I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
This.
Yeah, but we know that Linux people would cheer and praise those games if Linux support was suddenly added
Exactly. Another lemming made a fantastic quip to this effect, claiming that consoles and windows are performing “SCP level containment” for the rest of us. Let them have CoD.
I have to keep using the megacorporate OS because the other megacorporation won’t let me play their slop game unless they can install a virus on my computer!
It’s Activision-Blizzard. It’s the same megacorporation
Ah right, I forgot MS bought them.
ActiBlizzcroSoft
MicroVisZard
Macroshaft
Honestly more trustworthy.
Man I remember when both those names were something to get excited about.
I don’t think I need it, but I’m super glad it’s going to exist.
If it came with a native DVD reader and my PS4 suddenly died, I’d have some choices to make, however.
I’m 1000℅ certain you could attach a Blu-Ray drive via USB without internet telemetry, unlike Sony’s policies ;)
Wow, I just realized that’s the default key on GrapheneOS lol, I should file a bug report.
The idea did occur to me a minute after I’d commented. After my PS4 gives up, I’ll have choices to make.
The DRM measures of blurays make a hassle to play any legitimately purchased movie, especially 4k ones, a big hassle on any operating system. Not as plug and play like with DVDs…
I don’t want to rip them before watching them or search hours in obscure forums for a leaked description key…
This would be more useful for game ripping - did that for a lot of my PS3 games due to the large filesizes.
I wonder if it could support an external DVD/BD drive via its USB ports. I assume yes, but that would be an extra purchase for you.
My Steam Deck feels about on par with PS4 in terms of power, and they say Steam Machine will be more like a PS5, so it sounds like it would be an upgrade over your PS4. Just more expensive, especially if you’re buying a disc drive.
I think that this thing coming out will only be beneficial to PC gamers, especially Linux users. This will encourage further development and standardization.
Kinda yeah. Like I said I’m happy it’ll exist, it’s just that I don’t like to spend money on upgrades for the sake of upgrades.
I can dual boot my Steam Deck with an external Windows 11 SSD. I expect I can do the same with the Steam Machine.
But why would you?
Maybe to play games that you can’t play on Linux.
A) to see if it could be done.
B) I wanted to see if/how Destiny 2 runs on Steam Deck and it requires Windows. Running it in a compatability later gets you banned.
I genuinely do not understand the point of using kernel-level anticheats. They have been bypassed for nearly a decade now, you can buy cheats for any kernel-level anticheat game, battlefield 6 had hackers during the first betas, didn’t even take more than a day to bypass it. The only thing they seem to be affecting is your player count and review ratings
Indeed. I chalk it up to the power of narratives and emotions. These are emotional decisions by managers who don’t know what they’re doing but salivate at the opportunity to limit someone’s access to something for not paying them or for using something differently than how they’d like to after paying. You know, stupid s**t like kernel level anti cheat and denuvo.
But if the cheats are at kernel level, how can any anti cheat compete without going full server authoritative?
I’m actually a believer in server-sided anticheats. The time feels right to really start developing machine-learning backed anticheats that basically analyize how you play. Look up VAC Live
You can literally install windows on it if you want
You don’t use Linux because of kernel anti-cheats
I don’t play CoD because kernel anti-cheats
We are not the same
I do both!
been playing on linux for many many years.
never once have I been stopped by kernal level anticheat.
Weird, its almost as if good games don’t use invasive spyware rootkits.
I feel like the steam machine could actually change the trajectory of gaming. I mean look at the playstation 5. It was crazy overhyped, they don’t have any games, pay to play online, the next one is around the corner. The xbox is somehow even worse. If the steam machine sells, linux is gonna see an insane push and the game developers have to sink or swim.
If that was true the steam deck would have already done it.
Steam Deck is held back by the perception of mobile gaming. Many don’t know how powerful it is, so it competes with the Switch more than PS5.
Well and even then it revolutionized gaming on Linux somewhat. We are now at over 90% playable games, while a few years back we scratched at the 50% mark.
The steam deck competes with consoles and most of the pc world. It has different form factor but it is a pc.
As much as i love video games, steam devices and all that jazz, i never saw a reason to get a steam deck.
Yeah, I know I’m not the target demographic.
That doesnt mean I dont think its an interesting piece of tech, and I would like one as a toy/curiousity… but i’d only get one if I can get it used/second hand and dirt cheap (and probably broken, so i can drive the price lower and fix it myself)
Steam deck hasn’t sold that many devices compared to PlayStation, switch, or xbox. Wildly successful for what it is? Yes. Was it ever going to become a significant % of all gaming consoles? No.
Eh, it’s gonna depend on your taste in games. If competitive multiplayer games are your thing, then it is a problem. But sure, there’s lots of people who have zero interest in competitive multiplayer.
Not all competitive games require kernel level anti-cheat. Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, Valve’s games, and Halo all work under linux. It’s only a problem for people who want to play certain games like LoL, CoD, or Apex.
Sure, but as it happens with multiplayer games, you typically have a friend group that plays a certain game. Getting all of them to switch to another game can definitely be a problem.
I can understand that a lot of people would not want a machine that can’t play their favorite game. I think it’s a bad idea to simply shame them for wanting a machine that can play a game they want to play.
I think it’s good to shame the developer and platform that make it so locked-in to the Microsoft ecosystem in the first place.
But if the Steam Machine works for you, as it will for my uses, then I think it’s good to support it as an alternative.
Agreed. I don’t blame CoD players or people who play other games that use kernel anticheat, and I don’t blame Valve for using something other than Windows here; the issue is lazy corporations choosing to use a shortcut for anticheat which doesn’t catch all cheaters and locks Linux out.
But the reality is that most people interested in giving this product a shot are not the people who play CoD, and if they do then they’re either happy on console or on their Windows PC already. Steam Machine isn’t for them, and the people interested in a Steam Machine aren’t interested in these games. It’s like somebody looking to buy a Corvette being told that it can’t tow a boat. Yeah, cool, that’s not what I’m trying to do with it, but I guess thanks for pointing that out so people who don’t know any better won’t try?
If someone is looking for an all-in-one device, it is a valid criticism to point out.
As it stands now SteamOS can’t play the big flavour of the week multiplayer games. If that really matters to you and you don’t have somewhere else to play them, a steam machine isn’t for you.
I dual boot for this reason but default to Linux for everything that works there.
Sounds like the problem is with the game and its developers. There are still cheaters in games with kernel level anticheat. It’s not a substitute for having moderation functions, staff, and reporting functionality. And at that point, you might as well go with something that isn’t invasive rootkit spyware to safeguard your game.
Server-side anti-cheat is the best solution, and doesn’t require any malware on the user’s machine. It’s harder though, and might need beefier servers, so…
If the game structure is actually properly planned, it isnt harder to implement server side anticheat.
The server already has all the info it needs since it gotta sync all the clients anyway, and it is already a authoritative source of truth.
Yet, most modern games codebases are absolute monstrosities of shit piled up, glued up, tacked on with hot glue and a prayer, and shipped. A spaghetti monster, which makes server side anticheat impossible because the codebase is a mess.
And so, because they dont want to spend the time and do things properly, let’s shove everything into the rootkits that are anticheat software
If they want to make their game incompatible with the best gaming systems I will simply not play it.
I am excited for the steam machine because of the anti cheat issue. If we push for linux gaming, they are forced to either find a
spywarekernel anti cheat solution for linux or drop thespywarekernel anti cheat.IIRC, kernel level anti cheat works for linux. It’s at the company’s discretion if they enable support for Linux clients
Of course, it works. The tech was never the issue. The issue is that they think that linux is easier to modify to break the kernel anti cheat. It is a PR issue, when there is enough money, magically the pr issue is gone.
I think the main issue there is that the player base is not big enough to justify developing a kernel-level anti-cheat. The variability in Linux kernels might also be a bit of an issue.
The classic “it is not big enough” while actively preventing the user base to grow.
I stopped gaming because of this shit.
Of course. For a large corporation only having to support a single platform is perfect. Having to support multiple platforms increases the cost and we have to think of the poor, poor investors.
On the other hand, there are more than enough great indie devs making actually fun and innovative games.
Screw AAA games, they suck anyway.
Is it kernel level on Linux, though? It may have some privilege inside wine, but in never gonna give root access to some game.
No, EAC, BattilEye, and a handful of other anticheat solutions have a native user space linux binary, and wine provides a way for the windows portion to hook into the linux portion, allowing the anticheat host to work with wine/proton games.
This involves the developer enabling the option to allow this when building their game which most devs do except for the notorious few that refuse to enable it because they don’t want to spend the extra .00002% worth of budget into making proper anticheat solutions and instead rely on kernel rootkits to solve that problem for them.
This is the thing I agree with. This push will accelerate the advancement in gaming and other applications within computing. Compatibility will be priority across all types of hardware rather than restricted to corpoware. Additionally, efficiency would be increased rather than diminished with the pointless root access.
Naive talk about about restricting games which most people find as favourite goes completely against the direction this scene should follow.
It makes no sense to me not allowing anticheat on unmotivated steamOS…
I mean, valve could even build something in, like secure mode, where you have a secure little linux root system for each anticheat game together with a online hash to check against this hole separated file system
Like when you start the game, steamOS boots in this separate root system
Unmotivated? Its a literal checkbox in the anticheats that games package to enable running in Proton. This is not Valve’s responsibility, but idiot or lazy game companies/devs.
Secure boot is what I think you’re thinking of because of Battlefield 6. But as I understand from just skimming it, its handled a bit differently in Linux than Windows, so unsure of how that could be handled or adapted for native Windows games.
Anti-cheat, even kernel level anti-cheat has worked on Linux for a very long time. Some of the most popular products used by AAA have been available for years. They just intentionally refuse to make their products work on Linux.
Remember Genshin Impact, for example. It literally has an internal flag that instantly closes the game if it detects it is running on Linux. There’s no technical limitation for any of those big multiplayer titles from working, they just don’t want them to.
wont play cod cause it has an ewaste gpu anyway.
People are playing cod with igpus xd
I mean thats gonna be the joke. If steam machine really does take off, developers will come, just like they’re starting to cater to the deck. It’ll set a standard for what people want to play on and what they need to make sure their game works on. This is beyond anti cheat and DRM but it’ll be interesting to see how the momentum picks up.
I’d bet that Microsoft is already thinking about getting gamepass working on it (for better or worse)
Depends how much the thing costs.
Oh yeah I don’t mean to imply that it’s a guaranteed success, you’re right.
The hype is real though.
The hype is earnest
