I think that’s it’s a slap in the face to remind us all that Valve is a for profit company.
They are supporting Linux, they make repairable hardware, proton is amazing, but they’re doing it so they can own the full stack and not have to deal with another party’s transaction fees when selling games.
They aren’t going to sell a product if they don’t make a profit. They want to make more profit.
They have the potential to enshitify at any moment. We can all be excited about Steam hardware but how is it different than Apple locking its customers in a walled garden?
What happens if they decide to make all the games you bought unavailable for licensing reasons? What happens if they shut down and suddenly all your games are gone? What happens if they lock their hardware?
16gb of ram cost 100$ more now. The SSD cost another 100$ more. We know they are for profit. Steam deck is just too expensive to make. That’s it. Why you feel entitled to getting hardware cheaper than production cost?
It sucks that the SD got more expensive, but your calculation about relevant component price hikes is spot-on.
Blaming Valve for that is a kind of victim blaming, because Valve would love to bring even more users in their eco-system through affordable hardware that just works.
I mean, no one ever doubted Valve was a for profit company.
They aren’t going to sell a product if they don’t make a profit.
Obvious
They want to make more profit.
O don’t think that’s what’s happening here, RAM prices are ridiculously high, and the Deck has RAM and SSD. We also know they’re selling it close to cost so they wouldn’t have been able to take the hit on those increases, and the price increase seems to be exactly what the components have increased in price.
They have the potential to enshitify at any moment.
That’s also true, and something we should be weary of, but I don’t think it’s warranted on this case.
how is it different than Apple locking its customers in a walled garden?
Because their hardware is not locked. You can do whatever you want with your Deck. Wanna pirate games? Go ahead, wanna install windows in it? Be my guest. That’s part of the reason why Valve can’t sell these cheaper than manufacturing cost like most consoles are, because it’s an open architecture people would just buy it in bulk to do servers and shit like they did with the PS3 before it was locked down for this exact reason.
What happens if they decide to make all the games you bought unavailable for licensing reasons? What happens if they shut down and suddenly all your games are gone What happens if they lock their hardware?
What happens if the government starts abducting children for their secret brainwashing institution? What happens if they shut down all personal own property? What happens if they lock all of the frontier?.. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit to RAM being more expensive and a product that has RAM becoming more expensive too?
Well, you are right and that’s why one should also support smaller stores like gog. However I think this is not valves corporate greed but more a hardware price increase thing. I think the reason why valve is okay to its customers is because its a private company and not a publicly traded one. The moment Gaben leaves and another head of the company moves valve to the stock market, the ship is wrecked.
I think that’s it’s a slap in the face to remind us all that Valve is a for profit company.
They are supporting Linux, they make repairable hardware, proton is amazing, but they’re doing it so they can own the full stack and not have to deal with another party’s transaction fees when selling games.
They aren’t going to sell a product if they don’t make a profit. They want to make more profit. They have the potential to enshitify at any moment. We can all be excited about Steam hardware but how is it different than Apple locking its customers in a walled garden?
What happens if they decide to make all the games you bought unavailable for licensing reasons? What happens if they shut down and suddenly all your games are gone? What happens if they lock their hardware?
16gb of ram cost 100$ more now. The SSD cost another 100$ more. We know they are for profit. Steam deck is just too expensive to make. That’s it. Why you feel entitled to getting hardware cheaper than production cost?
It sucks that the SD got more expensive, but your calculation about relevant component price hikes is spot-on.
Blaming Valve for that is a kind of victim blaming, because Valve would love to bring even more users in their eco-system through affordable hardware that just works.
I mean, no one ever doubted Valve was a for profit company.
Obvious
O don’t think that’s what’s happening here, RAM prices are ridiculously high, and the Deck has RAM and SSD. We also know they’re selling it close to cost so they wouldn’t have been able to take the hit on those increases, and the price increase seems to be exactly what the components have increased in price.
That’s also true, and something we should be weary of, but I don’t think it’s warranted on this case.
Because their hardware is not locked. You can do whatever you want with your Deck. Wanna pirate games? Go ahead, wanna install windows in it? Be my guest. That’s part of the reason why Valve can’t sell these cheaper than manufacturing cost like most consoles are, because it’s an open architecture people would just buy it in bulk to do servers and shit like they did with the PS3 before it was locked down for this exact reason.
What happens if the government starts abducting children for their secret brainwashing institution? What happens if they shut down all personal own property? What happens if they lock all of the frontier?.. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit to RAM being more expensive and a product that has RAM becoming more expensive too?
Well, they’re not gaming charity, sure. I don’t think anybody expected them to sell their hardware at a loss.
Well, you are right and that’s why one should also support smaller stores like gog. However I think this is not valves corporate greed but more a hardware price increase thing. I think the reason why valve is okay to its customers is because its a private company and not a publicly traded one. The moment Gaben leaves and another head of the company moves valve to the stock market, the ship is wrecked.
Steam Deck and SteamOS are no walled garden.
That’s the difference.
Feel free to run Bazzite on the SD, or even Windows, lol.
If all my Steam games are gone, I continue playing games from my GOG library through Heroic Games Launcher.
Again, see: no walled garden.