The Steam Deck Is Software-Freedom Friendly

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons work. You can pop open multiple windows. It gets out of your way. You can even set your kids accounts to not have access to the store, something that literally no other company does. I'd love to disable the Minecraft Marketplace for my kids because sometimes they spend more time looking at things there than playing.

GabeN called piracy a service problem. And he's right. I've received games free on other platforms like Epic or EA and I've bought them from Steam just so I don't have to use the terrible apps. If I was younger or couldn't afford it, maybe I'd be sailing the seas. I bought Alan Wake 2 on Epic since it's a timed exclusive. I plan on buying it again once it releases on Steam because Epic is just so terrible. All the effort went into the store and almost none into the actual act of playing the game which is where I'm spending the majority of my time while I'm in the app!

Most companies don't care about customer satisfaction or post sales support. They have your money, why would they. Oh, yeah, repeat customers.

EDIT: Just to add a gripe about Amazon. Their games app is so bad that if you use the back button on your mouse while a screenshot is open the page changes but the image stays until you close it. If you click on a game to view the details in a long list of games and then go back it loses your sort order and position in the games listing. It's frustrating to use even just to find something to play. Steam has its own rough edges, but they're not in the golden path of discover -> buy -> install -> play -> share

It truly is, and it's the culmination of a long history of development to get to this point. Back in, I want to say 2016 or so, we had Steam Machines, which were a series of hardware partnerships with various vendors for a console-style form factor of essentially PC hardware running on the first version of Steam OS.

It was an incredible idea, but at the time rather frustratingly, I think some people came down with what I like to call The Verge Syndrome, which is to judge things on whether or not they're an overnight success, and otherwise deemed failures. So, according to some people, the fact that there were fewer Steam Machines than PlayStations in the world meant that the project as a whole was a failure.

And so the Steam Machine was not successful (by that metric at least), but it got the ball rolling on increasing sophistication in developing the Linux ecosystem and the understanding of hardware that culminated in the Steam Deck, which is a triumphant rebalancing of the PC gaming universe, away from dependence on Windows. But try telling that to someone in 2016.

I'm happy to sing the praises of Valve, but I think a particular distinguishing virtue they're holding on to is being willing to play the long game and not giving up in the absence of overnight success.

I purchased a steam deck when they first came out specifically to financially support Valve's Linux efforts and I haven't regretted that purchase for a second. In the past year I had a couple of days where my laptop was not working. I got out my steam deck, plugged it into my dock, and got back to work like nothing happened (after installing some software of course, like emacs). I've re-purchased games that I own on consoles just to get the PC versions to de-couple my games from hardware, so now I'll be able to run Flower on powerful beasts, portable handhelds, and computers that haven't been invented yet whereas before it was stuck on a loud aging ps3.

My only complaint is console exclusives like the nintendo games. I don't want to have to purchase Nintendo's universal turing machine just to be able to run their software when I already have a perfectly capable universal turing machine. It would just lead to more e-waste and wasted closet space.

Sure I can pirate and emulate the games, but I am an employed adult, I want to give you money for your games. Release your games on Steam so I can do that without burdening the world with more e-waste.

They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of, but...

I really think Valve have become the de-facto owners of the “don’t be evil” motto nowadays, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such.

I'm out of the gaming platform loop but assume the timing of this post is related to the Switch 2 announcement?

Others have suggested the Switch 2 is one of the best endorsements for buying a Steam Deck.

(Not really a gamer, despite having written games, ha ha, but I picked up a Steam Deck a couple years ago to test a game I ported to it — and was duly impressed.)

Sounds like the Switch 2 might be a bit more powerful and similarly priced to the 3-year-old Deck. But even if Switch’s hardware feature set was substantially better, Steam’s much cheaper (and more expansive) library is still the killer feature. I don’t think the Switch 1’s Zelda launch title has ever been discounted lower than $40 despite being 8 years old. On Steam, virtually every top title will be 50% within 2 years, if not 1.

I love the deck. Its shown us how opensource can be used for a commercial product (and how consumer products dont have to be locked down). I use it in desktop mode every now and then (work in robotics so it makes one hell of an awesome robot controller). I really wish more manufacturers followed suite rather than bundle the crapware that is windows.

> According to ProtonDB, over 5000 PC games are certified Verified on the Steam Deck, and over 15,000 games are considered playable. This means that there are tens of thousands of games that can be run on Linux in some way.

Note that whether games work well on the Steam Deck or not isn't reflective of whether they can be run on Linux at all. With desktop Linux, virtually every game ever released can be run, on any platform, the biggest obstacle being anticheat.

It's one of the best devices I've ever bought.

I've used it for all sorts of stuff from gaming on flights, to local multiplayer, to controlling a robot car, to watching YouTube with adblocking, etc.

That's an editorialized title ("The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly") and subtly different than what the article actually states. I don't think Steam Deck was made particularly software-freedom friendly. I do think that it managed to not be software-freedom unfriendly, and that's because unlike other vendors Valve did not care to make it so. It's a subtle, yet non-negligible difference that leads to different outcomes.

I have a first-gen Switch, still in active rotation. My kids are asking me why we don't hack it. My answer has been, what does a hacked Switch do that my Steam Deck doesn't already do, without hacking? I mean, if you're going to sail the seven seas and yo-ho-ho, not that I've been encouraging that, the answer isn't even "Play Switch 1 games", the Steam Deck does that better too! And at least we can't accidentally hook the Switch up to the network and get it banned if it isn't hacked.

> Not all these thousands of games running on the Deck have binaries that run natively on Linux. Pivotal to the success of the Deck is Proton, a middle-layer compatibility software, that makes this (mostly) seamless emulation possible. Nonetheless, the greater the adoption of Decks, the likelier we are to normalize prioritizing game-builds for Linux.

This exactly the problem with Steam Deck, and will last while Microsoft decides tacking Proton isn't high on priority list for Microsoft Games/XBox division issues to sort out.

If only gaben could live forever... It'll be a dark day for gaming when he's gone and valve gets bought out by MS or goes public.

The steam deck is so cool, I can't wait for the steam box revolution to begin

I don't think a product being freedom friendly is going to make it a success in and of itself, but seeing one always makes me smile and that's a win in my book.

How good is platform support - can I install e.g. Diablo 3 and have the thumbsticks control the character and not a virtual mouse? Or would I need to remap the input myself?

Does that mean it can run Steam games offline and DRM-free?

If only there was a powerful linux phone with convergence. The steam deck is not far from that.

> I had no issues installing Epic Games

Except Fortnite =(

Hmm, the headline here is quite different to the post.

> You can’t run arbitrary programs of your choice on an Android phone without rooting, or on an iPad or an iPhone without jailbreaking.

Since when? You can easily run your self-built / third party apps on Android WITHOUT ROOTING and without paying / getting verified by google. Not-rooting only prevents you from circumventing the Android security model (dedicated toggles for each permission)

steamdeck verified is a lie, I bought a steamdeck and tested 20 games. Lots of problems.

> Some people have criticized that their company culture of libertarianism sometimes takes precedence over other important values including equity and inclusion.

To push for equity is to discriminate and dehumanize people, so it's certainly good that valve does not put this value ahead of anything else let alone allow them to take precedence over taking care of their customer base. They are perfectly inclusive as well, though they are not "inclusive", the kind where they discriminate against people on the basis of race to please some misguided quotas.

The selling point of a Steam Deck is that it is a PC console. One of the problems with the PC gaming market is that even though in theory all PCs are "compatible", the reality for game developers is very different. Different PCs have subtly (or not so subtly) incompatible software and hardware, and it's up to OS developers to try to maintain some semblance of compatibility, and game developers to ensure that their product runs on as many configurations as possible.

The problem is that there is a large market segment that would enjoy the greater variety of games that are available on PC than on any given console, but they simply view a gaming PC as another "console". I have a friend who I would consider a "gamer" (a long history of console ownership, hundreds of hours logged on his Nintendo Switch on "hardcore" games), whose only PC is a laptop that is too weak to run any modern games, and feels that buying another appliance just to play a handful of games he can't currently access doesn't make sense.

The Steam Deck bridges the gap by providing a console experience for PC games. Developers only need target one hardware and software configuration to ensure that any Steam Deck owner can play their games. The Steam Deck operating system indicates which games run well, and provides out-of-the-box settings for controller and graphics configurations that ensure that a Steam Deck owner can buy a game and be reasonably sure that they won't have to spend any time updating graphics drivers, remapping controls, tweaking settings, or troubleshooting PC-centric issues just so they can play a PC game. It inhabits a handheld form factor because that is the best selling form factor (see Game Boy, Nintendo DS, etc.) with the added bonus that it can be docked and played like a regular console. The same combination that propelled the Nintendo Switch to massive success.

People outside the HN echo chamber don't care about the arcane hardware and software issues that cause many to turn away in disgust, they just want to buy a device that gives them access to a library of games they wouldn't otherwise be able to play. At present, the Steam Deck is the device that does that the best.

> The Steam Deck is a great gaming system. This isn’t because of it’s great battery life. A Nintendo Switch would probably have better battery life. It’s not because of its great performance. I don’t usually play AAA games, so I wouldn’t know.

First paragraph pretty much confirms my belief that some people who aren't hardcore gamers don't buy the Steamdeck to play games, they buy it because they are Steam/Valve fanboys.

Steam doesn't give a flying f if it runs the games on Xorg or Wayland - the Wine project made Wine run on Wayland, not Steam. What Steam does is hire Crossover developers to hack compatability to newer games, because thats all that matters from a business perspective and Valve is as corporate as any other.

Don't forget that Wine has been a a several decades long project before Steam hired some Crossover devs to fork it and take the limelight from the original project, the gamer-stupidity seems to forget this and give all credit to Valve which is ignorant and disrespectful to the work Wine has put in over several decades.

Lots of Linux ports have been cancelled since this is becoming the norm.. Rocket League and many other games simply don't see the reason to maintain their Linux ports. Linux ports are being cancelled more than ever.

Honestly, this shift towards running everything in Wine disgusts me. If you told me before the Steamdeck released that they would try to sell a handheld running wine on battery I'd be pissing myself laughing from how inefficient and terrible that sounds. Software crash can happen at any time, thats life with Wine.

Another thing is that I know people who own Steamdecks who have zero clue what games to play on it. It ends up being pirated Nintendo games or emulator games. Often they have to fiddle with control maps, settings before playing.

My idea of a handheld is that I don't want to tinker with it. I want the integrated out-of-the-box experience - maintaining another system despite my own PC is not something I prioritize my time on, same reason I don't buy an Android phone, really..

Native Linux ports matters!

I might be missing the point of the author, but what's the difference between Steam Deck and a normal Windows gaming laptop in terms of software freedom?

Wouldn't you have more software freedom on Windows? Because you can run both Windows and Linux software (via WSL2).

I use macOS, Windows and Linux daily. They are all pretty open to installing and running your own software. And all of them have some sort of security measures that prevent you from running arbitrary apps unless you close some scary warnings or bypass it with some flags.