If Valve really wanted to make a splash, they could release a desktop version of SteamOS in October, right when support for Windows 10 ends. For additional damage, they could bundle in Half-Life 3. Just imagine the coverage this would get.
If Valve really wanted to make a splash, they could release a desktop version of SteamOS in October, right when support for Windows 10 ends. For additional damage, they could bundle in Half-Life 3. Just imagine the coverage this would get.
Yes and no, people can still use win10, it just won’t receive patches anymore. And in this particular case, my best guess is, that most people would rather use and outdated OS for a long time, rather than changing the OS altogether. Not every game is on steam, also not every non game programm is easily available for Linux. Humans are lazy.
You’re forgetting that valve can also drop support for EOL versions of windows, which so far they have.
True, but for example for Win7 they dropped support last year I think. So quite some time.
I think that was them drawing a line on eol windows. They cut both 7 and 8.1 at the same time. Could just be the policy now.
Part of me wants them to take the opportunity to push people to switch to Linux, the other part of me thinks that will be perceived no differently from msft’s badgering about win11.
That would be quite the power move, but unfortunately Steam doesn’t hold that much power alone, I think. There are still enough games that are not on Steam. As of today , Microsoft is the biggest games publisher (with Bethesda, Blizzard, Obsidian, ID, Mojang etc. belonging to them) and there are also giants like LoL or Fortnite.
It’s hard to say. I agree, it seems like the MAU data for each of League and Fortnite is roughly the same as MAU for all of Steam (which is nuts). Of course there’s no way to know how much overlap is there. Still, both of these titles would be a hard stop for people deciding whether to switch to Linux.
As for msft themselves though, ironically I don’t know what titles they have that keep players on windows. Battle.net works on Linux, Minecraft Java ed works on Linux (not sure about bedrock ed compatibility or player count, but afaik most of those players are on non-PC platforms), all their zenimax titles are sold through steam and work great on Linux. CoD might be their biggest hold.
I disagree on number of games, but I agree on player count. The number of PC games that are not on steam (or don’t work on linux) is tiny these days. But the number of PC gamers who don’t need steam, or need something that doesn’t run on linux is probably still quite high. Still, even if valve was able to push a few % of PC gamers to Linux, that would be huge. We’re currently at 2% on Linux in steam surveys. I could see a power move by valve around win10 eol bringing that closer to 10%.
Yeah that’s true, I think the biggest hurdle are games that use anticheat that don’t work on Linux, which are afaik usually multiplayer games. So they might be able to pull gamers, that only play Singleplayer games.
I don’t disagree in principle, but from what I’ve heard the full screen “buy a new computer” pop-ups are pretty bloody annoying!