2mo ago

The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork of Valve’s own experience - Bazzite turns the Asus ROG Ally X into today’s best handheld while putting Windows to shame.

www.theverge.com The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork of Valve’s own experience

An Asus ROG Ally X running Bazzite has all but replaced the Steam Deck in my life.

PC Gaming @lemmy.ca

alessandro @lemmy.ca

2mo ago

on Asus ROG Ally X

The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork [Bazzite] of Valve’s own experience

www.theverge.com /2024/12/30/24329005/bazzite-asus-rog-ally-x-steam-os-editorial

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I'm sure Valve loves the fact that more people are locked into the Steam store.
Steam is great, and there's workarounds for using other installed games/stores, but... kinda feels bad that this stuff is so integrated into the Valve/Steam experience.
Don't get me wrong, I use my steam deck... a lot... and I buy most of my games on Steam... I just wish GOG and Epic integration was a little more integrated, just so I don't feel so locked in to one company. (yes, I'm aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they're still just hacked on extra steps that don't always work)
- There's nothing stopping epic or GOG from distributing a flatpak for their experiences/stores, the question is where are they?
  
  Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both have Epic and GOG integration.
  While I would love to have an official GOG Launcher on Linux, it would probably not work as well as Heroic’s integration.
  
  I'm aware, I just like to gently remind people that the stores they want to shop from, seemingly don't want their money. I view the deck as a kind of linux trojan horse for gaming, SteamOS on more devices could at least convince GOG that linux is worth supporting.
  Epic has an axe to grind and I expect nothing from them.
  
  Why? I claim them all the time on my phone, and occasionally play them through Heroic. I've never installed EGS on any of my devices, but I've played a few through Steam's integration.
  A free game is a free game, but I'll never buy from EGS while they're so hostile to my preferred platform: Linux. I'll occasionally buy from GOG, but honestly, their DRM-free schtick isn't nearly as valuable to me as Valve's investment in Linux.
  
  Epic is paying the devs, FitGirl and any other form of piracy isn't.
  
  So, they ignore Canada and refuse to support the people there. Greaaat.
  
  Neither of the companies want to support Linux. Simple as that. Or else their launchers would work on Linux without needing third party ones. They don't see Linux user base as big enough to be worth the effort.
- Thing is, unlike other vendor lockins, it's on GOG and Epic for not providing a launcher. It's super easy to install alternate launchers on the Steam Deck, it's just Epic and GOG haven't released official ones yet...
  
  They likely already have regular executive meetings amongst the developers at GOG and likely have discussed this over a decade and decided is wasn't worth the effort. I wonder why?
  
  If GOG officially supported Linux with their launcher and whatnot, idy probably switch my spending to them. That they haven't tells me they don't want the hundreds I spend on games every year.
  Likewise for EGS, but I expect a bit more from them (e.g. fund Linux compatibility, make Fortnite Linux compatible, push their EAC customers to support Linux in their games, etc).
  
  It will never happen unless CD Project/GOG spend the 100s of millions of dollars that Valve spends to help fund and support all the Proton compatability and tool suites and ease-of-use QA control to ensure their legacy games run in Linux (i.e. support a game developed in 1996 to run smoothly on every permutation of PC hardware configurations and support paying to develop patches until the end of time). Which is what Valve is currently doing.
  
  They don't need to, Valve's work is FOSS, and Heroic proves that it can be reused in another application.
  I don't expect GOG to test every game on every Proton/WINE version, all they need to do is give the user the option to select a different version. Heroic does that, as does Steam, so surely GOG can figure it out.
  
  So then why do you think they (GOG) haven't done anything for Linux yet?
  
  Because they don't care. Or maybe they're just poorly run. It would be pretty cheap to make Linux gamers happy, yet they don't.
  
  Is there a newer method? I had to install Ubisoft Connect recently and it's still somewhat tedious having to set up all the Proton settings manually.
- Agreed but that's just life in Linux in general. If epic and gog don't want to do the work to have a legitimate option in Linux (makes sense given market share), we'll keep doing the best we can with the hacky options while supporting the platform that is putting in the work.
- No one is locked into the Steam store. Any of the others could release a Linux handheld if they wanted to.
  First they would have to make an interface that works in a console like way, and then actually make the launchers work on Linux. But this would require effort, and neither care about actually supporting customers.
  Epic is far happier being customer hostile.
- GOG games work great with heroic because no DRM, almost as easy as steam games. Epic is a pain in the ass though because you need to be logged in to play them. They work offline for a time but every time I travel I have to reenter username, password, 2FA code and captcha. For whatever reason it just refuses to remember the device. Still Civ6 is good on deck and it was free on epic.
- yes, I’m aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they’re still just hacked on extra steps that don’t always work)
  I mean, this requires buying a windows powered handheld and then loading an entire OS on it.
  So I don't think people are locked to steam with it, but I'm honestly not sure.

123 comments