It looks to me like Valve has been missing the boat constantly. They completely screwed up SteamOS/Steam Machines, haven't shipped a game in years, their current games have been essentially under maintenance mode, competitors have built their own storefronts/launchers that have caught up to Steam, they didn't react to obvious gaps with communication (Discord) and streaming (Twitch).
They shipped SteamVR with HTC, which is cool! But you need a powerful PC, $800, and plenty of free space. There's no competition to the $200 Oculus Go.
I guess the flat management structure isn't all that its cracked up to be.
> I guess the flat management structure isn't all that its cracked up to be.
I guess it's also because they feel absolutely no pressure to do anything. As things are right now, Steam generates massive revenues for them (and profits since they remain a fairly small organization) so everything else looks like pocket money in comparison, especially anything hardware related.
A problem that Apple faces too -- any product proposal that doesn't derive 10-20% profits out of the gate is derided as a non-starter, so product development becomes stagnant.
The steam streaming is perfectly acceptable if you use it for it's intended purpose: streaming games to 1-2 close friends rather than 1000s of faceless "nobodies". It requires absolutely no configuration on the streamer side. Two clicks and you're live!
Without SteamOS and Steam Machines we wouldn't have 3100 games with linux compatibility on steam so I would consider that a moderate success. For the remaining unsupported games using the windows steam client via wine works reasonably well because the client installs the missing libraries automatically.
But you're right they are certainly lacking in focus.
This is in line with my anecdotal experience. A few of my coworkers got Oculus go when it first came out, and all of them ended up returning it. The only thing it seems to be good for is watching normal non-VR content, which they don't need a VR headset for. It doesn't have enough power for gaming.
I could see it being useful like, on airplanes or something, but I don't think we're at a place yet socially where someone could wear a VR headset on a plane and not look like a weirdo/pervert.
While I will concede VR is still, at it's best, in to it's toddler years you should still give credit where credit is due.
The form factor and experience for the first standalone, wireless VR device is above par and raised the bar. The price point is, IMO, still too high for fast adoption but the experience is unparalleled and, dare I say, revolutionary in its space and makes me very excited to see where VR is going to _go_ (pun intended).
I bought and love the Oculus Go and I also have an Oculus Rift. It fills the spot my tablet used to fill for watching stuff and consuming media in bed.
Also watching / listening to ASMR on the Oculus Go in bed is a very relaxing almost therapeutic experience.
Why would you accuse Valve of 'missing the boat' just because they aren't the best at everything?
Do they, or we, even want a single company to run the most popular game distribution service, the most popular gaming chat service, the most popular game streaming service, the most popular VR platform and the most popular gaming OS?
I can't imagine any competitor is anywhere near what Steam has in user numbers, however many publishers have their own exclusive clients now. EA with Origin, which actually has great customer service (you can chat with customer service reps without waiting a month), Activision-Blizzard though I think Activision still releases games on Steam, GOG which I have no experience with but hear its good and then there's Uplay which is fine, integrates with Steam. But I like many Steam users am invested in the platform, I just wish they did some things better.
Not a storefront per se, but I think Blizzard's Launcher that includes most of their newer games (as well as Destiny 2!) is a good example of one that's gone from nothing to pretty-darn-good while the Steam client has been relatively stagnant.
I think there was a problem in that it is difficult to get good performance from games written for Direct X ported to Open Gl. If graphics performance is always worse on the same hardware, it is hard to offer good value. Now there are some alternatives (Vulkan) but the concept has essentially failed and would be hard to restart.
No, they've just become Microsoft. One big cash cow that is generating money with barely a human needed. It's resource curse, on a micro economy level.
> What is especially ridiculous is that we keep seeing folks, in 2017 and 2018, repeating the same nonsense “Witcher 2 runs like crap”, which is completely false and a blatant lie at this point in time. The long tail of stupidity.
Witcher 2 did indeed run bad on Linux the last time I looked at it, and that was many months after its release. It wasn't at 2 FPS anymore, but still only barely playable. I bet it still runs badly, I think my last test wasn't that long ago, but given the driver improvements since then I might be wrong. All that on a system where the game ran fine on Windows.
I know nothing about whether the criticism was too heated, but if a linux port is released and does not run properly on user's systems, then complaints are to be expected.
I completely agree. There's something wrong with that port. With a machine that can run The Witcher 3 on high settings (on Windows), Witcher 2's port for Linux barely gets to 30fps on medium-low settings.
This phrase made me sad, but it's an understandable statement. The article mentions several times that the Linux community in general was very toxic when it didn't get its way, and this isn't the first time I've heard the sentiment. It seems to me that the sense of elitism that Linux-users (including myself) generally carry can be enough to turn people off from trying to assist us from outside the community, and I don't think I'm the only one who has come to that conclusion.
I've seen it too. I use macOS at work, troubleshoot my gf's Windows laptop and use Mint as my daily driver. I'm far from the elitist camp. But the sentiment against Linux is surprisingly large. I posted 2 reviews for Overlord and Overlord 2 just to warn Linux users that a camera bug that makes the game incredibly annoying to play is still present and I was met with comments that I shouldn't be bothering to play on Linux.
If the developer offers that support, should I not report issues with the port? I don't follow that logic. I didn't pass any judgement on the game itself, but couldn't really give a positive recommendation.
For now, I value the lack of Linux ports for some items because I know the barrier to get it working on Wine (not always doable) will limit me and force me to get back to other, more valuable pursuits. Can't just game all the time as much as I'd like to at times.
It's interesting to hear about the dynamics between the porting company and the original developer.
As a mac user I'll agree with the statement "mac users are happy to pay for their port". I'm perfectly happy to pay for whatever is coming to mac, it just needs to work properly. When I do pay and the performance is crap I don't want to spend hours digging through forums while people point fingers at each other.
Dunno, as a mac user I only buy cross platform games lately. I.e. those that have at least win/mac (preferably linux too) available in GoG or Steam. I would never consider buying just a Mac or just a Linux version.
However, most AAA games are made with consoles in mind, so if i do want to play one, i'll get it for my PS4. It happens pretty rarely lately, though. Huge backlog of Mac indies to play, sorry AAA companies.
About the Witcher 2, the performance on Mac (and I guess on Linux too) was crap on launch. And that's what most people who bought the game saw, because they didn't expect the ports and bought when the Windows version launched and dual booted. Whatever they improved, it was too late, everyone had finished the game by now.
As for Witcher 3, I bought it but I only got like 1/3 of the way through it. Why? Because it only runs on Windows (I haven't tried Wine lately, so this may have changed) and rebooting to play a game is disruptive to all the stuff I run on the Mac OS side of things.
That doesn't bode well for my chances of rushing in and preordering Cyberpunk, sorry CD PROJEKT.
Edit: please no one explain to me how Macs don't have the hardware to run games, I hackintosh, have a proper video card and stuff like the ports of the Metro games work just fine(tm).
I finished Witcher 3 on Linux using DXVK. Not sure if it works on Mac (probably not), and it's not 100% perfect yet, but it is pretty good performance wise already.
> Linux wasn’t really ready either, with the poor AMD driver situation amongst other things. AMD APU’s would have been the ideal platform for a console
Is there any practical difference for applications whether GPU is outside or on the CPU chip? Any major difference in drivers?
Readit News
They shipped SteamVR with HTC, which is cool! But you need a powerful PC, $800, and plenty of free space. There's no competition to the $200 Oculus Go.
I guess the flat management structure isn't all that its cracked up to be.
I guess it's also because they feel absolutely no pressure to do anything. As things are right now, Steam generates massive revenues for them (and profits since they remain a fairly small organization) so everything else looks like pocket money in comparison, especially anything hardware related.
Now they have no pockets to put todays money into for tomorrow.
Without SteamOS and Steam Machines we wouldn't have 3100 games with linux compatibility on steam so I would consider that a moderate success. For the remaining unsupported games using the windows steam client via wine works reasonably well because the client installs the missing libraries automatically.
But you're right they are certainly lacking in focus.
I could see it being useful like, on airplanes or something, but I don't think we're at a place yet socially where someone could wear a VR headset on a plane and not look like a weirdo/pervert.
While I will concede VR is still, at it's best, in to it's toddler years you should still give credit where credit is due.
The form factor and experience for the first standalone, wireless VR device is above par and raised the bar. The price point is, IMO, still too high for fast adoption but the experience is unparalleled and, dare I say, revolutionary in its space and makes me very excited to see where VR is going to _go_ (pun intended).
Also watching / listening to ASMR on the Oculus Go in bed is a very relaxing almost therapeutic experience.
Do they, or we, even want a single company to run the most popular game distribution service, the most popular gaming chat service, the most popular game streaming service, the most popular VR platform and the most popular gaming OS?
That sounds awful to me.
What's a competitor store that's caught up with Steam?
The Tyranny of Structurelessness
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
I don't think so. DXVK is extremely promising, as a way for running DX11's crap API on Vulkan.
The Lab was released in 2016, Artifact recently went to beta.
Witcher 2 did indeed run bad on Linux the last time I looked at it, and that was many months after its release. It wasn't at 2 FPS anymore, but still only barely playable. I bet it still runs badly, I think my last test wasn't that long ago, but given the driver improvements since then I might be wrong. All that on a system where the game ran fine on Windows.
I know nothing about whether the criticism was too heated, but if a linux port is released and does not run properly on user's systems, then complaints are to be expected.
This phrase made me sad, but it's an understandable statement. The article mentions several times that the Linux community in general was very toxic when it didn't get its way, and this isn't the first time I've heard the sentiment. It seems to me that the sense of elitism that Linux-users (including myself) generally carry can be enough to turn people off from trying to assist us from outside the community, and I don't think I'm the only one who has come to that conclusion.
If the developer offers that support, should I not report issues with the port? I don't follow that logic. I didn't pass any judgement on the game itself, but couldn't really give a positive recommendation.
For now, I value the lack of Linux ports for some items because I know the barrier to get it working on Wine (not always doable) will limit me and force me to get back to other, more valuable pursuits. Can't just game all the time as much as I'd like to at times.
As a mac user I'll agree with the statement "mac users are happy to pay for their port". I'm perfectly happy to pay for whatever is coming to mac, it just needs to work properly. When I do pay and the performance is crap I don't want to spend hours digging through forums while people point fingers at each other.
However, most AAA games are made with consoles in mind, so if i do want to play one, i'll get it for my PS4. It happens pretty rarely lately, though. Huge backlog of Mac indies to play, sorry AAA companies.
About the Witcher 2, the performance on Mac (and I guess on Linux too) was crap on launch. And that's what most people who bought the game saw, because they didn't expect the ports and bought when the Windows version launched and dual booted. Whatever they improved, it was too late, everyone had finished the game by now.
As for Witcher 3, I bought it but I only got like 1/3 of the way through it. Why? Because it only runs on Windows (I haven't tried Wine lately, so this may have changed) and rebooting to play a game is disruptive to all the stuff I run on the Mac OS side of things.
That doesn't bode well for my chances of rushing in and preordering Cyberpunk, sorry CD PROJEKT.
Edit: please no one explain to me how Macs don't have the hardware to run games, I hackintosh, have a proper video card and stuff like the ports of the Metro games work just fine(tm).
I finished Witcher 3 on Linux using DXVK. Not sure if it works on Mac (probably not), and it's not 100% perfect yet, but it is pretty good performance wise already.
Is there any practical difference for applications whether GPU is outside or on the CPU chip? Any major difference in drivers?
For example, dedicated GPUs usually can't make use of shared memory.
On the other hand, shared memory has slower access rate, meaning integrated GPU with it cannot be as faster.
This is just one difference, there are others.