I agree. It's a mistake for Valve to reduce platform support as it becomes a justification for dropping other platforms for other developers as well.
I know that MacOS is a bit of a pain to support right now with how steam and third party applications are treated, but it would be a bigger issue for Apple to drop support if Valve maintained a strong presence on the platform via steam. With the way things are now, Apple might rip the bandaid off and just remove the ability to have third party stores on their computers. This is already what they do with Iphones/Ipads
… it literally contains the Steamworks SDK: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton which becomes pretty awkward to ship on your own storefront. You'd have to do a good bit of work to make Proton steam-free. No one is going to do that for 2% of the market. Just like arguing you could use Chromium and anyone who wants to make a browser can use it but realistically it creates an ecosystem around Google and for Proton, around Valve.
Don't forget that the only reason Proton even exists is because they added a version of Steam Play to Linux Steam users.
One dev does it in his spare time. I use it to run games that aren't on Steam like Ubisoft and Blizzard stuff.
But yes, as a software company you'd probably have to pay someone to create and maintain a similar release for your own use - but that's part of being a software company.
I agree. It's a mistake for Valve to reduce platform support as it becomes a justification for dropping other platforms for other developers as well.
I know that MacOS is a bit of a pain to support right now with how steam and third party applications are treated, but it would be a bigger issue for Apple to drop support if Valve maintained a strong presence on the platform via steam. With the way things are now, Apple might rip the bandaid off and just remove the ability to have third party stores on their computers. This is already what they do with Iphones/Ipads
Valve wants developers to drop Linux though. It gives them a monopoly on Linux game compatibility.
No it doesn't.
Any other store can straight rip their compatibility tools if they want. It's not their fault no one else can be bothered.
… it literally contains the Steamworks SDK: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton which becomes pretty awkward to ship on your own storefront. You'd have to do a good bit of work to make Proton steam-free. No one is going to do that for 2% of the market. Just like arguing you could use Chromium and anyone who wants to make a browser can use it but realistically it creates an ecosystem around Google and for Proton, around Valve.
Don't forget that the only reason Proton even exists is because they added a version of Steam Play to Linux Steam users.
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom
One dev does it in his spare time. I use it to run games that aren't on Steam like Ubisoft and Blizzard stuff.
But yes, as a software company you'd probably have to pay someone to create and maintain a similar release for your own use - but that's part of being a software company.