Hmm. It seems you're actually correct on that one. Although I think they might have a hard time arguing that it's "just a PC" when it launches straight into a dedicated gaming environment on boot.

They import Steam Decks as PCs currently. I’m pretty sure this is also a part of consideration regarding next gen Xbox.

They are using a modified arch distro with KDE, yeah it defaults to steam big picture on launch but that can be changed, specially on the GabeCube. It's a computer, a literal computer with all the capabilities and support systems of arch Linux with KDE. The amount of contributions they have done to the Linux gaming world to then use it in their consoles is insane. They didn't built it for themselves, they built it for everybody, then made it popular in their consoles so they get money back from increased sales on the games. They did sell the deck at a loss, but that was a new concept and people were weary, price needed to be good. Now people know that the idea works, the picture changes. I don't really care if they sell at a loss or no, I'm not buying one when I basically have the equivalent already at home, but saying that their plan is to corner consumers sounds like the other side of the lunacy spectrum as those that treat steam as religion.

GoG, epic, any other store really. Proton is made by valve but it works in whatever, and there are tools now to use proton (not wine, proton) outside of steam to get all the goodies you got on top. Heroic launcher does that for the games you get from the Amazon store, gog, epic, and any other exe you got. I even installed battle net, and once you open it everything you install from there works in that bubble and work, I played plenty HOTS games. I play modded D2 without much issues. You know why the steam market share in Linux is so high? Because they are the ones that put the work to make windows games work on Linux. Yes, wine existed before but they both adapted it for games and contributed to the overall wine project a ton. Also, iirc, steamdecks make up for 30% of the Linux machines from valve's yearly reports. The market is tremendously tiny yet.

Right. I don't believe they're hurting for profits, and at the same time, having Linux and specifically Steam OS become much more widely adopted would greatly benefit them (for breaking out of the Microsoft jail they still find themselves partially in). Also, hardware is not their primary business. It seems that they could sell this to cover their costs and reap all the rewards from that besides immediate profit.

What is their current market share on Linux?

Why is that even relevant? You said people can only get games on Steam and that's just not true

If they have no market share then that competition exists in theory only.

Good guess. For reference, [Xbox series X](https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/xbox-series-x) without optical drive is $600 currently. [PS5 Pro](https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/buy-consoles/playstation5-pro-console) without optical drive is $750 currently. The specs on Valve Machine seem more similar to PS5 Pro, I think.

You can launch any .exe through Steam using Proton... You don't even need to *buy* the games if that's your prerogative.

$600 and more would be embarrassing because that’s how much base Mac Mini costs and I’m not yet convinced which one is more performant.

$600 and more would be embarrassing because that’s how much base Mac Mini costs and I’m not yet convinced which one is more performant.

Just walk me through what prevents Valve from following Google’s footsteps in commoditising Linux only to lock it down like they are doing currently.

Linux and proton are open source, and their licenses allow literally anyone to fork it. GE-Proton already exists. How are they currently locking Linux down?

Same could be said about Android. - [Google will require developer verification for Android apps outside the Play Store](https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/25/google-will-require-developer-verification-for-android-apps-outside-the-play-store/) - [Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions](https://www.androidauthority.com/android-power-users-install-unverified-apps-3615310/) (they will retry, long game)

The same cannot be said about Android. I think you need to educate yourself on what Linux and FOSS actually is.

I see AOSP was forgotten very quickly.

You're right, that's why there's countless mature Android distributions to choose from, and they're all free. Oh wait. I don't really know much about AOSP, but isn't the fact that it doesn't contain any of the proprietary Google stuff mean that the "sideloading" restrictions likely will not apply? How could it?

You're not seeing the forest for the trees. Just because other game distribution vectors lack market share does not mean there are no alternatives to Steam. People have options, but they overwhelmingly choose Steam based on the quality of their product and service. If others decide to improve those things or a particular game is better priced or contains more content on another service, the consumer is free to choose that distributor. Market share is completely irrelevant in this case.

So you don’t really know the story of Android, much of it very recent, but you’re going to argue that Valve is not following the same path. What a waste of time.