Taking money away from one billionaire and giving it to another billionaire is completely irrelevant.
Also, of all the billionaires we have, gaben is one of the few I like. Steam has brought linux gaming ahead like nobody else ever did before, and there was no profit incentive until the steam deck which was like 5 years after the first release of proton, and that’s something I’m genuinely thankful for.
Valve had a Steam Machine before the Steam Deck which went down like a lead balloon but did get enough indie interest to continue to support a Linux version of the client. The Steam Deck is basically a continuation of that in a small form factor. I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve ever decide to offer cloud gaming that it is also derives from some of these efforts, if for no other reason than to avoid a Windows license fee on the server.
The steam machine was good in concept, the problem was that the software was not ready at ALL and the market was too niche. Most people alrady had a PlayStation or XBox for couch gaming and most games back then that were available on steam were not that well optimized for controllers.
They basically built the foundation over the past few years with steam input and proton so they could bring it all together to make an amazing handheld device.
You gotta fail somewhere to be succesful, and valve did just that.
I think another problem with the Steam Machine was that it was still trying to be like a PC ecosystem, so there wasn’t a universal Steam Machine. It was just a PC running a specific OS, and everyone who was making Steam Machines had wildly different builds. It didn’t make it any easier for a non-tech consumer to get, and there was nothing to get excited about as a tech-minded person other than the software.
The Deck is a perfect entry level PC, and, aside from the added bonus of portability, should have been what a Steam Machine actually was.
Valve already does cloud gaming. It’s called Steam Cloud Play (not to be confused with cloud saves) and they currently work exclusively with GeForce Now.
