[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck

Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows.

I've loaded Win64 Unity builds on the machine to test and they run perfectly every time. I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. The machine doesn't even get hot despite my fear that it would doing something like this.

The only part of the SD experience that felt like "linux" was the OOBE wherein I had to arbitrarily restart the first time setup process 3-4 times before it finally worked.

I am at a point where I almost prefer to game on the linux handheld over my windows desktop. It really is a superior package in many ways. Games like Elden Ring, Arkham Knight, Euro Truck Simulator 2, etc., are so much better to play on a machine like this. On keyboard+mouse I struggled to enjoy these titles. I realize I could always connect a controller to my PC, but it never felt right to me in that form factor. Playing ETS2 on the couch is a completely different dimension of relaxation. I'd never touch this game on my PC.

I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.)

I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform.

Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there.

And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger.

Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.

Why can’t it be that?

I’m not familiar with the inner workings of the FTC, so this is a genuine question.

Some parts of Steam consolidation have been good. It forces kids to have stakes (their whole account) that they lose if they hack / cheat in multiplayer games. Objectively good. But having one store I don’t know: you pay both 30% and you are sourcing users for CSGO and DOTA2.

Anyway I don’t really know what consolidation means to you.

It is hard to argue that Silicon and Synapse being acquired by Davidson and Associates to form Blizzard Entertainment was not good for gaming consumers for a long stretch of time.

But there is certainly a tipping point where this sort of consolidation really becomes a problem when it results in large entities with a lot of market power, or one side of the deal is already a large entity with a lot of market power. And the larger the consolidation, the worse it gets for everyone (except perhaps shareholders, though even this being arguably positive can often just be a temporary situation).

Unfortunately the only really viable exit strategy for a lot of VCs is to offload their startups to Alphabet or Meta sized entities which is immediately concerning from an anti-trust perspective because those companies are already so overly large (and a lot of their M&A is clearly just to kill would-be competitors, which is at the heart of anti-trust).

So the techbros were instrumental in making sure Lina Khan got the boot, despite the fact that she's been right about everything.

What is good for the FTC is typically opposed to what is good for profits and we get standoffs like this.

What are you talking about? It's awesome having so many options, with so many great indy titles. One of the things that makes Steam so great in comparison to consoles. Who are these people asking for less choice?