Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.
It’s more than just pushing for support. They have made a lot of windows only games just work on Linux.
They’ve changed it from “need to release and support Linux” to “zero effort other than not actively fuck up the compatibility layer”. In user land, it’s the same thing. For developers it’s a vast difference.
More than that, they don’t lock it down to apps coming from Steam. In a Steam Deck, you can get the app from anywhere, even pirating, if you wish, and it works with Proton.
And the Steam Deck runs games that didn’t have to come from Steam.
Valve is legitimately doing things for the customer, even if they aren’t always a customer of Valve.
It’s more than just pushing for support. They have made a lot of windows only games just work on Linux.
They’ve changed it from “need to release and support Linux” to “zero effort other than not actively fuck up the compatibility layer”. In user land, it’s the same thing. For developers it’s a vast difference.
More than that, they don’t lock it down to apps coming from Steam. In a Steam Deck, you can get the app from anywhere, even pirating, if you wish, and it works with Proton.
And the Steam Deck runs games that didn’t have to come from Steam.
Valve is legitimately doing things for the customer, even if they aren’t always a customer of Valve.