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Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have 'enormous choice' about where to buy games (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 36 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (17 children)

Honest question, is there any other store that directly supports seamlessly running games on Linux? Even games that do not natively build for Linux?

Edit: Because in that case, Steam does have a monopol on Linux, since it's the only store that can seamlessly/without 3rd party tools run most games.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    running gog games through heroic is pretty much as seamless as steam

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago*

    I use Lutris myself to run GOG games and have the same experience.

    Mind you, sometimes I do have problems and have to tweak things to get them to run (usually switching the runner to wine-ge instead of wine-staging).

    It's very rare to be totally unable to run a GOG game in Linux with Lutris.

    I would say that my rate of success with Steam is roughly the same.

    That said, in Lutris I can run my games sandboxed with networking disabled, which I cannot in Steam (even if I started Steam itself sandboxed with networking disabled, Steam itself needs Internet access).

    Maybe Steam is a little more seamless for non-technically adept users (of which there are more and more running Linux nowadays), but at least Lutris (and, I expect, Heroic) are way much more configurable and hence give a lot more possibilities for power users to do things like sandboxing or even to solve problems with running some more obscure or AAA games from a certain DRM-heavy era (for example, there's a game which no matter what I couldn't get to run in Steam, but with a bit of tweaking I could get a pirate copy to run in Wine under Lutris - still now that game is listed in ProtonDB as not running in Linux)

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    I was just curious whether technically Steam is a monopol for Linux, as in being the only store where you can run games without using 3rd party tools.

    Not that I mind, running games on Linux is super easy nowadays (My favorite is Faugus launcher), but technically it can be another hurdle for some people.

    But when I need to play some Epic free game, Heroic is awesome.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I mean, they develop and maintain Proton yet they don't even prohibit you from using it on other things. If literally any company did that, their shareholders would riot...

    ...so I don't think it technically qualifies as a monopoly, but they probably could have had a legal monopoly using an exclusivity patent on the tech (although they technically can't patent the whole thing because it's based on Wine, but they could have done this in a way that they could have).

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    That is a fair point. I'm also not trying to discredit Steam, I don't really think there's any kind of a problem as of now (well, apart from the fact that it could go downhill very fast once Steam changes hands), and the services they provide are reasonable and for me worth the 30% cut, especially their Proton work.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Well, things like Lutris do the same automated configuring of the underlying tools to run Windows games under Linux and putting it all under a "press button to play" interface as Steam as well as letting you manage your collection.

    Lutris (and I believe Heroic too) even integrated with game stores and will list your games there and download them directly from there to install them.

    What they don't have is the store part - you can't actually BUY games from those tools.

    People using for example Lutris to play GOG games in Linux, have pretty much the same experience as using Steam from a browser to buy the games and then Steam app to manage your games collection and launch the games.

    Having both Steam and Lutris, I personally prefer the latter because it seamlessly integrates with multiple stores and even works fine with games from other sources (such as games I bought in physical format way back in the day or games I bought directly from the developer).

    Sure, the open source apps doesn't include a store, but as I see it that's actually a good thing since I'm not interested in getting the sales push to buy more games everytime I want to play a game, same as I'm not interested in seeing ads when I'm browsing the web.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    What they don’t have is the store part - you can’t actually BUY games from those tools.

    Heroic does let you buy games through the app, but it seems like it's just a browser that gives heroic an affiliate link when you make the purchase.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry but I have to disagree.

    Holy failed updates batman. After I update some games, I have to fully restart heroic or it is an endless loop of "installing update" -> "Update available, click to install"

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago

    Given that Proton is open source, provides plenty of instructions and permits reproduction and distribution (BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI), any other store could likewise include it or a fork of it. They may have a factual monopoly, but it's not enforced legally in any way.

    It's just that nobody seems to compete meaningfully. Steam has a vested interest in being independent from Microsoft, maintaining their own SteamOS and making games run on it. Other companies just might not have the same commercial drive. And if there are easy to use 3rd party tools that people are content with, why would they bother investing in their own solution? They're accessible to the Linux market through no work of their own.

    Of course, there are some companies actively not wanting to work with Linux. Some just don't trust the platform. Some require particular technology that might not work on Linux. For example, things like kernel-level-anticheat being confined to the wine environment defeats the point of spying on the whole OS. And some would require additional work to make it run smoothly, which obviously is an investment into a market they may feel doesn't promise enough profit.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    No. You can use Lutris although it appears to be unmaintained. Native GOG games work fine. Even better than the Windows versions do on windows because you don't need Admim privileges to install for whatever fucking reason

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago

    Oh, I know how to run my games, my point was more that in that case, Steam does have a literal monopol on being the only store that can run most games on Linux without using any 3rd party tools.

    Not that I mind at all, and it's not a real problem, but I was just wondering if that's technically the case.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    There are plenty of frontend alternatives out there that work fairly seamlessly and, at this point, I don't think work on compatibility tools like Proton would be too affected even if Valve decided to stop working on it tomorrow.

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