Bingo,I think people forget Valve went out of their way to make their profit margin razor thin, or at a slight loss because they know the benefit of having a device that basically assures a new paying user will be added in their Steam ecosystem. It’s based on Nintendo’s walled garden philosophy after all, just refined really well on PC.
It’s not a walled garden though, Valve made no attempts to lock anything down. You can install something like Heroic Game Launcher on the Steam Deck and play Epic Game Store or GOG games too.
No, but they did make it very easy to buy Steam games and installing HGL or any other launcher is going to be both inconvenient and require a level of investigation that most people don’t care to bother with when they can just hit “buy” on the store.
It’s really not that hard and there are plenty of guides available. If you are unable to visit the “store” (discovery), download a program and finally run it, then maybe you should just keep using Steam and not complicate things.
I feel like if you are smart enough to know that Heroic Launcher exists then you could figure out how to do a google search on how to install it. It’s not like Windows “just works” every time
No I just think you’re exaggerating the problem and had a bad take on it. In my opinion Steam is harder to install on Windows than Heroic Launcher is to install on SteamOS.
Messing with Proton isn’t required and I am sure most games will figure out how to add a shortcut to Steam.
While this is true and works out that way, it’s either put in a bit of work to get a game to run (I have epic games borderlands 2 handsome Jack collection and it crashes a lot on me) or use the store that has all the games and controller settings set up specifically to the deck. Having the option is great, but using steam is still easiest and makes any deck owners default purchase store choice for a game as steam. To the point where if I had to pay $25 for a game on steam vs $20 on epic or any other, I’d just go ahead and get the steam version if I intended to play it on my deck.
It’s funny. I thought I would just play through my SO’s gargantuan library for a long while, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more on new games than I did on the Steam Deck itself at this point. So, yeah. They made the right call.
Valve also made a really thought out and well designed product, which I think is pretty rare these days. The instant hibernation feature is just one example of why the Steam Deck is so much better than the competition
Bingo,I think people forget Valve went out of their way to make their profit margin razor thin, or at a slight loss because they know the benefit of having a device that basically assures a new paying user will be added in their Steam ecosystem. It’s based on Nintendo’s walled garden philosophy after all, just refined really well on PC.
It’s not a walled garden though, Valve made no attempts to lock anything down. You can install something like Heroic Game Launcher on the Steam Deck and play Epic Game Store or GOG games too.
Yeah, it’s based on the philosophy, but it doesn’t strictly follow the philosophy.
No, but they did make it very easy to buy Steam games and installing HGL or any other launcher is going to be both inconvenient and require a level of investigation that most people don’t care to bother with when they can just hit “buy” on the store.
Why do you say that? Heroic games launcher already exist on Flathub and is super easy to use
I mean it’s a whole thing of even knowing how to install it, much less configuring Proton, adding it to Steam Launcher, etc.
It’s really not that hard and there are plenty of guides available. If you are unable to visit the “store” (discovery), download a program and finally run it, then maybe you should just keep using Steam and not complicate things.
I feel like if you are smart enough to know that Heroic Launcher exists then you could figure out how to do a google search on how to install it. It’s not like Windows “just works” every time
You’re missing the point entirely and I’m not sure if it’s just intentional.
No I just think you’re exaggerating the problem and had a bad take on it. In my opinion Steam is harder to install on Windows than Heroic Launcher is to install on SteamOS.
Messing with Proton isn’t required and I am sure most games will figure out how to add a shortcut to Steam.
No I think you’re just woefully ignorant of why people buy consoles in the first place, and why the Steam Deck even exists.
No I think you’re just woefully ignorant of why people buy consoles in the first place, and why the Steam Deck even exists.
While this is true and works out that way, it’s either put in a bit of work to get a game to run (I have epic games borderlands 2 handsome Jack collection and it crashes a lot on me) or use the store that has all the games and controller settings set up specifically to the deck. Having the option is great, but using steam is still easiest and makes any deck owners default purchase store choice for a game as steam. To the point where if I had to pay $25 for a game on steam vs $20 on epic or any other, I’d just go ahead and get the steam version if I intended to play it on my deck.
It’s funny. I thought I would just play through my SO’s gargantuan library for a long while, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more on new games than I did on the Steam Deck itself at this point. So, yeah. They made the right call.
Valve also made a really thought out and well designed product, which I think is pretty rare these days. The instant hibernation feature is just one example of why the Steam Deck is so much better than the competition