original release not a flop. Hence my lemonade comment -- you don't make lemonade from apples; you have to have a lemon first.
I think there is something to be said for companies putting their money where their mouth is. Getting behind Gaming on Linux with a hardware launch is pretty substantial and Valve have been explicit since 2013 that they think it's the way forward.
They also continue to have first class support for BOTH windows and Linux without forcing it down anyone's throat which is not the strategy for literally every tangent related market. There are no super annoying layers to this strategy Valve could have done a number of things to force users to use Linux such as. - Linux game exclusives and Linux discounts. - Preventing the steam machine from running on a windows machine by dropping certain hardware - Making windows users second class by not releasing the latest updates and features. - Making other hardware incompatible with windows e.g. Valve Index, Steam Controller etc
> I find this framing to be beyond maddening.
Yeah, it's like the people who say, oh, the iPhone mini was a flop. That was a BILLION DOLLAR product. How many companies would LOVE to have a billion dollar product???
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...
I believe Valve's concerns went(or maybe go?) beyond just the Windows Store, and into "We believe Microsoft may become unable to ship a good Operating System in the future".
In a 2013 interview with Gabe Newell: "Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business. Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC, buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales — it’s like 'holy cow that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like 'oh my god...' I find [Windows 8] unusable." [0]
The Windows Store probably was a part of it, sure, but looking at that quote from 2025, after having your SSD broken, your recovery unusable and your explorer laggy? It's quite bitter-sweet.
[0] https://archive.is/eBP6q#selection-3645.0-3645.729
Outside of XBox, Minecraft, and journalists trying it out, I don't think I've heard of anyone using the Microsoft store.
The Wikipedia page has quite the description of the view from within Microsoft:
> Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's gaming division, has also opined that Microsoft Store "sucks". As a result, Office was removed as an installable app from the store, and made to redirect to its website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Store
I actually use the Microsoft store before looking elsewhere for software. It’s basically a package manager with a minimal jank. It’s there on a new install and it works. It sucks that they don’t let you add other sources though.
Having an app from an exe installer sucks because you have to update it manually, or, it uses resources while you’re using it to check for updates. With the windows store I can update everything at once and don’t need a million individual update checks on startup.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/wi...
https://chocolatey.org
https://scoop.sh
Just in case you don’t know about these. :)
Do you need a Microsoft account to use the store?
Can you use Windows without a Microsoft account?
Yes. At least in 11 Pro installs, you can just say you'll be joining to a domain, create a local admin account and never actually join it. Then to create other users you can do it via the command line, or probably through the GUI after telling it you don't want one a couple of times
Yes? I use my Windows 11 with a local account, no microsoft account involved.
Because games are on the XBox app store, not Microsoft store.
> 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
Microsoft telegraphed its intention to kill Steam. The plan was a hermetically sealed ecosystem where only cryptographically signed code could run on Windows computers, from UEFI boot to application launch. This meant users would only run software Microsoft let them, and there was no room for the Steam store in Microsoft's vision of the future then.
I tried to use Microsoft's Game Pass and the Xbox store on a Windows machine with multiple users.
It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience.
It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still baffles me that companies with tens of thousands of engineers can produce such shitty software experiences.
It's not the engineers at fault here but C-suits. Those who are out of touch or stuck up their arse within their own world. Believing their own delusional vision is it based on that they have a toddler who's four.
I'd say engineers are at fault for bugs and performance issues, as well as poor UX (not counting what's made to sell you something or collect your data)
It can be the engineers issue, sure. Hire the wrong crew and you're sunk. However, while I might be bias, what do you do when the higher-execs don't give you time / space to fix the bugs, performance issues? No one writes genius code from day one of a project.
I've had to aggressively pitch to execs who've totally ignored the fact that $app is vulnerable. Would result in fines and if we optimized it could be pushed to milk further money offering X feature. I was denied because it's a waste of time, cost and "didn't provide anything for the company".
After finally persuading them and getting the classic response of "Oh!, why didn't you say so" three weeks later was fired for making the company waste money. This wasn't a small company in an industrial park.
Ever since I've turned down jobs that smell like toxicity. You can sort of see the companies stink when you enter reception.
> "Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform."
Valve is the one putting in the effort and paying for it at their own expense. If they ever lose interest in paying for it, like GabeN retiring and Ebenezer Scrooge replacing him, then it's game over for Linux gaming (literally).
> paying for it at their own expense
valve would recoup the cost from a bigger customer base, as well as paying it as insurance against windows/microsoft targeting them as an existential threat.
It's cheap for what they're getting. And iirc, it being open source means the foundation could be built upon by others if they do decide to call it quits.
That would make very little sense business wise. Steam “consoles” are not big break just for linux but also for valve. What could easily happen though is locking down their consoles once they get profitable.
"Sense business wise" seems to vary quite a bit nowadays, at least every other day there's a headline of a company on here doing something almost exclusively for short-term value at the detriment to long-term health.
Not just usable, better performant than Windows too.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...
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.
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.
Why do you link that article but not this one?
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-s...
becuase the one he linked is from this year, the one you linked is from 10 years ago
Oh, grabbed the wrong link.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/steamos-vs-windows-o...
And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right? Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility...
And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
The experience on random hardware in 2025 is nowhere close to what is was in 2015. Have you tried it recently? In 2025 I can install pretty much any game from Steam on my Linux desktop with an nvidia gpu and it just works. The experience is identical to Windows.
The 2015 experience was nothing like this, you'd be lucky to get a game running crash-free after lots of manual setup and tweaking. Getting similar performance as Windows was just impossible.
> But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
Far from it... the only area you tend to see much issue with a current Linux distro is a few wifi/bt and ethernet chips that don't have good Linux support. Most hardware works just fine. I've installed Pop on a number of laptops and desktops this past year and only had a couple issues (wifi/bt, and ethernet) in those cases it's either installing a proprietary driver or swapping the card with one that works.
Steam has been pretty great this past year as well, especially since Kernel 6.16, it's just been solid AF. I know people with similar experience with Fedora variants.
I think the Steam Deck's success with Proton and what that means for Linux all around is probably responsible for at least half of those who have tried/converted to Linux the past couple years. By some metrics as much as 3-5% in some markets, which small is still a massive number of people. 3-5 Million regular users of Desktop Linux in the US alone. That's massive potential. And with the groundwork for Flatpak and Proton that has been taken, there's definitely some opportunity for early movers in more productivity software groups, not just open-source.
The difference from 2015 to 2025 is enormous.
Gaming on linux in 2015 was a giant pita and most recent games didn't work properly or didn't work at all through wine.
In 2025 I just buy games on steam blindly because I know they'll work, except for a handful of multiplayer titles that use unsupported kernel level anticheat.
>And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right?
the performance difference between SteamOS and Windows did
>Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility... >And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?
the 2025 ars technica benchmark was performed on a Legion Go S, not on a steam deck
It is clearly not, as long as it depends on running Windows games, developed on Windows, running on Proton.
It is like arguing Windows is a quite-usable UNIX platform thanks to WSL 2.0.
The right way to push for Linux gaming is how Loki Entertainment was doing it.
I'm all for MS bashing and laughing at their incompetence, but was there really any threat there? I don't know anyone on PC who was interested in buying a game anywhere other than Steam in 2015.
It was specifically the release of Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM) in 2012 that had people nervous that Microsoft wanted to lock Windows down long-term in the manner of iOS and Apple. Windows RT only ran code signed by Microsoft and only installed programs from Microsoft's store. It failed, and Microsoft let off the gas locking down Windows, but that moment was probably the specific impetus for Gabe Newell to set Valve on a decade long course of building support for Steam and the games in its storefront on Linux. Windows being locked down to the degree of iOS was an existential risk to Valve as a company and Steam as a platform in 2012. It isn't anymore.
Windows RT also drew ire from people other than Newell at the time IIRC. It was widely perceived as a trial balloon for closing down Windows almost completely. The first Steam Machines a decade ago were Valve's answering trial balloon. Both failed, but Valve learned and Microsoft largely did not... They haven't locked down Windows 11 to the point of Windows RT, but they're abusing their users to the point of potentially sabotaging their own market dominance for consumer PCs.
This was also closely related to their initial plans with the Xbox One to essentially kill used games, which they were about a decade to fast on rolling out.
Yes. We could have had Windows on Arm ten years previously, but Microsoft tried to use the platform transition as an opportunity for lock in. Fortunately this meant there were no apps and basically zero take up of WinRT.
People feared that MS will make installing things not from the store harder. Like what apple is doing. It posed a serious potential threat. Given that MS had complete control over the Windows, DirectX and many other tools developers were using.
Sure, if they pulled Apple and locked everyone into only installing from Microsoft Store, Steam would have been in serious trouble.
They still can be, Microsoft is one of the biggest publishers, and they can lock everything from their studios into XBox app store or Gamepass, if they feel like it.
I never installed Steam, nor I intend to.
How many games have you bought in 2015?
Enough, on physical computer stores selling those little shiny things called DVDs.
As for how many, that was 10 years ago, I hardly can remember everything I ate last week.
I buy games on GoG when I can, Steam when I have to. I have nothing against Steam, but they do have a near monopoly position on PC. Unfortunately the non-GoG alternatives are from even worse actors.
> Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago...
Yeah, I briefly addressed that concern in the article as a comparison to Facebook; probably could've expanded on it, but it was already quite long and didn't feel like it fit naturally into the topic at hand
That wasn't meant as a criticism, more like some additional context. With how irrelevant the Microsoft Store is these days, I can't blame anyone for skipping over it...
Ah, okay, gotcha!
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?
ADHD? What do you mean?
They probably mean that with some projects, Microsoft builds something half-assed and then moves on to something else. Instead of sticking with the project, evaluating it critically, and committing to fixing whatever sucks about it until it's high quality.
One could get that impression from the Windows Store/Microsoft Store. And also the state of the Settings UI for at least the past 13 years - Windows 8 moved a small fraction of Settings to Metro design, but 13 years later there are still some pieces of Windows 7 UI left.
Or the Edge browser fiasco - how can a company as large as Microsoft conclude "eh, I guess we just can't have a browser that works well enough for enough of the web to be competitive, let's just give up and do a Chrome branch"
Or the Kin phone: "we launched this 4 weeks ago and I guess it sucks, let's just pull the plug and never mention this again"
Or Windows features like home group, libraries, and Windows Home Server - they're around for a few years, then someone decides "we don't really care about this" and dump them.
"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.
> I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example
I'm not a media outlet! Just some dope who noticed a thing and wanted to get the thought that wouldn't leave out into the world so I could use my brain for other things.
> as the reality is something different
That's fair. My anecdotal experience (as outlined in another comment) is that platinum has generally just worked for me. That's probably because I'm on Steam Deck rather than a "generic" Linux install (I also use Windows for my desktop gaming).
That said, do you think a parenthetical note is necessary for accuracy? I figured it might be getting too into the weeds since the article is primarily about the platform/ecosystem/hardware comparison between Apple and Valve...
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.
Simracing is the only reason my gaming rig runs windows. I never even thought my hardware would work on linux (especially my motion hardware). And stuff like crewchief and race telemetry. How do you deal with all that on linux?
Some random guy had the same problem as you a couple months ago and already released a nice software package that you can get from AUR/apt/dnf etc.
And if it doesn't exist then maybe you should go and make it!
> as nostalgia hit hard
in my experience the older games are more of a pain to get running, as a lot more tweaks are needed
it's the case on Windows too, but on Linux there's an additional need to mess with DLL overrides DXVK settings and the like
To be honest, I've never had any issues with 'Platinum' games on Proton. But I somewhat agree, starting with 'Gold' and below, it was a hit-or-miss situation.
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.
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.
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.
In 2025 none of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo sell their consoles at a loss. They're sold for very slim margins, which is what I assume Valve will do with the Steam machine. I expect the Steam Machine to be price competitive.
ish. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo likely have contracts locking down RAM prices whereas Valve will have to negotiate theirs based on current prices.
If that's the case, then why are console games so damn expensive? I was shocked to see how much the latest AAA title costs on disk/store
Console users now
- Don't get a price subsidized console
- Have to pay an online membership
- Pay the premium for any games released on the platform
How could anyone ever justify getting triple taxed!
If Valve sold the Steam Machine for any significant cost less than the Dell / HP / Lenovo equivalent, HNers would snap them up by the truckload to repurpose as home or work machines with guaranteed Linux compatibility.
I'm sure Valve would be ecstatic if they were snapped up by the truckload for home use, because home use and gaming use overlap significantly even if not perfectly.
For business use, the Beelink equivalent is about $350, because the GPU in the Steam Machine is useless for business or AI use. The Steam Machine is going to be more than $350.
The comment you're replying to is in a discussion about the possibility that the Steam Machine will be sold at a loss, as they would be able to re-coup the funds in sales on Steam.
In this example, no, Valve would not be ecstatic if they were snapped up for things other than Steam use. Sony tried this with the playstation, and the military bought them out as cheap linux compute, costing Sony thousands
> relevant article about Sony https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
The comment says "any significant cost less than the "
It's not talking about selling at a loss.
And that was a reply to my comment saying that nobody sells their consoles at a loss in 2025.
Oh...I must have misread something somewhere along the thread. My apologies
This is why Sony killed the PS2Linux effort, and the PS3 Linux no longer offered graphics acceleration.
They had hoped for a second wave of Yaroze like indie developers, instead the large majority were repurposing their PS2 as MAME like emulators or Linux computers.
> They will not outcompete Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market
I don't follow the console market at all, but don't its players subsidize their hardware by keeping software (game) costs high? I didn't think they had anything like Steam's level of regular discounted sales. "Price is king" can cut both ways.
"Steam" doesn't decide to have discounted sales -- games are heavily discounted because developers compete against one another for attention. Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.
Does that distinction matter? Seems like a simple case of open platform -> more competition -> lower prices.
It does not :)
> Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.
The prime Nintendo games (i.e. Animal Crossing, Pokemon and anything Mario related) are rarely discounted, yes - and Nintendo can do this because these games have borderline drooling fanbases and the games aren't available anywhere else.
But everything else? There's constantly something on sale on the Switch store.
Likewise, the PS5 has absolutely dominated the Xbox's current generation in terms of sales in large part due to exclusives. Xbox Series S is far cheaper than a PS5, mind you.
What platform has more exclusives than PC?
There is a current generation of XBox?!?
Xbox Series S|X.
Steam doesn't need to lock down the Steam Machine to subsidize it with store purchases. The casual user could theoretically install another OS, but that doesn't matter because they won't (because they're casual users), and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.
The risk isn't that casual users all spontaneously decide to stop using Steam on their own. The risk is that businesses exploit the subsidy in various ways. For example, businesses could buy the Steam Machine in bulk as a workstation. Or a store competitor could produce an OS of their own that replaces SteamOS and promote it to users.
>and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.
It's also the most convenient by far, and the new Steam Family stuff lets you share all of your games with all of your siblings without any need for password sharing like you'd have to on e.g. GoG or Epic. I have 4 siblings and most of us are married. Our combined Steam library is well over 1000 games
They do need to lock it down if they want to subside it with store purchases, otherwise it's too tempting for non-gaming uses where they don't get any money after the initial sale.
As long as they don't sell the Steam Machine in retail stores it will always be a niche
> 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.
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.
> 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.
i dont think that's possible unless steam choose to go the route of what apple does with iOS and macOS - both essentially are "different" OS's.
But if that's the case, then games would have to be written "twice" (or have engine support directly from engine vendors). I highly doubt this can or will occur, as game developers are short on time as is.
Windows has locked down variants. Nobody has to recompile apps to use those.
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
It's still not desirable, because it artificially excludes the rest of computer users who run Linux.
Couldn't it be a simple reboot to switch back to normal linux?
At what point do you have anything different than a console appliance?
Pixels and SafetyNet are different than a console appliance (e.g. Xbox, Playstation) in that Google allows both unlocking and relocking the bootloader, without affecting the integrity of a Pixel's onboard cryptographic hardware and secure enclave. This means you can, for example:
1. Unlock the bootloader and install an alternative OS (e.g. Graphene).
2. Relock the bootloader and still benefit from the Pixel's hardware security.
The above is not possible on modern video game consoles, or other phones, for the most part. Hardware cryptography has historically been used to lock customers out of their own machines for the purposes of profit, but that doesn't mean it has to be.
In the threat environment as it exists today --- a world in which almost everyone has an always on, always networked computer which must continually reveal its location in order to interface with the global network --- something like the Pixel's design ought to be the minimum standard for a computer in your pocket. Sadly, the only other device on the market with similar hardware security features is the iPhone, and it's as locked down as a games console. Samsung's Knox is another secure hardware platform/architecture, but they burn out a fuse on their phones to disable it when you unlock the bootloader.
Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux.
Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible.
If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft.
One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone. One of Meta's biggest mistakes was to give up on their phone (they gave in early due to technical choices, not just lack of user demand).
Owning a "pane of glass" lets you tax and control everything. Apple and Google have unprecedented leverage in two of the biggest markets in the world. Microsoft wants that for gaming, and since most gaming is on Windows, they have a shot at it.
Valve is doing everything they can to make sure developers start targeting other platforms so PC games remain multi-platform. It's healthy for the entire ecosystem.
If we had strong antitrust enforcement (which we haven't had in over 25 years), Apple and Google wouldn't have a stranglehold on mobile, and Microsoft would get real scrutiny for all of their stunts they've pulled with gaming, studio acquisitions, etc.
Antitrust enforcement is good for capitalism. It ensures that stupid at-scale hacks don't let the largest players become gluttons and take over the entire ecosystem. It keeps capitalism fiercely competitive and makes all players nimble.
The government's antitrust actions against Microsoft in the 1990s-2000s was what paved the way for Apple to become what it is today. If we had more of it, one wonders what other magnificent companies and products we might have.
> It encourages developers to write for Linux.
Valve actually encourages devs to only provide Windows builds compatible with Proton, or at least it used to, to the disappointment of some professional porters. Mainly because several devs kept leaving their Linux builds abandoned while still maintaining their Windows ones.
Hopefully developers are being encouraged to target Proton, as it's the subset. Presumably anything that works on Proton will also work on Windows, so it makes sense to target Proton.
If the windows build already performs better than on native windows, why faff around with another build target and all its associated complexities (testing, etc).
Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros, and that's asking for trouble I reckon.
> Targeting Linux means probably targeting all distros
Valve actually distributes a runtime (or at least used to), that's based on Ubuntu, and provides a stable target for developers who want to release a Linux port.
But I agree in general with your point; if the Windows build already performs great on Linux through Proton, why go through the effort to release a native Linux build?
They still distribute runtime(s). Proton runs inside one of those runtimes. You're talking about 1.0 version, 2.0 was based on debian 10, and 3.0 is based on debian 11.
It still has some assumptions about host system, though, but that's a problem for those who package steam. For example, my non-FHS NixOS provides everything required, and it works out-of-the-box.
Was antitrust enforcement necessary in this case, if Valve can break the "monopoly" with a superior value proposition for customers? Perhaps Valve would not feel the need to enter such a capital-intensive industry if it weren't for pressure from the behemoths. I happen to like that antitrust doctrine in the US is focused on good for consumers instead of some abstract ideal of a healthy market.
Not at all, developers will never stop targeting Windows as long as Proton is a thing.
Microsoft and Nvidia (amongst many others) are happy to leave their gaming customers hanging for years in order to inflate the AI bubble further. They don’t care about gaming in any significant capacity. Valve is still a great gaming focused company and they will be successful.
Microsoft is one of the biggest game publishers, given the amount of AAA studios under the Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios organisation.
Great point. Exactly. They have undermined the marketplace by hovering up and consolidating studios, scuttling a lot of IP that gamers care about and squeezing money out of properties for quarterly gains. They use their market power to push worse games with abusive, dark patterns. Microsoft has really become even more of a heel than they were in the 2000s.
> One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone.
They had no other choice.
The technical foundation of the prior WP versions (aka, Windows CE) was just too dated and they didn't have a Windows kernel / userland capable of performantly dealing on ARM, x86 performance was and still is utter dogshit on battery powered devices, they didn't have a Windows userland actually usable on anything touch based, and most importantly they did not have developer tooling even close to usable.
At the same time, Apple had a stranglehold over the upper price class devices, Android ate up the low and mid range class - and unlike the old Ballmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" days, Microsoft didn't have tooling that enticed developers, while Apple had Xcode with emulators that people had been used to for years, and Android had a fully functioning Eclipse based toolchain.
As I recall, that is not correct. There was a gargantuan internal effort to refactor Windows 10 to run on everything from mobile devices to servers. Windows Phone 10 was running Windows 10. And the tile UI was well received by those who had WP devices.
As others have said, lack of critical apps and shenanigans from Google is what killed sales which led to the death of Windows Phone.
It really doesn't help when Google repeatedly broke Gsuite and the YouTube apps and mandated their removal from Windows phones.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/aug/15/...
This is the kind of shit regulators should stop. In the 90's, this would have gotten Microsoft broken up into several companies.
Apple darn well knew what people want - even the first iPhone, the one that didn't even have an App Store (which got invented as a concept by jailbreakers proving it was possible!), came with YouTube and Maps from the start.
What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
> What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
There's a long backstory here.
Microsoft tried everything to get YouTube on Windows Phone. At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app. That didn't happen.
Microsoft tried to use the proper APIs, but Google kept shutting them off:
https://www.windowscentral.com/youtube-access-and-windows-ph...
"Downloading" the videos was Microsoft trying to work around API limitations and shut offs.
Imagine Microsoft's customers getting angrier and angrier that YouTube kept breaking. For years. This was a deal breaker for lots of people, especially young early adopters.
Microsoft tried really hard here.
What Google did was abuse their market position to cripple Windows Phone. Customers abandoned Windows Phone because it didn't have YouTube.
Google had to play nice with Apple in the early days because Apple had all the patents Google needed to continue with Android. It wasn't until they purchased Motorolla that they had a MAD patent strategy.
> At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app.
MS made that offer to probably every developer on top 100 on ios/android stores. That usually meant some small shop in Eastern Europe will be contracted.
> 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").
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!
people on the internet were pissed about steam in 2003
not cs playerbase, which was it's foundation.
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.
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.
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.
I have a MBP M4 and a Linux desktop, and to be honest other than the Apple ecosystem integration (which is good but doesn't matter to me because I have an android phone) the system software is generally mediocre and annoying.
The third party Mac software is often better, but not always.
It starts that I can buy Apple hardware at any European consumer shop, GNU/Linux hardware hardly, with exception of Raspeberry PIs on the electronics section.
> 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.)
You should check out the adoption curve for Linux desktops, it's actually starting to hockey stick, Windows 11 is a dumpster fire, Apple is stagnant and Arch based distros are getting crazy good.
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...
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.
> since it would be a linux phone
It doesn't have to be. Proton runs fine on Android.
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
Sure, but so did Jolla and Waydroid. I think the consensus is that AOSP > Linux for the average Joe's mobile handset.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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).
I could amend to "Apple is thoroughly not-invested in the kind of gaming that Valve is invested in".
Phone games are an entirely different thing from console or PC games. They aren't comparable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Outside of speculation do you have any source or evidence that valve plans to expand the hardware ecosystem outside of gaming?
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
> But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads
At least for PS5 the opposite is true: if a game uses kraken texture compression, and many do, PS5 variant will be the smallest.
How is that even an argument - the PS5 has had proper discs. The issue is, the disc content is 1GB file that requires a 50GB download.
In modern game development practice you will have to download patches anyway, so whatever there's on disk is irrelevant. Hardware has nothing to do with that.
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.
Convienence. Consoles are popular because you just plop down, hit the on button and play (in theory).
And while people don't care how much spy/adware their computer is, they do care when frequent notifications, popups and updates interfere with what you're doing. Nothing more annoying that having a windows notif steal focus from a game you're playing through steam link in the other room (personal experience).
I'm so glad that they've improved steam and link on linux so much, having to run it on my s/o windows computer was a pain.
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.
> 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?
Absolutely. The UI on Windows 11 is not designed for couch gaming, and Microsoft licencing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.
> Microsoft licensing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.
What do you mean? As in - manufacturers can't create an overlay similar to Steam Deck's "Gaming Mode"?
As in
> manufacturers can't replace Explorer with a desktop similar to Steam Decks GameScope.
You have to use Microsoft's OOB experience. Improved with "handheld mode", but still not as slick and you are not allowed to improve it.
You can have a "full screen launcher", but you have to boot to Explorer and then run your Big Picture Mode.
Steam do on Windows through "Big Picture" mode.
My Windows 10 box needs to be replaced before October (when patches end).
I want a new computer that just works, and plays my games. This looks like it will be designed to do exactly that.
> 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.
> (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.c...>
Thanks for turning that up; edited into the article with credit to you!
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.
You can do that right now on almost any Android handset with Vulkan 1.2 compliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflIp1rBJgw
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)
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.
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-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.
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.)
Valve is one of the good companies out there. Love my steam deck. It just works.
This article is peak “acksheully”.
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")
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").
Thanks for the in reverse explainer, i did not really get this from the article. That said I havent had my coffee yet.
in 10 years it will be Steam and Nintendo. everything else will be a dim memory.
So Valve started out rich and now is getting poorer with each passing year?!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Valve made two headsets. Nonetheless, they will not make their own branded phone because of the reasons I just outlined.
> 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?!
Playing two Steam games simultaneously typically results in a logout from the second (offending) PC.