Valve is about to win the console generation
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excited
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Valve
gaming consoles
Steam Deck
The article argues that Valve is poised to win the current console generation with its Steam Deck and related ecosystem.
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Maybe HLX will have some kind of VR interaction possible, as they want to push technology further with each Half life game.
Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even now. They want to support running software on the headset, and sure why not enable compatibility layers to play some small games, but the end goal is clearly streaming from a PC. Maybe if some good ARM cpu hit the market they will pivot, but up until recently "ARM gaming" meant mobile phones.
Anything besides rumors? AFAIK, there is absolutely zero official information beyond the rumor mill.
> Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even now.
I mean, then you're just looking the other way intentionally, they're quite literally adding support for ARM now, https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/codeweavers-launch-a-n... That's not something you do on a whim, it's a calculated step towards something.
And they're clearly setting up the new VR head to both do standalone gameplay for people without PCs, and to do streaming from PC.
None of the Steam hardware seems to have only a single use in fact, all of them are multipurpose, not sure why the VR headset should be any different, especially when what we know points to it also being multipurpose, quite explicitly so at that.
If you count datamining as rumors, then no, nothing else. But the data mining is real data coming from valve so it's more than just "somebody said...". You can find lists of all the references to HLX found in other games, and what that tells us about the game.
>I mean, then you're just looking the other way intentionally, they're quite literally adding support for ARM now
Yes, I'm not looking the other way. But ARM is not their bread and butter and won't be for a good while. I'm fairly certain they are pushing this because they can, not because there is a strategic importance to supporting ARM. Had they been able to use a x86 cpu in the Frame, I'm sure they would have.
Plus, ARM gaming implies games made for ARM running on steam, like on mobile phones. This is "just" an emulation layer to play x86 games on ARM. Just like Apple is doing with the Game Porting Toolkit, and just like Microsoft is doing with their Windows on ARM. Are they really pushing ARM Gaming, or PC gaming or ARM?
For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6 months.
Good luck with that.
Steam does not.
Switch 2 does not.
I'm mostly a PC gamer but let's be real here.
It is far, far better to have tons of high quality software available for a platform, than to have an amazing platform, but a limited choice of software.
Yes Steam has huge library (my ‘want to play’ list is over 100 titles at this point) full of games of all genres, qualities, and niches. But Nintendo has more than enough to do what they have done for years, i.e. sit tight on their beloved IP and dole it out at varying levels of quality on strictly low end hardware and watch their earning go up.
Funnily enough, I own a Switch and a PS5. I mostly buy and play on the Switch while the PS5 main function is getting covered in a thin layer of dust.
However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales--Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
However, the single digital service that hasn't killed my digital library at some point is Steam. Games that I bought many years ago are still fine. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all killed digital games that I bought.
That having been said: I've transferred a lot of my purchasing to GoG. Steam doesn't get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
No? All stores are still online. Some don't allow buying new games anymore (DSi Shop, Wii Shop, PS3 store for example) but redownloading still works.
Half Life 3 is coming.
The only way immutability helps here is you could have two OS images, the users own customisable one, and a clean one. Then when you try to load an anti cheat game, the console could in theory reboot in to the clean one, and pass all the verification checks to load the game.
It's like docker images for the whole OS. As far as I can tell, the Steam Deck does not have secure boot or any kind of attestation enabled. They have been very forward in marketing it as an open and free system you can do anything on. The hardware does have a TPM that is seemingly unused currently, not sure if it supports some form of secure boot.
Attested sealed images and Open and Free systems have no conflict with each other. Mod it all you want; sure, it’ll generate a different attestation than the shipping sealed image, or if your customizations turn off attestations and/or secure boot, none at all. You do you! Source code releases will never include the private key used to sign them, just as with all open source today, so either the OS’s attestation will be signed by Valve or by you or by someone else. It takes me about sixty seconds to add my own signing key to my PC BIOS today and it would not surprise me to find Valve’s BIOS implements the same, as I’m pretty certain this is basic off-the-shelf functionality on Zen4/Zen5. But, regardless, Free/Open Source is wholly unconcerned by whose release signing key is used; otherwise it wouldn’t be Free/Open! The decision to care about whose release signature is live right now is the gaming server’s decision, not Steam Linux’s, and that decision is not restricted by any OSS-approved license that I’m aware of.
Secure boot attestations plus sealed images do enable “unmodified Valve Linux release” checks to be performed by multiplayer game servers, without needing the user to be locked out of making changes at all. This is already demonstrated in macOS today with e.g. Wallet’s Apple Pay support; you can disable and mod the OS as much as you wish, and certain server features whose attestation requirements require an Apple release signature on the booted OS will suspend themselves when the attestation doesn’t match. When you’re ready to use those servers, you secure boot to an OEM sealed environment and they resume working immediately. This is live, today, on every Apple Silicon (and T2 chipped Intel) device worldwide, and has been available for developers to use for years.
Attestations are, similarly, already available on all AMD devices with a TPM today, so long as the BIOS to OS chain implements Secure Boot — not requires, but implements, as there’s no reason to deny users unsigned OS booting once you’re checking attestation signatures server-side. As you note, it remains to be seen if the Steam Box will make use of it. If they do, it coexists just fine with full reputposability and modifiable, because you can do whatever you like with the device — and, correspondingly, each game may choose to require an unmodified environment to ensure a level playing field without kernel or OS modifications.
It would be a lost opportunity for them if they were not the first fully open OS with a fully secure multiplayer environment that prohibits both third-party cheating mods and third-party DRM rootkits. VAC becomes as simple as a sysctl, and patches are still welcome. Open source for the win, and one step further towards the Linux desktop finally overtaking residential Windows, and thr ability to play console-grade multiplayer without the proliferation of on-device software-only hacks? Yes, please.
(Note that manufacturers who use Secure Boot to lock out device modifications are not in-scope here; that choice has no effect on attestations. Secure Boot is “the OS booted had this checksum and signature” with HSM backing, so that the software can’t lie. It is extremely unlikely that Valve would demand that the OS booted be signed by Valve. That would be no different than Xbox/PS5/Switch, and they’d be leaving a massive competitive advantage over tvOS on the table: device repurposeability.)
Attestation could help, but I'm not sure if it goes in the spirit of what Valve tries to do with their OS. The system is open and you can easily access the desktop (it's a first party feature) and thus do what you want. Maybe with a separate verified boot state without desktop but the user experience would not be great.
And in the end, like you said, they'd run to only support sealed attested systems if they could. But cheats have evolved past being run on the computer running the game. Some use DMA or are in between the keyboard/mouse and the usb port. Consoles also have their fair share of cheaters. None of those would be solved by attestation.
Valve has shown recently that it's possible to fight cheaters without kernel AC or attestation. It's just a bit more difficult and intensive so other AC providers won't go the same route.
On windows with kernel anti cheat you would need to find some vulnerable driver, sign your own driver, or use external cheats like DMA or vision based. This funnels cheat devs into using a few methods that anti cheat devs can focus on for detection. Is it perfect? Clearly not as there's plenty of cheaters anyway. But its much more effective than what these anti cheats can do on linux.
The only place it suffers for me is games that aren't coded to support simultaneous gamepad and mouse input, which you can work around by mapping the joystick as a keyboard input. Otherwise it's great.
Somewhat related, but I enjoy the topic. Is how freakishly good the mouse is for FPS type games. If you asked anyone to design a purpose built controller for a first person game they would not come up with a mouse. But somehow despite all odds that thing designed for moving a cursor around the screen is the best controller yet for looking around. Probably something about the huge throw distance compared to any other controller.
On a PC, for $15 a month you can get a HumbleBundle subscription and get 5-6 Steam games to keep yours forever (unlike Playstation Plus "free" games). Plus 3-4 free games/month from Epic (an option, since Valve said they won't lock the hardware). Plus 3-4 games from Amazon Prime Gaming if you are a subscriber. Plus a ton of other discount websites.
Compare this to the average cost of a PS5 title and the walled garden of the Playstation Store. Not to mention that your PS5 library probably won't be playable on PS6.
Yes, AAAA games will still be expensive, but for everything else the Steam Machine will give consoles a run for their money. Cost-conscious gamer are very likely to switch.
How does the Steam Machine affect this at all, then?
Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
Just seeing all the gamers requesting a kernel AC for CS2, saying VAC does not work; but now they have banned a lot of cheaters and seem to have less cheaters than the new Battlefield which has kernel AC.
If anyone is capable of moving things along in this space, Valve should be it.
> Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
It's not the gamers that don't want this - although, yes, I do also want the option of matchmaking - it's the companies that don't allow dedicated servers, or shut down the servers after releasing that year's full-price version of the same game.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
Even if it is a "pricier" PS5-like machine, I'd still buy it and I bet I'd make up the difference in less than a year with just the sales games (including older games I can't play on either console).
I think most of the critiques for this are from people expecting this to be aimed at PC gamers.
I don't think it is. I think it's aimed at people that actually DON'T want to bother with building, buying, upgrading PCs, but still want to play cheap games, older games.
To this day, I can't make my PC turn on with a controller (and I've tried). Making a PC wake up as fast as a Steam Deck from sleep? Impossible.
Those little things will all add up to make this a very nice option for the non-hardcode PC game crowd.
Valve is going to steal a lot of users from console, mostly Xbox. Not PC Gaming enthusiast.
I don’t think it needs to compete on price directly, if it can deliver the polish of a console. It can also play up the angle of being a full blown computer.
PS5 + 3 years of PS Plus = $740
Steam Machine = $700
Add/remove more years of PS Plus if the SM turns out to be more/less expensive.
If you add the fact that games on PC are usually cheaper and have sales more often then it's a no brainer, but that won't convince the FIFA and COD players.
Sure you don't need to subscribe to PS+, but that's somewhat easier to swallow since PS+ gives you games with the subscription.
I'm still interested in this for playing older games but I have a Steam Deck and it still isn't remotely as seamless as my Switch or PS5.
That's largely known now but still a bummer. I wonder if anything will ever change in this area and if Valve will be able to pressure game editors or create an anti-cheat so good and for any platform to be able to change something.
Also, making anti cheat on Linux feels like the most Anti-Linux thing to do. But I don't play many multiplayer games, so I have no skin in the game.
It can be involved but it's certainly possible
It has a custom motherboard for example, which may or may not be supported by Microsoft.
All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6 at launch.
I don't expect them to match either in volume but it seems like microsoft is already backing out of the dedicated console hardware space tho
What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
I guess it depends on how big the loss is… if it is small, it might not be really worth it for most people; but any larger, I wonder how sustainable this will be.
For normal computer use (reading email, watching videos, doing spreadsheets), there are much cheaper and better options available. If somebody wanted a Steam Machine specifically, it'd be for the GPU.
If you needed a lot of GPU compute (for AI or blockchain or whatever), it'd be cheaper to buy or rent a dedicated server with Nvidia H100s rather than buying dozens of Steam Machines.
So the only potential use cases are those that have a significant but not too significant GPU requirement. The only ones I can think of are gaming (which is the intended use case), video editing, and 3D rendering.
Video editing is less of a concern because neither Adobe Premier nor Final Cut Pro will run on Linux (to my knowledge), so you might as well buy a Mac that runs both of those very efficiently and has decent hardware.
So we're left with 3D rendering. If people want to use Steam Machines to render things in Blender, I say "let them", and I assume that Valve does too.
Media box under your TV? Right now I don't have a lot of options that also don't inundate me with ads.
Sure, I can build one, but if Valve can put this out at a price that makes me go "Nah. Not worth building it myself." that's a win.
So, there's quite a bit of pricing room.
No need to buy an almost 1000€ massively overpowered custom gaming machine for that.
Plus, Steam is bordering on a monopoly for PC gaming anyway, so, even if they install another OS, a user is probably going to end up on Steam.
Just a random blog's guess.
> What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
Nothing. But it doesn't mean that Valve doesn't benefit from it. Valve wants the whole gaming scheme to shift toward SteamOS. Like Google wants the whole web browsing to shift to Chrome, even you can use Chrome for stuff unrelated to Google.
(Technology, demographics, popularity?)
SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
Gamers don't like playing with cheaters.
You could be playing against an AI model specifically trained on that game. No anti cheat is going to detect that.
I imagine that if this happens, it will be followed by popular Linux distros finally becoming serious about their Secure Boot implementations, instead of simply shimming it or seen as a rarely-used feature reserved for enterprise distros like RHEL.
Some of us actually think that having some sort of validation that our OS hasn't been tampered with is a feature and not a bug. It's only a problem when companies parlay that validation into anti-consumer DRM - but that's a political problem, not a technological one.
All the platforms that went all-in on secure boot like things and attestation are anti-consumer hellholes that slurp all your data. The evidence just does not look good. Maybe Linux is different, but it's swimming against the tide here. It would be the first of it's kind.
Also some services will just downgrade you to a lower quality stream if your device doesn’t have the appropriate keys.
And anyway I (and many other people!) have valid keys for basically all widevine streams extracted from supposedly secure android devices. That DRM approach ended up failing miserably and torrent sites are full of WEB-DLs.
Maybe playing with the anticheat enabled makes you immune to being reported for cheating (because they can verify down to the kernel level that you aren't), but you can still play without it (but without the immunity from being reported).
Obviously they wouldn't do this in today's market because there's no incentive to do so, but if a significant portion of gamers moved to Linux, offering a Linux solution might become a reasonable choice for game studios.
I can imagine a whole scene popping up where everyone cheats to the max, creating whole new game modes.
That would be very interesting. I also bet that people would start developing bots that play the game better than a human could and eventually it would essentially turn into digital BattleBots.
GTA VI will probably run single player on proton fine, GTA V does. Multiplayer will probably not.
The multiplayer with kernel level anti cheat will keep Sony safe through at least another generation; Microsoft is less safe as they're so vulnerable this generation anyway.
This isn't really true. As GP said, there isn't a kernel level anti cheat for linux. You can switch a flick on BattleEye to run on linux but it wont be a kernel level as it is on windows. So there is an incentive for them to not turn it on because it simply is the worse version than the windows one. As far as I know even on windows you get cheats even if it is kernel level. Meaning, allowing linux you'd probably be flooded with cheaters if you already get them on windows.
There's an easy way to not get cheaters, or at least to slow down their impact: stop making your games "free to play". When cheaters have to buy 60€ games everytime they get b&, eventually they'll run out of money.
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
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