Slashdot Mirror
Valve Removes Steam Machines From Its Home Page (extremetech.com)
Steam Machines were supposed to take PC gaming mainstream by simplifying setup and moving the games in your living room, but they never took off. Today, ExtremeTech reports that Valve has removed Steam Machine listings from the Steam front page due to poor sales. From the report: You can still access what remains of the Steam Machine landing site via a direct link -- not that you'll see much when you get there. It lists only five devices, one of which is no longer available on the manufacturer's site. Several of the remaining systems are arguably not even Steam Machines as Valve envisioned -- they run Windows 10 instead of SteamOS. The final nail in the coffin for Steam Machines may have come from Valve itself. In late 2015, it released the Steam Link. It's a small box that you plug into a TV, allowing you to stream a game from your PC in real time. The original price was just $50, and Valve is basically giving them away right now. Valve is still developing SteamOS, but I don't expect that to go on much longer.
I don't think it was ever intended to sell well. It was intended to stop the Windows Store in it's tracks.
In that it was quite succesful.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You shouldn't try to game Linux in the first place. Its not good for the security of Linux servers, or the integrity of the Linux kernel. =)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Was there ever a market for this? It's always the same two Linux enthusiasts who are vocally adamant about there being a market for games on Linux, but who are we really kidding here? Games on Linux is a cute niche, sure, but it is a niche nonetheless. There is absolutely no need for it because it will always have consoles and Windows as competitors, and that just isn't a market you break into half-assedly. If Linux as a gaming platform was 150% better than Windows, then absolutely games on Linux could become a thing. But until then who really gives a fuck? Who's really going to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars that it's going to take to make Linux a competitive gaming platform?
i never really saw the point of steam machines, steamOS is available for free and you can build your own 'machine' install steamOS on it and you're done.
all the people i know that have a steam machine, have build their own. the official ones were either very expensive or underpowered while in the end, they were just plain pc's (alienware was about the only vendor that tried to make it not just a pc).
valve developed a controller and the link, i honestly don't know why they didn't do the same for steam machines.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
What happens if someone with lawyers requests to remove or unlink his or her owned library of Steam-dependent games from the Steam service? Does Steam have the legal right to keep games you paid money to own locked into their DRM garden and DRM client? Or could someone successfully argue "I own these games. I should have the right to leave Steam and keep my games running!" in court? That argument could well be the "design flaw" in Steam's Death Star. One change in the applicable laws, and Steam might be FORCED to let you take your Steam games out of Steam's service and allow them to run like normal, independently executable Windows or MacOS apps again.
http://store.steampowered.com/...
" The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.".
Unless you can revive Johnnie Cochran, I'd say your're pretty much SOL.
So, you're not happy with a closed binary drivers on Linux, but happy to use a completely closed computing device, i.e. a smart tv?
I think it was a JOKE. He didn't say "Don't game ON Linux" or "Don't game WITH Linux", he said "Don't game Linux". It is a play on gaming the system.
Who wants a steam machine in their living room, the noise, the coal and the risk of CO-poisoning alone.
Your questions are all answered in the Steam EULA. I would imagine Steam does have the legal right to DRM lock your games just like any other DRM, since you agreed to it with the Steam EULA. If you change your mind you are welcome to walk away but you don't "own" your games outright. Perhaps the courts will eventually decide that if you buy something you do indeed expect to own it and companies trying to subtly change the definition of ownership to licensing is misleading and unethical. But that hasn't happened yet.
It should also be noted you and Steam are not the only entities involved here. Third party publishers have their own agreements with Steam. Steam can't just give you un-DRMed copies of games (unless ordered to by the courts as you suggest) due to these agreements, even if Steam dissolves (before third party games were on Steam Valve said if Steam failed they would remove the DRM from their games in a final update. It is not clear if this would apply to third-party games but I doubt it... it would need to be part of Steam's contracts with publishers). Plus, third-party publishers sometimes put their own DRM on top of Steam's. Steam has no way to remove this DRM even if the courts order them to.
Release Half Life 3.
Make it SteamOS exclusive for 6 months.
Watch the money pour in (if it's anywhere near half-decent).
That they haven't already done this means they have no clue. I love Steam, I think they're great. But they missed the boat by just letting people make Steam Boxes that have... no unique selling point whatsoever. It's just an expensive PC operating as a console using software you can install on your existing PC for free.
Or you could have had the first PROPER set of VR-designed consoles by getting into bed with HTC or someone, and done the same.
They'll still rake in millions, from silly loot boxes and shite, but it bugs me that they aren't in the game-development industry any more. Steam was just a distribution method for HL2. They forced you onto it if you wanted to play HL2 or CS (after shutting down WON).
Now... there's nothing of incentive to move platform.
I honestly don't think Valve had high hopes for it. At the very least, they weren't banking on it. It was more of an experiment to generate enthusiasm and get certain wheels turning to wrest control of PC gaming away from Microsoft; and to that end it seems to have been very effective. The Windows Store hasn't taken over gaming, Vulkan is poised to supplant Direct3D, AMD is open sourcing their Linux drivers, and Linux as a gaming OS (and even as a desktop OS in general) has improved by leaps and bounds as a result of their efforts. Criminy, DX12 wouldn't have even been released if Valve hadn't pulled this stunt; and yet every year the naysayers come buzzing to pronounce the death and failure of the entire effort because they can't see the forest for the trees. Meanwhile development keeps cranking along and more games keep getting Linux support. Will Linux ever truly compete with Windows as a PC gaming platform? Not for a long time, if ever. Does that matter? Not really. At this point it's like a knife Valve sharpens in their spare time to keep pointed at MS.
The problem with USB is not solvable through faster hooking up to the USB port. USB is always "best effort", and while 99.9% of packets may get through the bus quicker, there's no guarantee. Every once in a while, a packet can get delayed, and that is fully within the specs.
On a PS/2 port, you may have a slower average latency, but you have a guaranteed maximum latency due to it being interrupt driven. That's why many gamers even today prefer PS/2 over USB.
It's much like some online players prefer leased lines with slower speeds but a CIR (latency/throughput guarantees) over much faster offerings that are only faster on average. It's the worst case that will get you headshot.
Yep. I never got to the level of play where I felt the need for a PS/2 mouse, but definitely in my experience playing twitch fps games I valued consistency in framerates and ping over anything else. I'd rather have to lead a target twice as much every time than some smaller but random amount.
I mean sure, Linux won the phone market, home router market, and server market. But we can't call ourselves REAL men until we win the desktop market. Even if we overthrow the PC master race, somehow we'll never be as cool as they were.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
As a Linux user I really appreciate that Steam works on Linux and there are several ported games. I think that's great.
But from a business standpoint I question if it is worth going after the 0.1% of linux gamers (as of 2017). I guess it depends on the development costs for a game publisher. If it amounts to flipping some build options on Unity and some additional testing, then maybe if it's a net profit for a game studio. If it involves new software architecture and implementation, then Linux support must be a labor of love rather than a smart business decision for a game studio.
P.S. - I use SDL2 for all my hobby game projects. It's great! (I'm a C dev so I'm biased toward C-friendly libraries and frameworks)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire