$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.

Market share is very much relevant to determining if some company has a dominant position in that market. You people would be arguing that Internet Explorer 6 wasn’t a monopoly because Mozilla and Opera existed.

Steam is a game distribution store, Steam machine and deck are console oriented machines. Linux as a whole has dominance in the server world, valve is touching the gaming side of desktop Linux. Desktop Linux is tiny compared to Windows. You are comparing it to a phone operating system in a world where they were two-ish, to a potential distro in a world where there are 12 or more, several of those widely used in servers. Be angry if you want but it's not the same.

It's just not even comparable in any way, regardless of how you try to shoehorn it into your analogy. Android was not a mature, stable OS with hundreds of distributions, for several decades, before Android phones came along.

You did not address anything I’ve said really. I’m going to go with block because I value my time too much.

Please stop digging that hole because it’s getting embarrassing.

Homie you're having a completely different argument than the rest of us. It's been explained to you like 3 different ways now. Not sure what else to tell you, so yeah. Believe what you want to believe, big dog.

Oh I'm wrong?

First public release of Android was in 2008 but you’re talking about several decades. No billionaire is your friend. Please sober up.

How do you feel about Google requiring apps to be notarised by them to run? How do you feel about locked bootloaders? I outlined steps that are required to get there and where Valve is on that timeline.

It doesn't come with windows. For a lot of businesses that is a requirement. The other thing valve has done is require you to have a steam account with purchases, and limit the number you can purchase on that account, before you buy a hardware device from them. This was to prevent scalping but also would prevent the scenario you present limiting sales to those that have already purchased games is a solid strategy for their new devices imo.

i swear i read *somewhere* that they were shootin for around $400 for a base model