this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
531 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
59148 readers
2689 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's your take on what valve has done for linux gaming and how much off it is open source?
That's purely profit driven. The biggest difference to other corporations is that they're privately owned, meaning they can pursue long-term strategies instead of short-term ones. Publicly traded companies have to pursue short term strategies because otherwise investors get itchy and want to sell. Doing something that costs money and will yield results in ten years is a big no-no for publicly traded companies.
Everyone and their mother who makes any computer has to pay money to Microsoft because they put Windows on it. There are only a few outliers, most notably Apple and a few vendors who put Linux or no OS in there.
Valve doesn't pay them shit, meaning they can sell the device cheaper, thus getting more customers. That's the immediate gain. When you provide a gaming OS that you want to offer to others, you're also the one getting paid for providing support. That's the long term profit.
And through it all, as a nice bonus, they stopped being reliant on a single vendor and gained unbelievably great PR from a group of gamers.