You’re missing the bigger picture. Yes, developers really appreciate that their games work seamlessly on the Steam Deck and Linux with no effort on their part. But there are a couple of knock on effects.

One is that developers now a specific hardware + software combo to test their games with. Even if it’s the same build they’re sending out, they’re still testing their game on the Deck and fixing issues, leading to a better (but not perfect) experience for Linux gamers. Here’s a video of Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian studios playing a game released by his studio on the Steam Deck - https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k. He’s very pleased and promises to test future games released by his studio on the Deck. And he stuck to that promise - Larian released several fixes specifically for the Steam Deck to make Baldur’s Gate III run better. Linux gamers benefit from that.

Second, this increases the % of gamers using Linux. After the Deck’s success in the last couple of years Linux is at 1.91% of the respondents of the Steam Hardware Survey for Nov 2023. Linux was at 1.15% 18 months ago. Doesn’t sound impressive, but if that growth continues and it reaches 3-4%, at that point developers will find shipping native Linux builds more attractive.

Valve adocates are the ones failing to learn from OS/2 history, "it does Windows better than Windows".

Studios don't care about native GNU/Linux, despite the games being shipped with Android/NDK, PlayStation POSIX environment, and the available APIs on Switch OS.

All of them much easier than porting from Windows/XBox, almost straight ports if coming from Android/NDK.

Having a desktop OS was a big thing 30 years ago, but now nobody cares anymore. Who interacts with their OS other than launching browsers or apps based on browsers? Not even most coders these days.

OSes are irrelevant these days and having basically libwindows.so these days only underlines that.

That is why GNU/Linux gaming is stuck on 2%, and needs to emulate Windows APIs.

Valve only stresses the relevance of Windows.

The Steam user survey isnt a representative number. An API isn't emulated, it's implemented, it's no more or less native than Windows itself.

In various benchmarks Proton is now outperforming Windows. There is no need for it anymore, outside some niche applications.

Statistics only matter when they make our case, yeah.

I know pretty well how Proton works.

Valve inventing a portable game runtime that just works on all Linux distros without game studios needing an entire department to handle the dependency hell of Linux NIHisn would solve that issue.

You mean the Steam Linux Runtime?

From a quick search this is the best description of it I found: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

Valve funds SDL development, I think

Does it actually work though? Ironically my experience is that windows api + proton are a more stable target than anything linux native. Even valve doesn't get it always right when shipping linux versions of their own games. See https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=30358... for example.

Pity that Khronos never got the support they needed to make cross-platform raster APIs a reality. I mean really, what an enormous and crying shame that a successor to a highly-demanded API like OpenGL never emerged. It's really quite sad that users never had a corporate champion to resist the allure of a proprietary graphics API. The stage was set for every modern OS to be unified under a new raster library, but the setting was dashed for a petty buck. Quite a tragedy.

Ah well, it's funny to see people complaining because it really solos out the OS you're using. Windows users have native DirectX, Linux users have near-flawless DXVK, and Mac users... well, Mac users get what Apple gives them, and they have to learn to be happy with it.

Just like PlayStation, XBox and Switch.

Game studios aren't FOSS indie devs stressing out about 3D APIs.

They are used to specific hardware since the Atari and Magnavox.

> Game studios aren't FOSS indie devs stressing out about 3D APIs.

You should tell them that, they must not be aware considering all the APIs they pass over and platforms they avoid.

Exactly because of my past history with the games industry 20 years ago, and some contacts I still have, I know much better than random HN commenter ranting about why studios don't care.

Food for thought, not even the studios targeting Android/NDK care about GNU/Linux, despite both platforms having the same 3D, audio and device API relevant for games.

It isn't the APIs that make them not care about GNU/Linux.

Totally, duly noted. Do try out Digital Combat Simulator when Mac figures out the whole DirectX thing though, it's a must-see on recent machines. Ciao!